saying goodbye

This past week has been busy. We’ve been at the college so there’s been more free time, but a lot of final exploring to get done. We turned in our final group presentations this week and our final papers and are officially done with school. We got to go on a peninsula tour and see the most southwesterly tip of Africa and the penguins, which are adorable. On Thursday we hit some of the major museums in Cape Town like the Slave Lodge and the District 6 Museum, which was a great taste of how Apartheid impacted communities and families. On Friday we went back into down and did some final shopping and looking around. Saturday we got up at 4am and went shark cage diving. It was a 2-hour drive to get to Dyer Island where we dove, but it was all worth it. We were on the boat for about 4 hours and took turns getting into the 7-person cage and watching the sharks under water. The great things about the diving is that you have a terrific view on the boat as well because they chum the water and bait the sharks in with fish heads. So the people in the boat are able to see the sharks breech and jump and bite the bait while the people in the water are able to be a couple of feet away from huge great white sharks. It was a great experience and we got to be so close to some huge and completely incredible sharks. Sunday morning I went to a local church and the service was a Christmas pageant put on by the children of the congregation, which was adorable. After church a few girls and I went to the beach and hung out for a few hours. Today we had our final class session for debriefing and discussing the reentry process and the difficulties we might face. And right now we’re all frantically packing and trying to understand that our time here is done. In so many ways it feels like we just got here, but I am thankful to be going home and for the upcoming Christmas season and the opportunity to rest. I have so much to think about and process about my time here, but I know that we have been so outrageously blessed by God. We have learned so much and have experienced so much of God’s goodness. When I see you at home ask me about my experience or any specific questions you might have. I would love to talk more about my time here and would love to be able to bless other people with this huge blessing I have received. Thank you for going on this journey with me!

This was the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.
Psalm 118:23

we've been at the beach the past few days.
wednesday is going to be a rude awakening.

1st Week in Cape Town

Home stays are over and we are moving into our final week here in Africa. It's outrageous to think that we're about to go home- our time here in Cape Town has flown by so unbelievably fast. Home stays were such a blessing. It was the second or third time I've been in a home in these past 3 months and even though our stay wasn't terribly eventful, it was so good to be able to rest and reflect. The women we stayed with are teachers and spent most of our time in their home grading papers while we did homework, but we found time to do some sightseeing with them and we got to meet their whole family and spend some time at some friends' houses. The colored community here in the Cape is loud, open, gracious, and joyful. There are always people in the street, there are always parties going on, and you can't walk or drive around without talking to someone every few feet. So being in that environment was new and exciting and getting to learn about Apartheid from a different point of view was so interesting. Every family had a different story, but after hearing them and knowing the people we were living with it made Apartheid so much more personal. Seeing the impact of the Apartheid system in my host family's life even today, a decade and a half after it ended, was also really interesting. I started noticing people staring at Caitlin and I when we were out with our family and understanding what it's like to be discriminated against or looked at differently was really eye opening for me. But we had some great times with our family and got to meet a lot of great people and it was such a good enriching experience. Being in a home did make me a little homesick especially because there was so much going on, but now that we're at BI we have some time to slow down and think which has been so great. This past week when we weren't at home stays we were either in class or on excursions. On tuesday we got to go to Langa which is a local township and we were led through it on a tour by a few of the community members. It was interesting because I've spent a decent amount of time in townships on this trip because of previous tours and because I worked in one for a month, so I came into the tour knowing what to expect and Langa was no different then any other township I've been in. The problems are the same no matter where you go and even though Langa's been given a lot of money, the problems are still there. I have learned so much in my time here about what good development looks like and I've seen so many examples of what bad community development is which has been really eye opening and will be something I'll continue to figure out and use in my career. On thursday we went to Robben Island which wasn't what I pictured, but was certainly interesting and I'm so glad I had the chance to go. The tour is guided by an ex-political prisoner, so our guide was a student that was arrested for organizing and participating in demonstrations against the Apartheid government. He was a little difficult to understand but his insight and personal experience made the tour much more interesting and it was pretty cool to get to see where so much South African political ideology was discussed and created and where so many great leaders lived. On friday Virginia, our host mom, picked us up early from school and we drove around the city and stopped at some of the major lookout points and got to see great views of Cape Town and the ocean. For dinner we got banana pizza from the camel farm across the street which was weird but pretty good as far as banana pizza made on a camel farm goes. Saturday morning we got up early and hiked Table Mountain. It was a harder hike then I was expecting, if you could call it hiking. It was really more like rock climbing/going up giant stairs for 2 hours. So not really easy, but about half way up the mountain I found a Zulu family that was hiking at the same speed as me so we hiked and talked and sang Zulu songs together and had a great time. It was really cloudy as it tends to be on Table Mountain, so we couldn't see anything from the top, but it was a good hike. On sunday we went to church in the morning with Raynard, one of the cultural mentors, and after we went to a huge flea market in Muizenberg and we broke down on the way and got to push the car up the hill which was exciting. That night we went to a concert in the Kirstenbosch gardens which are gorgeous and saw a band called Mango Groove. They're a jazz african fusion type ensemble and the crowd was mostly old people with picnic baskets but we still had a good time. The semester is almost over so we have a group presentation due in a few days and a final paper due next week so we're pretty busy and today's been devoted to homework, but hopefully we'll still get out into the city a few times in this next week to really enjoy the last of our time here!

Cape Town!

We have arrived in the beautiful city of Cape Town and are going to spend the next 3 weeks taking our history class and getting to know the city. This past week we traveled from Maritzburg for 4 days down the garden route. The garden route is beautiful and parts of it reminded me of driving the 1 in central california. We spent the 1st night in Port Elizabeth and moved onto East London the next day. In East London we were right next to the water again and a large casino and mall so we got to eat out for lunch and dinner which was fun and a great treat. The next day we drove to George and stayed at a retreat center called Carmel which was on a mountain overlooking the coast and was incredibly beautiful. We stopped at the bungee jumping place on the way to George and some of our group threw themselves off of a really tall bridge. That afternoon we got to go to a big cat refuge and looked at baby white tigers and cheetahs. The next day we took a day trip to the cango caves. The caves are huge and breathtaking- they were so much bigger then i was expecting and the formations were so cool. The used to hold concerts in the 1st chamber and the acoustics are incredible and we were able to persuade our guide to sing some Zulu songs with us which was a lot of fun. After the tour we came back to Carmel for the night. The next morning we drove the final stretch to Cape Town and got there mid afternoon. It was thanksgiving so our wonderful coordinators had arranged for us to have a thanksgiving meal together which was wonderful. We had turkey, ham, rice and vegetables, and pecan pie. They'd even decorated the dining hall red white and blue for us which was a nice touch. The next day we had orientation and got to know the city a little with our "cultural mentors" who are college students from the college we're staying at that are getting paid to hang out with us. At the college i was sharing a room with Janet, on of the CLC's that used to go to the college, so she invited me and a few of the other girls to go to breakfast with her and one of the other mentors. We got up early and walked to Olympia bakery, one of the many coffee shops and bakeries near the campus, and we got chocolate croissants and coffee and had breakfast walking down the pier. It was such a lovely way to start our time in Cape Town and i am very excited about the amount of good pastries so close to me! That evening we went to dinner at the Anglican church in Oceanview- the church that's sponsoring and arranging our homestays, and we got to meet our host families. Caitlin and I are staying with Virginia and Bernadette, two sisters that are Afrikaans teachers at the nearby high school. So we had dinner and the youth of the community put on a talent show for us and we went home with our families. We've only been in homestays a few days but it's been lovely so far. Virginia and Bernadette are very sweet and easy going and host people pretty frequently so it's been very easy to settle in and be a part of their lives. School is almost out so they've been pretty busy grading papers but we've had time to do some fun things and it's been really nice for me to sit in a home while they're grading and watch cartoons or read. We haven't had the opportunity to do that in a while and it's been nice to not be busy. Saturday we took the train downtown and went on a scavenger hunt for our history class. We got done with the assignment pretty quickly but it was a great introduction to the city and will help us plan later activities and excursions after class. After our expedition into the city we came back to our Oceanview and had dinner with Virginia and Bernadette. We visited one of the other host families after dinner and got to talk to the girls staying there and listen to hilarious stories from their host mom which was very fun. And this morning we went to church which was a little confusing because parts of it were in Afrikaans and it was very structured but Caitlin and i had fun trying to figure out what was going on. So we've been busy but it's very exciting to be here- Cape Town is beautiful. It's not like any other city i've been before- kind of a small San Francisco with more of a European pace and feel but also distinctly African. I am so looking forward to getting to know it better in our last few weeks here.

Saying Goodbye

I don't really know how to express what my time at Mpophomeni has been like or what it has meant to me. I wish I could really explain what it was like to have 10 childcare workers and 70 children love you as soon as you walked in the door. And what it was like to come along side people doing the work of God in such a real and tangible way and learn from them.
This past week at the center we finished projects and really got to know the staff and a few of the kids very well. On Monday we got to go to Claire's house after we were done in the afternoon and she made us dinner and we played card games with Zwe and Nhlaka and ate far too much carrot cake. On Tuesday we got to lead a spiritual discussion group for a few of the older youth which was intense. The spiritual issues and things going on here are pretty out of my league. We talked about ancestor worship which is a huge issue in the Mpophomeni community. Even some of the churches here practice it- kind of a combination gospel, ancestor worship religion. So we discussed the influence of ancestor worship in the community and in these kids' lives and had a really deep discussion about the sovereignty of God. The reality of suffering for the gospel stuck me as we were talking to these high school guys. If they don't practice ancestor worship and traditional religion with their families (what little family they still have- they all have either one or no parents) they are kicked out and ostracized. These young boys are facing the cost of discipleship that Jesus talks about in Luke 14 and their decision to chose to be followers of Christ in the face of that floors me. It also brought up a discussion in our team about "ancestor worship" for American Christians. We discussed what idol we are putting our faith in and why we aren't suffering for the gospel like so many of our brothers and sisters around the globe, which I think are questions we need to be seriously examining in our own lives if we call ourselves followers of Christ.
On Wednesday afternoon we got to do home visits with our child care workers. I had done home visits the week before with to visit AIDS patients but this was a whole different ball game. We were visiting the houses of the kids from the center and knowing the children and then knowing their home situation was enlightening and heart breaking. The family center ministers to some of the poorest of Mpophomeni and the first house we went to was a mud hut smaller then my room at home. We met Tokello's father and we read a passage for him and he talked with the childcare workers for a while. We met Tokello the first day we got to the center and he was having a bad day- he kept hitting other kids and crying and Claire told us that he has rough nights at home and comes in hurting sometimes and doesn't know how to handle it. And being in his home, and meeting his father who is trying to raise 3 kids by himself and who is unemployed, things started to make sense. That whole day as I met more families of children that I knew, I started realizing how important the center is. No one we visited was employed, and the biggest and nicest house was 2 small rooms made out of cinder blocks. Without the family center these kids would not eat, they might not go to school, and they would not know Jesus and have the hope that comes from knowing Him. And they are a community organization! They are not running because we were there, they just let us join in. The people in charge of the center saw a need a filled it, and that picture of loving one's neighbor gives me hope, not only for Mpophomeni but for everywhere else there is hurting.
On Thursday, our last day at the center, we spent the morning driving around and praying over churches in Mpophomeni. Our team realized about half way through our time at Mpophomeni that the issues in the center and in the lives of the people working there weren't exclusive to the center. They were community issues which needed community wide solutions, and with the magnitude of the problems and the end of our time there coming quickly we knew that we just needed to pray, so that's what we did. We visited 6 or 7 churches and laid hands on them and prayed. We prayed over churches that are doing well and are biblically rooted and we prayed over churches that are claiming to exalt Christ but are worshiping ancestral spirits or other idols. It was incredibly powerful and while we won't see the fruit of that labor, I know something is being stirred mightily in Mpophomeni and I can't wait to see the community turn back to its maker.
That afternoon we had a naming ceremony with the staff of the family center. They gave me (another) Zulu name: Thandazile, which means one who prays, which I love. God has taught me so much about prayer in my time at Mpophomeni and I love that they recognized my desire to know God through prayer and gave me a name that reflects that :). After everyone got their name we talked about our time there and what we treasured about it and what we would miss which was pretty emotional but such a blessing. After our time with the staff we had a great party and John Wallace, the president of APU, who happened to be in town showed up and we played with bubbles and said goodbye to everyone.
Friday we gave group presentations about what we did at our service sites and it was great to hear what everyone else's been doing. God's been doing some great things through the people on this group and it was so great to be involved in it by hearing about it. After the presentations our Zulu class pretended to study- it's been such a long week we're weren't terrible motivated but we had our final this morning and it went pretty well. And I only need to get 5% to get an A in the class, so I'm not too worried. It's great to be done with class and now that people are packing it's setting in that we are leaving tomorrow. I have loved being here and it's been an incredible experience but I am also excited for this next stage exploring Cape Town!
This next week we'll be on the road and probably won't have internet, but I'll catch everyone up when we get to Cape Town.


Group Shot

The 1st home we visited on Wednesday

Thembi, my childcare worker giving me my Zulu name!

2nd to Last Week in Maritzburg!

This week at Mpophomeni there was staff training going on so things were pretty hectic. The training was going on in the front room so we were feeding the kids and sending them home because there wasn't room for all of us and we were also trying to paint the early childhood development room so things were pretty cramped, but we got a ton done. We got a mural painted and the rest of the walls in the ECD room painted purple and I sewed 2 bean bags and started on covers for them so it was a very productive week. Hopefully this next week (our last week!) we'll be able to do a couple of programs with the kids since we'll have all of our space back and maybe even throw a party for everyone before we leave.
Saturday we went to UShaka Marine World which is an aquarium/sea world/theme park. A few of us didn't swim so we spent the whole time walking through the aquarium and going to shows. The aquarium was very impressive and because this is South Africa had a ton of sharks which are always fun. We also got to see the penguin feeding and a pirate themed seal show which was wonderfully cheesy. After UShaka we had a chalet dinner! There are 2 nursing students that live across the hall from me and because they're older and more responsible than the rest of us we call them the RA's of our chalet. Being the fabulous RA's that they are, they made a wonderful dinner for us with food Emily's dad sent from America (never thought I would be so happy to see Prego sauce and Kraft parmesan cheese!) and they gave us awards- I won "the smartest" award. After dinner we had a talent show. Everyone put together great acts that were hilarious. Zach and I played a few songs and managed to win second place which was fun. Ashton's fabulous impression of a fire alarm took first place.
Our final week in Pietermaritzburg is coming up and things are getting really busy. We have our Zulu oral final and then our written final this week and we are wrapping things up at our service sites and presenting what we've done to our university president John Wallace. And packing to leave. So things are crazy but I'm trying to use my final week here well and really appreciate it.

Battlefields Tour

This past weekend was busy! On friday we went to staff training with the Mpophomeni and Ethembeni staff which was such a blessing. Both of the staffs are filled with women that have experienced so much but are so full of the joy of the Lord. The women that work at both of the centers are residents of Mpophomeni and are affected by the same problems impacting the community- alcoholism, poverty, a general lack of education- but these women have given their lives and time to the Lord and it was a really uplifting time of praise, worship, and learning for all of us.
Saturday and Sunday we spent off campus touring the battlefields of KwaZulu-Natal. The Anglo-Zulu war and the Battle of Blood River were both fought only about 4 hours away from us. We went to the site of the Battle of Blood River on Saturday and spent the night in a charming hotel and ate some wonderful food and had a great question and answer time with Reg.
On Sunday we visited the site of the Battle of Isandlwana where the British were defeated by the Zulu army. It was Britain's largest colonial defeat and had a huge impact on world politics. This excursion was part of our History and Culture course so our guide delivered a lecture at the battle site and when he was done speaking we sat in silence and listened to the worship songs rising from the churches in the valley which was a beautiful way to end the trip.
This week we've been tackling projects at the family center. I sewed a beanbag today and we have so much fabric that I'm pretty sure it's all I will do for the rest of the trip, but I'm getting really good at hand sewing, so that's a plus. We've also been working pretty furiously on a mural based on the creation story in the Early Childhood Development room which is looking really great considering we have no art majors on our team. Please be praying we would be able to use the rest of the time at the center well (only 6 days!) and for the continuing of the Lord's work in Mpophomeni!

Mpophomeni Family Center

This past week

This past weekend we got the fantastic opportunity to go zip-lining through the Drakensberg Mountains. They ferried us up to the top of the mountain and then we zip-lined back down which was quick but so much fun. There were a few runs that i didn't have to brake on so i got going super fast which was really fun. After zipping they served us GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES for lunch which almost as good as the zip-lining. That night we had a braai and watched the rugby final. The moon bounce for the halloween party was already up so we got to play on it with Gloria's grandson which was also super fun.
The next night was halloween and we had a dress up party. I recently got my hair cut very short and i look a little bit like Fräulein Maria from the Sound of Music so my whole chalet dressed up as Sound of Music characters and we performed a few songs from the musical throughout the night which was great.
Our Zulu pen palls from the high school up the hill came on tuesday and taught us Zulu folk songs which are already coming in handy at our service site. Zulus sing all the time and being able to join in makes it even more fun.
This week i missed the first day of service sites because i caught the 24 hour flu bug that's been going around but i was only out for a day. On wednesday we had a half day at the site and in the afternoon we got to see the Drakensberg Boys choir perform! They did a Classical set the first half which was beautiful and in the second set they sang South African folk songs.
Today we worked with Ethembeni- the care center affiliated with the Mpophomei Family Center where i work. We did house visits and took food to AIDS patients the center supports and talked and prayed with them which was such an incredible blessing to be a part of. It was great to be a part of the church loving their neighbors in such a real and tangible way. This afternoon we went back to the center and i started my most recent project- bean bags and floor pillows for the play room. We don't have a sewing machine so i'll be sewing them all by hand which will be time consuming but worth it. It will great to have seating in that room.
Tomorrow we have staff training for Mpophomeni and this weekend we are going on a battle fields tour for our history class so we get to stay off campus and spend some quality time with our director, Papa Reg!

1st week of service sites

My team and I spent this Thursday and Friday at the Mpophomeni Family Center. The center is an after school house for kids who are affected by AIDS. Many of them have lost a parent to the disease ad many of them have a parent with AIDS currently, and some of them have lost both parents and are in charge of their households. There is also a preschool that goes on all day which is fun because there are always babies to play with! Yesterday we had orientation and then started planning for our time at the center. We only have 3 more weeks and we have a lot of things we want to do, so we started getting things in order for our major projects, like painting murals and building a shed. We discussed our vision/goals for our time, specifically focusing on the high school group and the staff. The majority of the activities currently offered at the center are for elementary and middle school aged kids so the older high schoolers often get overlooked. And they're such a vulnerable group that needs as much support as they can get so we've been planning activities with them to try and build them up and encourage them while we are here. Next week we are facilitating a dream workshop for the high schoolers to talk about their futures and life after they graduate. We are also going to trying to focus on building up the staff. A number of the childcare workers have been doing this for a long time and are just burned out. There is also not a lot stress on group spiritual development among the staff so we're going to try and encourage them and build them up spiritually so they are ready and able to glorify God through teaching the kids.
So I am really excited to see what will happen will our time at Mpophomeni and I feel so blessed to be part of such a great team that is so willing to serve and learn. Keep us in your prayers please!
Tomorrow we are going zip-lining which should be super fun!

homecoming!

This past week was homecoming! It was really just for fun- we didn't have a game or any real reason to put on a homecoming week and dance, but we did it anyway and had a great time. We had dress up days during the week and this weekend we had events in the evenings. Friday we had a soccer game and watched Beauty and the Beast. Saturday we took our final for Intercultural Communication and had a game night. And last night we had a homecoming banquet/dance! By far one of the best dances i've ever been to- we played some fun games and of course, danced. Zach and i got to play a few songs as people were coming in and did a cover of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" which was really fun and everyone sang along.
This week we are starting our community engagement course which has been fantastic so far. Our teacher, Francis Njoroge is a world renowned leader in community development pedagogy and is a community development facilitator himself. He just got back from a stay with a community in Sierra Leone. He's also the nicest man in the whole world and it's an incredible joy and privilege to get to study under him for this next month. So we've had all day lectures for these past few days which has been exhausting, but we've received a ton of information for this month in service sites and i'm sure i will be using these principles later in my life/career. We've also had an opportunity to learn a lot more about the Mpophomeni Family Center this week because the girl who is in charge of coordinating our group has been here on site and sitting in on the lectures with us. So yesterday we got to talk to her about the Mpophomeni Family Center community itself and discuss what was working and what needs help, which was really eye opening. We will certainly be working with the kids and the community in home visits, but another part of our job will be working with the staff at the center which was an area of ministry that i had not even considered before our conversation. From my initial impressions and conversations with Claire it seems like the staff is tired and lacking vision which she said has had a negative impact on both the work environment and the kids. And while i haven't seen or experienced any of this myself, i am very hopeful for our team and this situation because i can see strengths in our team that meet the weaknesses we have talked about in Mpophomeni. So i am so excited to see how God will take the strengths of the staff and teach us and how He will use our strengths to build up and encourage them. Please be in prayer for open hearts and minds. The Zulu people are reserved in nature which can make it hard to approach problems openly and talk about solutions, so if you would pray that we would be able to be open and respectful with one another that would be greatly appreciated.
Our team is Katie, Tyler, Kristina, Adam, Leanne, Caitlin, and I, if you'd like to pray for us by name.

Zulu name

Our teacher gave us Zulu names in class today! All Zulu names have meaning, some of them more pleasant than others- we met a woman a week ago whose name meant rainfall because it was raining when she was born. But our teacher told us that for families with a lot of girls they will often name the last one "too many girls".
Anyways, mine is complimentary. It's Qhalipha which means sharp or clever one. And yes, it has a click.

Service sites!

I just found out my service site for this next month!
I will be working at a community center in Mpophomeni, a very poor township in Pietermartizburg. The center runs a preschool for little kids in the morning and then an after school care program for kids who are affected by AIDs- either their parents have the disease or they have died from it. So i'll be hanging out with the babies and then helping kids with homework and teaching english and computer skills. We will also be cooking and cleaning and helping where they need us, and making school and home visits with the social workers, so it will be a lot of different things. We already got to meet the staff and they are fabulous so i'm so excited to get going!

Durban and a rugby game

This friday night we had a night off (for the first time in a long time) so the activities committee scheduled a game night with a dress and act like your roommate theme which was really funny. Everyone got really into it and we have some very distinctive personalities in this group so it was funny to see those imitated, especially by people that are normally not as animated or outgoing.
On saturday we went to the Victoria market in Durban which is an indoor market- kind of a really ghetto mall, and bought a ton of souvenirs. Every thing's much cheaper here than in Cape Town so we tried to get most of our shopping done here. It was around lunch time so we got to try bunny chow- the ultimate Durban food, which was a great. I got done shopping a little early so Adam and I walked around the corner and checked out the Emmanuel Cathedral which was such a strange experience. It is a beautiful cathedral and is so similar to so many of the cathedrals i'd been to in Europe, just a little younger- but it was surrounded by market stalls and trash and meat market and other distinctly African things. A strange mix of wealth and poverty and very different cultures.
After Durban we went to a semi-final rugby game that we found out afterward was a really big deal. We cheered for the sharks because that's what Janet told us to do and we had a great time. I don't know anything about rugby but it moves much faster than football which keeps it more interesting. About half way through the game it started pouring but we were in the cheap seats so we were covered by the overhang and safe from the rain. So the sharks won and we went home.
Sunday we went to church which was great- the pastor spoke on spiritual gifts and the physical manifestation of the holy spirit which is not something we talk about often but was really good and really encouraged a spirit of freedom. After church we had a group come with 50 djembes and lead us in a drum circle which was SO much fun! They split us into groups and beat out different rhythms for each group and had us playing some crazy stuff that sounded really good. A couple of people were clueless but for the most part everyone kept up and we had a really good time. After drums we went out and got thai for dinner which was some great variety and was surprisingly good considering the total lack of Asians in Pietermaritzburg.
This is finals week so everyone is really busy but once this week is over we get to start service sites!

SAFARI!

This past weekend we went on Safari! We got up early saturday morning and drove the 4 hours to the Umfolozi/Hluhluwe game reserves (originally 2 reserves- now they've been combined) to do some serious game viewing. We got there early afternoon and jumped into our safari vehicles and were on our way! Being on safari feels like being on the Indian Jones ride at Disneyland- the cars are the same and you're riding trails most of the time and communicating with the other cars via radio so we sang the Indiana Jones theme song pretty frequently this weekend. So we headed out in our game drive vehicle as soon as we got there with Reg, our program director at the wheel. And we started looking at animals! We saw giraffe, impala, a ton of white rhino, buffalo, warthogs (there was also a lot of quoting and singing the lion king) and we even found a breeding herd of elephant with a baby. Mamas and babies were the theme of our safari experience- we saw so many babies which was really fun. So in our first day we'd knocked out 3 of the big 5 in just a few hours! The big 5 are the buffalo, lion, leopard, elephant, and rhino. They were nicknamed the big five because they are the 5 most difficult animals to hunt on foot. If you didn't kill one of the big 5 first shot then they would most likely kill you. So we'd already seen 3 of them and Reg was on a mission to find us some lion, so the second day the lion hunt began. In searching for the lions we saw a breeding herd of elephant cross an open field and a ton more rhino, including a black rhino. In the afternoon the rangers/guides that were driving the other vehicles tracked down one lioness that was on the riverbed (there's been a drought going on for about 3 years now and all the rivers and streams are dry) so we all quickly gathered and she was very difficult to see because she was so far away, but standing near her was a breeding herd of elephant, a couple of buffalo, and a rhino. We got to see 4 of the big 5 all at one time, which was awesome!
And further down the riverbed was a pack of wild dogs which we chased over a hill and we got to see about 12 wild dog puppies which was incredible. Wild dogs are small and very illusive so not many people get to see them, and we got to see a whole pack!
The next morning we got up early to find the lions and found the lioness again, but she was by herself and we wanted to see them closer so we started the search again. The guides knew where a pride was supposed to be so we tried to encircle them with our vehicles and the Regmoblie was waiting around when we got the radio from Andy, "Reg, We got 'em." at which we all jumped into the car as fast as we could and arrived at Andy's vehicle just in time to see a pride of 5 lions cross the road in front of us. They were mostly young- there was one adolescent male lion whose mane was coming in and the rest were female and there was one cub. It was awesome to see them doing their own thing just crossing the road while we were freaking out- quietly of course. So after the lions were out of view we decided to move on to breakfast and maybe try to intercept them again on the loop. I didn't think we would find them again and was just excited about eating when all of a sudden we came around a turn and there they were! They were just as surprised as us and some of the lionesses were only about 8 ft from our car. After they realized we weren't going to do anything they crossed the road in front of us again- this time only about 10, 15 ft in front of the vehicle, and we got to see them really up close which was probably my favorite sighting of the trip because it was so unexpected and exciting. After we ate breakfast we moved into cheetah country to try for a cheetah sighting before we went home and unfortunately we didn't find any, but we did get to see two Kudu fighting with their horns and two Giraffe doing something that could have either been fighting or cuddling with their necks which was interesting. Safari definitely ended on a high note.
The game reserve itself was incredibly beautiful and we actually stayed in it. The girls stayed in tent/cabins with attached bathrooms and a billion bugs which was unpleasant but manageable and the biggest inconvenience was that we couldn't leave our tents at all at night because the animals were able to wander through our camp (a man had been scalped by a leopard about a year ago where we were staying), but this is africa- not a big deal. So altogether it was a great experience and we got to see some fabulous animals. This week we have our Zulu mid-term and then saturday we are going to uShaka Marine World which is a theme park/aquarium and to a rugby game.

Ecabazini and Durban

This weekend was BUSY. On friday afternoon we made our way to Ecabazini, a traditional Zulu homestead (umuzi in zulu). Realistically, it's more of a recreated homestead that's open to visitors, but it is set up the same as a "real" homestead and is run by Zulus that live in the almost identical homestead right down the hill. So it was pretty authentic as zulu homesteads go. So we were greeted at the gate by men in traditional dress and were escorted to our respective huts- the men were in the hut on the top of the hill and the rest of us women stayed in the huts beneath the central one that would have housed the first and second wives. Our leaders got to sleep in the huts beneath ours that would have housed the children. After being shown the huts and bathrooms the tour began. The zulus were very intentional about every aspect of what they did and everything had a reason behind it so there was a lot to explain. The homestead is centered around the cattle kraal which gives you an illustration of the centrality of cattle in the zulu culture, and the kraal is surrounded by the huts for the men, wives, children, and the cooking hut. After the explanation of the buildings we were staying in, the people that were working there, and the traditional garb they were wearing, we walked down to the homestead where all of the zulus lived. It was remarkably similar to our set up. The houses were older looking and certainly a little more worn but there were all the same structures made from all the same materials, and this is where these people lived, which really put the whole experience into perspective. We walked into the cooking hut which was not open like ours so i was expecting a fair amount of smoke and soot, but the hut was quite clean. Zulu huts are made from thatch laid over a stick frame which lets the hut breathe and keeps them cool and dark, so the hut was only covered in soot from about 2 feet off the ground and up. The bottom portion of the hut was still the golden brown of the thatch which was really interesting. Then we went into the isangoma's hut. The isangoma in zulu culture is the mediator between the zulus and the ancestors who control their lives, so the isangoma is the spiritual leader of the community and has a lot of influence. And the spiritual presence in his hut was overwhelming- i know a lot of the group felt oppressed by the presence in the room and many of us were praying through the thickness of the space, which was our first real encounter with spiritual warfare on this trip. So after we left that hut we moved into the home of the isangoma which was decked out with lots of modern conveniences. The "real" zulu homestead has a methane producing system that gives them all gas to cook and heat water. They harvest- for lack of a better word, the cow manure that builds up in the kraal and then mix it with water and put it in an underground reservoir which channels the methane from the holding tank into these people's homes and provides them with free clean gas. After our tour of the other homestead we walked down to the lake that may or may not have had crocodiles and some of us went swimming. After we got back we ate dinner which was steak grilled over the fire and zulu bread as an appetizer, and then chicken, beans, maize, and vegetables cooked in curry which was all incredibly delicious. After dinner they let us try zulu beer which is made out of fermented sorghum- the indigenous grain that is used in a ton of the traditional dishes, and they performed traditional zulu dancing for us which was incredible. The dancing was more feats of strength then it was dancing like we would think- it was a lot of kicking as high as you possibly can and then jumping around but it was great to watch and my favorite part was the singing. God gifted the africans with beautiful voices and all of it was so incredibly effortless. The were harmonizing like nobody's business, and it was no big deal. No one was ever out of step and the drum was never off beat, and we were in a round hut so the sound surrounded you and it felt like the drum beat was coming from the floor. It was perfect. It made me very excited to go to zulu church and hear the zulu choir and get to experience these people singing again cause they are so naturally talented and it's fun to watch. After zulu dancing we went to bed and the next morning we got up and had sorghum porridge and a few more normal breakfast items and then we moved to a different part of the camp and they showed us how to do traditional zulu pottery. Zulu pots were not fired which makes them all porous which means the clay absorbs the moisture of whatever is in it. Normally this is not what you want happening to your pottery, but when your clay is wet it sweats and becomes cool which in turn makes the liquid inside cool, so the zulus put their liquids in clay pots to keep them cool which is super interesting and works remarkably well. After making pinch pots we had tea and then got to hold the baby goats. We then moved into a hut where we talked about daily life for the zulu people and our guide showed us weapons and talked about zulu history for a while. And then we got to the cow dung. The floors of zulu huts are made of hard packed termite mound which you can't clean with water, so to get off mud stains the zulus rub the floors with cow dung which they told us they do about once a week. One of the zulu women then proceeded to do this and show us how and a few members of our party got to try. Then they showed us how they grind the sorghum to make pretty much everything in a huge mortar and pestle which we also got to try. Then we had beadwork time which is a traditional zulu craft and is something that i'd seen zulu women do before so we all made bracelets to take home. And after that our trip was done and we got back in the bus and headed home. We got back just after lunch so we decided to set up our new slip n slide which is a grand total of 30 ft long and was a lot of fun although a number of injuries were sustained. Sunday we got up and went to church at a new place that meets in a circus tent and it was a congregation of mostly zulus and indians so in the african custom they prayed out loud all at the same time which i always enjoy. Then we headed to durban to visit the markets because they are the best place to buy souvenirs so we got some stuff for real cheep and then made our way to the beach. This beach was very different from the one we had been to before because this was in the middle of durban and was very comparable to any beach in LA. It started raining about an hour after we got there and people had homework so we called it a day and made our way home but everyone had a lot of fun swimming, the indian ocean is really warm especially to the californians, and we all made some good purchases so it was a successful day for sure.
This week is midterms so it is busybusybusy for everyone but we'll get through it and then this coming weekend is safari which should be great!!!

this weekend

Friday was National Heritage Day here where everyone celebrates their heritage by eating a lot of meat, which is obviously a holiday that we wanted to get in on, so Friday night we had our very own braai. South Africans are all about the braai which is a cook-out that involves as much meat as possible. Generally sausage, pork chops, chicken, and whatever other meat you have lying around is thrown on the grill for a long time and then eaten with salads and we had pap and a tomato based salsa also, which is very traditional african food. We also roasted marshmallows and made s'mores which confused the South Africans helping us, be we had a great time.
Saturday we had a History and Culture excursion to see some bushmen paintings so we set out early in the morning for the Drakensberg mountains which was a beautiful drive. The Drakensburg are lumpy, malformed mountains that look like they are crumbling and they are burning the fields right now so every once and a while we would come upon a black mountain which was peculiar, but it was still a beautiful drive. We hadn't seen much of the rural areas of South Africa before the trip so that was also interesting, to see how the people in the country lived. There were a lot more traditional houses made of wattle and daub and there were also a lot of the traditional round houses which are made round so they don't trap spirits in the corners. We also saw a ton of livestock and had to stop a couple of times to let cows and goats and sheep cross the road. Cows are really important in Zulu culture- your wealth is measured in cows and a bride price was traditionally paid in cows. So after a couple of hours we got to the site and hiked for about an hour to the bushmen paintings. They were small and unassuming and our guide was a man of few words so the actual experience was pretty quick. The paintings were painted by medicine men while they were in a trance communicating with the ancestors, and all the paintings were of animals and were focused around the hunt. The bushmen are totally gone now, they were a small people that were migratory hunters and gatherers and they have died out but our director actually got to meet the last remaining bushmen about 40 years ago. He went with his daughter and because they had very limited access to white people they thought that Reg's daughter was severely ill because she was so white. So after we saw the paintings we hiked down to a stream and ate lunch and then we hiked back out and drove home.
Sunday morning we went to church which was great. It was fun going back because i had met people the week before so it was nice knowing some of the congregation and being able to connect with other people my own age. All the high school kids are on holiday, so some of them will be coming up to hang out with us again this week.
School is getting crazy right now cause mid-terms are coming up next week (ridiculous right?? we just started!! literally!!) so i am super busy with class work and all the stuff they have for us to do on the weekends so i'm having to be really intentional about having quiet time to just rest in the presence of God, but it'll be good for me to learn that.
"At the time, discipline isn't much fun. It always feels like it's going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it's the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God." Hebrews 12:11


the braai



the drakensburg mtns.


a cave painting

Zulu

Zulu can be complicated and a little stressful but the more i learn about it the more i like it. Today we had our first test which was mildly terrifying because it was our first test on a totally new language in a totally new country with a totally different teaching style. South Africans just kind of laugh at you when you ask what the format of the test is like or if there is a study guide. That's not how they work here which does little to ease test anxiety, but it really wasn't that big of a deal. My favorite thing about Zulu is the way African concepts and customs work their way through the language. We learned today that there is a different word for the death of plants and animals and for the death of humans. When humans die the Zulus say that they have slipped away like the sun and for a year the deceased is considered a shadow. After that year there is a ceremony and the person becomes an ancestral spirit. The lilt of Zulu is also quite beautiful. Most of the words start and end with vowels so it sings like italian and is pleasant to listen to, like a never ending poem.
In a month we will split into groups and work in the Zulu community with different organizations. We got to visit one of the organizations today and we spent about an hour talking to the older Zulu ladies working there (because our bus broke down- it's africa) and we had such a great time. They were funny and open and thought our very limited Zulu was hilarious. I can't wait to get into this community and get to know these people and the way they see the world.

Durban/Indian Ocean

Yesterday we visited an indian area of the coastal town Durban and went to the beach! The drive from Pietermaritzburg is about an hour and 30 mins so we left pretty early and spent the second half of our morning walking around the predominately indian town just outside of Durban. It was the poorest area we've been in so far (it was about on par with Soweto, but we didn't get out of the vans for very long there or interact with any of the people) and it was a great experience. We were confined to walking around the main street and as soon as we pilled out of the vans it became ridiculously obvious that we were very out of place. I have never felt so much like a tourist or so obviously white in my life. We all went our separate ways (in groups- except for Adam, who talked to every single person on that street) and we started walking through the market area where women were cooking things like huge sausages on small fires and selling produce and clothing. We then moved toward the shops and looked around for a while. Most of them sold about the same random assortment of clothing and bedding and shoes and any other random thing they could squeeze into the small room. The women that ran the shops followed you as you browsed and most of the stores did not even bother pricing their wares because everyone haggles over everything. The South African people are so overwhelmingly hospitable and open that everywhere we went we had people shouting greetings and questions at us and we were invited to the homes of a couple of the shopkeepers we had particularly long conversations with. Most of the shops were owned by indians and the workers were blacks and generally the owner was in the shop standing in the door until someone came in and then they stood and talked while their employees shelved and moved things. In one of the shops i met a man that told us that we should tour the mosque at the end of the street so we made our way there and as we were walking around trying to figure out how to get in we ran into the principle of the school that was attached to the mosque and he ended up taking us on a tour of the mosque and the school. We were not allowed into the prayer area of the mosque but we were able to stand in the back and the principle explained what the different areas were for and how prayers work, where the leader stands, and all the other basics none of us knew. Then he opened up the girls school for us and let us walk through a few of the classrooms and explained how they split the genders after puberty. They actually had one classroom where both boys and girls took a class and there was a brick wall splitting the room in half so they remained separate. After our tour of the mosque and the school we looked through some more shops and got back in the vans and went to the beach. The coast of Durban is beautiful and the water is clear and a light green blue, not quite like the Mediterranean but still very beautiful. But the most impressive thing about the beach was definitely the waves. Since my primary frame of reference is the Atlantic it doesn't take much to impress me, but these waves were unreal. I made the mistake of just walking into the water instead of bracing myself like i was going into battle and i was immediately knocked on my butt. But besides my not-so-graceful beginning, the water was warm and we had a great time. After swimming we met up with a local youth group. We had to move beaches because a number of men had parked themselves right next to us and were getting progressively more and more drunk which was taste of the disappointing reality of SA. This country and its people have so much beauty and potential but you are confronted with serious social issues every time you turn around. Leisel, Reagan's (one of the CLC's) wife was talking to us about the struggle with teenage pregnancy that is going on especially in the black and colored communities. The potential of this place is so overwhelming and there is a feeling that this potential is not being realized and is not being met. But we have a lot more time to wrestle with and try to understand these problems. So after we switched beaches we started the braai which involves a lot of meat which takes a long time to cook so we walked around and talked with the local kids until it was ready and by that time it was late so we ate and went home.
This morning i got up and went to church with Reg, the director of the program. His church is mostly white and is so full of joy and the holy spirit, it was great to be there. I love that we are getting the opportunity to see God praised and experienced in so many ways, it is really impacting all of us and will definitely change the way we understand the global church and the way we experience and see God.

Week 1

Our first week of school is done! It actually officially ended for me yesterday, because isiZulu was cancelled for tonight but now everyone else is done as well and the weekend can begin. My week was much different than the school schedule i am used to because i usually take morning and afternoon classes and Zulu is only at night so i had way more free time this week then i am used to, but my roommate and i managed to be somewhat productive during our free times. On wednesday we hiked up the stream to find the other waterfall and i had my first big "i am in africa right now" moment. We were about half way up the stream to find the second waterfall and hacking our way through jungle and i had slipped for like the 12th time and it hit me that i was not on jungle cruise, but was in fact in the middle of a real jungle in the bottom of Africa. We did not make it all the way to the second waterfall, we found a different one instead (they seem to be all over the place on this campus). On the way back to campus i found a porcupine quill near the stream which i thought was exciting but was not so impressive to the South Africans. Apparently porcupines are common roadkill so the sides of roads are generally covered in quills. Because i didn't have class today i spent most of the day walking around the nature reserve and saw a few bushbuck. No zebra yet, but many people have seen them so we know they are there. It's only a matter of time. Overall it was a great first week and i think school will be very manageable in terms of homework load and coursework and all of the kids taking Zulu are interested in exploring Pietermaritzburg while everyone else is in class so we will be planning some excursions to do some fun things in the area. Tomorrow we are visiting an Indian town down the coast from durban and going to a market and then meeting up with some South African Indians from a local youth group for a braai (cook-out, the word is Afrikaans for "roasted meat").

the monkey post

So there are monkeys on our campus. My interaction with them thus far has been limited to them running into my chalet, lecture hall, or dining room. They move around in a pack and are either all there and in the way, or are no where to be found. They are grey and about 1ft to 1 1/2ft tall. They fight occasionally and some of the meaner ones are missing their tails. They eat whatever grows on the trees and whatever people accidentally leave out. They have not bullied any of us yet and just seem intent on taking our stuff and being nuisances. And now for the pictures:


monkey in repose


two monkeys plotting outside of our chalet

1st day of class

Today was the 1st day of class and chapel. Chapel is student lead, so i played guitar for worship today and our program director Reg spoke. He is outrageously smart and a biblical scholar in his own right and he had some really great things to say about the kingdom of God and our role in it, which was a really great message for the start of this trip since that's what so many of us are doing. All the people on this trip seem to be searching for their calcutta/their role in the kingdom work so it was a great direction to start the semester in, thinking about that role and understanding our responsibility as citizens of heaven to respond to it by responding to the needs of those around us. After chapel i hung out with the other kids taking the 8 units of Zulu on the lawn because we have night classes so we pretty much have mornings and afternoons off to do whatever we want. We are planning hikes and other activities to keep busy so we don't end up napping or on facebook all day. While i was packing up my stuff to go to class before lunch someone left the door open to our chalet and we had our 1st monkey visitor! He ran in and saw me looking at him and promptly ran back out the door so any possible crisis was averted. After lunch we had our 1st Intercultural Communication lecture and then went to Intro to Zulu. Inter Com should be really interesting- it's kind of a combination of sociology and com and anthro and it counts toward my major, so it is a win all around. Intro to Zulu is not the 8 unit course, it is the one that everyone takes- the "Zulu-light" if you will, but we jumped in with both feet today in our hour and a half. Our teacher is white but grew up with the Zulu people on a game reserve (her parents ran the reserve) so she is pretty much a native speaker and has been teaching it her whole life so she knows what's going on. We learned all the vowel sounds which are pretty similar to english and then we learned all three clicks which are not at all similar to english. They all sound different because they are made in different parts of the mouth and are notated by the consonants "c", "q", or "x". Some combinations of vowel and click or consonant and click and vowel are pretty difficult, but once you work through it slowly and hear it a few times it isn't that hard to catch on. After we learned the sounds we worked through a basic greeting/short conversation so now i can respond to the cleaning guys whenever they ask me how i am doing which will be great. They will love laughing at me. Tomorrow we will visit our service sites that we will work on once our school segment of the semester is done and i will have my 1st real Zulu class which will be an adventure.

back to school

Today about 20 people and i went to church with one of our CLC's, Reagen. He goes to an Indian church in Pietermaritzburg and it was certainly different, but also really great. The service was in english and because the church has some affiliation with Hillsong we actually knew a lot of the songs so that was pretty similar. The worship time lasted for about an hour and was great, the church is not formal so everyone was very expressive and was very excited about being there. After that the pastor spoke for about an hour. The sermon was not that different and i was expecting to notice some theological differences but it was honestly your pretty standard topical sermon that might be preached from any pulpit in the united states. The pastor and congregation's biblical knowledge was extensive which was probably the biggest difference i saw- they were very committed to the reading and application and memorization of scripture and placed a very heavy emphasis on it. But besides that it was a pretty normal church experience for me. I am going to attend a different church next week, the church where the director of our program goes, but from what i know of that church i am pretty sure that i will be attending the New Life church where i was this week because it is the least similar to what i experience at home and i want to take advantage of that while i am near it. After church we stopped at McDonald's quickly where i learned that South African creme soda is green and is nothing like our cream soda, and then we came back to campus and had lunch. After lunch we explored the nature reserve that surrounds our campus and walked about 3 miles through the trails. Everything is very dry right now but there were some very nice parts and once the rain comes the whole thing will be beautiful. There is a small stream that flows through campus (remember the waterfall?) that also flows through the nature reserve and pools have been damned and bridges built whenever the trail crosses it resulting in some beautiful areas and really scary bridges. So we finished our hike and walked back to campus for tea time (seriously, the greatest) and have been doing pretty much nothing but talking to people from home since then. Everyone gets pretty tired pretty early still (thank you jet lag) so after dinner most people go to their rooms and go to bed so things aren't that exciting in the evenings here yet, but it should get better once we are totally used to this time zone. Tomorrow is the 1st day of classes so summer's finally over even though it's just starting here.

Maritzburg day 2

Today we had our first lecture brought to us by our director Reg who knows everything. So needless to say it was very informative but parts of it were especially interesting to me because of their relationship with the present situation here in South Africa. We learned about the different tribal groups in Africa and touched especially on the history of the Zulu people which was mostly bloody and filled with conflict, but the proud and warlike character of the Zulu people explains a lot of the conflict going on in the government here right now, especially because the current president is Zulu and is very proud of it. So learning the history and the tension and issues between the colonial and native groups here was very interesting and will help us understand Apartheid better when we get to that time period in South African history. Another thing that was very interesting about the lecture was the amount of South Africa history that lines up with American history. Colonization happened in about the same time, rebellion against the British started at about the same time, expansion (manifest destiny stuff) happened and gold was found at about the same time. It was kind of erie. Mid lecture we stopped for tea time which is my favorite thing about this country so far. We have tea time at 11am and 4pm every day and it is the best. Rooibos tea. Look it up.
After the lecture we drove to Pietermaritzburg and stopped in the train station where Ghandi was kicked off of his train because a white man wanted his seat, which was the catalyst that started his peaceful resistance movement against Apartheid in South Africa and British rule in India. It's not particularly remarkable, but it is still a working train station which is nice. After the train station we drove up toward the mountains and saw a show at a refuge for raptors and other GIANT birds. There were all kinds of owls, hawks, eagles, and gigantic vultures as well as storks that were definitely bigger than Will. South Africa has about 3 times the amount of raptors then America so it was fun to get to see all the different kinds and to get to be really close to some of them in the show.




a waterfall behind my chalet

If you ever want to see more pictures you can check them out here.

Day 1 at AE in Pietermaritzburg

We got up early this morning and made our way to the airport. The airport in Johannesburg is very nice but, still very African which means that a lot of things are a billion times more confusing than they need to be, but we finally got things figured out and made our flight. Once we arrived in Durban we grabbed our luggage and jumped into the vans and made our way to the African Enterprise Conference Center in Pietermaritzburg, our home for the next 3 months. The campus has one large building where we eat and take classes that is surrounded by smaller offices and chalets where we are staying. The chalets are 2 story and pretty good sized holding about 20 people in each and ours has a kitchen! The campus itself is beautiful- i haven't had time to see all of it yet, but it's set back from the city and is surrounded by a nature reserve which makes it kind of secluded and offers some great animals- Adam saw antelope and zebra before dinner. It is definitely colder here than in Johannesburg but it will get warmer as it moves into summer and the rainy season here. Until then we will just be big fans of our space heater. Tomorrow we have our first lecture and then in the afternoon we are seeing something that has to do with birds of prey.

Day 2 in Johannesburg

Before I tell you about day 2 in Johannesburg I thought I should give some basic info on some things you might be curious about:
Weather: It is hot during the day and cold at night. Today it was mid 80’s in the sun, but I wore 2 shirts, pants, and a sweater to dinner because the sun goes down around 6 and it gets a lot colder fast. It is also very dry here. I was talking with Janet (one of our community life coordinators- she works for APU and makes sure we have fun on the weekends. She’s South African, from Pietermaritzburg and isn’t much older than us, probably mid 20’s) and she told me that they were going through a dry spell and that the farmers were saying that the rainy season wouldn’t be here until October which is late so it will be dry for a while, although Pietermaritzburg, where we are living, gets rain during the winter so it will be greener. But everything here is dry and brown and the dust is pretty bad.
Hotel: Is certainly decent by American standards- it’s pretty generic looking, like any motel chain in America. The beds and rooms are smaller and breakfast is better (they offer potted meat here! Not being sarcastic though- the breakfast is good) but other than that it is pretty much the same. And there were soccer ball stickers in our room when we got here.
Johannesburg: From the highway downtown looks like an older version of LA’s fashion district. None of the buildings are very tall, and everything is old and squat and brown. I think the downtown itself is mostly businesses because the upper class lives in the nicer suburbs and the lower class lives in Soweto.

Today we visited the Apartheid Museum and took a tour through Soweto, a very large township south west of Johannesburg. The Apartheid Museum was set up well which made it even more interesting to explore. You entered the museum with a ticket that said either white or non-white, which determined which entrance you took into the museum. I entered the white door and the walls were covered in identification cards of white South Africans and quotes from the white leaders and from legal documents and laws from the Apartheid era. We then joined the non-white group and walked through the rest of the museum, which explained the rise and fall of Apartheid in South Africa, which was explained through pictures and personal stories, and accompanying memory boxes, which was interesting. There was also a Mandela exhibit going on which I got the chance to walk through which was a lot of reading but good background for our history course because I really know so little about South African history and Mandela’s role in it. I accidentally walked through his lifetime timeline backwards which didn’t help to make things less confusing, but it definitely made things more interesting. Something interesting for all the Methodists reading- Mandela was baptized a Methodist by his mother and attended a Methodist school and in a stack of his school books that were on display there was a book titled Minutes from the Methodist South African Annual Conference of 1948. After the museum we picked up our tour guide, a friend of one of the men in charge of us for these next three months and she took our bus through Soweto her hometown. Soweto is a mix of squatter camps, state housing, the homes of upper middle class families that drive BMWs, churches, schools, the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere and in all of Africa, and all the other things you need to accommodate 3 million people. We did about half of our tour and then stopped at our guide’s restaurant, which is a restaurant by day and her home the rest of the time. I really have no idea what we had for lunch- I know I had hake, beets, something like cole slaw, something like pico de gallo, bread, mashed potatoes, rice with a spicy red salsa, a beef stew, and a couple of other things that were generally unidentifiable. Desert was vanilla ice cream and something like pound cake and homemade vanilla custard, which was probably my favorite part of the meal. The vanilla is different here, it is much sweeter and much richer which made for a very heavy desert after a large lunch, but it was good. Waiters brought us our drinks and we served ourselves buffet style. My table was right next to the kitchen so I could see the women preparing our food, which was interesting. After lunch we got back on the bus and went to a memorial for the youth that lost their lives, that were sent into exile, or that went missing during the student protests, specifically a 13 year old boy that was caught in the cross fire, Hector Peterson. We actually met the nephew of one of the youth the memorial specifically honored- a few of the family members of those honored work in the museum, which is pretty cool. We got back on the bus and drove by Mandela and Desmond Tutu’s houses, which are right next to each other in a nicer middle class area of the city, and then we visited a square that held the Freedom Charter Memorial- a rotunda that houses the 10 pillars of the Freedom Charter Memorial which are the foundation of the South African constitution. After that we finished up our tour and headed to our guides neighborhood to drop her off and on the way she taught us the 3 clicks in the Zulu language and then attempted to teach us a sentence in Zulu that was very strange and had to do with back pimples. It was also extremely difficult to get the clicks in there right- Zulu is going to be very challenging till we get that figured out. After that we dropped her off, drove past the soccer stadium built for the world cup and headed back to the hotel. The kids were getting out of school as we drove around after lunch so everything was really active and it was fun to see kids everywhere walking home and hanging out with their friends. All of the kids walk home regardless of age unless they go to school in a formerly white area and their parents pay a driver to take them back and forth because it is too far to walk. Once we got back to the hotel we napped and then headed out for dinner at the same restaurant we went to last night, the Harvard Room which is actually adjacent to a small airport so you can watch the planes take off and land while you eat. The food is American/Italian with an African spin, which made some things a little dubious, but overall everything was good. Tomorrow we will catch our final flight to Durban and then drive to our new home at AE in Pietermaritzburg.

the entrance to the museum

Reagen- one of the CLCs, the people that make sure we have fun, and I

Soweto- where we stopped for lunch

Kids walking home from school

We're here!

Greetings from Africa! We landed in Johannesburg about 5 hours ago, moved into the hotel, and went to dinner. Not terribly exciting, but we are all exhausted from the time fog we have been in since Monday night. We had to ask the desk clerk what day it was when we got here-15 hours is a very long time to be on an airplane. Tomorrow we are going to the Apartheid museum and to Soweto, one of Johannesburg’s largest and most famous townships.

Africa, here i come!

Welcome to my Africa blog!
I plan on using this to keep everyone up to date on what i am learning and doing and experiencing while i am in South Africa. I will be leaving this Saturday, September 4th, for LA, there will be a day of orientation, a little hanging out with friends from school, and then at 1:45 AM Tuesday September 7th, i will go to LAX, make a connection in DC, and then finally arrive in South Africa.
Until Saturday, i am making arrangements, gathering information, packing, and reading as much about South Africa as i can. My next post will probably be from Africa as i have nothing else interesting to say now, so i just ask that you would keep my whole group in your prayers these next few weeks!!
Thanks, and i'll talk to you as soon as i get settled in Pietermaritzburg!


from here