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