Windemer

Whindemer is still amazing.  This past week has been rainy; the lightning storms over the ocean and the beach have been absolutely incredible at night and it, been a little easier to work on homework rather than lay on the beach.

This weekend I went back to Cato to visit and I’m so glad I went.  I don’t think I would have truly appreciated the opportunity that I had if I had not left. I now can go visit and truly appreciated how amazing the Zondi family is and relish every conversation, with my mama and brothers, the neighbors and friends. I just get to treasure moments like being taught how to play Sudoku with Ayanda’s dad, or having a debate on politics, and multiple relationships with Spa, Mlu and Ayanda, or dancing with beautiful Bule when her two incredible twins slept.  It was so good to come back to mamas cooking and my room, and have S’bahle wake me up in the morning and ask if I would play race cars. I still feel guilty not living there because I made a conscious decision that took away part of their monthly income. I also at the moment feel like I am a tourist who is posing as a student. I have to remember that is still South Africa, just a different part, when else and I going to get the opportunity to wake up in the morning, go swimming, running, and sun tan, and then be back in my apartment writing a paper all before 8:30.

Bread!  I learned that I can make some pretty tasty bread without a recipe.  Water, oil, salt, flour, yeast, and a little sugar and you are set.  I have been having fun making bread for my apartment mates.  Our apartment became a home with a little help from smell of freshly baked bread.

Our friend Bongani, has theater connections at Durban’s theater and got us free tickets to the mellow drama ‘mating birds’ at Durban’s Play House.  It was fun to go out to the theater and experience a different part of Durban, Monday and Bongani are hilarious university students who are studying here. Let’s just say I’m still processing it.  “A black man and white woman meet at the beach and end up making love.  When this is discovered, a case of rape is wrongfully declared, and the made is sentenced to death.  It was set during apartheid and highlighted some of the issues around race, rape, cultural assumptions. 

Every day I try to do at least two things. 1) I always to a cart wheel, this has happened every day since I have been in Africa and 2) have a completely new experience, they do not necessarily need to be epic events but in their own way each one is.  When I return to the states I’m going to keep up these goals.  So new experiences this week, there are many more I just need some time to remember them:

Living in my own apartment for the first time in my life

Baking bread without a recipe

Figuring out the public transportation mini-bus system between Cato Manor and my apartment

Going to a mellow drama

Playing with match box cars for 3 solid hours with my little brother

Nina’s “bachelorette” 21^st birthday party

Good Bye Cato, Hello Rural!

S'bahle bunneded up for school, on my last day in Cato

This past week I have gained many amazing and wonderful memories I will treasure for the rest of my life.  After two rural home stays and a stay in Drakensberg Mountains I have truly fallen in love with South Africa.  The warmth and excitement of its people and the beauty of the land holds me captivated and eager to learn more.  This week was a tidal wave of emotions, sorrow after leaving my home in Cato and the arms of my new family in Cato, joy of gaining two new families and standing in awe at Gods beautiful creation.

The rain mocked me as I hugged mama as she stood by the pickup area for the last time. I stood next to five year old S’bahle bundled up in his winter jacket, gloves, and umbrella.  It was so hard telling him that I would not be coming home to play race cars with him, or swing him around by his arms between the houses. My family opened their home and treated me like their daughter and sister. We piled into the vans and headed out of the city.

Umthwalume

This is a beautiful costal area region that extends into rolling hills of sugar cane.  We went to the home of a umthandazi a traditional healer who is said to pray to god, use the help of her ‘twin’ and water to heal.   We next visited the Dustan Farrell Specialized TB hospital, which was situated miles back in the hills.  I questioned how patients arrived at the hospital.  According to the staff over 80% of the patients who were living and being treated at the long term care hospital did not have insurance and the hospital was mostly supported by government funding, even thou they had a really great system.  It was hard to interact with the patients because most of them only spoke Zulu, once I got passed the greetings, I found myself struggling with small talk in Zulu.  Being at the TB hospitals we were required to wear masks so patients could not see our faces, and I realized how much I use smiling to communicate.

Love life is the South African version of a YMCA, a organization dedicated to promote healthily lifestyle choices for teens.  I Umthwalume they have amazing facilities with computer room, radio center, and grounds for net ball, soccer, basket ball and volley ball, it was centrality located between a few high schools.  Teens could go there and take dance classes, and computer classes, a multitude of sports, as well as participated in debates about HIV, multiple relationships, and life style choices.  All these activities were to keep the kids busy and not having sex doing drugs or drinking their life away.  The center was run by hip young facilitators who were trained to be roll models for the teens, I hope they were full filling that position, and creating a safe space for the kids.  There were tons of fantastic ideas and initiatives but I have to ask how much it is going to help in the future.  The radio station only broadcasted to the complex of love life, the computers some of them worked none had internet, and I didn’t know if all the facilitators practiced what they preached. 

The Beaders… this was a humbling experience. At every market, the beach, an on the side of the road there is always people selling beaded art work, and until now I did not have a true appreciation for the skill and time that is put into every peace.  We were brought to a work shop set up by the government where single mothers and gogos worked beaded every day.  They gave us a demonstration and we tried our hand at beading.  Let’s just say I would not be alive if I had to bead for a living, and I was one of the better one’s of the SIT students. 

Home stay mama was really my home stay sisi, she was a 24 year old mother of a three year old and so excited for use to be living with her. I had eye opening conversations with her about relationships, violence and life in rural Africa.  Our home was a whole community of people children, uncles, grandparents, at any one time I didn’t know who all lived there, people floated in and out at all hours of the day. 

Impendle

Impendle is a beautiful mountainous region just north of the Draconsburg Mountains.  I stayed with the Zuma family and learned SO much!  This is the family that I will be staying with during my independent study project, in November.  I will start with the obvious differences of my new family, they are polygamists.  I have always heard about polygamy but I have never been exposed or met a family.  My mother is the 2^rd wife of her husband and she has 6 children, who are grown up and or going to school with in Johannesburg with their father.  She is also raising three children from the 5^th wife.  Living in the same complex is the Husbands 3^rd wife. They each have separate houses and culture kitchens, but they live in the same complex. My father lives in Johannesburg with wives number 1 and 4 and the rest of the 22 children, he comes to visit his Impendle wives once a month. He is a witch doctor who sells cattle and goats, which must be a fairly lucrative business, because supported 5 wives each with their own house, land cattle, and had his own car.  My mother, my new sister, and all the multitude of extended family was so open and welcoming and excited to show me their world and culture.  We all gathered in the culture kitchen with the Zulu drum and I got a Zulu dance lesson as we sang traditional songs, church songs, and modern pop songs.  It was such a loving open atmosphere.  Dance really brings people together.

Other events:

·         Dancing with Gogo crafters

·         Hiking in the mountains/hills right outside our door with me new family

·         Constant zulu vocabulary lessons

·         Amazing star gazing with no lights at all

·         Bucket baths

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·         Visit to non ‘eco’ eco school

·         The most amazing primary school dance performance I have ever seen.  Children are born dancing and with a sense of rhythm and they just keep dancing!  Their sung their own music to dance to and their voices should have been recorded and sold all around the world. 

Polishing the floor with cow dung with the neighbor in Impendle

·         Polishing the floors with cow dung with my mama to get the houses ready for the return of the Husband Mr. Zuma.

·         Painting the house with different pigments collected from different areas in the mountains.  Red from the top of the ridge, brown from the bottom of the valley.

Drakensberg Mountains (named after Dragons! And I could totally imagine dragons hiding away in the cliffs and caves in these mountains)

The rolling grass foot hills dotted with cattle homesteads surge up to gigantic table tops decorated with boulders from a rock climber’s dream world. It was absolutely amazing hiking in these mountains the first time I have been away hiking since I left Alaska.  I have realized there are many outdoor experiences I have taken for granted, in Alaska it is common for to go to hatchers pass or the Chugiak mountains and possibly be the first person to ever stepped foot on that ground, or only one in a hundred people, I have had the opportunity to go back packing and camping all my life.  I tried to explain backpacking to some of my new friends in Cato Manor and they did understand the concept of hiking or being somewhere where there was no pavement or people. I wish I could talk all of them to the Drakensberg and share with the joy of walking for hours and not seeing any one else. I was so sad to leave the mountains and come back to the city.

Our own apartment!!!

It is sad not to be living in Cato anymore, and I am planning on going back to visit but our new apartment is INCREDIBLE.   This morning I woke, went running on the beach and then jumped in the ocean and did a stair work out up 12 stories to our balcony where I watched the surfers as I ate breakfast. It was an amazing way to wake up.  

In my apartment It is strange being able to buy and cook all my meals, until now we have been part of family units with set dinners times, and food put in front of us.

At the bottom of the mountain a there was a stream created where large rocks created a perfect swimming holes to cool off in, then we could crall on the on the rocks like beaches seals and suntan. At night after a fantastic brii (South African BBQ) we star gazed for hours spotting shooting stars, the Milky Way, Southern Cross, and Scorpio.  It was sad to leave the mountains and com back to city life in Durban, I would come back to South Africa just to hike I those mountains again.