Valeu Valeu-Braddigan

Okay, so I know I am not the most up to date on my activities here. However, I prefer being so busy doing fun things that I hardly have time to tell you about them, so you will just have to bear with me. I have an Ethnomusicology research paper due Friday (in the afternoon, luckily) and pesky things like trips to the beach keep getting in the way of writing it :) Also, this post is mad long, I apologize in advance…

This past Friday, I went on a trip with my ethnomusicology class to a music festival near Keiskammahoek... that is all I knew about it before we left. Well, our teacher also said that we would be leaving at 7am. Should I have known that it was a straight up lie? After all, this is Africa (I have been hearing that all the time recently...) Our professor arranged for a 21 person van to drive us (it was a little under 2 hours away) and told me that one of my American friends, M.E., could come with us if there was extra room in the van. She is interested in cultural stuff, and none of the people I knew from my ethno class were coming, so I figured it would be fun for her, and I would have a buddy for the day. We showed up at 7:05 after a mad dash to turn in our Zoo prac assignments, (they were due before we were supposed to get back, so we planned on sliding them under the secretary's door, but of course the outer door to the department was locked... so stressful!) only to find that we were some of the first people there, and the professor hadn't even arrived where we were supposed to meet. Thus began a very African adventure...

I have no idea what I was expecting when our professor said we were going to a music festival, but it was not what we actually found. The last bit of our trip was a 10-15 drive  down a dirt road into the middle of nowhere, which eventually led to the most confusing building I have ever randomly found in the wilderness. I was this immense cement thing shooting up in the air and curving around so that I thought we were driving towards some sort of colosseum. We weren't, the building was just curved like a semicircle (as well as curving upwards, it was just a very odd design).

(This is a building. I promise.

Also, I know that it looks like it stretches straight across in the first picture, but it actually curves inward.)

When we pulled through the gate, we found this odd building, some people milling around, and a lot of grass. It turned out that despite leaving almost an hour after we were supposed to, they were just setting up. This actually worked out for the best, because we had a long time to wander around exploring and figuring out what was happening. It turned out that we were at a Heritage Festival, which suddenly made sense, because Saturday was National Heritage Day. There was a population of Xhosa-speaking people living in a village somewhere nearby (they called it a village; I never actually saw it so I am using their descriptor) and the local people had an annual weekend festival to celebrate. So we were basically crashing their party, but they didn't seem to mind. We also learned that the site we were at was a big deal... it had been a very important battle ground in a series of battles during the Frontier Wars that took place before Europeans consolidated control of the country. The huge weird building had been built by some important colonial commissioner/offical, who used it when meeting with chiefs and representatives of the people. Also, the burial site of Chief Maqoma, a famous Xhosa chief who played an important role during the Frontier Wars, was within walking distance to the place were the festival was taking place.

I apologize if any of that information is confusing (or incorrect), but since the entire festival was in Xhosa, I was at a bit of a disadvantage as far as understanding what was going on. There was a translator, but it was hilarious, because the master of ceremonies would talk for literally 15 minutes, and then the translator would come up and say something along the lines of “He just explained the history of the location and the events that are taking place today.” A few of the details were unfortunately lost in translation… It was a shame, because it sounded really interesting, and as I have a tenuous grasp on the history during that time period because of my South African history class, I would have loved to fully understand the importance of the place where we were. I also would have liked to visit Maqoma’s grave, but this was a ceremony that was reserved for the men near the beginning of the festivities, while the women and the boys hung out and waited for them to trek to wherever they were going and back.

I didn’t really mind hanging out with the women though, because I got to hear them sing! Actually, I got to sing with them, which was awesome despite the fact that I don’t speak Xhosa (I have always been pretty good at faking lyrics that I don’t know, anyway) and I absolutely could not master the steps they were doing (despite my best efforts and those of my teachers’). The best part of going on a trip with ethnomusicology students is that the whole point of ethnomusicology is to go find music from other culture and study it, which meant that my tendency to go exploring/take pictures/record video was totally normal. A few of us happened upon some women, who were singing for fun, and we stopped to observe them for awhile (yay ethnomusicology!), but music is much more of a communal activity here than that of performer and audience, so when one of the women caught my eye and motioned for me to join in, I did. It was really fun, even though I couldn’t really speak to the women (it was one of the few situations I have been in here where the older adults only speak Xhosa). It was also awesome from an ethno perspective, because I have learned about traditional Xhosa music, and it was super cool to see some of the aspects of the music in real life. I was totally geeking out over the polyrhythms and polyharmonies, and it was really cool to see the way that hand-clapping, rather than a melody line, formed the basis of the song that everyone conformed to. It was also cool to experience (although not properly execute) the connection between body movement and music… in the Xhosa musical tradition, the strong beat is connected to an upward movement (of the feet, usually) rather than a downward movement that you find in western music. I really couldn’t get the hang of it, although the several very sweet mamas (a term of address used for women who are older than you… as opposed to sisi/sister when you are talking to someone your age or younger) very patiently tried to teach me the correct rhythms.

The improv music session was actually my favorite part of the day, although I enjoyed all of the actual performances during the festival, especially those of the poet. There is a musical tradition of “praise-singing” that is common in many parts of Southern Africa, where the poet/griot/praise-singer performs something like spoken-word with or without musical accompaniment. Either way, there is much more attention paid to sounds—of the words themselves and of the rhythm—and it is considered to be music. This poet was really good; I was totally enthralled even though he was speaking in Xhosa, and he also happened to be a really good djembe and mbira player as well. As much as I love drums, I think the mbira is probably my favorite African instrument (but you will have to look it up for yourself, because I didn’t get any good video, and this is already too long for me to go off on an mbira tangent…) 

Anyway, it was a really awesome experience… I enjoyed the performances (including a choir singing in 8-part harmony that reminded me of my beloved GCC) and it was a good day, even if I might have forgot to put sunscreen on before I left that morning. In the middle of the afternoon, one of the Xhosa guys came up to me and said, “Excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude, but do you have sunscreen on? Maybe you should sit in the shade. Our skin can handle it, but yours can’t.” I thought it was hilarious, because I didn’t burn nearly as much as the other white people I was with. In fact, it was really more of an obnoxious sunglasses tan than anything else, and that is fading now. Anyway, the moral of the story is that it was a day well spent, and M.E. and I had a lovely adventure. 

The Tide-The Spill Canvas

Adventuretime with Kristen and Christiana, Episode 3: Ushaka and Beach Fun

Don't you just want to say Ushaka three times in a row like they say Mufasa in Lion King? Or maybe that's just me... Moving on...

One of the days that we were in Durban, Kristen and I went with the other 4 international girls in Durban from Rhodes to Ushaka Marine World/Water Park. Did I mention that it wasn't just the two of us all week? Four other Americans who are on exchange at Rhodes for the semester had decided to go to Durban, and it worked out that we spent a lot of time with them... we both stayed at the same hostel in Morningside from Sunday night till we left (on different buses) the next Sunday. It was nice to have some people to make plans and do things together at night with, but the two of us could go off and do our own thing as well...we were at hole in the wall indian restaurants and markets while they were shopping at Mr. Price and eating at Wimpy's (Mr. Price=Target, Wimpy's=Wendy's, more or less).

Anyway, Ushaka is a huge complex, complete with a water slides, an aquarium, dolphin and seal shows, shark cage diving, snorkeling, scuba diving, surfing, a dangerous animals exhibit, plenty of shops and stuff to keep everyone entertained, from the schoolchildren on class field trips to the families there for the day and tourists like us. We went and played for awhile on the water slides, although we did not go on the "highest slide in Africa" because a drop that steep without a tube just looked like it would be painful at the bottom. Afterwards, we went to the marine world part of the park and went snorkeling with sharks. The aquarium at Ushaka is the 5th largest in the world, but unlike the Baltimore Aquarium, you can get in it :) Obviously, they don't let you go snorkeling with the ragged tooth sharks, you have to go cage diving to do that. However, since you can go cage diving off the coast in areas like Cape Town, we decided to forgo the cage diving. Instead, we went to a different part of the aquarium where the tanks are partially outside, with viewing windows that people can see from the inside of the aquarium. We got to snorkel in one of these areas, and it was really fun. We weren't supposed to actually touch the fish or dive down to the bottom (where the sharks were hanging out), but it was super cool to be so close to all of the pretty, tropical fish. 

(The fishes we were swimming with. I was most excited about the Dori-fish... er, Palette surgeon)

(This is a picture I took from the inside of the aquarium of where we had been snorkeling before. There are some people in the background scuba diving, but they are really just doing some training/safety before going for a dive in the ocean, which Ushaka is right next to) 

The aquarium was cute (it had a finding Nemo exhibit, with all of the species of fish in the movie, minus the shark, in a tank) and I loved the dolphin show. I don't know if I was just exhausted at the time, but the 'majestic, intelligent creatures that we share this world with' were making me emotional, which was very entertaining. What can I say, dolphins are so much like us, we are all connected, etc. (cue "Circle of Life" in the background...)

While I am on the subject of ocean creatures... we spent quite a bit of time at the beach while we were in Durban. It was sunny most of the week, although it was windy enough that I don't think you could categorize us as ocean creatures. Intertidal for sure, though. Other than feet at the edge of the water, I didn't really get in until the last day we were there, when the wind died down and the weather was gorgeous. Most of the time, Kristen and I spent our time at a part of the beach that was the closest walk from our hostel... we just turned left at the end of our road and walked straight for 20 minutes (over a bridge by the stadium they built for the soccer world cup last year, which was cool looking...)

Anyway, the last day we were there, we went with one of the other guys who was staying at the hostel (he was on break from University of Liverpool, and was working with some other british students at a program for street children in Durban for about a month) to North Beach, where he typically went to surf. The ocean is definitely much rougher along the coast here than on the East Coast at home, which means two things: Surfing is big here (although I am not sure that I will take advantage of this while I am here; surf boards do not appear to be compatible with my balance), and swimming at the beach is really restricted. There are small areas where you are allowed to swim (they go out and measure the rip-tides and currents on a regular basis, and these swim areas appeared to move around a bit), which are vigilantly watched by several lifeguards. The section that we were in was super crowded, and I couldn't go out to the deeper water where I would have liked because I didn't have a buddy (we couldn't just all leave our stuff and go in the water, so I would hang out with the stuff while Kristen and Yassin went out). Guys did tend to approach me and offer to take me into the deep water, but I did not want to be taken anywhere, thank you very much, so I remained firmly where I was. I tended to draw attention to myself at the beach where we were, which could be annoying but also meant that the life guards could easily pick me out of the crowd, so I was unlikely to be swept away unnoticed :) I don't have the time or space to go into SA race relations here, but I will just mention that the beach sections were pretty sharply divided, which was why I stood out so much (My curves fit right in, though, which I found amusing).

Its like an easy version of Where's Waldo... 

Thus ends my report on Durban adventures, not because there isn't more to say (I can always find more to say) but because there are other adventures to tell. Later! 

(Footnote on Durban Adventures: I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Kristen and I went to a swanky revolving restaurant that was at the top of a high rise in the center of downtown. It was sort of an accident; we had intended to go to the BAT center, which by all accounts was a cool cultural center with stuff going on at night, but when we got there, there was nothing much going on. Since we had already taken a taxi there, we decided to salvage the evening by going to Roma's Italian Restaurant, where we split a three course special for like 300 rand, which isn't bad for two people but was outside our usual budget. It was super fun, though... all cities look cool when they are lit up at night, and the food (including the best stuffed mushrooms I have ever had, some really tasty veal and amazing dessert) was fantastic. Also, it was just funny to be eating in an Italian restaurant in the middle of a South African city. Good times were had all around ;)

The Longest Drive Home (I Should Have Taken The Subway)- The Apathy Eulogy

Adventuretime with Kristen and Christiana, Episode 2: Malls and Markets

So, Kristen and I are both the sort of people that want to take advantage of 'authentic African experiences' while we are here. This is an odd thing to look for in a simultaneously first and third world country. What I mean is that South Africa is extremely prosperous, and in many ways is a first world country, while at the same time, it has the greatest wealth disparity IN THE WORLD. They recently wrestled this title from a South American country somewhere (and before you get all proud that the US doesn't have the highest income disparity, we are number 4 or something) Anyway, SA is in some ways extremely modern, and you aren't going to find a lot of the 'traditional Africa' that you might expect in other Sub-saharan countries. However, my point was that Kristen and I are much more interested in experiences that we can't get at home, rather than going to fast food restaurants and malls.

However, in a bit of irony, between the two of us, we ended up being in a mall at least once every single day we were in Durban except for Tuesday. Kristen's mac was broken, and she needed to take it to an apple store to get it fixed, so Sunday we went to Gateway, which is a huge mall in Durban that claims to be the biggest mall in the Southern Hemisphere. Not only was it huge and super fancy (it reminded me a bit of the King of Prussia mall, complete with a movie theater, rock-climbing wall, wave pool, waterfall, valet parking, and three stories of stores), but the shocking difference between Gateway and the markets and minibuses we had been through on our way their was ridiculous. We ended up making an appointment to get her computer fixed on Monday, so we had to come back the next day (and again on Wednesday. Originally, the technician said on Monday that it would take 45 minutes to fix... then a bit longer... then "I'll call you when it's done"... then eventually when we went back to the store for the millionth time to bug them, he said it wouldn't be done that day, and she could probably pick it up the next morning.) So, although we went to Gateway multiple times (and spent so much time in there that even I knew where almost every store in the massive place was by the end) I think our most ridiculous/adventurous trip was the first one, so I will only describe that one...

When we asked about Gateway at our first hostel, the staff said it was really far away, and was going to cost a lot to get there by taxi (260 rand the one time we made the mistake of letting the parking guard convince us that we needed to take a taxi to get home instead of a minibus), so she explained how to get there using the minibuses. Later, we found an easier route from our second hostel, but the first time:

We caught a minibus on Florida Rd to 'the workshop', which was basically an open air street market. This was the friendliest minibus experience ever. Two guys asked us if we were lost while we were looking at a map posted on the road, and when we said we were looking for the fasted way to get to the workshop, one of them looked around and said "probably that combi (minibus) right there" and proceeded to hail the bus and enquire if it would get us to the workshop. The driver was really nice, and told us that we needed to watch our purses where he was dropping us off, and there was a friendly lady sitting next to us who offered similar advice. After working our way to the opposite corner of the workshop, we got on another minibus, which took us to Victoria Street market (step 2 in the directions to Gateway we had been given). This wasn't open air, but was another market area that was like a combination of chinatown in NYC and a mercado that I went to in the Dominican Republic. Basically, very exciting and also a bit terrifying. Again, I wish I had pictures, but it was not someplace you would want to wander around with a camera looking like a tourist. We ate lunch on Victoria Street at this fantastic little hole in the wall Indian restaurant and bakery that had some really cheap and yummy bunny chow, then attempted to find the minibuses that would get us to Gateway. At this point we got a little turned around (or more so than usual, I think the majority of the time we were walking around Durban I was either partially disoriented or working my way toward lost), and ended up at a minibus location that was not the one we were looking for. However, the drivers said they would get us to Gateway, or rather "just across the street" from Gateway.

This street happened to be a freeway, which they pulled over to the side of and dropped us off/kicked us out.

It was the most ridiculous ride I have ever had. Luckily, we were able to hop the guardrail and walk up a semi-path to an overpass (with a sidewalk) that got us over the freeway and into an area full of big retail buildings, were we eventually located the mall. 

(Our friendly, side-walked overpass)

So basically I walked from the side of the highway for about 10 minutes to the biggest mall I have ever been in. It was crazy.

Just in case you were curious, most of the other mall trips happened by accident as we were looking for ATMs, bathrooms, places to catch a minibus, grocery stores, etc. Later in the week, we went back to the workshop (I got myself a Springboks jersey... the rugby world cup is going on right now, and SA is doing really well so far!), as well as an Indian trade fair (more irony, we were in Africa and went to a market of things specifically made in India. What can I say, Durban has a large Indian population...), a cute, posh little Saturday market in Essenwood where I tried my first biltong (its a SA food similar to jerky), and a "lifestyle market" on Florida Rd that was similar to the Essenwood market. While I did not, unfortunately, visit as many markets as I did malls (not that I wanted to go to more markets, just less malls) Kristen and I calculated and figured out that our minibus to mall ratio was in favor of the minibuses, so I think we redeemed ourselves in the end.

I Need a Dollar (How to Make it in America)-Aloe Blacc

Okay, Adventuretime with Kristen and Christiana, Episode 1: Transportation

Love it, hate it, took a lot of it, paid a ton for some and basically nothing for others.

First of all, I would like to state for the record that I refuse to travel to a foreign country again before I turn 21. Luckily, since I don't plan on going anywhere else before April, I don't think that it will really be an issue. I also am not traveling anywhere without a credit card again, but that is another issue... It is fairly difficult, it turns out, to rent a car if you are under 21. In fact, in some countries you have to be 23, but the limit for most places in SA is 21. I am fairly sure that it is impossible for me to rent a car in Grahamstown; the Avis at least won't rent to anyone under 21. This shouldn't really matter because technically I am heavily discouraged from driving by my study abroad program. I signed a form that I believe acknowledged that they told me I shouldn't drive a vehicle in SA (without actually agreeing that I wouldn't drive... ) The point is, they don't want me to do it because people drive on the other side of the road and driving cars is dangerous. So I shouldn't really be driving anyway, which is fine because I didn't... Kristen and I were able to book a car at an agency in Durban that would rent to people under 21, but when we got there, they wouldn't accept her traveler's credit card for complicated reasons that had to do with holding payments and regulations and such. So, the moral of the story was that we were safe little girls who did not get into any cars with steering wheels on the right and take ourselves to Kruger. It was a bit disappointing, since I don't know if I will be able to get up there while I am here, but God was probably looking out for us and preventing some sort of disaster.

However, we still had many crazy transportation adventures which no doubt kept our guardian angels busy (my study abroad program did not have me sign any forms against walking in cities, which I think is probably more dangerous than driving...). We took a coach bus to and from Durban, but rather than paying the extra money for a Greyhound bus (one of Gettysburg students who was at Rhodes last fall told me that his Greyhound broke down, anyway), we took City-to-City, which got us there just fine, despite being slightly lower quality than some buses I have been on. However, I think that in general, not having a bathroom on the bus worked out really well in our favor, since we made plenty of stops and the bus smelled fine the entire trip. The first hour out of Grahamstown was both hilarious and awful; there were music videos this boy-band full of blond haired guys (I can only describe their singing style as crooning) playing on the tvs (and the 40-something guy beside me was definitely singing along). Kristen was a few rows ahead of me, sitting next to a woman with a baby that was totally chill when we got on the bus, but started wailing for approximately the next hour until they got off. Luckily for us, a lot of people got off after the first hour or two, leaving us to enjoy the other 10 hours in relative peace. They played some ridiculous movies, including Jennifer's Body (without the sound... it was just as funny for me but Kristen had no idea what was happening) and what I assume to be a bootlegged version of the Salina Gomez movie where she goes to Paris and gets mistaken for a movie star. I actually enjoyed most of the bus ride, as I like road trips, and I enjoyed checking out the scenery until it got dark.

Once we got to the bus station in Durban, we needed to take a taxi to our hostel (it was dark and we had luggage, anyway). We did take a few taxis over the week: to the music festival, because we didn't know where it was (and it was dark), back and forth to the downtown when we went out Tuesday night (and again Wednesday after we walked downtown in our quest for a rental car but didn't want to walk all the way back), to Ushaka and back, back from the mall once, and whenever we moved our luggage, but in general, we tried not to use them too much. There are some metered taxis, and others where you can haggle a bit with the driver, but either way you can end up paying quite a bit... or at least, more than we wanted to. I was sent to Durban with advice to "not let the taxi drivers rip you off" and I still have no idea how to accomplish this...

So, we spent quite a bit of our time on minibuses! I didn't take any pictures of them (usually because they were in areas where you wouldn't want to take out a camera) but basically they are 15 seater vans that drive people around... you can find them all over southern Africa. Most of the ones in Durban don't exactly have specified routes, or at least not posted ones, so I usually just ended up walking to the drivers window and repeating the name of the place we were trying to get to, and the driver would either tell us to get in or point us in another direction where we could find minibuses to our desired location. This could be tricky, and was a bit of an adrenaline inducing activity, but it felt like such an accomplishment to get to where we wanted to go (and only spend 4 to 10 rand to get there... the exchange rate is 7 rand to the dollar). I spent 10 rand to ride a minibus to a place that it cost 260 rand to get back from in a taxi.

While using various forms of public transportation made me appreciate my 4runner at home all the more (I don't even know what the age to rent a car in the US is... it has just never come up), and we sometimes had to invest quite a lot of time and energy to get where we needed to go, I believe that our transportation adventures in Durban were overall quite successful (of course, there was the 260 rand taxi ride, which was depressing, and then that time we were dropped off on the side of the freeway, but that it a story for another post...). We got safely where we needed to go all week (this includes our multitude of walking adventures, as we walked whenever it was daylight and the distance was doable. Or when we thought the distance was doable and ended up walking basically to the other side of the city) and in the end were returned in one piece to Grahamstown. I should mention that the bus ride home was fairly uneventful, as we were traveling overnight and mostly just tried to sleep, except that my seat mate was extremely talkative and I got to hear all about his life, from his job working for Volkswagen to his opinions about crime in Port Elizabeth and experiences with religion. Not as conducive to sleeping as snuggling with Melissa Dorrance on a band bus, but I did okay :)

In No Time At All-Article One

Sorry for the hiatus! I am safely home from term vac, and I have so many adventures to share that I don't think it's a good idea to try to write it all out in one post. Plus there are those pesky things called classes that I have to go to and I receive more work, which cuts into my blogging time :) So, I will give you a quick overview of "Adventuretime with Kristen and Christiana" (aka term vac) now before my history class, and hopefully I can ramble later about things like minibuses, markets, and malls (all things I encountered frequently in the past week) at a later time...

Saturday morning, Kristen and I headed to the center of Grahamstown to catch a bus to Durban. We left at 8am and got to Durban sometime after 7pm... making good time, actually, as it is basically a 12 hour trip by bus. We spent our first night in a hostel in the Berea area, and ventured out to a street festival at the advice of our friendly hostel staff in time to see the band Napalma. Sunday we switched to Tekweni Backpackers, a hostel right off of Florida Road in the Morningside area... not much like the Morningside I know, but it was a nice area, and we could safely walk to places on Florida Rd at night, which was great. We spent part of Sunday and most of Monday on a quest to get Kristen's broken laptop fixed, which entailed several additional adventures. Tuesday was a beach day, and we were supposed to leave Durban on Wednesday, but ended up staying for the rest of the week when car rental issues couldn't be sorted. Thursday we went to Ushaka, which is a massive water park/marine world by the beach in Durban. Friday we were back at the beach, as well as an Indian trade fair at the racetrack. Saturday we mostly explored some markets, and Sunday we hit the beach for some perfect weather before forcing ourselves to get everything packed up and catching a bus overnight back to Grahamstown. We got back at 5:30am, and I managed to drag myself and my huge suitcase (I only brought big suitcases here, which makes it appear that I extremely overpack when I go on weeklong trips) from the center of town up the hill and back to my room by 6am. At this point it seemed like it would be stupid to go to sleep and then get up in 2 hours for my classes, so I headed off to play some drums for my ethno class in a slightly delirious state...

Thats basically a mad oversimplification of our week. I promise I will elaborate (hopefully not too much) at a later date. I will just finish for now with a sad tale...

On Sunday, the temperature in Durban was like 32 degrees Celsius, and I was walking around in shorts and a bathing suit. When I got back to Grahamstown, it was in the teens, and Monday I wore long sleeves, a sweater, a scarf, and a jacket basically all day. Devastating. It reminds me a bit of deceitfully warm spring breaks in Nicaragua, only to return to Gettysburg and discover that in reality, March is just not warm. In this case, I am pretty sure that Grahamstown is just being spiteful, since it is warmer basically everywhere else. Perhaps it will motivate me to stay inside and catch up on my work?

Use Somebody-Kings of Leon

Backing up a bit… sorry this is sort of out of order, but to celebrate spring this past weekend, I escaped Grahamstown and went to the beach. (Not that Grahamstown isn’t lovely, its just also very difficult to leave/travel if you don’t have a car, and the Avis in town wont rent to anyone under 21.) Luckily, the two German girls who are here are both older, so on Saturday morning Eva, Britta, Kristen and I rented a car with the intention of driving to Coffee Bay, which is located on the ‘Wild Coast’ between here and Durban. However, when we stopped a Chintsa for lunch around 12:30, we found out that the road between there and Coffee Bay was bad, and it was going to take us another 3 ½ hours to get there. So rather than spending most of the weekend in the car (not that it wasn’t delightful to actually be in a car again… I love road trips!) we decided to stay at this super cute backpackers lodge in Chintsa.

When I got here, I had this misconception that backpacking around the country involved camping, and that backpackers lodges involved camping as well. In reality, backpacking in SA involves hostel hopping, which I am guessing is more like backpacking in Europe than in Appalachia :) I am much more down with staying in a dormitory with showers than camping, and the place that we were at reminded me of Laguna de Apoya, which we stayed at during choir tour in Nicaragua this spring. I did not sleep out in a hammock, but it felt tropical with all of the palm trees and very secluded (in a good way, with more nature than village). There were a bunch of little buildings tucked into the side of the hill, which overlooked the river that separates East and West Chintsa with a beautiful view of the sea. Although it was a bit chilly this past weekend (not quite swimming weather, unfortunately) we did put on swimsuits and walk at the edge of the water. Actually, in order to reach the beach, we had to follow a path that at points involved wading through the river's edge, which was much cooler than the relatively warm Indian Ocean.

While swimming was out, we did spend some time on the beach, as well as taking a short little canoe/kayak trip up the river. I was in a double kayak, so it was much easier to handle, but the wind was high so it was difficult for the other girls to paddle through the waves upstream, and the wind kept blowing cold water onto us as we went. So we turned around fairly quickly and let the wind push us back to where we started. We also played a bit of volleyball on Saturday (it was the free activity for the afternoon—wine and volleyball). I have never played volleyball where there are rules about wine breaks at certain points of the game, or where various dogs either chase each other through the court or just lay down and sleep while a game is going on. I can’t say that I was very good at volleyball, and I have still definitely not acquired a taste for wine (although it seems like that would make it more difficult to hit the ball, anyway, so it wasn’t really a bad thing). Anyway, we mostly just chilled at the backpackers, explored around the area, and ate fantastic food—a Xhosa meal for dinner and a yummy breakfast outside on a deck overlooking the cove—but it was a beautiful weekend and a nice chance to get away and go on an adventure.

I have realized that I want to come back to South Africa. I know that sounds funny, since I have three months here still. There is just not enough time (or money) for me to do all of the travelling that I want to do and explore all of the gorgeous places that I haven’t been to yet. It turns out that I totally enjoy ‘backpacking’, and I would love to come back someday with a partner in crime, a map, and a car and just travel all over. For some reason, when you go to new and beautiful places, you want to share it with someone you love and just… be. While I can’t really do that to the extent I would like during this semester, I am realizing that it is a desire I have. I want to travel, to explore, and to share. Hopefully, God has some of that in my future. In the meantime, I will just share a little with you.  

Our view from the deck outside of our room :) 

(You see that sandy bit at the bottom between patches of grass leading into the water? That's the path to the beach.)

Western part of the cove (the tide is in, and seawater meets the river at this spot)

(Eastern side of the cove)

(Britta, Me, Kristen and Eva on the deck where we ate breakfast)

Control-Shawn McDonald

Happy Spring!

… Or you can enjoy the stiflingly hot, sticky, humid time of year at the summer just before fall comes. Or possibly torrential downpours for days. You know, whichever you prefer. As for me, I am so pleased that spring is here and warmer times are ahead. August 1st was officially the first day of spring, although Friday was just weird… sunny, then windy, then rainy, then sunny but also rainy, then just really windy. This week has been warmer, enough so that I wore shorts Tuesday and Wednesday. And there you have my very official weather report. :)

In other news, I spent some more time at the Rafael Centre this past week (I suppose I should spell it properly, although I am not handling this American to British English switch very well, and will probably blame that when I can never spell properly ever again. Of course, 'again' implies that I could spell anything properly in the first place…).  Aya and I are getting on well—I asked him if he played any sports and he told me that he didn’t, but that he liked to read novels and write poetry. Also, he really likes life sciences/biology, and when I asked him what he wants to do later in life, he told me he was considering being a psychologist or a lawyer. Could there be a better mentor/mentee pair? Granted, he writes most of his poetry in Xhosa, so I can’t understand it at all, and I do have difficulty understanding his accent some times, but hopefully that will improve as we go. On Thursday when we met, he asked if I had extra time to meet this week, so I went in again Monday and we worked on his projects a bit. Honesty, so there wasn’t a lot that we could do except for some brainstorming before he does his research for the papers, so we mostly just hung out and chatted.  He is graduating at the end of this year, provided that he passes his examinations, and then in December he is going ‘into the bush’.

This is sort of a coming of age thing for Xhosa guys that has survived over time and is still a part of the culture in this area. As far as I can gather, some older men take a bunch of guys (all around the same age, although there are not really structured age-groups in society the way there used to be) out into the surrounding countryside and leave them there to survive on their own for 3 or 4 weeks. While I can imagine that this would actually be quite difficult (I have no idea what you would eat… it’s a good thing no one is leaving me out in the bush), I can’t help but think that this is also an excuse for male bonding time. But no man-dates at Servo or Saturday morning brunches here… this is serious. Anyway, after the older men go out and bring them back, there is a big celebration that involves lots of beer, gifts, and possibly slaughtering a cow. I am a little fuzzy on the details, but it sounds like a big deal. When I took my tour to the township shortly after I got here, we saw some guys coming back from the bush, as well as a party with tons of neighbors and a cow… there’s just a difference between knowing that it happens, and Aya telling me that he is doing it himself.

This week has just been a mash of trying to get work done while planning for vac. I finally have plans… well, a rough sketch, anyway. I am definitely going to Durban with Kristen. We are going to leave Saturday morning (for a 12 hour bus ride) and are coming home the following Sunday overnight, so that we should arrive back in Grahamstown around 5:30 in the morning. Hopefully, we are going to rent a car in Durban (I don’t know if the 21 age requirement is nationwide, or just in Grahamstown… we were able to book a car through Economy Car Rentals, so hopefully everything will work out in Durban and we will just possibly pay an underage insurance fee), which will allow us to drive up to Kruger National Park with a stop in Swaziland. The plan is to drive to Swaziland on Wednesday and get to Nelspruit (just outside of Kruger) by Thursday night, do some drives on Friday and Saturday, and take a shuttle/minibus back to Durban on Sunday. There is still a part of my mind that is panicking and saying that the rental car isn’t going to work out, but if not, we will just stay in Durban for the week. I am sure we can find something to do… I mean, there is a beach, so it wouldn’t be that terrible.

Anyway, in the meantime, I am just constantly being reminded that God is has been taking care of me, is taking care of me, and will take care of me in the future regardless of how much time I spend panicking and trying to control things in my life. So, the real plan is: I am going on a trip over vac. I will explore new places and see new things. I might not go everywhere I planned, but I will find a place to sleep at night, food when I am hungry, and I will get back to Grahamstown more or less in time for classes to start (although will I really want to go to class when I get home 3 hours before it starts?) I was in the dining hall yesterday, taking a break from stressing over bus and car bookings, and a girl was making toast with her back to me so that I could read Jeremiah 29:11 written on her shirt. God knows the plans he has for me! And then today my dear Melissa sent me Proverbs 19:21 "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand."

It has just been so helpful to be told over and over again (because I can forget very quickly… as soon as I get back to my laptop and open up travel booking pages or something) that God is in control. He is big enough to have this great master plan, and he still cares about the details my life. Like where I am keeping my stuff over vac, how I will get malaria meds, and hopefully where I will be sleeping next week. I have to be smart and make good decisions, but I am not alone in them. And that is a big comfort.