Going Rural

I just learned I won't have service after tonight for awhile. Hopefully its a lie and I really will! We're going to a place called Kokstad and then Umtata that are supposedly REALLY REALLY rural. Yuck!  :-(



Kokstad, South Africa

Umtata, South Africa





More Safari and First Homestay

I definitely like seeing the kids more than animals. We're at another park now and the 500th giraffe you see isn't as cool as the first. We stayed at the roundhouses at the game park so it was really nice, but the cabin we're at now is gross.

Two nights ago we had our first home stay. My host family was nice, but they weren't very talkative and they went to bed not long after I got there. Yesterday I went to the school my host mom teaches at. I didn't like it that much because a lot of the kids didn't know English so I couldn't communicate with them. Even though school is supposed to be taught in English after grade 3, I sat in on a 6th grade science class that was almost all Zulu (click on the link to listen to "The Circle of Life" in Zulu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qNSwXm-Cl4). 

After school we went to a nature reserve and went on a hike to see giraffes and zebras, it was alright but we were all really tired and didn't want to go anyway. Then we had a bonfire and dinner and everyone went to bed pretty early.

Today we had our first service project. We went to a boarding high school and scraped the paint and sanded the walls in the dorms. I'm pretty sure I'll have lead poisoning or something because we didn't have any kind of mask to stop us from breathing it all in. I would have rather been painting or something. My throat has been sore the past couple days and that didn't help at all.

We're staying at the nature reserve again tonight, but tomorrow I think we're going to a guest house, I don't know what city we're going to though. It's actually really cold in the mornings and at night here.  It's hard to say I wouldn't rather be at home, as much fun as I'm having I'd jump on the next plane out if I had the chance.

SAFARI TIME!

The safari was soo much fun! By 9:00 am today I had been within feet of a family of zebras, giraffes, rhinos, warthogs, and antelope. It was so much fun, I took millions of pictures. But it was freezing, like the "40 degrees riding around in a car with no windows" kind of freezing. Then we went on another drive at 3:00 just in our van and an elephant was within 10 feet of us! It was actually kind of scary, there's not much you can do if an elephant comes at you. We didn't see any lions or leopards though, but I didn't expect to. A teacher I was talking to at one of the schools said he's been here over 10 times and still hasn't seen the cats. Plus the grass is at its highest right now so everything is really camouflaged.


I can see why this might be scary...

There's a walking safari here where you just go out with a guy and a gun. That would have been really cool, but it was booked for the next two days. The safari was surprisingly cheap (the program paid for ours) but it was only 300 rand per person for 3 hours which is less than $50. We're having a braai for dinner, but we've had a huge breakfast and lunch today, I'm not even hungry lol.


South African braai (barbecue)

Tomorrow were going to an estuary for a boat ride at 8 am. Hopefully well see hippos and crocodiles in the water because we didn't see any today.


Estuary near Hluhluwe
I don't know if this is where she is going, but I hope she sees this many hippos!



Stop #3 - Hluhluwe Game Reserve

Hluhluwe Sunset

I actually have service her, its crazy! We came at the perfect time, right when the sun was setting. The scenery was beautiful!

This morning we went to Northwood Boys High, a public high school just for boys. In South Africa, public schools can still charge their students, this one was 25,000 rands ($3,571) a year (7 rand = $1). A lot of people didn't like the school because they said it wasn't fair to the people who couldn't afford it, and it isn't. I thought of it more like the parents just wanted to give their kids the best education. A lot of the girls judged the school and the students right from the beginning and I thought that wasn't fair. They had 15 rugby teams at the school and sent a lot of boys to college and pros for it. It seemed pretty similar to St. Marys or Brother Rice, but public.

After that we spent the rest of the day driving to the game park. After we passed through the front gates, it took another 40 minutes to get to our round houses, talk about the middle of nowhere! But I love it, I already saw a python and a herd of buffalo! We're on our way to dinner now, and I have to get up at 6:00 tomorrow morning to start our safari!

Map of Hluhluwe Game Reserve, not sure what camp Kelsey is in.

Entrance Gate to Hluhluwe Game Reserve

Hluhluwe bush camps (top) and lodges (bottom).

Pictures!

I just added pictures to most of Kelsey's posts, so go back and take a look!  I just found them on the Internet, so I'm sure her's will be much better, but atleast you can see where she's been!

Last Day in Durban!

University of KwaZulu-Natal

Today we went to the Verulam Islamic School in Durban. Its a religious school but anyone can go there. They were so welcoming to us, we got breakfast and lunch and a huge welcoming from the students. A 7th grader recited a verse from the Qaran, he's memorized 27 of the 30 chapters! And then a little girl sang us a song about how her mom was amazing, but then it was just a dream and she was an orphan. It was really sad, I don't think there was any dry eye in the house. I watched a sex ed class, the teacher talked about rape and arranged marriage and it was really interesting.

After that we had a lecture about the economics of teaching...

Right now I'm on the way back from the Zulu healer's house. It isn't like you'd expect, he was very westernized. He said if someone comes to him with a head injury he makes them go get an x-ray or if he thinks someone has AIDS he makes them get a blood test. It was a really cool conversation about how he combines modern medicine with traditional practices to help his patients.

I hope this is what he looked like :-)

There was an article written about our group in a South African magazine.  It's called "America's Future Educators Visit South Africa" and it was in the Coastal Weekly.  I'm sure there are a lot of newspapers called that, but if you can find the article online then you can finally see my face! (I can't find it online)

I miss all my TV shows! The TV here is really behind in what season they're showing, and a lot of the local shows are in either Afrikans or Zulu. Afrikans is understandable sometimes because they have similar words but Zulu is a language with a ton of clicking in it so there's no chance.  I'm having better luck with food, but all I really want is a salad.  It sounds weird, but everything here is cooked and I haven't had a salad since I got here. A lot of the food is heavy in gravy and there's a lot of starch, so a salad would be so refreshing right now.

Tomorrow I'm going to the game park after our last school visit. I'm spending the weekend there and then staying in the rural towns for all of next week. I have no idea if I'll have service or when I will be able to talk to people next. Hopefully I can find some, it's going to be really hard to have no communication.

Next stop...Hluhluwe Game Reserve!

 Love and miss everybody so much, hopefully talk to you soon!

More School Visits in Durban

I'm laying on the couch contemplating doing homework and thought it'd be more fun to write another update for everyone at home!

Today we went to a quintile 5 school (schools are ranked 1-5, 1 means poorest so they get the most government funding). It was in an area that was only for Indians under apartheid and now its about 50% black and 50% Indian. During our welcome the choir sang for us and a girl performed a traditional Indian dance, everyone was really glad to see us.

Here, most people speak 4 or 5 languages and at the elementary school the kids were learning English, Afrikans, Zulu, and Hindi. I watched a 2nd grade Hindi class and it was amazing to see how much they knew. The kids treated all of us like we were celebrities, they'd all mob around us when we walked in the hall and I probably signed 100 autographs.

The staff made us food so I had Indian for lunch and dinner today, something else that doesn't like my stomach... Tomorrow we are visiting an Islamic school and then going to our lectures at the University of Kwazulu-Natal. Then, if it isn't raining, (its rained all day today) we are going to a village to meet a traditional Zulu healer, or medicine man. I'm really excited but it's going to be a very long day.

I leave for the game park on Friday in the early afternoon, I'm not sure if I will have service there but I'll send another e-mail before we leave the city.

1/3 of the way done!