From a letter from Singer Rankin -
"We stay in Johannesburg, where there are so many beautiful objects to buy for World Women Work, from hand embroidered cushion covers and placemats to recycled telephone wire baskets. I go to Soweto with an old friend from London, and Nicholas Jaff, who heads the Bright Kids Foundation. He uses old containers from ships that he has retrofitted as classrooms for pre-school children and places them in townships too poor to have enough school rooms. We visit one. The two teachers are wonderful and the children are so cute! They sing for us. I am sold and commit to WWW's sponsorship of one "Edutainer," as they are called. Our logo with the Ethiopian woman and baby will be on the side. The other sponsor is Citibank.
"Sixty percent of the kids' parents - who themselves are between the ages of fourteen and thirty - end up going to school because their children are, so I feel we are helping not only children but their entire families as well.
"From here it is on to Botswana with Katy Payne and the elephants. We spend an entire day at one water hole under the shade of a camel thorn acacia that we climb and perch in from time to time as respite from the cramped quarters of the Land Rover. A couple of elephants come to drink, many birds, a leopard, and finally one lone elephant who completely submerges like a whale. Then a few bulls who go off in another direction, so we decide to follow. What we find are 25 bulls all playing together in a huge waterhole - trunks wrapped around each other, pushing, rolling, throwing water, butting their tusks, facing off. In the midst of this elephant playground appears a breeding herd of maybe 70 cows and calves thundering down to the waterhole. The little ones race to keep up with their mothers. They mix with the bulls, trumpeting and causing complete chaos! We are then surrounded as they leave. Their curiousity is amazing as they encircle our vehicle... almost touching it. Then they go. There is such a sense of fun and playfulness about them. They are constantly touching and communicating with one another. Katy interprets the whole time."

Note: For more information on The Edutainer, and on Katy Payne's Elephant Research Project, please see the Programs section