Mo-ments.

This past Saturday I moved out of my Cato Manor homestay which was very sad since it really felt like home to me.  On our last night all of the girls and their families had a dinner party and we got to see everyone lots of singing and dancing. Every year the girls have to perform a song for the mama’s and families and so we performed the national anthem, build me up buttercup, and this local song called Shoshaloza.  Shoshaloza is a song which people sing at a lot of the sports games but if you start singing it anywhere then people will all join in, if they speak Zulu that is.  We also got to do some great dancing at the party.  All of the kids are really into dancing and my little brother loves to show me his moves, one of his favorites is the snake, which is accompanied by a hisssss of course :)  This homestay experience was really great I really felt like I was leaving my home, the last morning I left by making pancakes for my mama (her favortie food that I cooked for her).  She likes to eat them for every meal when I make them.  Also, I got a great recipie from her for steam bread which is this amazing type of bread which is boiled in water, the outside is moist and the inside is more dry, hard to explain but really really good.  

Now I will be in a backpackers for about two weeks.  It is such a difference living there, a really touristy and white area of Durban.  There really is such separation in the races and the neighborhoods.  Everyone we talk to here lets us know which part of town they live in and who lives there.  It really is sad that it is still like this, the colored (mixed) people are separate from the Indians, separate from the blacks and separate from the whites.  

Went to the Durban World Cup stadium and it was amazing!!!!!! (see the pic)  You can take the car up to the top of the stadium and see the entire beach and city.  Will definitly do that before I leave.  Also there is a swing from the top of the stadium which you can get strapped into and then jump, apparently its more of a free fall than a jump.  I would love to try but I am afraid of heights so I guess we will see.  Tickets for the game were only 20R which would be about $3.50, yes everything here is so much cheaper.  Also SA soccer is very different fromt he soccer that I am used to.  People told us the team is very lazy.  Ant its so true, they dont really run at all, I guess its just teir style but Bafana Bafana will have to do better than that for the world cup.  Great energy in the stadium there is this traditional vuvuzela (not sure if that how its spelled) but they are huge horn type things which everyone blows during the football game to make the most noise that they can.  It was a great time, got to get a lot of world cup paraphernalia for everyone back home, if I cant be there for it then I will bring it back to America with me.  

Second Rural Homestay

The second rural homestay was in a new village that our program had never visited before, so it was an experiment.  We were dropped off in pairs and when we got to our house it seemed very very nice.  A nice tv and living room with a beautiful table.  Our mama was very old and didn’t speak very much English but was really energetic for her age she was turning 70 this year!!  She showed us pictures and all of the different things she made by hand.  She wove mats out of grasses and then covered the grass with plastic bags to make mats, really pretty looking.  She also knitted table cloths with super thin sting so it looked like lace.  In the house there was no toilet, literally just a bathroom.  With a bench, still trying to figure that out, and then buckets and a hook, for bathing.  The toilet was of course outside, but wasn’t too smelly or anything.  So the first evening after dinner, we went to our room and there was a huge spider.  I mean huge, larger than the size of my hand with these pincher-looking things.  We freaked out and mama came in to see and tried to smash it but it was a quick big boy.  Also as we were preparing for bed we saw quite a few cockroaches, which we had to kill with raid.  During the night, you could hear the skittering of the cockroaches on the walls and on the floor.  It freaked me out and I spent most of the night up with the can of raid, I got really good at killing them.  Also we couldn’t go to the toilet at night because there were cockroaches all crawling all over.  In the morning time we had a lot of dead cockroaches and no live ones.  That day we got to go to a school for a little while, and saw amazing Zulu dancing.   All of the girls came out first and then the “men” followed, it was also boiling out in the sun so Im not sure how they stood to do that.  We got a talk from one of the teachers and got to see how this school god funding because it was an environmentally savvy school.  One of the children cam into do a skit about sexual abuse and how it is not ok to be touched by anyone even if they are in your family.  It was so cute, she was very animated and started out by screaming “hayboooo, hayboooo”  which means “oh my, oh my.”  She was in first grade and so it is good that at this school they are teaching these lessons so early on.  Also there were kids who came in which put on a miming skit!!! Very interesting I never thought id see miming outside of the united states but here these kids were.  They were miming in case they had to communicate with a deaf person or just because it was a different form of communication.  They also had an excellent garden, which the children tended to.  They gave us some plant which is like a sweet potato and apparently is all the rage in the country because of its healing powers.  It looked kind of like garlic to me but definitely tasted like a potato.  We also got to go to an NGO which was an afterschool center for kids, which taught them classes in computer, sound recording, and then also had activated such as dance and basketball.  It was mostly a tool though for the students to talk about HIV/AIDS and sexuality issues.  Seemed like a very important place for the children that we saw there and good because of the directors said that many parents do not talk to their kids about safe sex and their different options.   We also learned how to play net ball with the kids, and got schooled!!! They were probably about 8 or so J  While we were there we also got to see the clinic, very, very small  and some trailers substitute for clinics for TB and ARV’s and HIV.  The last night that we were there we had a real Zulu feast. Our brother cooked the entire meal and then put down mats on the floor.  For a Zulu feat you eat off of isiTable, a big wooden table which has very short legs.  All of the food is placed on the table and then you just use your hands.  The women must sit on the mat with their leg straight and crossed and the men sit on small benches.  It was a lot of fun, the food was excellent, there were unborn chicken eggs which we could try and tasty dumpling type things.  Overall the trip was great, and except for the cockroaches, I was sad to leave the entire place. 

Cobham Weekend

This past weekend our whole group visited the Drakensburg Mts at a place called Cobham. We camped in a large cabin, next to a fire pit, a crystal clear river, and a gorgeous view of the Mts. Ahhhhhh what a good time  We arrived on Saturday and got to go to the stream which is super clear and the water is so pure that you can drink right from it. There were actually people who went to the university of Madison WI there, which was amazing. Weird to meet people who went to school in my hometown halfway across the world in South Africa. Its strange because this place does not look like Africa to me. There are no savannas, no giraffes, or elephants, just a lot and lot of grass and rocks. The next day we took a hike with our leader and he told us about the Koikoi (san) Bushmen which were the early inhabitants in this area. This day we were to hike up one of the mountains to see the rock paintings done by the san people. When we started off the only animals that we saw were baboons (pretty far away) and weirdo looking grasshoppers (waaaay too close). The grasshoppers here are bright red, blue, and black and are about three times the size of a normal grasshopper. Our leader is not sure if they are poisonous so we try to stay away. So we walked for about an hour and came to a nice big swimming hole where we got to relax before setting off on the next part of the hike. The rest of the hike was exhausting to say the least. It took about 3 more hours past the first pool to get to our first resting point, and then some of us me included climbed another hour to the top of the mountain. It was super hot the entire time and our leader is full of energy and never wants to wait for more than a few minutes. Seriously this guy has so much energy; I think all he brought on the trip was one apple. Water was not really an issue because there were lots of lil streams and waterfalls to refill with ice cold water. Once we got to the rock paintings we stopped for lunch and then climbed to the top. Seriously a breathtaking view!!!!! Definitely worth the climb, you can see the mountain right next to ours which was Lesotho and could see just wide empty space for kilometers and kilometers. Ill try to attach a picture too show as much as I can although im sure it will not compare to the actual view. We then prepared for our 5 hour hike down and back to the campsite. Last night there, I slept under the stars contemplating the galaxy and how I got so lucky to be right there at that moment.