It’s been a long time since I’ve written an update but it’s harder than usual to get online. Due to students striking on campus here, the computer labs and library keep being closed to prevent damage to equipment. At this point the library is closed until further notice (ugh!) and I am just lucky right now that the strike is small today and hasn’t managed to close the lab. As they say here “aish!” (it’s like oi vey or ugh or whatever but Zulu-style). The strike is being led by the SRC, student representative council, and is occurring because there are many students who didn’t get on campus residence or financial aid and are living in bad circumstances off campus. I understand that this is a serious issue and I am lucky to have a room here and my finances are good. However, the goal of the strike, to get heard, is to disrupt all lectures and get normal classes and whatnot to cease for the time being. At first they were just marching around campus, singing, chanting, and dancing. Being in DC, I’m kind of used to this. What I’m not used to is rumors of students going into classrooms and harassing other students to join them and getting lectures cancelled. There is also talk that they have broken windows and vandalized cars but I’m not sure how much of that is true. Some of my classes were cancelled on Thursday and Friday but some met and I didn’t have any problems with striking students. However, Monday I was taking a test and two strikers came in the back and were saying that we couldn’t be writing a test while students were on strike. The lecturer (it’s an ethics/philosophy class) tried to reason with them and say that we couldn’t be forced to join the strike and that they couldn’t prevent us from pursuing our education…but the reasoning didn’t work and they turned the lights out on our test. Literally shut them off three separate times so the lecturer was forced to cancel the test and it’ll be rescheduled. I was realllly not pleased since I spent the whole day Sunday studying for it and felt like I was doing really well on it. On the way to my next class, everyone was walking in the direction away from campus and some people were running. I knew this couldn’t be good. I got to the top of the stairs that lead up from the residences to campus (it’s all on a hill) and people were standing waiting and said that the riot police were on scene and it was getting bad. I started to go the back way, around the strike, to class when I heard shots fired. Thankfully there were only rubber bullets and no one was seriously hurt, but I guess that sting pretty badly. After 10 minutes or so, things cleared out and all looked good so I did got to class, with 8 other students who showed up. There were no other problems yesterday, and today things are much much quieter. There are extra security guards around the classrooms and there appear to be no riot police. The only striking I’ve seen was 15 or so students and they were just sitting or chanting. I hope this is the end of the chaos but I also hope something is done to help them. I’m just not sure that this is the way to do it. It’s strange to be here in this privileged position while other students are struggling. One girl told me that when I go back to my country, I should tell them that apartheid is still happening in South Africa. I’m writing this to share my experiences and not to make anyone worry about me. At no time was I in real danger. I wasn’t near the crowds and I will continue to avoid them. I wasn’t even on the same level of campus as the shots fired. I think things are clearing up and I will stay safe.
In other news, I should probably mention the actual dives I did since I wrote about the class. Sodwana is an amazing place! The five dives I went on were all amazing. I arrived Friday night, drove up with two girls from the class, and couldn’t find some of my gear initially. Things were a bit hectic getting all the boatloads ready and all the gear kitted up (check out my diver lingo) and the boats loaded, the camp set up on the beach, and the boats launched, but once you were in the water it was all amazing. I went on three dives on Saturday and we started bright and early in the morning, which is good because we hit a lot of snags along the way. I was sharing gear with another girl so as soon as I came off the boat I had to give her my stuff, including my wetsuit, which is not exactly cake to take on and off, but it all worked out. I didn’t know what to expect for th reef in Sodwana but it was bigger and more awesome than I could have anticipated. On the first dive I saw a huge manta ray sleeping at the bottom and two really big and moray eels! The fish were awesome and so colorful. We were down for about 25 minutes and it was so cool. The second dive was a little longer and I saw a big sea turtle sleeping under an overhang! And more cool fish! The third dive happened after one of the boat motors broke, but we got to snorkel in the meantime and saw some cool stuff close to shore that way. On the third dive I saw a scorpion fish and a puffer (not puffed up). At the end of the day, since your not putting the boat in any more, you get to drive it fast at the beach and beach it up on the sand, this was also really fun (don’t worry, we wear lifejackets and hold on to all these ropes). We did however have to push that boat up to the truck, and then the truck through the beach a good ways. So diving is really awesome and really tiring. It rained at the campsite that night but luckily I stayed pretty dry and so did the inside of our tent. The next day I got to do two more dives, both awesome as well. My cylinder was smaller that day and I breath a lot I guess underwater, so I kept getting to the level of air which you come up at first. On the fourth dive we saw two white-tipped reef sharks! So cool! On the fifth dive we had to do our skills. This means that you kneel in the sand at the bottom of the ocean ( a cool feeling!) and have to show that you can take your mask all the way off, put it back on, and clear it. This was challenging even in the pool but we all managed to do it, a great feeling. We also had to remove our mouthpiece underwater (that thing that you breath through) and find it and put it back in. And we had to breathe through our partners spare mouthpiece (octo-breathing). We all passed and then the rest of the dive was the best for me of them all. We saw a little sea turtle swimming around on one of the earlier dives that I forgot to mention but this time we saw a big one eating! And it saw us, and kept eating, and we got to watch it for a long time. Either I was braver and got closer to the fish, or they got closer to me, these little ones were all around me and near my face. They were awesome colors. We also saw a huge school of fish from the bottom to the surface on one of the other dives and we got really close to it, almost in it, that I forgot to mention as well. So much!
Now I am fully certified beginner scuba diver!
One other thing I should write about is my hike on Saturday. It was epic! Myself and 5 other girls headed to the Krantzkloof Nature Reserve for the day. It’s part of the Valley of 1000 Hills, a really beautiful and mountainous/hilly area about 30 minutes from Durban. We planned to be there the whole day but I don’t think anyone imagined the actual hike we went on. We started off and immediately had beautiful views of the cliff side across from the one we were on, and a waterfall running down it. We continued and entered a forest like area and then headed down to this rocky river bed. Our trail crossed the river at one point so we took our shoes off and waded through, then sat down for our picnic lunch and let our feet dry. Little did we know that the trail crossed the river probably about 5 more times…I think that it was higher than usual because of the rain and some areas that were usually just rock actually had some fast moving water over them. There was on really hard spot to cross. Mio and Myrthe made it halfway across but the rest of us were too short/ too nervous to straddle the rocks they used, so we headed back upstream to a more rocky area. I made it half way across when Sarah was still coming and dropped her shoes in the river! Meg called to Myrthe to lean out and grab them…but they never got that far. They got stuck in the rocks and small rapids somewhere, so Meg and I had to scramble like Gollum over the rocks to find them. I ended up getting both and was just lucky to reach under this huge boulder where the second one was and had to yank it out. After that we cursed the river every time we came back around to it. Eventually the landscape turned into more of a grassland and we started encountering these huge spider webs all along the trail. They were kite spiders with red and yellow patterns (google it, they’re really crazy looking) and we either had to move them nicely (Annereike is afraid of spiders in general, and these were pretty scary) or duck under and around them. Eventually we headed up and realized that we were climbing one of the red cliffed mountains that we had been in the valley of at the river bed. We went up and up and up and up (meanwhile Myrthe is afraid of heights) and the views were incredible. Finally we came out of top in tall grass and there were zebras! At first they were far off but when we were waiting for the cab to come pick us up we edged closer and closer to them and we got about as close as we thought we should. It was amazing to see truly wild zebras (this isn’t a game reserve) that close up. They are awesome. I can’t wait to put all the pictures up from the past month and a half (there are tonsss) but I will have to wait until the library reopens. Hopefully that is very soon! I’ve been here for about two months now!
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
SCUBA
As I mentioned before, I signed up for the SCUBA course here at UKZN. For the past two weeks I have been taking part in the course and this weekend I will be travelling to Sodwana Bay, one of the top ten dive spots in the world, to do my five qualifying dives.
Getting it all done has been pretty intense for the past two weeks and taken up the greater part of my brain power and time. The group is usually capped at 18 but somehow this time around it got as big as 24 or so, so there are a lot of us to organize and teach at once. We had lectures on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and then last Saturday and Sunday we had two full days of pool training and lectures. They started at 8:30 or 9 and went until 4. This was truly exhausting. To add to that, I got the chance to go out on a boat off Durban on Saturday morning before class, ie 5:30 am. Caroline and Andrew, two of the people who are super involved in the underwater club/pretty much run it (they are the chairman and secretary and are probably somewhere in their 30’s) took 6 of us to look for dolphins. It ended up being rainy the whole time and we didn’t spot anything but little fish, but the waves were really big because of a surge from Capetown and I rode in the front of the boat. It was sooo fun to go over the waves and we had a great time all together.
Pool training started with a swim test that was more intensive that I had expected. We had to swim across the 25 meter pool underwater in one breath and this took me multiple tries to complete. In fact, I didn’t get it until Sunday morning when I went early to try again by myself (pretty embarrassing but when I got it I popped up out of the water, took a big breath and fist-pumped with joy). We then had to tread for 10 minutes straight. I made it through that and then we learned all kinds of other things in the water, including how to take your regulator (the thing you breath through) out underwater and find it and put it back in, and to take your mask all the way off underwater and put it back on. Then we did both at the same time. I got these on the first tries but it was challenging. You have to fight the feeling that you should be panicking and coming to the surface.
That night I went to a nice Thai restaurant with three friends to relax and have a nice meal. The restaurant was on Florida Road, a swanky place with lots of restaurants and clubs. Apparently it’s the place to “see and be seen” in Durban (say the guide books). The food was great but I’d need a second look at the rest of the street to be convinced.
The second day we were more accustomed to our gear and I had more fun in the pool. We learned other things and then played some games at the end which were really fun. We played broken telephone, where you try to communicate the message with only hand signals. This was pretty hilariously impossible. The last game was dubbed “the war game” and consisted of all the students swimming around in the deep end and the instructors “attacking” us. They could take off our masks, take our regulators out, steal our fins, inflate our BCs (like a flotation vest), undo our weight belts, unbuckle our cylinders and even turn off our air! The goal was to recover from these incidences, like get your mask back on, etc. or come up to the surface if you couldn’t. The last person at the bottoms won. Luckily none of the really bad ones happened to me. I just got my fin stolen a few times and my regulator removed a few times. However when one instructor undid my weight belt he broke the buckle off so I couldn’t get it back on. I had it in one hand and then got a flipper stolen. I couldn’t get both back on and then my mask started to fill with water, so I surfaced, about in the middle of the pack. Some people stayed down impressively long!
I had my written scuba test last night and I passed with a 94%. Then we packed up our gear. I finally got my medical clearance form signed (it’s a huge problem when your school clinic doesn’t have their doctor anymore and gives you the run around) which was a huge area of stress. I am leaving tonight and will be there until Sunday evening. It’s going to be hectic but very exciting. I do three dives on Sat and two on Sunday. I’m on the smaller boat which I think will be nice. I got an underwater disposable camera so I should be able to take some pictures. I’m sharing a tent with some girls, two of which I just met in the course and are really nice. The other is my dive partner, Sarah, who is from France. I’m excited and will certainly write another really long blog post about it later. This week I also had my first Zulu test which I think went well. It was a lot like the practice tests they gave us. I also started planning my Easter break trip with some friends. We are trying to go to Mozambique and Swaziland! We have a lot of planning to do but it should be great.
Getting it all done has been pretty intense for the past two weeks and taken up the greater part of my brain power and time. The group is usually capped at 18 but somehow this time around it got as big as 24 or so, so there are a lot of us to organize and teach at once. We had lectures on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and then last Saturday and Sunday we had two full days of pool training and lectures. They started at 8:30 or 9 and went until 4. This was truly exhausting. To add to that, I got the chance to go out on a boat off Durban on Saturday morning before class, ie 5:30 am. Caroline and Andrew, two of the people who are super involved in the underwater club/pretty much run it (they are the chairman and secretary and are probably somewhere in their 30’s) took 6 of us to look for dolphins. It ended up being rainy the whole time and we didn’t spot anything but little fish, but the waves were really big because of a surge from Capetown and I rode in the front of the boat. It was sooo fun to go over the waves and we had a great time all together.
Pool training started with a swim test that was more intensive that I had expected. We had to swim across the 25 meter pool underwater in one breath and this took me multiple tries to complete. In fact, I didn’t get it until Sunday morning when I went early to try again by myself (pretty embarrassing but when I got it I popped up out of the water, took a big breath and fist-pumped with joy). We then had to tread for 10 minutes straight. I made it through that and then we learned all kinds of other things in the water, including how to take your regulator (the thing you breath through) out underwater and find it and put it back in, and to take your mask all the way off underwater and put it back on. Then we did both at the same time. I got these on the first tries but it was challenging. You have to fight the feeling that you should be panicking and coming to the surface.
That night I went to a nice Thai restaurant with three friends to relax and have a nice meal. The restaurant was on Florida Road, a swanky place with lots of restaurants and clubs. Apparently it’s the place to “see and be seen” in Durban (say the guide books). The food was great but I’d need a second look at the rest of the street to be convinced.
The second day we were more accustomed to our gear and I had more fun in the pool. We learned other things and then played some games at the end which were really fun. We played broken telephone, where you try to communicate the message with only hand signals. This was pretty hilariously impossible. The last game was dubbed “the war game” and consisted of all the students swimming around in the deep end and the instructors “attacking” us. They could take off our masks, take our regulators out, steal our fins, inflate our BCs (like a flotation vest), undo our weight belts, unbuckle our cylinders and even turn off our air! The goal was to recover from these incidences, like get your mask back on, etc. or come up to the surface if you couldn’t. The last person at the bottoms won. Luckily none of the really bad ones happened to me. I just got my fin stolen a few times and my regulator removed a few times. However when one instructor undid my weight belt he broke the buckle off so I couldn’t get it back on. I had it in one hand and then got a flipper stolen. I couldn’t get both back on and then my mask started to fill with water, so I surfaced, about in the middle of the pack. Some people stayed down impressively long!
I had my written scuba test last night and I passed with a 94%. Then we packed up our gear. I finally got my medical clearance form signed (it’s a huge problem when your school clinic doesn’t have their doctor anymore and gives you the run around) which was a huge area of stress. I am leaving tonight and will be there until Sunday evening. It’s going to be hectic but very exciting. I do three dives on Sat and two on Sunday. I’m on the smaller boat which I think will be nice. I got an underwater disposable camera so I should be able to take some pictures. I’m sharing a tent with some girls, two of which I just met in the course and are really nice. The other is my dive partner, Sarah, who is from France. I’m excited and will certainly write another really long blog post about it later. This week I also had my first Zulu test which I think went well. It was a lot like the practice tests they gave us. I also started planning my Easter break trip with some friends. We are trying to go to Mozambique and Swaziland! We have a lot of planning to do but it should be great.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Warning- this is another epic post, about another trip!
In the interest of time, I’m going to have to summarize my last trip, not the long narrative of the last trip…because well it’d be nice to be current again. Also, I’m writing this in the computer lab where I just noticed we’re operating on Microsoft 2003…speaking of being current…
Anyways, a week and a half ago, I went on another trip (yay!). It was organized by a lecturer here, named Blessing (yes that’s his first name) and was scheduled to go a long time ago but because not enough people signed up to go, it was postponed. In the end there were only 7 of us, plus Blessing and the driver of our van, but it was really nice that way I think (I’d take 7 over 40 any day). We went to an area north of Durban, about 3 hours away, called St. Lucia. It’s home to a great game reserve and wetlands park so that is it’s main draw. This was to be an education trip as well, teaching us through experience about rural and community development, what Blessing’s degree and study has been in. We headed out of Durban on the smaller highways, climbing up through rural neighborhoods and through sugar can farms, then onto major highways through green stretches dotted by small communities of tiny homes and the occasional smattering of cows and people out and about. Blessing took us to his own neighborhood and his home to show us the community and where he plans to start some of his own community upliftment projects- like a community garden project. I learned a lot about rural community issues and what makes a good project and what does not. Like I have found before, in Africa the journey is definitely an integral part of the experience. You are able to see and learn so much just driving through different areas, witnessing the changes in landscape and housing.
It took us the whole afternoon to get to our backpacker destination because of the many stops and detours we took to see different communities. Blessing narrated along the way. Our backpacker was called the Veyanne Cultural Village and is run by local community members (ie an all African, all Zulu organization). I forgot to mention that the greater region we were travelling through is called Zululand. The backpacker is set up like a mock Zulu village. There is a large main hut for meals and gathering, a cattle kraal (which is used not for cattle here but for a bonfire and traditional dancing), and smaller separate sleeping huts, where we got to sleep. The first thing we did when we got there was get dressed in traditional Zulu clothes which was really cool. Except for the fact that it was still reallllly hot even though it was the evening and the clothing was really heavy. The skirt, made out of cow hide, was so heavy that rolled up, it stands up on its own. This is the kind of skirt a married woman wears. We also had thick beaded belts, necklaces, bracelets, and Zulu hats (I’m sure you’re all dying to see the pictures of me in that- it is pretty funny). Later a group of young men performed traditional Zulu dance for the guests and they were extremely good. There was the leg lifting dance (that just doesn’t sound right but I can’t think of another name for it, I should probably find out the Zulu name for it) as well as back flips and all that. Then they said we had to dance with them and we all tried our hand at the leg lifting. There is also photographic evidence of that on someone’s camera. It was really fun, albeit embarrassing.
Sleeping in the hut was fun, except for the fact that it was extremely hot in there as well. The thick roofing seemed to hold in and super heat the air, and as I was staying in it with Annereike, who is Dutch, I named our hut the Dutch Oven (cue laughter). The next morning we headed out bright and early to the game reserve, the name of which I would write if I could spell it and you could pronounce it. We drove around in our van and as soon as we came around the first corner, there were three zebras in the road with a giraffe behind them. So exciting! It’s so exhilarating to see these animals right in front of you, you don’t even know what to do with yourself. There is awe and much photo-taking, then you have to keep driving because another car comes up behind you. But it is amazing. A little further down the road we stopped for more zebra and a wildebeest and then I noticed something moving and it was a hyena! It ran behind some bush and was tearing at a carcass with some more hyenas! That was one of the coolest things to see in action, even though the bush was kind of in the way.
Even though we started in the park at 7 am, it was extremely hot that early and the whole day. My guess would be high 80s if not low 90s with high high high humidity. Ever break we took we were guzzling water, we bought the 1.5 liter size and several smaller ones each. We were sooo sweaty but it was a great time to cruise around the game reserve. Even when you weren’t spotting animals the landscape was awesome. We ended up seeing lots of impala, wildebeest, zebra, baboon, another giraffe or two, water buffalo, one rhino (!!!), monkeys, wart hogs and baby wart hogs (adorable and about 5 feet away from me), waterbuck, and probably some other things that I will see in the photos later. Unfortunately, the closest we came to an elephant was some fresh elephant poo but we couldn’t find them! As it got later and hotter it got a lot harder to see big game because they rest in cool places under trees or in mud. This is why it’s so hard to spot lions too, since they sleep also for 20 hours a day. But all in all, I was really excited with what we saw.
In the afternoon, we travelled to a drop-in center for kids who have been affected by HIV/AIDS, either with the loss of a parent/head of household, or more personally. The idea of a drop-in center is the kids come in the morning to get breakfast before school, then go to school, come for lunch to the center, back to school, then get some food on the way home and bring some to parents/elderly and other children at home. There were maybe 30 or 40 kids there from I’d say 3 to 16 years old. They had been waiting eagerly for us but were shy once we got there, at first. They sang a few songs for us and did a skit (in Zulu), then we played games with them. The first one was like duck duck goose and the second was called Teddy Bear and was generally about hugging. It was fun to interact with the kids. They served us a generous lunch and then we got a tour of the humble facility, which helps an astounding number of people. The area is considered an HIV/AIDS infection hot spot and it could use way more of these facilities.
After departing from the center, where we could have spent a lot more time playing with the kids, we were headed to the wetlands park for a boat ride through the wetland for more game spotting. First we stopped at the biggest curio (souvenir, handi-craft, carvings, baskets, bracelets, etc.) and produce market I’d seen so far. The smell of pineapple was delicious as soon as we stepped out of the van. I tried the African equivalent of prickly pear there (Laina, it was kind of like Tohono O’odham cactus fruit).
On the wetlands boat trip we saw lots and lots of hippos! It was great! There were some babies too. We also saw African fish eagle, stork, crocodile, Egyptian geese, but the hippos were definitely the highlight. The scenery here was also great. Caked with sunscreen and sweat, we returned to Veyane for dinner and then crashed pretty hard for the night. Thankfully, it was a little cooler (only a little).
The next day we headed to the beach to an estuary area. We took some of the dancers from the first night with us. Oh I forgot to mention that this whole time we also had Sisa with us, a girl about our age from the community we would be visiting later this day. It was sort of like a cultural exchange, Blessing knew her and thought it would be nice to learn from eachother. Anyways the beach was great and although I didn’t go in (no suit) I enjoyed myself and watched the dancers do backflips in the waves. After relaxing on the beach some we went to a crocodile park and saw lots more crocs, even little babies!
After this, we packed up and headed to Sisa’s community near Richard’s Bay (a little bit south back towards Durban). Richard’s Bay is one of the most polluted places in the area because of a local mineral mine. Blessing has been working in this community to start a community garden project. Because of lots of beaurocracy (like they’ve been waiting 2 years for the government to hook up their irrigation pipe) it has had some trouble getting off the ground. There is also no where for them really to sell their goods, and the soil isn’t so great. As we walked around the community, learning about it, a pack of local kids started forming behind us. They were captivated and so were we with them. We kind of became our own parade. We tried to interact with them as best we could. My conversational Zulu doesn’t go too far with people who are native speakers. Again I taught them how to high five and had a crowd of boys all running up to my outstretched hand. Then they started to play sort of tag with me (just me, I’m thinking it was the hair), where someone behind me would run up and tap me in the back and then when I would turn around they would pretend no one had done it and run away from me. The local women who tend the garden were all very warm and welcoming to us. We went to Sisa’s home, a cluster of small buildings for her extended family. After this, we unfortunately had to leave, but our parade of children followed us to the van and crowded around, making departure difficult, we waved through the windows and eventually took off on the 2 hour or so journey back to Durban. Another full and impacting weekend.
(So I’m not that great at summarizing….).
This past weekend, in the spirit of a true summary, I went to uShaka Marine World, which is a shopping area, beach, aquarium, and water park all in one. While it was still sunny and hot, we were in the aquarium, when we got out it was raining. So after lunch when the rain still hadn’t passed, we put on our bathing suits and went on the waterslides in the rain. It was so fun, I felt like a little kid again. We went on the lazy river three times and it winds around past the penguin and shark tanks (very cool and very fun). The girls I was with were all great fun and we had a good time getting wet and laughing together. We had a great dinner at a restaurant called Moyo which is right at the beach edge. They have seaweed sculptures made out of green glass bottles and glass jellyfish lamps. The food is amazing and not so expensive because of the good rand to dollar ratio (10:1). It was a great day. Sunday I went to a market down by North beach and got some great souvenirs that my friend Myrthe bargained for and got everyone down to half their price (you have to do that here because they over price things when they think you’re a tourist). Afterwards I went to the harbor to the Royal Natal Yacht Club to meet a friend of a friend and her family who are in the UKZN sailing club. I loved seeing all the sail boats and the family we met owns their own and let us on it (while docked). I would love to get sailing here!
Anyways, sorry that was so long but it was another great trip I had to share about. I have my first test Tues in Zulu so I’ve been studying a lot for that. Also the scuba course has started, so I’ll be in the pool and in classroom time with that for most of the weekend!
Anyways, a week and a half ago, I went on another trip (yay!). It was organized by a lecturer here, named Blessing (yes that’s his first name) and was scheduled to go a long time ago but because not enough people signed up to go, it was postponed. In the end there were only 7 of us, plus Blessing and the driver of our van, but it was really nice that way I think (I’d take 7 over 40 any day). We went to an area north of Durban, about 3 hours away, called St. Lucia. It’s home to a great game reserve and wetlands park so that is it’s main draw. This was to be an education trip as well, teaching us through experience about rural and community development, what Blessing’s degree and study has been in. We headed out of Durban on the smaller highways, climbing up through rural neighborhoods and through sugar can farms, then onto major highways through green stretches dotted by small communities of tiny homes and the occasional smattering of cows and people out and about. Blessing took us to his own neighborhood and his home to show us the community and where he plans to start some of his own community upliftment projects- like a community garden project. I learned a lot about rural community issues and what makes a good project and what does not. Like I have found before, in Africa the journey is definitely an integral part of the experience. You are able to see and learn so much just driving through different areas, witnessing the changes in landscape and housing.
It took us the whole afternoon to get to our backpacker destination because of the many stops and detours we took to see different communities. Blessing narrated along the way. Our backpacker was called the Veyanne Cultural Village and is run by local community members (ie an all African, all Zulu organization). I forgot to mention that the greater region we were travelling through is called Zululand. The backpacker is set up like a mock Zulu village. There is a large main hut for meals and gathering, a cattle kraal (which is used not for cattle here but for a bonfire and traditional dancing), and smaller separate sleeping huts, where we got to sleep. The first thing we did when we got there was get dressed in traditional Zulu clothes which was really cool. Except for the fact that it was still reallllly hot even though it was the evening and the clothing was really heavy. The skirt, made out of cow hide, was so heavy that rolled up, it stands up on its own. This is the kind of skirt a married woman wears. We also had thick beaded belts, necklaces, bracelets, and Zulu hats (I’m sure you’re all dying to see the pictures of me in that- it is pretty funny). Later a group of young men performed traditional Zulu dance for the guests and they were extremely good. There was the leg lifting dance (that just doesn’t sound right but I can’t think of another name for it, I should probably find out the Zulu name for it) as well as back flips and all that. Then they said we had to dance with them and we all tried our hand at the leg lifting. There is also photographic evidence of that on someone’s camera. It was really fun, albeit embarrassing.
Sleeping in the hut was fun, except for the fact that it was extremely hot in there as well. The thick roofing seemed to hold in and super heat the air, and as I was staying in it with Annereike, who is Dutch, I named our hut the Dutch Oven (cue laughter). The next morning we headed out bright and early to the game reserve, the name of which I would write if I could spell it and you could pronounce it. We drove around in our van and as soon as we came around the first corner, there were three zebras in the road with a giraffe behind them. So exciting! It’s so exhilarating to see these animals right in front of you, you don’t even know what to do with yourself. There is awe and much photo-taking, then you have to keep driving because another car comes up behind you. But it is amazing. A little further down the road we stopped for more zebra and a wildebeest and then I noticed something moving and it was a hyena! It ran behind some bush and was tearing at a carcass with some more hyenas! That was one of the coolest things to see in action, even though the bush was kind of in the way.
Even though we started in the park at 7 am, it was extremely hot that early and the whole day. My guess would be high 80s if not low 90s with high high high humidity. Ever break we took we were guzzling water, we bought the 1.5 liter size and several smaller ones each. We were sooo sweaty but it was a great time to cruise around the game reserve. Even when you weren’t spotting animals the landscape was awesome. We ended up seeing lots of impala, wildebeest, zebra, baboon, another giraffe or two, water buffalo, one rhino (!!!), monkeys, wart hogs and baby wart hogs (adorable and about 5 feet away from me), waterbuck, and probably some other things that I will see in the photos later. Unfortunately, the closest we came to an elephant was some fresh elephant poo but we couldn’t find them! As it got later and hotter it got a lot harder to see big game because they rest in cool places under trees or in mud. This is why it’s so hard to spot lions too, since they sleep also for 20 hours a day. But all in all, I was really excited with what we saw.
In the afternoon, we travelled to a drop-in center for kids who have been affected by HIV/AIDS, either with the loss of a parent/head of household, or more personally. The idea of a drop-in center is the kids come in the morning to get breakfast before school, then go to school, come for lunch to the center, back to school, then get some food on the way home and bring some to parents/elderly and other children at home. There were maybe 30 or 40 kids there from I’d say 3 to 16 years old. They had been waiting eagerly for us but were shy once we got there, at first. They sang a few songs for us and did a skit (in Zulu), then we played games with them. The first one was like duck duck goose and the second was called Teddy Bear and was generally about hugging. It was fun to interact with the kids. They served us a generous lunch and then we got a tour of the humble facility, which helps an astounding number of people. The area is considered an HIV/AIDS infection hot spot and it could use way more of these facilities.
After departing from the center, where we could have spent a lot more time playing with the kids, we were headed to the wetlands park for a boat ride through the wetland for more game spotting. First we stopped at the biggest curio (souvenir, handi-craft, carvings, baskets, bracelets, etc.) and produce market I’d seen so far. The smell of pineapple was delicious as soon as we stepped out of the van. I tried the African equivalent of prickly pear there (Laina, it was kind of like Tohono O’odham cactus fruit).
On the wetlands boat trip we saw lots and lots of hippos! It was great! There were some babies too. We also saw African fish eagle, stork, crocodile, Egyptian geese, but the hippos were definitely the highlight. The scenery here was also great. Caked with sunscreen and sweat, we returned to Veyane for dinner and then crashed pretty hard for the night. Thankfully, it was a little cooler (only a little).
The next day we headed to the beach to an estuary area. We took some of the dancers from the first night with us. Oh I forgot to mention that this whole time we also had Sisa with us, a girl about our age from the community we would be visiting later this day. It was sort of like a cultural exchange, Blessing knew her and thought it would be nice to learn from eachother. Anyways the beach was great and although I didn’t go in (no suit) I enjoyed myself and watched the dancers do backflips in the waves. After relaxing on the beach some we went to a crocodile park and saw lots more crocs, even little babies!
After this, we packed up and headed to Sisa’s community near Richard’s Bay (a little bit south back towards Durban). Richard’s Bay is one of the most polluted places in the area because of a local mineral mine. Blessing has been working in this community to start a community garden project. Because of lots of beaurocracy (like they’ve been waiting 2 years for the government to hook up their irrigation pipe) it has had some trouble getting off the ground. There is also no where for them really to sell their goods, and the soil isn’t so great. As we walked around the community, learning about it, a pack of local kids started forming behind us. They were captivated and so were we with them. We kind of became our own parade. We tried to interact with them as best we could. My conversational Zulu doesn’t go too far with people who are native speakers. Again I taught them how to high five and had a crowd of boys all running up to my outstretched hand. Then they started to play sort of tag with me (just me, I’m thinking it was the hair), where someone behind me would run up and tap me in the back and then when I would turn around they would pretend no one had done it and run away from me. The local women who tend the garden were all very warm and welcoming to us. We went to Sisa’s home, a cluster of small buildings for her extended family. After this, we unfortunately had to leave, but our parade of children followed us to the van and crowded around, making departure difficult, we waved through the windows and eventually took off on the 2 hour or so journey back to Durban. Another full and impacting weekend.
(So I’m not that great at summarizing….).
This past weekend, in the spirit of a true summary, I went to uShaka Marine World, which is a shopping area, beach, aquarium, and water park all in one. While it was still sunny and hot, we were in the aquarium, when we got out it was raining. So after lunch when the rain still hadn’t passed, we put on our bathing suits and went on the waterslides in the rain. It was so fun, I felt like a little kid again. We went on the lazy river three times and it winds around past the penguin and shark tanks (very cool and very fun). The girls I was with were all great fun and we had a good time getting wet and laughing together. We had a great dinner at a restaurant called Moyo which is right at the beach edge. They have seaweed sculptures made out of green glass bottles and glass jellyfish lamps. The food is amazing and not so expensive because of the good rand to dollar ratio (10:1). It was a great day. Sunday I went to a market down by North beach and got some great souvenirs that my friend Myrthe bargained for and got everyone down to half their price (you have to do that here because they over price things when they think you’re a tourist). Afterwards I went to the harbor to the Royal Natal Yacht Club to meet a friend of a friend and her family who are in the UKZN sailing club. I loved seeing all the sail boats and the family we met owns their own and let us on it (while docked). I would love to get sailing here!
Anyways, sorry that was so long but it was another great trip I had to share about. I have my first test Tues in Zulu so I’ve been studying a lot for that. Also the scuba course has started, so I’ll be in the pool and in classroom time with that for most of the weekend!
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