I probably should start with classes. Like I’ve said before, this semester abroad isn’t a piece of cake like I’ve heard about other programs. There is a TON of reading involved (that we actually have to do) and we have a good amount of papers and exams to take care of as well. I had my first political science paper due, which turned out to be about 5200 words…although it was long, it wasn’t terribly difficult to write. It was simply discussing the key parties and negotiations involved with SA’s transition to democracy. Like everything in my classes, it’s fascinating because it is SO recent. It’s cool because almost everything that has happened in this country is still happening, and I’m able to witness it. This is the first time in my life that I really feel like I am living through history, which is a completely novel, unique experience. I’ve now had at least one major paper/exam for each of my classes, so I’m really in the midst of things and I stay quite busy with homework and whatnot during the week.
Pendla….it’s been quite the experience as usual. I absolutely love the kids in my class to death. It’s funny to think about my first few days there when I was completely overwhelmed…I never thought I’d learn a single kid’s name, and I just didn’t see myself having any sort of impact on the kids or on the school in general. Now I know all 32 names of the students in my class (even if I can’t always pronounce them correctly!), along with some names of students in other classes or grade levels. I also see myself having an impact on these kids, even if it is very small. I just hope that in the end, I have a fraction of an impact on the kids as the kids are having on me. Like I’ve said, I’m hoping to do a Pendla entry one of these days where can get into detail about what I do, see, and experience, along with some info about the individual kids in my class.
Group Excursion--THE KAROO.
The Karoo is a very arid, mountainous area of South Africa. On the drive out, we stopped at a cheetah sanctuary where we were able to pet tame cheetahs, lion cubs, and other wild creatures indigenous to South Africa. It was pretty cool, and I didn’t have much of an allergic reaction to the animals like I was expecting—another girl on our trip, Emily, had a pretty bad one and had to deal with a swollen, watering eye for the rest of the day. After a 4 hour drive, we arrived in Graaf-Reinet, a predominantly Afrikaner town in the heart of the Karoo. It was strange entering the town because it was so Afrikaner. The architecture was European, everything was in Afrikaans, and there were white people milling throughout the town. At the same time, however, we experienced a huge amount of hassling and begging, much more so than in PE. There is a township directly connected to Graaf-Reinet (thank you, apartheid’s forced removals), so poverty is definitely prevalent—it’s just been shoved outside of the immediate city borders. I’ll get a little more into that when I talk about our trip to the Valley of Desolation.
On the Friday of the Karoo trip, we really spent most of our day traveling. The cheetah sanctuary was cool, but after that it just got VERY HOT. We went to the Zebra National Park right outside Graaf-Reinet, but we were all so hot that it made us tired and uninterested (for the record, we didn’t even see any zebras—all monkeys and bok, which are everywhere down here). Since we were all so tired, we decided to just lay low in GR for the night….went and grabbed a quick dinner and then hopped in the pool at our bed and breakfast. The pool felt great and was a lot of fun (WHIRLPOOL!), so it was a nice end to a long, hot day.
The next day was actually my birthday…yes, the big 2-1. I woke up early (standard haha) and started my morning by having coffee with our drivers, Shaddly and Henry, which was great—they are SO funny and have lived in SA their entire lives, so they have a lot of insight as to what really goes on in this country. After breakfast, we headed out in small groups to explore Graaf-Reinet and complete a small assignment Sister Mary Jane assigned us. We went to a few museums and learned about the fossils, art history, and the political background of GR (the leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress is from GR). Afterward, Karla and I had lunch at a cute little café and completed our assignment. Once everyone was back to the bed and breakfast, we headed to the Valley of Desolation, which was basically a beautiful high peak on a mountain. Before we went to the real valley, however, we stopped on a mountain to view Graaf-Reinet and the GR township. I am so happy we did this, because it was a way that I could photographically sum up South Africa—there is the Afrikaner town, but then completely separate (yet still attached) is the township that all blacks were forced to relocate to under the Group Areas Act. While one can say that apartheid is over and black people can technically live wherever they want, the division between black and white in this country is extremely apparent—as illustrated in this picture. The big circle is the main town, and the offshoot circle in the upper left is the township. Completely divided—apartheid’s main goal.
That night, we went to a local restaurant for a lamb dinner. The lamb was a little fatty, but I love lamb so it was a nice treat. After dinner we all just headed back to the B&B, where we just hung out and enjoyed each other’s company. I ended up jumping in the pool completely clothed, so that was probably a birthday highlight. In the end, I got to bed before midnight because we had an early morning the next day.
On Sunday, we went and saw bushman cave paintings. It was SO cool to see paintings that were done 7000+years ago…I can’t believe that a concoction of blood, urine, and other animal bodily fluids could last so long. It offered a slightly different piece of South African history, since most history we are learning is within the past 20 years.
Long Weekend—JOHANNESBURG AND SWAZILAND
Since we had a large paper due Thursday, our poli sci prof gave us the day off. We also had the following Monday off because of a national public holiday (Human Rights Day), so everyone in our group ended up going for a weekend trip. Five girls and I decided to go on a guided trip to Swaziland, with a day trip to Johannesburg. Along with our group of six was Tony, our guide, his daughter Larissa, and his volunteer Noemi (from Switzerland). Tony picked us up at 5am so we could catch our flight to Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa. Not only is it the largest and most dangerous city in SA, it’s the second most dangerous city in the world. It has its roots in gold mining…the mines are a huge part of SA’s history, as thousands of black men would leave their families to work endless hours in extremely unsafe conditions, live in tiny little dorms, and oftentimes only be compensated with alcohol. Immediately after leaving the airport, we saw what looked like a huge mountain of gold dirt from the mines—it was pretty cool to see.
We were originally going to try and see Soweto, the largest township in South Africa (and the location of the uprisings I mentioned in an earlier blog), but unfortunately it was not safe for us to do so. There are lots of riots going on there right now, mainly because the World Cup cities are not allowing kombi drivers to transport fans to and from the stadiums during the games. Tony talked to several people he knows from Joburg, and they all said we’d be crazy to try and go there now. Sooo, with those plans aside, we obviously headed to the next best place: SAB’s World of Beer. SAB (I think it stands for South African Brewing?) is a massive company that brews on five continents. For only 25 rand (about $3.50), we got an almost two hour tour, a small beer halfway through (and we got to keep the SAB glass!), and two tall tap beers at the end. The tour was super high tech and lots of the time I felt like I was at Disneyworld. The coolest part of the tour was probably when we learned about how traditional Zulus make beer in their villages, and then we got to try some out of a communal bowl, like they do. It was really gross (especially the white lumps floating around), but it was awesome to experience a little bit of the Zulu culture. The Xhosa culture is so dominant in the Eastern Cape where we live, that we don’t get to learn too much about the Zulus (they live primarily in the Kwazulu-Natal province).
After the World of Beer, we headed to Gold Reef City, which is actually an amusement park. Although there were rides, we went there for a gold pouring demonstration and a trip down into a mine. Unfortunately, the mine was closed for the day- but we did get to see the gold pouring. (I can’t believe how hot it needs to be! God bless the workers down in the mines, there’s no way I could do it.) While we were waiting for the demonstration, we decided to kill some time by hitting up the roller coasters (such a pain,I know ;) ) They were comparable to home, but the big difference I noted was the lack of safety checks and instruction. At home, they check you at least once and always have the instructions about ride conduct playing, but here they only check you once for the big roller coasters…and no instruction. There was one ride, the Tower of Terror, that brought you up in a car and then dropped you vertically down into a mine shaft…SUPER fun. Megan and I were the true ride warriors, riding every time that someone else wanted to try it. J
After Gold Reef City, we needed to start heading to Swaziland so we got to our lodging before dark. We stayed at Old School Trout Lodge (in SA), where we got an entire house to ourselves. The coolest part was the lake in the backyard—it took up the entire backyard, and literally came all the way up to the house. If you looked directly down off the porch, you could see all sorts of fish swimming around in the water. After breakfast, we headed out to finish our drive to Swaziland. Crossing the border was quite an experience. It’s not a busy border crossing at all, so the officers don’t see many people regularly. One of the officers had us write our names on this official-looking document, which we thought was part of the crossing process….turns out he wanted to add us on Facebook. Another officer was joking with us and telling us he was happy we were there because he wasn’t married yet, so we told him he had to pick one of us for a wife….lucky me, I was picked. My border patrol officer husband became kind of an ongoing joke throughout the weekend…crossing the border was really funny and bizarre, but few things happen completely “normally” down here.
Most of our day was sucked up by traveling, but we arrived to Mlilwane, Swaziland in time to have a nice dinner with live music and then head to House on Fire, a club for local Swazi entertainment. I’m not going to go into detail about House on Fire for time’s sake, but it was a VERY unique experience. After House on Fire, we headed back to our backpackers, which was actually on a game reserve. We were staying in these little two-person huts (Madiba huts according to Pehler and I, since they looked like the hut Nelson Mandela grew up in) with animals roaming around everywhere. Literally. There was this big cow thing lurking outside our hut door at night, an ostrich joined us for breakfast, and warthogs ran around like common household pets.
The next day, we headed out to do some serious crafting. Swaziland is known for their markets and crafts, especially candles. I got a lot of souvenir shopping done, so that was nice. The markets were incredible, and they don’t attack you like the markets in PE. Probably the most notable part of the market was my conversation with a local man that was just hanging around. It ended up being the strangest experience I’ve had so far in Africa…it started out with him saying he wanted to pray for me, moved to him trying to put ash on me to make me his wife, and ended with him telling me that Bill Clinton is his lawyer and America and Africa are the same now because we have a black president. It was all pretty comical, but we was getting quite a bit of attention—at one point, a European tourist was taking pictures of the whole ordeal. After a long day of crafting and shopping, we headed to SwaziTrails for the highlight of the trip—caving. It was SO COOL. We hiked 45 back to the caves, where we ended up descending 80 meters into the earth. It seriously was like Indiana Jones…Tony said that he has done a lot of caving and spelunking and this was by far the best. There were so many times in the caves when it seemed impossible to get through a hole or get up a boulder, but our guide, Darron, was so helpful and made sure we were all safe. We all felt really accomplished when we were done, and rightfully so I’d say—it was pretty intense, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Turns out I am highly allergic to something at the bottom of caves…surprise surprise, there really isn’t any escaping my allergies on this planet.
Sunday was spent exploring the game reserve (mountain biking and horseback riding), visiting this museum about the king of Swaziland, and then just chilling at a different backpackers we decided to stay at. That was actually a ton of fun…we met people from England and Germany, had a braii, and played the longest game of BS ever. It was a nice, relaxing way to spend our last night in Swaziland. In the morning, we packed up and headed to Ngwenya Glass Factory and some other shops in the area—I didn’t purchase anything, but it was cool to look around. Finally it was time for the long drive back to Joburg and the quick flight back to PE.
Nothing too monumental has happened this week—this weekend and the next couple weeks are what I’m looking forward to. Tomorrow I’m going to an Elton John concert, which is a pretty big deal because nobody ever tours down here. Saturday our whole groups is going hiking and snorkeling at our lit prof’s house, then we head out for Cape Town on Monday! After Cape Town we have a week off for break, so I think I will be heading to Durban for that. It should be a fun couple of weeks…hopefully I can do small updates so it’s not one massive update like this. I miss you all terribly and I hope everything is going great back home!
Until next,
Logie
No comments:
Post a Comment