Love Is In The House-TobyMac

I keep saying that I will talk about race, apartheid, and all that difficult stuff, but I put it off time and time again. I think part of it is that everything is so very complex, and it is hard to explain. Also, I still feel like I don’t have a complete understanding of everything, and I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. But, it is a huge part of SA history and I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you anything. So, I am not even going to try to give you an overview of things, but will instead just tell you some of the things that I have learned, noticed or experienced since coming here. If you don’t know what Apartheid is, go read a book (I would recommend A Rainbow in the Night, I found it helpful for me before I came). Also, if I have gotten any of this wrong, please forgive me and don’t be offended. Just remember that I really love SA, and that it is a very complicated place.

Deracialization seem to be the catchphrase and the goal of everything. We are ‘de-racializing the schools’, ‘deracializing the workplace’, ‘deracializing the country’ (actually, if you want to be accurate, you should probably replace the “z” with an “s”). However, Grahamstown, like most places, is not really deracialized. There are no laws prohibiting black people from moving into a white area, and the rise of black middle class has led to some semblance of mixing. However, in reality, the town is still surrounded by townships (the name used to describe shantytowns and impromptu communities that grew up around “white only” towns during apartheid), which are often still referred to by their old names and do not appear on most of the maps of Grahamstown I can find. The main divide is caused by economic disparities… the conditions in the townships are very different compared to Grahamstown proper, and people in the townships largely couldn’t afford to move to white areas if they wanted to (When I went to some of the townships during my orientation, my guide, who lives there himself, said that many people who could afford to move to white neighborhoods didn’t want to anyway, because their friends and family lived here, and the atmosphere in white neighborhoods felt restrictive compared to the communal nature of the townships). However, the thing that I wanted to point out was that everything is still described as ‘the white neighborhoods,’ ‘the black township,’ ‘the coloured area,’ ‘the Indian area,’ etc. The fact that these places exist is a remnant of apartheid law, but the fact that they are still described this way is a remnant of apartheid ideology.

Not that people are outwardly racist (for the most part). Its just that the country was harshly segregated less than 20 years ago, and it takes awhile for people’s minds to let go of the things they were taught. This doesn’t show explicitly, but rather in subtle ways that I think are less-than-conscious practices. Race is just there, and it has been used to differentiate between people for a long time. I hate to get all psychology on you, but the best way I contextualize is using research that was done on race divisions in the workplace (in the US). Basically, researchers described two different methodologies that people use when interacting among different races. The first is the “colorblind” approach, which is basically viewing everyone as the same and seeing no difference between people of different races. The second methodology was termed “celebrating diversity,” which acknowledges that there are differences between people, but assumes that people from other races have something valuable to add to the community. It is my opinion that when people say that they are colorblind, it is because they have been told that everyone is equal and that it is wrong to divide people based on race. However, this results in trying to suppress or ignore any differences, because they feel that to acknowledge them would somehow be impolite or even racist. This in turn creates some level of tension and awkwardness, which I think exists to some degree in the US and even more here. People are extremely aware that they are white and the person next to them is black, but they aren’t supposed to be noticing this, so they can’t address whatever separates them from the other person (because those things aren’t supposed to exist, either!). Does that make sense at all? For example, I am fairly ignorant about the concept of a weave (although I know a lot more now than I did before I came… which just goes to show how much I didn’t know before), but I would feel totally rude if I said to one of my friends, “please tell me all about your weave because I am white and I have never had one and I just really don’t understand all of the details.” Okay, perhaps that was not the best example, but I hope that you can possibly relate to that awkward feeling I am describing.

I am not saying that this applies to everyone, but I do sense that awkwardness often here. People tend to form friend groups according to color, and I don’t think it is on purpose, but it is still pretty stark. All of the churches I went to were either white or black with a handful of people mixing it up (this wasn’t quite so pronounced at Fronteirs, but was still true). Even the classes were surprisingly separated… in a university where the majority of students were black, there was only one girl in the entire third year zoology class, which was definitely not the case in my history class. In our dinning hall, it was clear that friend groups were divided along racial line for the most part. And I am totally not immune to this. I realized about midway through the semester that most of my friend here are white, and if you asked me how that happened, I really have no idea. I am not really proud of it, but at the same time I love the friends that I met here, so I don’t regret the friendships I made. It’s just something that happened along the way, and I honestly don’t know what to make of it. But it is a part of my time here, so I think it bears mentioning to you.

What does it mean to be racist? Is it thinking less of people whose skin is a different color than yours? Is it thinking that people whose skin color is different than yours are different than you? Is it noticing that someone’s skin color is different from yours at all? The lines blur, and it is hard to tell the difference when it is a matter of the heart. But matters of the heart have a sneaky way of creeping into your actions without you noticing, so it is important to think about these issues. Race relations are strained here sometimes, and they are strained at home as well. If we want to stop being politically correct and actually loving our brothers and sisters, it is something that we all have to address. A matter of the heart. 

Free-Switchfoot

Disclaimer: Okay, I am actually home now, but I wrote a few blogs right before I left and while I was traveling that I couldn’t post because I had no internet. So I am going to put them up now, and you will just have to wait for the wrap up ending stuff for a little bit. I will get around to that one eventually, I promise. In the meantime…

So, I told you that I had a few adventures left to keep things interesting here during the last part of my exams. Well, Wednesday, I went with Gillian and Jill to the Born Free Centre, which is a world-wide organization that was started in the UK to rescue and take care of wild animals that for some reason can’t be released into the wild. Usually, this is because they have been raised in captivity and don’t know how to hunt or survive in the wild if they were released.  The centre that we went to was in one corner of Shamwari, which is the oldest and largest private game reserve in the Eastern Cape.  Basically, the company came in and bought a ton of farmland (aka 20,000 hectares) during a period when farming was not profitable (Its hard to farm much in the soil here in the Eastern Cape) and before any other companies got in on the game. Shamwari is now surrounded by other, smaller game reserves (no farms to be seen), but it is easily the biggest, with enough land to support two separate lion prides at opposite ends of the reserve. The cool thing is that the bigger the reserve, the more “natural” the conditions, hence the autonomous lion prides that are free to range and hunt like they normally would.

However, the lions that I got to see were not free to range and hunt… then again, they probably wouldn’t be able to survive if they were. That didn’t stop them from being big, intimidating hunters at heart, though. The first lion we saw, Shada, was super excited by the herd of impala that were in the hills to the west of her enclosure, despite the fact that she has never hunted live game in her life. She was rescued, along with her sister and a male lion, from a circus in France, where all three were kept in a single circus wagon, the stereotypical type that’s like a big cage on wheels. It was divided into three small sections, where they were kept for breeding purposes and were declawed so that they would be ‘easier to handle’. Luckily, they were eventually rescued and sent to Born Free, where Shada got over being skittish and afraid of humans, and now appears to be quite content (other than the impala taunting her with their scent on the other side of her fenced enclosure).  The other two lions didn’t live at Born Free very long; the other lioness had a kidney disease when she came and the male lion actually dies of a snakebite, because apparently living in captivity doesn’t teach you to avoid snakes. The Born Free centre now does snake training with their lions… crazy, I know. They basically connect a rubber snake to the current in the electrical fence, then put it in the middle of the lion’s enclosure and make it wiggle convincingly. The shock is strong enough to teach the lions to leave snakes alone if a real one with venom gets in their enclosures (Behavioral Therapy!).

The next pair of lions included an older male and younger female who had come to Born Free around the same time (they were not actually a mating pair; they don’t breed the lions at the centre because they wouldn’t be able to teach their young to survive in the wild, and apparently there are enough lions in the world that they don’t need to breed them in captivity). Anyway, the male, Brutus, was much older, and was also rescued from a French circus, where he was kept in sad a little cage. Apparently, it freaked him out when he got to Born Free and they put him out in an enclosure, because he could feel grass and see the sky (but he seemed perfectly happy when we saw him). He is much slower than the lioness, which I think had to do with being in a cage for so long, so when they feed the lions, they had to separate them, because she would eat super fast, and then eat his food, too. The lioness was younger, and was apparently found in a box… literally, imagine someone finding a box (I don’t remember where this was) and assuming that it was a cat, but then opening it and finding a lion cub. She was really active, and when Gillian crouched down to get a better look, she got up and came over to the edge of the fence so fast it was incredible. It would have been a bit terrifying, except that I totally trusted the fence… and I also wasn’t the one she was rushing at. Once we got her attention, she pretty much tracked our every move the whole time, and when we started walking, she trotted right next to us, looking altogether just a bit too interested…

After that, we got to see my first leopard! After my lifelong love of leopard print, it was like a dream come true. Also, it completed my big five! (Technically I don’t know if I saw black or white rhinos at the Sibuya reserve, but if I fudge that just assume a bit, I have completed my big five) Anyway, the leopards were beautiful. An Italian who was in the Ivory Coast met a man who was selling two cubs and a leopard skin (probably the mother) and he bought both of the cubs and house trained them. Eventually, they got older and more unpredictable (you know, like big, wild cats), and he wanted to give them to Born Free, but the Ivory Coast wouldn’t give him export papers, and required the leopards be taken to the Ivory Coast zoo, which apparently has really terrible conditions. After the female leopard escaped the zoo and was shot, the Italian government put pressure on the Ivory Coast, and eventually they agreed to give the export papers for the male leopard to come to Born Free. We also saw a mother and daughter leopard, although they were both a bit harder to see, because they weren’t chilling right by the edge of the fence (we got really lucky with the male leopard). The daughter was actually hanging out on top of one of the shelters that were built in each of the enclosures for when it rains, and the mother was hiding in the bush… I couldn’t find her until she came out of wherever she was hiding in the bush to be fed.

The last lion pair were a mother and son, although the son was old enough to have a full mane, more or less. Both of those lions were underfed when they got here, which had prevented the mane from growing in fully around his shoulder areas. They were both really active and ready to eat by the time we went over to look at them, since the truck had gotten there to feed all of the cats (they feed them every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). These two were the only cats that could be fed together, because the male lion respected the lioness and let his mother eat her fill first. Good manners :) All of the cats basically got chunks of beef thrown over the fence (4kg for a lion, 2kg for a leopard), which they picked up like they weighed nothing and wandered off to eat with that snug look cats get.

Anyway, the whole thing was really cool, and I loved being able to get so close the cats, even if there were fences that may have made some of the pictures less cool (while keeping me from getting eaten). We watched while they fed the mother and son pair and the mother and daughter leopards, and then we had a lovely picnic lunch of our own while the fed the rest of the cats. It worked out really well, because the weather started to get kind of ominous, and when it rains the cats all hide in the bush or under the shelters, but they were all out and active when we were there because it was almost feeding time. I am so glad that I got the opportunity to go see them (even if I didn’t ever get to hold cubs like Jon Kentner did this summer… just another thing to add to the list of “next time I am in Africa) and it was a lovely way to take a break from exams.

Passing Afternoon-Iron & Wine

I feel as if it is time for me to give you an update on the past few days here, although I know you don’t want to hear about my extremely exciting final exams and whatnot. The past few days have been a bit rough, actually, but I am doing better now. The news of Ryan’s death was just so unexpected, and it was hard to be here by myself when I really just wanted to get in a car like everyone else and drive home to Frederick for the funeral. Unfortunately, small details like finals and the Atlantic Ocean made this impossible, so I was stuck here regardless of how I felt. The feeling of being stuck when I wanted to be home was intensified by the fact that I don’t actually have responsibilities here other than finals now... no classes to wake up for, and volunteering and stuff is finished. Most of my days are spent in my room, either studying or not studying (which is probably more often the case) and as my friends all have finals at different times and are busy studying too, we don’t see each other much.

However, I think that I am getting past the roughest part. Although I am still sad and confused about what happened, I am remembering God’s goodness and sovereignty, and I can’t help but trust in him. There is a psalm that really helps me with this: Psalm 77. In the beginning, the psalmist is in distress and crying out to God… he asks if the Lord will reject him forever. Then, he moves into the second part, which is when he appeals to and remembers what God has done in the past. This leads to the end, when he is praising God for who He is. Its basically as if remembering who God is automatically leads to worshiping him. Its not that the trials or pain have gone away, but that the psalmist has regained some perspective, and I need to do that sometimes. Not hide the hurt or try to keep from remembering it, just remember who God is at the same time. 

So, this past week… like I said, mostly exams. I have taken three of them now, and now I just have one more next Saturday. This means that I literally have a week to do nothing. Some of my friends are going to Mozambique, and others are going to Cape Town or Zambia and Kruger Park, but I will just be chilling in Grahamstown. However, after a chat with my lovely friend Katy, I have decided that I am just going to bask in the fact that I would likely be busy and stressed out of my mind if I was home at this time of year. So, I am letting myself have a week of vacation like the ones where I go to VA beach and do nothing but sleep till lunchtime, read a book in the sunshine and watch tv. In fact, there is technically a pool here, so the only thing missing is of sand, Melissa Dorrance and strawberry desserts (all in copious amounts, of course). After all, I am in Africa, shouldn’t I be having some soft of vacation? Okay, technically I have a philosophy exam at the end of my “vacation,” but that just means that instead of reading a novel in the sun, it will be Strawson and Kant.

Also, I am not actually just lazing around all the time… after I finished my ethno exam Tuesday afternoon, I decided to take up my instructor’s offer to go to the drum class that he teaches in town. It was a fun, spontaneous little adventure… I took my friend M.E. with me, and we found the house in town, which turned out to belong to a secondary school music teacher and was full of instruments. And I don’t just mean the typical piano (well, there was a piano, actually), or a violin hanging on the wall… over the course of the evening, we pulled out an mbira (happiest girl!) and a karimba, which is like a slightly modernized mbira that can be mass-produced. In fact, there is a factory here in Grahamstown… they also make super nice marimbas there, as well as a bunch of other idiophones and a few drums. Speaking of drums, returning from my tangent... there were obviously plenty of djembes at the house, since that’s what we were playing but she also had a steel drum that her son played (and a drum set, but I was  way more excited about the steel drum) and after some cajoling, we convinced him to play it for us before we left. So much musical fun for one day! And by fun, I really only mean the djembe jam session, since the exam could hardly be described as fun. However, as someone living in the African Diaspora, I totally had the advantage when we got to the Americas, and I actually paid attention for the part of the course talking about Africa, so I was all set!

Anyway, I can’t believe how soon my time here will be done. Like I said, I finished my third exam today (I took it in the Great Hall… I was seriously not kidding when I said that exams here remind me of Harry Potter) and I have started cleaning out papers that I won’t take home with me, returning stuff that I have borrowed from people while I was here, and I even caught myself thinking about how I am going to pack everything up to go. Something about knowing that I can count the days I have left here on both hands makes me think of leaving the idyllic Africa in my imagination instead of the South Africa that has temporarily become normal life. Part of me wants to just stow away on a safari and be taken out into the bush somewhere, where I can chill with giraffes and leopards (the only two animals I have failed to find, besides hippos, which I decided were not cute or friendly anyway) for a nice long time. On the other hand, I have started getting excited every time I see screen shots of Washington D.C. during Bones episodes because I am going to be there so soon! I will be so excited to be home, and I am really looking forward to Thanksgiving and all the times after that, even if I don’t know what I am going to do with my life just yet. God will provide a job or will otherwise meet my needs just like he always has. In the meantime, I can quit worrying about where I am going to work over break and just look forward to some pumpkin products and gravy. Except not touching each other on the plate, obviously, since that would be unacceptable. 

How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)-James Taylor

It is 9:30 pm (your time, I don’t even want to think about what time it is here) and I can’t seem to sleep. While you all gain an hour from daylight savings tomorrow (which, by the way, is a week after Europe switches, which is confusing and led me to believe that I was just crazy for awhile) I do not, and I am unlikely to be a happy camper in the morning. In fact, I should probably shut off my computer now, because everyone knows that when you starts talking late at night/early in the morning, awkwardness is likely to ensue. However, I don’t think I am in the confession danger zone, and besides, I can’t think of any confessions that I might accidentally share with you, so I probably will be okay.

The past day and a half, I have really wanted to go home. No, that is incorrect; I haven’t wanted to go home, I have just wanted to be home. The fact that I really don’t feel like studying and taking my exams doesn’t help, but really it stems from yesterday evening, when I found out that a high school friend of mine had been killed in a car accident. We weren’t super close, but he grew up with some of my best friends in school, and I have known him for years. I know that many other people are feeling his loss more deeply, but I cared about him, and my heart is hurting. Ryan McCann was one of the smartest guys I knew, and I always joked that he could do better than I did in school without actually trying. In fact, as I tried to study for my zoo exam last night, I couldn’t help thinking that he could probably BS his way through the exam I was studying for and still score 4% higher than me… that was our norm in biology.

It’s just really hard, because he was a guy with so much potential… that is the word that keeps coming to mind over and over… potential, but not the time for it to come to fruition. I don’t understand God’s timing, and although I know He is good, and that God’s ways are beyond our ways, I can’t help but cry out “WHY???” with frustration at my lack of understanding, as well as a bit of anger and some guilt for time that I wasted. I both want to be God and thus call all the shots, while at the same time I feel like I have mishandled the things God has given to my control. I am really identifying with the part of Ezekiel 18:25 which says, “Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear, O house of Israel: Is my way unjust? Is it not your ways which are unjust?” I find myself in descriptions of Israel from time to time, usually in ways that aren’t very pretty… hypocritical and petulant come to mind right now.

There are just times in my life when I cry out to God “Comfort me!” but either I don’t trust that he will, or I won’t allow him to… I can’t figure out which at the moment, but it makes me wish for other forms of comfort (and by that I don’t mean the chocolate cake I ate this afternoon, but the comforts of homes and hugs and loved ones). It makes me ignore the beautiful, sunny day here and the time I have left, just looking forward to the time when I am back with the people I love and I can hold them close and keep them safe (I know it’s a delusion that I can actually keep them safe, but being able to touch them makes me feel better anyway).  

I don’t know why you read this… if it is to keep up with my various experiences here, because you miss me, or just random curiosity, but while I have you temporarily, you have to listen to what I have to say: I love you. I do. God loves you so much more. Please don’t take my word for it—find out for yourself. I might not tell you this to your face often, because I want to respect your beliefs. But you cannot understand what you stand to lose unless you understand what you stand to gain. You have a lifetime to figure this out… but I don’t know how long that will be. And I love you. I care.

Rest in Peace, Ryan. 

Jumper-Third Eye Blind

So, I had been saving tales of this little adventure for after its successful completion, so I wouldn’t worry you (unless you are my Mother, in while case I had to balance the “please tell me when you are going to travel” rule with the “don’t tell your mother you are going to jump off of a bridge because she will worry” rule and decided in favor of the former). My classes finished on the 28^th of October, and the past week was “SWOT week”, which is an acronym that has something to do with reviewing and studying for finals, but for most of the international students meant a week off school to go travel and have adventures. Since I am one of the few people who are not on a pass/fail system with my courses,  the classes that I am taking here will affect my GPA at home, and I need to do well in them. This meant that I actually needed to study during SWOT week (since my first exam was November 5^th, and it was my zoo theory, which I expect to be the most difficult of my exams), so it was not a good use of my time to go gallivanting off to Cape Town. Believe me, if I had the chance or was able to delude myself into ignoring the rational reasons why I couldn’t go to Cape Town, I totally would have been there. Unfortunately (although I don’t totally know why it’s a bad thing), I am both fiscally and academically responsible, and therefore Cape Town didn’t happen. I am really disappointed that I won't make it while I am here, but I just keep telling myself that I won't get there on this Africa trip to make myself feel better.

Amongst this and other platitudes, I consoled myself about the lack of Cape Town by taking an overnight trip on Monday to go bungee jumping. I went with Jens, one of the Germans I have traveled with before, Cameron, who is on exchange from the UK, and Kristen, who went with me to Durban (so much diversity! All of the accents make things fun… including Kristen’s southern accent, which doesn’t seem as exotic as the others but is a fun addition to the mix). We met at 4:10am—such a sacrifice—to catch a bus to Plettenburg Bay, which ended up being an hour late (in true South African style) and stayed in a hostel there overnight. The hostel was fantastic, and took care of reserving jump spots and transportation for us to the Bloukrans Bridge, which is in the Tsitsikamma National Park and is the highest commercial bungee jump in the world.

Us in front of the Bloukrans River Bridge (above) and a view from the bridge (below)

The ride to the bridge was a little less than an hour, through some gorgeous mountains and next to the sea. It seems like everywhere I go is just so beautiful here! I loved Plettenburg Bay, too. Although the others were a bit bored (since we were there on a weeknight during the off season) I think that of the places I have traveled to here, Plett is the one I would most like to live in. A seaside town, it isn’t that much bigger than Grahamstown, but it has more going on as far as far as downtown. Plus, everything was just so beautiful, and there was so much to do there.

 (Plettenburg Bay... sorry all of these pictures are kind of in shadow, I took all of them in the late afternoon)

The actual jump was fantastic. It was a little bit terrifying, but isn’t that what makes it fun? I have always wanted to jump of the edge of a cliff into the middle of nothing just to feel what it is like, and this was my chance. Granted, the fact that the bungee chord was attached to my feet freaked me out a bit—what if I just slipped out?—but I got back up to the bridge after in one piece. Technically, my throat was a little raw from the (completely involuntary) screaming that tore out of me about half a second after I jumped and my body send messages to my brain that I was going to die, but it was perfectly safe, and I didn’t even get whipped around by the chord at the bottom of the jump. It great fun, I would totally do it again (although I would prefer to go skydiving first) and I definitely recommend it. Although you can’t hear me—according to the guy who brought me back up, the rest of the gorge could hear me just fine—I attached the video so you can watch:

Two Birds- Regina Spektor

I think there are some things that I am just never going to get used to here. For example…

There is a window in the shower that I use in res. I actually really like having a window there… its frosted, so it’s not like anyone can see in it, and there are advantages of having a ledge and sunlight and such. Anyway, the architecture is not the point… the point is that birds fly into the window ALL THE TIME. The first time it happened, I was confused, then finally just decided that a very stupid bird must have flown into it. I mean, I understand birds flying into sliding glass doors and such (the reason I don't wash the one at home is obviously because I want to protect innocent animals) but this is a frosted window, and there is no way that a bird could miss that it is there. Plus, they can’t see their reflections in it either, so why would they fly into it? Well, after having it happen over and over, I have decided that the birds are not stupid (well, actually, they are), but that they are flying into the window on purpose. This is terrifying. A bird (or multiple birds, it was always black but I can’t see much through the frosted window) flew into the window inside the shower NINE times today. Sometimes they fly into the other window in the bathroom too, but not today. Also, they do it more when there is movement or colors near the window (such as when I sit my shampoo on the ledge), which makes me feel like they are purposely attacking me… perhaps they are territorial, and have nests outside the window or something? Either way, it was freaking me out today… the windows are cracked, and I had a sudden thought, “What if the cracks in the window are from the birds? What if they break through the window while I am in here washing my hair?” Its like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho meets The Birds.  Ahhh the birds are so frightening here…

I got an Ethnomusicology paper back today, and was amused to find that my professor had made notes about my grammar all through my paper. Now, I am obviously not an English major, and I make mistakes from time to time, but I read through the whole thing and only one thing that he pointed out was actually wrong. Perhaps it is the fact that I speak “American” English? I don’t know, but I find it quite amusing, especially because English is not my professor’s first language, and I often have to work to understand what he means. Also on the funny side, the note at the end of the paper says, “Excellent! 78%” At home, I think I would choke if I got a 78 on a paper, but here, it’s the equivalent of an A. I don’t think I will ever get used to the academic system here. In some ways, it is much easier than at home, but I struggle in other ways… sometimes, I really wish professors would just tell me what I need to do in order to do well in their class. Zoology especially. However, I am just going to do the best I can and not stress out about it... its not the end of the world if I don’t do as well as I want, and I basically have no idea what my grades are right now anyway, so there is no use in worrying.

Another thing I don’t think I will ever get over is how blue the sky is. It's just intense, and I absolutely love it.

Last thought… I will never get used to the way time moves here. Its so slow and so fast at the same time. I had my last mentoring session at the Rafael Center yesterday, and I can’t believe it is done. Also, I had my very last lecture this morning; now I just have SWOT week and then exams. However, when you are in the moment, everything seems to move so slowly here, so I don’t understand how it could be coming to an end. People tend to not hurry, so everything seems very chill and relaxed and "we’ll take care of the 'just now'” until suddenly, the day is gone and the week is gone and the semester is almost over. I am just about ready to buckle down and study for exams, and I have started trying to finalize travel plans and figure out how in the world I am getting to the airport (most of my afternoon magically slipped away while I was trying to work on that), but often I feel confused about how I got here. I will be excited to be home, but I also have so much more left I would like to do. South Africa is full of surprises and unexpected adventures, and I am not quite ready for them to end. Luckily, I have a few up my sleeve to keep the next month interesting…

Sooner Or Later-House of Heroes

We are beginning to do those sorts of events that happen at endings, and it is still all a little surreal. After all, I still have a month left in South Africa, but I have been to a Leaver’s Dinner and a Farewell Dinner in just the past five days, with more to come. It seems odd to me that we are doing these things so early, but it does make sense that once finals start, people will be busy studying, and everyone will be leaving campus sporadically as they finish their exams.

On Wednesday, I went to my first Leaver’s Dinner, which is something that seems to happen everywhere here. I was confused the first time I heard the term, but I hear it all the time now, and it is pretty self explanatory, after all: it is a dinner to celebrate the people that are leaving, whether they are third year students graduating at the end of the year—as was the case at my Hall’s dinner—or a more mixed collection of people... graduating with their bachelor's, completing their honor year, or leaving for another reason (such as going home to the United States) which is what the makeup of my cell group’s leavers dinner will be. Either way, it seems that everyone has a leaver's dinner: res halls, societies, church groups… just another norm here that isn’t done in quite the same way at home.

Actually, as I went into my hall’s Leaver Dinner on Wednesday, I tried to imagine doing something like it in Servo at the end of the year, and I just couldn’t do it. Everyone had gotten dressed up, some people in very fancy dresses (I didn’t bring such nice clothes, but I made a nice sundress work without standing out) and each table of people had decorated their table to make it fancy and pretty. The food was better than most meals that I have had in the dining hall all year, and the company was good, of course. We signed up and sat at designated tables (that we were then responsible for decorating), and I thought it was sweet when my friend Elri came to my room the day the lists went up (before I even knew we were having a leaver’s dinner) to inform me that she had signed me up to be at their table. I actually made some new friends that night, who I regaled with tales of Thanksgiving and my opinion of mullets. We had some awards and such after dinner, and the whole thing made me realize that Rhodes reminds me a bit of Hogwarts… mostly this is because of the way that exams are structured, with everyone freaking out and studying and taking exams in these huge halls with a ton of stress-inducing rules. 

I feel like I should give you some highlights of the questions I have been asked by people here, since some of them has amused me greatly and others might amuse you:

-Is spring break in America like it is in the movies?

-Are fraternities in America like they are in the movies?

-What is Thanksgiving all about?

-Which are hotter: American or South African guys?

-Do people in the states do drugs? ...No, not pot, everyone does pot, I mean real drugs?

-Do people actually support the Tea Party movement?

-You live in Maryland… that’s Elvis’ home, right? (Seriously, multiple people have said this to me)

-Does this taste like the Mexican food you have in the states? (NO)

There have been so many more, but I can’t force my brain to think of them just now… Anyway, Saturday night was the Farewell Dinner for my travel abroad program, so the Rhodes Coordinator and I rode to Port Elizabeth and met the NMMU students for a fancy diner, which I appreciated very much. Besides eating snails, which never ceases to amuse me, I had deep fried Lindt balls for desert, which just sounds like an idea that couldn’t go wrong. I had flashbacks to making deep fried oreos in my kitchen at home with Mom and Melissa, and although these were not really the same (I think they put Lindt balls in phyllo squares and dropped them into a fryer… it reminded me of a shooting star) it had Lindt chocolate in it so obviously it was a good thing. It was funny to be having a farewell dinner with people that I barely know (I have only seen the NMMU students a few times since I got here), but I balanced it later that night by getting to Skype with my cousin Margie (and momentarily with her husband Jerry, who had gotten home from Iraq the day before and surprised Margie at work a week earlier than she thought he might come home. So sweet!). The internet is really a wonderful thing, even if it does encourage facebook stalking over homework. I should really be getting back to that right now, by the way… the homework, not the facebook stalking. 

Under My Skin-Jukebox The Ghost

Sorry that I seem to be falling behind and getting lazy! Part of it is that I have work building up as the end of the semester approaches (next week is the last week of lectures… I cant believe it!) but I also find that it is harder to write posts about things over time because everything just feels like normal life. I know that it isn’t, though, so I will try to record things before I forget.

This past weekend, I went to Graaff-Reinet, which is a little town in the Karoo (the desert in SA). Grahamstown really is a nice location in that you can drive a little while in any direction and alternately come to the ocean, mountains, grasslands, or even desert. It works out super well if you are constrained to weekend travel by the existence of regular classes.

One of the German exchange students is friends with a guy in his res who lives in Graaff-Reinet, so some of us went home with Egmont, his sister Zanzi, and his friend Freddy. It worked out really well, because Egmont and Zanzi’s mother owns a Bed&Breakfast, and we stayed in one of the guest houses, which she wouldn’t let us pay for. Also, while I am on the subject of hospitality, she had dinner ready for all of us when we got there, and had our kitchen stocked with everything we needed to have a braai Saturday night. It was all fantastic, and so nice to be in a non-dorm with non-dorm food and drinks. Behind our house was a patio with a braai area, a pool, and a bunch of gorgeous plants (also a bunch of cute cats that came and went as they pleased, which made me rather pleased as well). I was warned that the Karoo can get pretty chilly at night, but it was warm enough that we ate dinner outside both nights under the stars, which were gorgeous. Also, I love braais, and more and more I find myself mentally taking notes so I can figure out how to have them when I get home.

Graaff-Reintet was an interesting little town, and the atmosphere was unlike any place I have traveled to while I have been here. First of all, you should know that Rhodes is considered an “English” University, so while there are definitely Afrikaner students here as well as 'English' whites, most white students speak English the majority of the time (Actually, I love to be walking and chatting with Elri when her family calls, and she picks up her phone and starts speaking in Afrikaans). However, Graaff-Reinet is heavily dominated by Afrikaners, and it played a role in historical Afrikaner events such as the Great Trek (if you aren’t familiar with this, the Afrikaans- and English-speaking whites historically didn’t get along, so when British colonizers would try to consolidate their control, Afrikaners would load everything into wagons and travel into the SA interior… sort of like Westward expansion on the Oregon Trail, only minus the trail part). Anyway, the people who live in Graaff-Reinet spoke Afrikaans most of the time I was around them. In fact, Egmont, Zanzi and Freddy spoke Afrikaans a lot of the time unless they were specifically talking to us (aka the Germans: Eva, Britta, and Jens and the Americans: M.E. and I) While the Dutch roots of the Afrikaans language allowed the German-speakers to occasionally understand what people were saying, M.E. and I were lost most of the time—unless Egmont was introducing us to people… the words for “Germans” and “Americans” were pretty obvious cognates.

Speaking of being “The American,” I was told before I left to study abroad to be prepared for anti-American sentiment, but before I came to Graaff-Reinet, I really hadn’t experienced any besides the occasional derisive remark about Bush or U.S. capitalism in class discussions. However, a lot of people I came into contact with last weekend were very… opinionated… about their perceptions of America and Americans. I found that this didn’t bother me nearly as much as it did M.E.—I don’t know if this is because I am less invested in politics in the States, or if it has to do with my loyalties. I suppose I have taken “your citizenship is in heaven” to heart, and my identity as an American is not so important to me as it used to be (Don’t worry, I still am quite fond of the 4^th of July). Anyway, all the ribbing didn’t get to me too much, but it was definitely an interesting experience. Also, Egmont had warned us on our drive there that Graaff-Reinet is still a pretty racist area, and that it is sometimes embarrassing for him when he brings friends home... I promise I will talk about race in SA sometime, but not now.

I must note that Egmont does not exactly have the typical Afrikaner family. His parents are divorced, but they live pretty much directly across the street from each other. His mom runs her B&B, but her real passion is social work, and she was a social worker for years working with the mentally disabled. His dad is a criminal defense lawyer by career, but is a cactus farmer by heart. And his older brother Anton is a Buddhist/hippy sort of guy with a sprawling house (it used to be painted purple, but he told us that he had to make it more respectable when he “grew up” and had kids… the mosaics on the outer walls are still there, though) surrounded by a cactus farm (not as large as his Dad’s) that was complete with a cactus labyrinth leading to a peyote cactus and some mystical crystals. Like I said, not exactly your typical Afrikaner family.

I had so much fun at both cactus farms; I have never seen so many different kinds of cacti in my life. Egmont’s dad has been cultivating his garden for 40 years, and the cacti are huge (well, except for the ones that don’t get big). We got lucky, and a cactus was blooming while we were there that only blooms three days a year… it reminded me of my Mom’s Christmas cactus, except it was bigger (also, we joke that the Christmas cactus at home is actually a Christmas-Easter-Thanksgiving-4^th of July cactus because it blooms so many times. Anyway, this is the one that we saw in his garden…

 Plus another cactus or two...

We also visited New Bethesda  (actually, all of the signs were in Afrikaans and said Nieu Bethesda), a town so tiny that it made Graaff-Reinet look large. While we were there, we visited the Owl House, which was the home of a recluse artist, Helen Martins, who filled her backyard with statues (many were owls, hence the name) as well as creating an interior design scheme in her house that was interesting, to say the least. She lived a tragic life, and I think the townspeople at the time thought she was crazy, but as one of my friends said while we were there, “Better to create all of this than just sit around and be depressed.” While we were in Nieu Bethesda, we also visited a brewery, where I tried honey beer and was sad to discover that it tasted less like honey and more like beer (which I don’t think I will ever develop a taste for).

Sculptures at the Owl House

Something that I am very fond of, though, are national parks, and before we left for Grahamstown on Sunday, we went to the Camdeboo National Park and saw the Valley of Desolation, which is an unusual series of rocky outcroppings formed by various geological processes over a really long time (clearly I am not a geologist, but I still found the view breathtaking).

Our drive home was uneventful (no flash thunderstorms or warthogs chasing each other across the road in front of our car like the drive out), but we did get two see two fantastic rainbows, bringing my physical rainbow count up to 3. I’m afraid the pictures didn’t do them justice, but I have about a million pictures of rocks and cacti to make up for it!

No Air-Jordin Sparks

Is six weeks incredibly short or very long? I really couldn't say, but it’s how much longer I will be in South Africa.

Last week, I got an email from the registrar, telling me that I was registered for too many classes at Rhodes, and since they will only give me 4 credits/16 credit hours, I needed to drop one of my classes. I should have realized that this would happen eventually, but since I really like all of the classes I am taking, I sort of ignored the issue and hoped that it would magically get resolved (this magical resolution involved me getting credit for all of the classes I am taking, and probably getting some extra biology credits thrown in just for fun). However, behaving like an ostrich does not solve problems, especially ones that involve the registrar. So, I was faced with the dilemma: which class do I drop?

It was a long and tedious thought process, but the result was that I decided to drop my history class. Although this is disappointing in some ways, especially because it is my favorite class and we are covering modern South Africa this quarter, the truth is that I am perfectly capable of attending the lectures if I want, and I was really learning the most from the research I was doing for papers and such. All of the books and papers are still available for me to read, should I desire to read them. And I do, but the truth is that I probably won't read them, because I will be focusing on doing well in the upcoming exams for the classes I am actually getting credit for. The Gettyburgian achiever in me feels a little guilty that I am only taking three classes when I know I could be handling more rigorous academics—isn't college about pushing yourself to the limit and barely surviving from the stress, only to feel really good about what great work you are capable of when it's all over?—but its actually nice to have a bit less work and more time to focus on doing well in what is definitely a different academic setting.  Just reading the immense list of official rules about sitting for final exams freaks me out, not including the actual material that I will be expected to know (how do I know what will be on the finals? I have only taken one test the entire semester, and all of my classes have multiple lecturers/professors whose material will be on the final exam). 

But really, academics were not the most important factor in this decision. While I can't say I am sad about that research paper that I don't have to write now, it had way more to do with timing than anything else. History was the latest scheduled exam, so I am finished 11 days earlier now. This means that I will be home for Thanksgiving! (I am getting much better at explaining this holiday, by the way... also, Columbus day is not a holiday here, obviously, I totally forgot it existed until I saw grumpy facebook posts from people at home who were resentful because they didn't get off from classes) I needed to reschedule my flight anyway—it was too early—so barring a freak storm or something, I should be back in the US by the 22nd of November.

On one hand, I am very excited about this. I will be home for Thanksgiving! I will be home in six weeks... that is so soon! And I will get to see my family and eat my Mom's delightful cooking, rather than spending Thanksgiving studying for a final in South Africa, a land devoid of pumpkin pie. On the other hand, being home soon means leaving Africa soon. Am I ready for that? I was perusing my international friend's blogs, where she had discussed all of the things she had crossed off her Africa list, and I realized that there are so many things that I want to do that I haven't yet, and probably won't be able to do before I have to go. Among these are visiting Cape Town, Kruger National Park, and Victoria Falls. I haven't been shark diving, and I don't know when I am going to have a chance to go bungee jumping (I know some people would say "why would you even want the chance to do those things?" but with Bloukrans Bridge, the highest bungee jump in the world, about 4 hours from where I live, I can't help but hear it calling). Thinking about all of this, combined with the fact that I don't know when I will be back to South Africa, made me a bit depressed.

(Oh, I will be back... I just know that "soon" is probably not an appropriate adjective. I recently made the realization that I am likely going to be in school until my youth is just a memory, and I will have student loans until my children start college. Its difficult to work "fly to Africa and jump off a bridge" into this plan) 

But then I thought back to something that I wrote in an earlier post...Regardless of whether I don't travel anywhere during my stay in South Africa, make no friends, and fail my classes, the purpose of my life is still going to be worshiping the God of the universe. This is just as true now as it was when I first wrote it. I may be tempted to make my life, and especially my time here, into a check list, but the fact is that it's not. Most of my best memories are not from bucket-list-worthy activities (although to be fair, some are, and there is nothing wrong with setting goals for yourself). I have a tendency to want to quantify my life, to see if I am successful or accomplished enough to measure up... and the plain truth is that I am not. But instead of being devastating, like part of my brain wants to think, this is actually really freeing. 

This weekend was full of delightful things that I hadn’t put on any exquisite list. Friday, I ran up to the 1812 Settler's Monument, where there is a fantastic view that I have seen before but don’t get tired of. I spent most of Saturday afternoon lying in the sun out on the braai area next to our res with some of my friends, and spent the remainder of the afternoon with them on an impromptu mission to get ice cream. I woke up horrendously early Sunday morning to go to a bar and watch the Rugby World Cup (SA lost to Australia at the very end, it was really depressing but still more interesting than football). Sunday night there was a praise and worship session at Frontiers, and I was able to just worship with abandon in a really fulfilling way. I didn’t really plan for any of it to happen (okay, except for the running,) but it did, and it was good.  

Rescue-Seabird

Besides my frequent trips to the beach, I actually do a lot of normal things like go to class and live my life here. Much of the past week has been spent on largely logistical things: classes, papers, planning for my life post-Africa (which can be difficult to make myself think about) and general scheduling. Thus, rather than give you exciting updates about what I have been doing, I will give you some updates about what I have been thinking, instead. Hang on, this could get hectic...

So, last week while I was in Port Alfred "doing zoo research," we were hanging out at Kelly's house, and we watched what I would consider to be a pretty bad romantic comedy called Something Borrowed. It was stupid, I am not even going to go into it… but I realized that this was only the second chick flick I had seen since I got here. Granted, its not like I watch them very frequently anyway, I am much more likely to enjoy a good man movie (these usually fall under adventure/suspense, if you are confused by the term). Anyway, I realized that while I have not been consciously avoiding them, generally watching chick flicks while far from home is not a good idea, because it just makes me miss people that I love and brings up all these emotional needs that I don’t want to deal with. However, I am not actually telling you this to complain about missing people or my lack of romance. What I realized the next day, when I had all those things on my mind, is that my normal response to these feelings is to go to God, to ask him to help me understand the ways that he actually fulfills whatever I feel like I am lacking (he’s the only one that can truly provide what I am desiring, anyway, although I usually don’t want to see that right away).

However, I have been operating in a totally different response pattern while I have been here. Its as if I have just attempted to shut out any desires that I can’t immediately fulfill… Don’t have best friends around to intimately know me? Its cool, I’ll get by on more superficial interactions for a few months. No family to make me feel needed/cared for? Its fine, I’ll just take a break from people expecting things from me. I don’t need to have deeply personal conversations, intimate relationships, and forget romance, I am definitely not looking for that here. The thing is though, that the people around me at home are not ultimately the source of these things… so by ignoring them, shutting these desires out of my life, I have been dulling my life to the point where I am complacent about being in a state where I shouldn’t be content. Instead of running to God for the things I need, I have been convincing myself that I don’t need them… and ultimately, that I don’t need him.

But that’s not the way that life is meant to be! In John 10:10, Jesus says that he has come so “that they may have life, and have it to the full.” God wants to give us so much more than what we actually think we want. And luckily, although I may sometimes fail to pursue God, he has not stopped pursuing me. Last Wednesday, while I was literally contemplating all of this, I heard a knock on my door (which rarely happens, it usually is so surprising that it makes me jump) and I opened it to find Mia, one of the girls in my res, who said, “Hey, you’re a Christian, right? Can I come in?” She then proceeded to tell me that she was giving a talk that night about giving your life completely to God, and she was talking about the way we compartmentalize our lives or are just lazy when it comes to giving some aspects to Him (convicting much??). She came over because she needed help finding some verses, and my bible happens to have an awesome concordance in the back, but since she had never even seen my bible before, I feel like there was a little divine intervention at work :)

I ended up inviting myself to go with her to her cell group that night. The term cell group, by the way, seems to be South African, since all of the churches I have visited (plus more that I haven’t) have cell groups, and all of the South Africans seem to know what it is, while the girls I know from other countries in Southern Africa generally have been as unfamiliar with it as myself and all of the Americans I have talked to. Basically, it is synonymous with small groups or growth groups that meet within a church group to get to know each other better and grow together. I have been twice now with Mia, and am enjoying just being in community a bit again. God has really been working on my heart in the past week or so (there is always plenty of work to be done), and while I won’t go into it all because I would ramble forever and half of it wouldn’t make any sense, I will give you the big picture: I need the gospel. (We all do.) A lot. Every day. No, really. Every. Day. I need Christ to sacrifice himself for my sins so that I can have a relationship with God. Isn’t it great that he has already taken care of it? 

Valeu Valeu (Coda)

I intended to include this video with my post about Keiskammahoek, but there was a series of unfortunate events that prevented me from uploading it earlier. Sorry that its a bit out of order, but this is just a short clip of some of the women who were singing before the festival started... I joined them eventually, but there is no recording of that! Enjoy :)

The Big Sleep-Streetlight Manifesto

I returned back to Grahamstown Sunday with plenty of work (and that paper I previously mentioned that I had sort of put out of my mind because it had been assigned at the beginning of the semester for Friday) so of course I was invited Monday morning to go do field research for Zoology. I have to do an independent research project for my Zoology class, which has been the source of some frustration, because the rest of my classmates have been working on their all year, and I still basically have no idea what is going on because my professor is really chill and keeps saying things like “oh, you can join on a continuing project” (without telling we what project) or “we’ll go out into the field at the beginning of next week” (I heard this one for about a month straight). However, when zoo requirements get stressful, I just keep reminding myself that Dr. Delesalle (the Bio chair at Gettysburg) has approved this class to count as double credit (because it counts as 8 credits at every school that has a typical credit system, which Gettysburg does not), which is miraculous and will make my life that much less stressful when I return to Gettysburg and only have a million instead of a million and one requirements to complete for my majors before I graduate.

Anyway, so as I am walking into Zoo Monday morning, one of the girls in my class (who I later learned was named Michelle) stopped me and said that Professor Froneman had told her to ask the international students (there are three of us in Zoo) if we wanted to come along and do research the next day. We would leave directly after class on Tuesday, go do research in an estuary near Kenton, and then come back Wednesday afternoon in time for our Zoo prac. I immediately agreed despite the work and several classes that I had between now and then, because it is the 4^th term and I still don’t know what is going on for the independent project.

To be fair, I still don’t really know about the project; our professor didn’t come with us, and I don’t know if we are just going to use the data that Michelle and Kelly have been collecting all year or what, but it was definitely worth going either way. It ended up being Michelle and Kelly, plus M.E., Megan, and me just hitting the road in Michelle’s car shortly after our Zoo lecture (I say “shortly after,” but what I really mean is that we employed the phrase “just now” with its South African connotation rather than its American one. Anyway, it was a gorgeous day, and as I absolutely love being in cars, the ride to Kenton was great fun. I already loved road-trips before I came to SA, but my love for riding in cars has definitely increased… I will be so pleased to drive my car again, once I remember how (and which side of the road I should be driving it on). We went to collect our data in this little gated beach village that was clearly a summer-home kind of place. I was very quiet, since it is just getting warm and isn't "in season" yet (I still have trouble merging “beach season” and “Christmas season” in my head, even though Kelly told me that her family spends every Christmas at their beach house). Data collection was fairly fun, as we basically spent the afternoon wandering around in water a few inches above our ankles, and collecting sand creatures apparently went much faster than before because there were so many of us.

We ended up driving to Port Alfred (it was a bit of déjà-vu, since I had just spent Saturday and Sunday in the same two places) and staying the night in Kelly’s vacation home, which was really cute and beachy. We went out to a seafood restaurant (I realized that I hadn’t gone to a seafood restaurant since I got here, even though we are so close to the coast all the time) and we ate so much that I am surprised that there are any prawns (aka shrimp) or calamari (aka squid) left in the ocean. Also, there was sushi at the restaurant, which made sense—sushi is seafood—while at the same time confused me… a greek seafood restaurant with sushi? Anyway, I just accepted it gratefully… I have eaten sushi once here (in Durban) and I have only seen one Chinese restaurant during my entire stay. I am pretty sure I will be picking up take-out on the drive home from the airport in December.

Anyway, it was so much fun to just randomly skip Grahamstown and go to the beach, especially because we had a legitimate excuse. The data collection took way less time than we had allowed (because it went faster with all of us) so we didn’t have to collect more on Wednesday morning, and we just hung out and enjoyed the beautiful day for a bit before packing up and heading back for our Zoo prac. Kelly and Michelle were both so nice, and it was fun having Kelly take us to all over Port Alfred… she qualifies as a local, even if she technically lives in Joburg. Also, I finally got to hear some South African music! I mean, technically I have heard plenty of traditional music in my ethno class, and I did get to hear that band in Durban, but generally most of the University students listen to American or British artists that I already know. It was fun listening to the South African bands that Michelle likes… it reminded me of all the musical instruction I have received from Elle :)

The Luckiest-Ben Folds

So, after my impromptu journey to Keiskammahoek on Friday, I got up early Saturday morning and headed out on an overnight excursion with my study aborad program. Gilliam (the Interstudy coordinator for the Eastern Cape, who also happens to be a professor in the Geography department at Rhodes) and I met and travelled to Port Alfred (one of the two closest beaches to Grhamstown), where we met three of the Interstudy students who are studying as Nelsen Mandela Metropolitan University (in Port Elizabeth, so they get to be at the beaches all the time). There are four Interstudy students at NMMU this semester, but the guy was away for the weekend, so the rest of us had a girls’ night (or rather, weekend) out. We ate a scrumptious breakfast at this adorable little restaurant/pub/bed&breakfast that was built in a Tudor-style, and reminded me of good times in Tudor 3 last year. On the other hand, Tudor House at Gettysburg never had a patio full of plants where cute older women with British-sounding South African accents brought you tea in little tea pots while jovial grandpas watched the rugby game just inside the open veranda doors.

Speaking of rugby (short tangent)… the All-Blacks played (aka crushed their opponents) on Saturday, and while it is really exciting to watch New Zealand play—they are a really good team and their Haka is intense—I am obviously supporting South Africa for the World Cup. The cup started during term vac, which was fun because we could watch the games in Durban with a ton of very passionate fans, but as the world cup is in New Zealand this year, all of the games are on at like 9am South African time, which makes it difficult to watch them now that we are back at school. Actually, it mostly makes it difficult for me to watch them, other people just skip class and go to the Rat&Parrot or some other bar to watch when SA is playing. I, unfortunately, feel the need to go to class, especially since I have missed several in the past two weeks due to spontaneous adventures. However, while I was in Durban, I bought a Springboks jersey, and since then I have made so many friends! Haha, but really, it is so funny the number of random conversations get into with people now on game days. Also, in case you are Melissa Dorrance and think that I only like rugby because of the movie Invictus, I would like to point out that rugby is way more intense than football, and that it is fun to watch regardless of whether or not Matt Daemon is involved. I wish that we watched rugby instead of football on Thanksgiving… this, of course, is legitimately possible for me this year, since at the end of November I will still be in South Africa, where they have neither NFL nor Thanksgiving (I actually tried to explain Thanksgiving to some girls recently, but I’m not sure how successful I was…)

Anyway, back to last weekend! So we left Port Alfred and drove to Kenton-On-Sea, the other beach closest to Grahamstown, where we took a boat ride up the Kariega River to a game reserve. It was super cool, as game reserves tend to be pricey, and thus not somewhere I would go on my budget. We rode on the boat with two older couples (from Australia and France), and when we got to the river camp, all I could think was “someday I want to be retired with money so I can travel to these places.” It was really cool, and had the feel of those places that are meant to be rustic but are really very posh. The staff fed us lunch at the river camp (it was some of the best food I have had since I got here… calamari and springbok and this amazing bread and if I actually continue describing it I am never going to finish this post) and we had a while to chill and check out the camp… there was a really cute rocking giraffe that was very sturdy (I may have tested it out).

In the afternoon, we went on a game drive on the other side of the river, where the “dangerous game” was. It was funny, because game reserves are so highly managed that I felt a little bit the Animal Kingdom safaris at Disney World. On the other hand, they are still wild animals, and I got to see them in Africa, even if they are not actually wandering around wild in the bush. We got to see lions and cheetahs for the first time since I got here, which was super exciting. The park had three of lions, although they were fenced in separately from the main reserve; apparently, it takes a ton of land to provide enough prey to feed lions if they were to wander around in the prey populations, and they also have a tendency to eat the really expensive animals in the reserve, such as the cape buffalo, rather than the impala or other buck that are really abundant. Since the lions were separate, they hadn’t eaten the buffalo, and I got to see them as well. There were, of course, a bunch of bucks of all kinds, including some kudu, impala, and these huge buck that reminded me of a mountain ram. There were also zebra everywhere, which I enjoyed, as I now have a million pictures to prove to Ron Malone that I found some.

I was really excited about the cheetahs; they were fenced in like the lions, but we were able to get out of our safari vehicle and walk right up to their enclosure. According to Bailey, one of my bosses at Ft. Detrick, cheetahs aren’t really a danger to an adult human, because we are outside the size range of animals that they will attack (children, on the other hand, are exactly the size of an impala), so you can actually walk right in the enclosure with them. We couldn’t go in the enclosure at Sibuya (the reserve where we were), but our ranger did say that its fun to have children on a drive, because when they visit the cheetah enclosure, the cheetahs will get very interested and walk right up to the fence. When we were there, they could have cared less about us… the male cheetah was much more interested in the female cheetah on the other side of the fence (our ranger essentially said that they were separated to build up sexual tension in the hope that when they remove the barriers, the cheetahs will mate… I thought it was hilarious, but apparently it had worked for other pairs in the past).

Saturday evening we had a braai (it was, after all, National Braai Day… okay, actually it was National Heritage Day, but it has also become braai day) and stayed in a bungalow in Port Alfred. The next morning, we got up and ate breakfast on a boat as we cruised around the marina and up the river a bit at Port Alfred, and then we rented these ridiculous things called hydrobikes and rode around the harbor by ourselves. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of said bikes, so just imagine it in your head and chuckle a bit: basically, it is a bike frame mounted on two parallel pontoons, with a little propeller that spins when you pedal the bike. The handlebars are attached to a rudder-looking device so that when you turn the handles, the bike turns ever so gently in the water. It was extremely embarrassing and touristy, but also so funny that we had a good time pedaling around the marina (not very quickly, I might add in a disgruntled tone, as the propellers were too small and we decided that  we were not traveling at a rate proportional to the effort we put into pedaling.)

We headed back to our respective universities Sunday after lunch with more of a tan than we had before (or in my case, sunburn fading into tan) and absolutely no motivation to accomplish anything. It seemed like this is probably acceptable at NMMU, where I am not sure that they actually have homework (the girls seemed to indicate that they don’t, and one of them was talking about how she just goes surfing all the time). Rhodes definitely has is pros and cons, but I will get into those another time… I have homework to do :)