Updates

Hi friends and family!

Some updates:

We went to a Rugby game on saturday, the KZN sharks vs the lions. It was pretty exciting, but kind of an odd experience to come from living in Cato to the stadium, which was made up of almost exclusively white spectators. I didn't know there were that many umlungus in Durban- I have no idea where they all came from

Saturday Mama took me to a Zulu funeral of a 50 year old woman who "got sick" (AIDS?). It was much like an American funeral, but better music, and when they go to lower the coffin in the ground, all the men grab shovels and bury the coffin then and there, and then stick a wood cross on top. Also, no one really cries, oddly. I think people die here a lot. Also, 50 makes you a grandmother.

Sunday was beach day with the mamas, except it was really cold. By really cold, I mean high 60s, but it's been over a hundred most days here, which is miserable. Mama kept saying she felt like she was going to die at the funeral, which seemed somewhat inappropriate to me, but hey.

Today I spent the day at a hospice, which is really a physical and social support center for people with terminal illness, aka AIDS or incurable cancer. Tomorrow, I'm going to an orphanage, and friday until tuesday is rural village take 2. Hopefully this time we won't all get sick. We're bringing all our own water, just to be on the safe side.

I can't get pictures to load to my blog, which is stupid, so there's some on Picasa, but the quality is poor because you have to compress them a ton to upload them on our slow internet connection.

Africa, Part I

the eastern cape is beautiful, but don't drink the water

So, this weekend turned into a bit of a misadventure. The plan was to drive all day Friday along the Eastern Cape, until we got to Mbotjie, and spend the night in a backpackers. Sat, we were going to hike all day, sleep at the same place, and depart for Gwetxlintaba on Sunday morning. The drive was good, and the hike Saturday was unbelievably gorgeous- pictures to follow. Sunday, however, it started raining really hard (summer is the rainy season on the eastern coast of SA) and the road to get to the village had washed away entirely, moonsoon style. So we drove to another backpackers, and spent the night on Sunday, hoping to still make it to the village for monday night. However, 19 out of 22 of us, and both program directors got really sick on sunday night. Most likely the water they told us was safe to drink wasn't, but we also were carrying all of our own food, so food poisoning is a definate possibility too. By mid day monday, 10 people felt well enough, and so went to the rural village. Sadly, I was not one of them, so the rest of us stayed back at the backpackers and slept all day, and then drove home tuesday. Overall, a somewhat unfortunate weekend.

We spent our first weekend in Durban! They let us stay in a backpacker hostel in the city on friday night, to give us a break from our host families and vice versa. It was fun to explore the city a little bit. They are building a ton of stuff in prep for the 2010 world cup, so you can see all the enormous construction for the field/dome, as well as a bunch of hotels and stuff. We spent friday night on Florida Rd, which is where everything happens in Durban. Saturday we went to the beach, and got really horrible sunburns-which has been making my role as a human jungle-gym for all the neighborhood kids pretty painful. Black people don't understand the concept of sunburn, and are really facinated with poking your skin. And then we headed back to Cato in the evening.

This week we're mostly in the classroom hearing lectures. A typical day in Cato Manor/at school:
I wake up around 5:45 am, and then have until 7 to splashbath, eat, and get ready for school. We get picked up in a minibus at 7 by our driver/zulu instructor Thula, who's pretty cool. We usually have 3 two or two and a half hour lectures each day, with breaks in between. Thula drives us home around 5 or 5 30. Usually, I play outside with kids until it gets dark around 7 30. My family usually eats dinner at 8, when Generations, the national Soappie that everybody watches religiously, comes on. And then time for homework and bed.

This weekend we're heading to a rural village to study the SA gov't Sustainable Integrated Development Plan or something. The village is called Gxwetlintaba (the x is a click), and it's in the Transkei, which is about 400k south/west of here on the coast. On sat a bunch of us are going on an all day hike in the Drakensburg Mountains, which should be pretty fun, and then we'll be living in the village until tuesday.

Some pictures finally

I'm finally able to upload a couple pictures, so here are a few of my favorites so far in no particular order. I'm having trouble with the formatting, so from top to bottom:
This is Garden's Dr., the street in Cato Manor where I live. My house is the little sliver of green roof you can see about 2 houses down on the right. But they all kind of look the same.

This is the drive from Jo'burg to Durban when you cross from the Orange Free State into KwaZulu Natal. KZN is beautiful and the pictures don't nearly do it justice.

A terrible picture of me, but really cute of the kids :-)

I brought bubbles with me, which are a huge hit with kids. They will scream and chase them literally for hours if you're willing to play that long. This is outside Mama Busi's house, the woman in the community who coordinates our program.

This is Lou. He is Mama Busi's nephew or grandnephew or something. Its really hard to figure out how people are related here. He's 2 and super cute.

More pictures from the drive.

Two of my favorite kids in Cato. On top is Mascuto (guessing on the spelling), also known as something pronouced like pea-weh. I think she's an orphan, but lives with a family down the street. And Lou again.

I spent my first weekend in Cato Manor this weekend. Weekends are pretty low key here, because there isn't a whole lot to do, but its kind of nice. My mama took me to the Pavilion Mall on Saturday morning, which was truly an adventure. You ride a "taxi" which is a 12 seat van they cram like 30 people into, and then drive way too fast down windy roads. The mall itself is bigger and fancier than any mall I've ever seen in America, which is somewhat bizarre when you've just come from a township where you consider yourself lucky to have a toilet that flushes. Otherwise, we basically hung out on the street and played with kids, which is my new favorite activity. Kids basically spend all of their free time outdoors, because they don't really have anything else to do and their parents pretty much ignore them. They are way better at entertaining themselves than American kids, so you might spend an entire afternoon throwing around a deflated soccer ball. Its fun, and they get super excited if you want to play with them. I brought bubbles and tennis balls with me, which have been a hit.

Sunday we went to church, which was 2 1/2 hours of very traditional roman catholic mass entirely in Zulu in a very overcrowded stone building with limited ventilation. The music was good however, and the pastor stopped in the middle of his homily to thank those of us from America (eMelika in zulu) for Obama. Typical. And then I played outside some more. Tomorrow we're shadowing at public schools for the day, which should be interesting. I picked a school for kids with physical disabilities, so I'm excited to see what that's like.

That's about all that's new on my half the world :-)

love,
Kara