Bloody Valentine's Day

We have been quite busy so I haven’t been able to update my blog much lately – my apologies!  In the past two weeks I have: gone through many orientation activities, visited our service sites, gone on tours, and obtained my scuba diving certification.  Our first diving experience in the ocean was just next to the pier, where we saw an octopus and a few other fish.  Bradley was our tour guide who showed us downtown Port Elizabeth as well as some townships and our service sights.  He is a mixture of black and white and many other ethnicities and he grew up in a colored township.  His had countless stories to share with us.  He also brought us to The Red Location, a museum located in the township of Missionvale.  Missionvale is one of the largest townships in South Africa and three out of every five people have AIDS.  The conditions are desperate.  It was incredibly moving and I had tears in my eyes much of the time.

The Red Location museum.

My group traveled through Missionvale on this "hakuna ma tata" bus.

Yesterday we had our second day of service learning. The fifteen or so of us arrived at Pendla to find out that all of the students had gone on a fieldtrip for the day. So, we surveyed the conditions around Pendla and brainstormed projects and activities that we can do this semester. One of the biggest projects we are looking at is getting some sort of check-out system going in the library. My aunt and uncle’s group built the library at Pendla about thirteen years ago, but it is currently not used at all by the students because the principal is afraid that if they open it up to the kids, books will be damaged or stolen. We spent much of the day yesterday organizing the teachers’ lesson books on the right side of the library. We also walked with an administrative woman named Sweetness to the public library just six blocks away from Pendla to have a look. We were pleasantly surprised to find an organized building with a separate childrens’ section, teenage section, newspaper room, and study room. It is our goal to take a few field trips to the library during our stay here.

I think that one of our biggest challenges will be making sure that we properly understand what is going on and why things are run in certain manners.  We have already misconstrued why a huge pile of broken alcoholic bottles are located right next to the kids’ playing field.  Our immediate reaction was that it should not be there so we started cleaning it up.  However, when we asked the principal, Mrs. Peters, about it she informed us that they ask people to bring their bottles to the school so that they can get money for them when a glass recycling company comes to pick them up.  This is just one example of how communication will be key in finding a mutual understanding of impending projects.  Another significant challenge we will need to keep in mind is the fact that whatever we accomplish while we are here needs to be able to easily be sustained by the employees of the school after our departure.  Because we come from such a “get it done” type of culture, it is vital that we recognize that enduring whatever projects and activities we get done here will be a huge strain on an already stressful job of the educators, who also need to have multiple other roles.

Today was our second day of class.  It was a nice day so I decided to walk to NMMU with Joe, Isaac, Sarah, and Kelsey since I hadn’t yet walked.  I was walking in the grass just next to the sidewalk so that I could chat with Joe and Kelsey when I suddenly dropped into a hole.  It was covered in grass so I did not see it.  I pulled my leg out and noticed it was bleeding quite badly.  Luckily, Isaac is an EMT so I laid down next to the sidewalk and he took good care of me.  Sarah and Joe ran a short distance to the mall to buy bandaging supplies.  Meanwhile, a couple of guys from a nearby hotel came out with an emergency medical kit.  While Isaac wrapped up my leg, I turned away due to my queasy nature.  When I looked up, I was surrounded by a rugby team making awful faces as they stared at my leg.  “Happy Valentine’s Day!” I exclaimed as they slowly continued on the path.  The two men from the hotel were nice enough to give me and Sarah a ride to the NMMU health center, where they poured iodine in the wound and were fully prepared to stitch me up right away.  As they were treating it, Sarah asked, “So… do you recommend stitches?”  The man replied with, “We don’t recommend them – we’re just going to put them in.”  Both of us were nervous about this statement.  Luckily, they couldn’t find the right materials so we told them we would seek care at a private clinic down the road.  Connie brought me to the clinic where they gave me about 20 stitches.  She was a wonderful advocate and support system – it was much like having my mom there.  A plus is that the wound is similarly shaped to the continent of Africa!

I have not had much luck on Valentine’s Day in the past either.  I wonder if it is a coincidence that two years ago on Valentine’s Day I totaled a car on my way back to CSB from a weekend at home.

Goodbye PMB, Hello Durban and PE!

This week is my last week in PMB.  We had Youth Justice on Thursday in which we implemented our first lesson plan.  It was more of just a talk, but the street kids were craving for someone to listen to their story.  We started off talking about role models, but the conversation swerved more toward the hardships that they face.  There has only been one female to show up to Youth Justice during my time in PMB – all the rest are boys.  I took special interest in her because she looked the most weathered out of all of the pavement community I’ve seen, and for the simple fact that she is a woman about my age.  After talking to her using one of the Zulu interns as a translator, I found out more about her story.  Her mother died when she was young and she has never met her father and has no idea who he is.  She hasn’t got identification documents, which the YMCA will help with this week.  She was extensively coughing and she revealed she has tuberculosis.  She has medicine to treat it, but the medicine must be taken with food to work and often times she does not have food.  I told her to come to the YMCA whenever she is hungry because they have extra so she can simply go to the security guard and ask for food.  Her physical condition is terrible.  She is dirty and wears tattered clothing.  Her face is full of scars and her breasts and one of her arms look as though they were once burned quite badly.  She had a fresh wound on the top of her head where her head was shaved.  I asked her about it and she told me that the police had yelled at her while beating her with their sticks simply because she was on the streets.  This is obviously illegal, but the laws are apparently not enforced and there is nothing to stop them.  On top of all of this, she has a four-year-old son that she cannot feed on a regular basis and she can’t be with due to her sicknesses.  She kept saying that she still needs to get a birth certificate for him.  Her story deeply touched me and it is difficult to wrap my mind around the fact that there are millions of others who have gone through similar lives.

I’ve made it this whole trip without locking myself out of my room.  But two days before I left, I managed to do so.  There is a wasp nest on the underside of my windowsill that I had not been aware of, but now I am as I was stung by several bees while I tried climbing in the window.  Charles, the new security guard, ended up saving the day by climbing through the window and grabbing my key.  Besides the bees, I’ve also made another friend.  I just found out there is a rat hole right outside my window that huge rats go in and out of all the time.  So between the bees, the rats, and the geckos, I’ve had some interesting roommates here.

Friday was our “Y-Zone Open Day,” which was a free event for everyone where they could come and enjoy crumping and also buy their monthly or yearly membership.  However, only one kid showed up so there was not much of an event.  The bible study was in full session with about 20 members, which was good.  There were also supposed to be between 60-80 students moving in this weekend, but none had shown up yet when I left on Monday.  Hopefully they will move in soon!  While I was waiting with registration forms for the kids to show up on Friday, Siya came and kept us company.  Since Swazi had gone to Johannesburg to visit her daughter, he had not eaten that day so I went and made him a meal.  Later in the evening when Lindie got off work, we walked to an Indian take-out restaurant just down the street and I tried an Indian delicacy called “briani” (not sure if that’s how you spell it).  They only make it on Fridays because it is such an extensive process to make it.  It is basically rice, curry, and meat mixed together but it takes about five hours because they cook it in layers to get the full flavor.

Siya, the boy who lives outside the sports center at the Y.

Saturday I hired a nice man named Rod as my tour guide for a safari!  We first went to the lion park in Pietermaritzburg where we saw deer, elephants, and lions.  We accidentally got between a mother and child elephant so the mother elephant charged our car and got within about 15 feet of us.  Rod slammed his foot on the gas and we got out of their quick – it was quite the adrenalin rush!  We then went to a private game reserve called Tala Game Reserve, where we saw zebras, buffalo, wildebeest, rhinos, hippos, ostrich, giraffe, and more!

Then we went to a rehabilitation farm called, “The Crafty Duck,” where Rod revealed that he is also a snake guru.  He has worked with snakes and reptiles for years so he took out a huge boa constrictor, which joined us on top of our table at the restaurant while we waited for our food.  The Crafty Duck had all sorts of animals from crocodiles to guinea pigs to snakes to goats.  I got to feed some ostrich!  Their brains are the size of a pea, but Rod told me that they are actually pretty dangerous because they are strong enough to rip right through you.

Rod, my tour guide, was a very interesting man.  He is in his mid-60s and is retired, but has a lot of hobbies.  He is involved at the Crafty Duck, leads tours and safaris with his wife, and is extensively involved in five different Christian mission organizations.  He grew up in South Africa and speaks Zulu, Afrikaans, and English.  In the early 70s he was drafted into the army to try to keep apartheid.  He said the only choice for white males at that time was to join the army or go to jail.  He still has nightmares about it today.  When he was young, he turned to drugs but he claims the Lord changed him and he has led a Christian lifestyle since then.  When talking about safety, he explained some crazy laws that apply to PMB including that if you are a woman alone driving at night, you are allowed to run red lights – you aren’t required to stop for anything.  Rod knows Pietermaritzburg like the back of his hand and was incredibly kind.  In fact he was so kind that he picked me up the next day free of charge for another 4 hours of touring the area.  We saw two different huge waterfalls, went to a street market, and went to the African Emirates (a place where American missionaries stay).

Sunday night I was busy packing up my suitcase when I heard tires screeching for about 5 seconds followed by a huge crashing noise.  I ran outside and sure enough, right in front of the YMCA a baki was on its side.  Luckily the driver was alone and he was fine – he only walked with a limp.  An ambulance was parked nearby so it got there within a minute.

Monday morning Reinhardt took me to the YMCA National Office in Durban.  Mpume met me there when she was done with registering for classes at school.  Thandeka, one of the employees at the national office, was explaining to me the process of extensively waiting in lines all day to register for classes.  It often takes all day.  Thandeka took me on a tour of the national office before Mpume got there a few hours later.  We drank coffee and hung out in the office for a while before we were picked up by Sizwe, Sipho’s nephew, to go to Sipho’s parents’ house where we stayed for the next two nights.  They live in a very nice community that Sipho explained was a white neighborhood before the abolishment of apartheid.  Everyone has been extremely hospitable here.  Mpume and Zama made a delicious dinner, prayed (which involved some beautiful singing followed by kneeling on the ground in praise), and then we spent the evening watching, “Jumping the Broom” and “Wrong Turn 4.”

On Tuesday, Mpume and Thandeka got the day off so that they could show me around Durban!  We took a public taxi, which was pretty much the same as the public taxis in Pietermaritzburg except it was extremely loud.  There was African House music blasting the whole time.  I got many, many more cow offerings in exchange for my marriage, but don’t worry mom - I declined all of them.  We stopped to see the world cup stadium, walk along the north and south beaches, went out for lunch near Ushaka Marine, and went swimming in the ocean!  When we laid down on towels on the beach to bask in the sun, we got all comfortable and within about two minutes a wave came up and soaked all of us along with our stuff.  We laughed and moved back about 10 feet.  In the evening, we stopped by a couple of townships to visit some of their friends and took a public taxi back and had dinner at Sipho’s house.  I met his wife, Kitty and daughter.  Sipho’s cooking was to-die-for.  I told him he could start a restaurant, as he and his wife are interested in converting their house to a family restaurant someday.  We went back to Sipho’s parents’ house for the night.  It was a lovely last day in Durban.

Mpume and I on the beach.

World Cup Stadium

Wednesday morning I had an early flight so Mpume drove me to the airport.  We got stuck in traffic along the way because there was a public taxi accident.  The emergency vehicles travelled on the shoulder of the road, but there were many cars and taxis that had swerved into the shoulder despite the fact that it’s illegal.  So the emergency vehicles were backed up and had to wait for the cars to clear out before they continued.  When we finally drove by the accident, there were people being loaded onto stretchers and several black people still lying in the road.  We continued to the airport, I said goodbye to Mpume, and I had a short flight to PE.  Jim picked me up from the airport and we made our way to Langerry!  The room is wonderful – a beautiful ocean view, kitchen, two bedrooms, bathroom, a spacious living room, and our own balcony facing the beach.  I dropped my stuff in flat 6 and went up to Connie and Jim’s place which is right above me to say hello to Connie.  None of my roommates were here yet but there were five or six others that were here.  Though it was a little rainy, we spent the day exploring the area, checking out the beach, watching movies, taking naps, and trying to get the internet to work.  For lunch we stopped at Friends Café, a couple miles down Beach Road.  We discovered they have free wi-fi there and the food and coffee is great so I suspect we will be making many trips there.  At 6:30 we went out to eat at the Fish and Chips place just down the road with Jim and Connie.  Even though I don’t like fish, I ordered fish and chips and to my surprise… I liked it! 

Our new living room!

Me, Sarah, and Britt's bedroom.

We found a jellyfish on King's Beach across the road from our flat.

View of the sunrise from our balcony.

The rest of the group arrived at about 9:30pm.  Jim rented a bus and trailer to pick them up and they came in full force at about 10pm.  It was so exciting to see everyone!  We walked around a little bit and got some cash before the unpacking began.

This morning we woke to hundreds of dolphins swimming in the crashing waves outside our flat.  We all agree that we are the luckiest people alive!  It is another rainy day, but the five of us (flat 6) put on our rain jackets and went to Friends Café for brunch.  We ran into all of the other groups at that mall throughout the morning.  After we ate and used some internet at Friends Café, we went to the grocery store, picked up a few things, bought our first round of South African wine, and headed back to our flat.  Tonight is our first gathering as a whole group.  I am so excited for the adventures to come!

Dolphins!

Pinetown

Monday 1/23/2012 – Wednesday 1/25/12

Today is the day Swazi, Reinhardt and I are going to Pinetown, Marianhill (about halfway between Pietermaritzburg and Durban) for a workshop regarding the development of the Youth Justice and Y-Zone programs!  We plan on leaving at 3 or 4.  We are all so excited to go on this adventure!

We planned to leave at 3, but some unexpected circumstances allowed us to leave around 1.  As of Monday morning, Fish no longer works/lives at the YMCA and I had to say my goodbyes as he is heading elsewhere.  Reinhardt had to stay behind to work security because of Fish’s last-minute departure so Swazi and I went. alone  We took three taxis in order to get to Pinetown, a small quiet town where we stayed in a hotel.  It was located on beautiful grounds and had an outdoor swimming pool surrounded by rolling hills thick with trees.  There are monkeys in the area and many people saw them and took pictures as they crawled on our hotel, but I never did see one of the playful creatures. 

View of the pool from the hotel.

We arrived at the hotel Monday at about 3:30pm.  I am not sure what time the meeting started, but it had obviously been going on for at least a couple of hours.  There were between 20-25 people in the room.  I found out that this event was a national meeting, the purpose being reporting on and developing the Y-Zone and Youth Justice programs.  Many of the members had flown in specifically for this meeting.  There were multiple people from the national office there that I got to meet as well which including Sipho, which was exciting.  I have been hearing about them/emailing/skyping for the past several months so it was great to finally meet some of those people!  A facilitator named Brenda was hired to lead the meetings.  Groups of two from each YMCA were busy working on how to present to the group how their particular Y-Zone and Youth Justice programs work.  The presentations started and when it came time for Pietermaritzburg to present, Swazi motioned for me to go up and present it.  So I went up and represented the Pietermaritzburg YMCA in explaining their programs to the national members.  At the end of the meeting we were told that instead of rooming with the people that we came with, they mixed it all up so that we would get to know people from other YMCAs.  I roomed with Mpume, Sipho’s niece.  She is 20 years old as well and she is working in the national office as a marketing intern.  We became good friends and I am going to stay with her on Tuesday night in Durban before my flight leaves for PE on Wednesday morning.

Sipho and I!

Taking a break from the meeting and walking through the jungle behind the hotel.

The meeting continues.

We were interupted by this huge snail that decided to move through our meeting at its own pace.

My roommate and Sipho's niece, Mpume.

Monday night after the meeting ended a group of people, myself included, piled into the back of a baki and headed to Durban for drinks.  We went to an open-mic restaurant on the beachfront because one of the members, Dina, is a fabulous singer/guitarist so she performed while we sat and enjoyed each other’s company.  We then drove a short distance to the beach front by all of the touristy hotels, took off our shoes, and ran to the Indian Ocean to jump through the waves and take pictures.  The glorious moment I have been waiting for!

Indian Ocean :)  (Thinking of you, Rits & Court!)

Swazi and I on the beachfront with Durban in the background.

Dina playing guitar and singing at the open-mic night. The lights in the background are from the harbor (Dad - you would have liked all of the boats there!)

There were also a few guys that had made some pretty cool sand sculptures:

Piling into the baki with the other youth workers.

Tuesday’s meeting started at 9 and it covered what is needed to run a successful Y-Zone and Youth Justice Program.  Swazi’s tooth ache caused her to not be able to attend most of the day so I took good notes.  We ended around 4 and I spent the next two hours in the pool.  All of our meals were served by the hotel.  Dinner was at 6 and Sipho informed us that the YMCA would pay for us to go out for drinks that night.  So at 8:00 we piled into a baki again and were on the road to Durban.  It was difficult sometimes because everyone else knew Zulu so they would sometimes speak only in Zulu or switch back and forth between English and Zulu so I often could not follow what was going on, but I still enjoyed it.  Even if I do not know what they are saying it is fun to listen to their language because it is so beautiful.  The ride to Durban was about one hour and I’d have to admit – one of my favorite things about traveling through South Africa is simply gazing at the landscape out the window.  Every time I do, I am deeply reminded of how lucky I am to be in Africa and how diverse and beautiful this planet and its people are.  The pictures just don't do it justice.

We were going to go to a fancy club, but many of us were not dressed for the occasion and thought we would be turned away so we went to the casino.  We ordered some drinks and ended up staying until 11 or 12 before heading back to Pinetown.  Mpume and I took a stroll on the sidewalk down by the beach before hopping into her truck and going back.  We got slightly lost on the way back, which is completely normal going from Durban to Pinetown, especially at night. Since people always get lost on this route, it is often blamed on a ghost.  I do not know the whole story, but a good ghost story has everyone on the edge of their seats!  Despite our detour, we beat the baki full of the rest of the group back to the hotel.  We chatted with Ann, the old lady security guard at the hotel, for ten minutes before the baki arrived.

The outside of the casino - what they called a "mini Vegas." haha

Palm trees inside :)

Wednesday morning Brenda was not there, so Sipho wrapped all that we had covered up in the last couple of days.  At 11am Swazi and I took four taxis back to Pietermaritzburg.  Some of our connecting stops were in townships, where I was again stared at.  Swazi leaned over with a slight smile and said, “You see how they are looking at you… you are the first white person some of them have ever seen.”  Our last connection was in downtown Pietermaritzburg, where the sidewalks are full of people and small stands where you can buy pretty much anything from underwear and socks to cell phones.  I bought my first “mealie,” which is plain corn on the cob either boiled or braaied.  I got mine braaied while Swazi got a boiled one.  We scrambled into another taxi with our bags in our laps and waited for it to be completely full of people.  The last person crawled into the taxi and plopped right next to me.  He was a small boy probably about six years old dressed in a school uniform.  I found it odd that he was alone, but I think that is somewhat normal here.  In each taxi, money is passed from person to person until it reaches the driver, who skillfully counts and gets change for everyone while he is driving.  The change is then passed back and distributed among everyone in the taxi. 

My first mealie!

When we finally reached Pietermaritzburg a good two and a half hours later, I asked Swazi why no white people take the taxis.  She said that they do not feel safe because everyone assumes that they have a lot of money.  She reminded me that I should never take one alone.  I thanked her for keeping me safe and being my Zulu mom especially in times like these!  We are both so glad that we got to have a change in our normal schedules and participate in this meeting.  It was good to get out and see more of South Africa!

Swazi, my Zulu mom! She thanks you, Mom, for sharing me.

May I please have s'more?

16-22 January

As I am getting more comfortable and getting used to things here, it was a less hectic week.  I printed some pictures of my visit to Cinderella on Monday for Mbali to take back to the township kids.  The next day she brought back a hand-written letter from some of the kids:

To: Shanna

We greet you in the wonderful name of our lord & savior Jesus Christ, hoping that you are fine.  Thank you very much for the photos you sent to us.  We received them.  We wish we could meet again.  It was really good spending time with you.  We wish you a good journey hoping that you will enjoy it.  Good luck with everything you are wishing for this year.  We can’t wait to see you again.  Please take care of yourself.  We will miss you very very much.  THANK YOU. 

From: Zimkhitha, Alithamsaqa, Abongile and Nolubabalo.

Swazi said we may be able to take an afternoon off and go visit Cinderella once more before my departure for Port Elizabeth so hopefully I’ll get to surprise them.

During the past week I have cooked multiple meals in the YMCA kitchen with Swazi, Lindie, Reinhardt, and Fish.  Last Sunday I tried “pap” for the first time with some beef stew.  Pap is corn that is mashed/ground up in grain-like pieces and it looks and tastes similar to mashed potatoes.  As Swazi showed me, the Zulu way to eat it is without cutlery so we ate with our hands.  We also played a little soccer with the street kids and ate some meals prepared by Rrrrrita (her name is pronounced with a strong roll of the R).

Monday night I had a different sort of experience.  I was hanging out with Fish, who was the on-duty security guard, when Shannon came by not looking so good.  Shannon is a 50-year-old Indian man.  He is the nicest man, but he is extremely frail due to alcoholism.  He was looking quite sick as he was just coming off of a bad streak of drinking so Fish and I helped him to his room where we were joined by one of Shannon’s ex-drug-dealing friends.  Fish ended up calling for an ambulance.  Emergency response is a bit different here.  It took about 45 minutes for the ambulance to get to the YMCA.  When it arrived, a few paramedics strolled into the room at their own pace and asked what was wrong with Shannon.  We asked if they were busy tonight and they said yes, but they acted as if they had all the time in the world.  They took his blood pressure, poked his finger, and asked if he wanted to go to the hospital.  He said no but after about 15 minutes, Fish and I finally convinced him to go.  When Shannon arrived back at the YMCA the next day he explained his awful hospital experience.  He hardly slept at all –they didn’t have enough beds for everyone so there were many people sleeping on the floor.  They put him on a drip and stuck him in a wheelchair for the night.  At one point he fell out of the wheelchair onto the floor and could not get up himself.  No doctor or nurse helped him up – another patient who was on the ground ended up helping him back into the wheelchair.  After hearing this, I am going to try to stay EXTRA healthy!

The two Shannons enjoying an afternoon at the YMCA.

On a lighter note, I got to brainstorm camp games and activities on Tuesday which brought me back to du Nord!  Even though I will not be here to help run the camps, it was so fun being able to bring my du Nord experiences to Pietermaritzburg and imagining the kids enjoying new activities.  I typed up a detailed sheet of all of the name games and other activities that I could think of as well as a schedule and theme for each session, so hopefully those things will be implemented in the upcoming camps.  I also secured a R500 donation for paint from a local hardware store this week so that we can give the main Y-Zone building (the after-school program for teenagers) a makeover.  I am hoping to have this mostly done by the time I leave so I am spending much of my Saturday cleaning out the building getting it ready to paint.  Since I have been here, no Y-Zone kids have shown up yet.  I thought this was unfortunate so I made some posters both for a “Y-Zone Open Day Event,” which is free for everyone and also for the general Y-Zone program.  With the help of the two interns here, we distributed them around some malls in Pietermaritzburg.  I am hoping that some crumpers will show on Friday so that I can meet them and see them perform.  I also made advertisements for renting out the chapel and the sports center because they are great affordable spaces for events but few people know about them.  Reinhardt, Swazi, and I are going to an evaluation training session at Marienhill Monday through Wednesday so we will be staying in a hotel for a few days.  Because of this, I really don’t have much more time here at the Pietermaritzburg YMCA – I can’t believe how fast the time has gone!  I miss the US YMCA family so much and trust that everything is going well.  I’d like to give a HUGE thank you to Skip, Peter, Lisa, Ben, Niki, my parents, and everyone else who has helped to make this whole opportunity possible for me. 

I bought a cheap cell phone this week.  Here, one must buy “airtime” separately, which allows you to call and text message so I loaded it up with R12.  Also Reinhardt and I went to Checkers to pick up a cake, candles, coke, and cream soda and we had an office party for Thys, the CEO because it is his birthday on Saturday.  On our way to the grocery store, we had to slam the breaks for a chicken darting across the road in front of us so we yelled out the window, “Why are you crossing the road?!”  While we were in the office, Swazi showed me pictures of a previous intern eating chicken heads and chicken feet – yep… that’s right.  It is one of Swazi’s favorite dishes and she vowed to cook it for me before I leave.  Looking horrified, I told her I don’t know if I will be able to stomach something like that, but she insisted that I try it. 

After work one day I went out and set up the volleyball net!  It looks great – the grass is freshly cut, there are beautiful mountains and trees in the background, but there is one problem: there are no Blazers here to play with!  In fact, I haven’t been successful in finding anyone to play yet but I told the street kids that I want to teach them volleyball before I leave so we are substituting volleyball for their usual soccer game next week.

When we were setting up the volleyball net, I noticed a ring of rocks with a ton of weeds growing in it.  Those weeds couldn’t hide it – they couldn’t hide from me the fact that it was a fire pit!  Obviously it had not been used in years so the following night I gathered all of the workers who live on site and we had a “marshmallow braai.”  As I mentioned earlier, braai is basically the South African word for barbeque – it means to cook over an open fire.  No one was familiar with the concept of s’mores, so I bought some Marie biscuits (like graham crackers), chocolate, and marshmallows.  Since the fire pit is such a wonderful and open space, I suggested to Swazi that they have a bonfire or marshmallow braai for the teens in the Y-Zone program but she immediately explained that it would not work due to safety constraints.  Since this YMCA includes accommodation, they are not allowed to let people into the YMCA grounds after a certain hour.  It reminded me that there are many limitations that make it particularly difficult to run a YMCA especially here in South Africa. 

All of the essential s'mores ingredients.

Swazi's first s'more!

We got off at 1pm again since it was a Friday.  It was sunny and hot so I spent the afternoon at the pool across the street with Fish.  Though it is still a little weird, I’m getting used to being stared at.   Last night Fish and I were playing cards outside and all of the sudden we heard tires screeching against the pavement.  Fish started laughing as we walked over to the front gate to see what was going on.  He said, "All right just watch - when the light turns green those two two trucks will spin around and drag race."  Sure enough.  Ten seconds later the light turned green and two tow trucks did a U-turn and sped away as fast as they could.  They both had just heard on the radio of an accident in town and whoever got to the scene first would get the business.  On Friday evening, Reinhardt and I went to see the casino and a few other places around town.   Other than that, I have been going to the gym most evenings and reading lots.  Oh! I finally took the braids out too!

Cinderella

1/14/2012

Today I was going to go to the beach in Durban all day, but ended up going to visit Swazi’s friend in a township called Cinderella with Swazi and Lindi (Thys’s sister) instead.  Around noon, we ran across the street to catch a taxi on its way to the inner-city.  The taxis here are not like the ones in the U.S.  Here, taxis are their main mode of public transportation.  They consist of a large van with about five or six rows of seats and they pile as many people as they possibly can into each one.  Seatbelts are not worn and children pile onto the laps of their parents.  Swazi hailed a cab and we squished in to a crowded van with three empty seats.   It was about a five or ten minute ride until we reached our destination of the inner-city, where we proceeded to buy coke and wine to bring to the township.  People here drink coke ALL the time – it is incredibly popular, so we proceeded to buy four liters which the four of us finished by about 6pm.  Next we went to a huge taxi station where we jumped in another taxi and waited for it to be completely full.  I was squeezed into the back corner, my right arm/shoulder sticking out the window because we were so packed in.  We rode another ten minutes or so to the township of Cinderella.  There are lots of townships, each of which has its own name.  Swazi pointed out some rough-looking shacks along the way as well as some nice-looking homes.  She said the nice homes were the Indians’ homes.  Living conditions are still extremely segregated – the biggest populations are townships which consist of blacks and coloreds only, and nice Indian communities. 

Me, Swazi, and Lindi in the back of a taxi.

The huge taxi station - we caught one of these to the township.

Cinderella is located on a mountain and is surrounded by other mountains full of shacks and houses.  One of the first things I noticed when we arrived was the beautiful view - I’m amazed by how far you can see into the distance.  The taxi wouldn’t take us to the particular address we were looking for, so we got out and walked on the gravel road through the town.  Two men drove past us in a car, stopped, and reversed it.  They wanted to meet us, but they were obviously drunk as the driver had a bottle of vodka in his lap so we kept walking.  Children were gasping, pointing, smiling, and waving as we walked and Swazi explained that Lindi and I were, for some of the kids, the first white people they had ever seen because they rarely leave their township, if ever.  The way they are raised in the townships is that whites are superior to blacks and a white person is seen as good luck.  This would explain the staring, curiosity, and amazement in their faces when they laid eyes on us. 

Mbali's house.

We came to a small cement-brick house about the size of a trailer home in the township where we met Swazi’s friend, Mbali, who hosted us for a late lunch.  The house consisted of two small rooms – a kitchen and a bedroom.  We moved the chairs into the bedroom so that she could have some room to cook while we ate some appetizers of samosas, spring rolls, meatballs, and fruit.  Her two-year-old son was taking a nap on the bed so we spoke softly.  After the appetizers, I went outside for a view of the dumping site for all of the nearby townships, which was situated right up against one of the townships.  Mbali explained that people there were sick for many reasons, one being that adults would sift through the garbage and sell expired food items to children in order to make some money.

The dumping site - it looks like a thin stretch in the middle of the photo right up against the township.

A few minutes later, a young boy probably about six years old appeared behind Mbali’s house.  He smiled and waved, took a good look at me, and hopped on over to ask me some questions.  Within a few minutes, more children started coming out of their houses and finding their way over to me.  At first, many of them were obviously curious but didn’t know whether they should come closer or stay back and observe.  However, once they touched my skin they couldn’t stop.  It was not long before I was bombarded with excited children climbing all over me, which is how I spent most of the afternoon.  The types of questions they asked me were: “Do you have a dad? A mom? You have both?! Are you married? Do you have kids? I want to come to America!”  I taught them some games we play at du Nord including elbow tag and Little Sally Walker.  One of the older girls (about fourteen) would translate the rules to Xhosa as I explained them so that the younger kids would understand how to play.  They taught me some phrases in Xhosa as well as some African games.  They loved my hair and were very interested in my eyes and eyebrows.  They also loved taking pictures with my camera and ended up taking a little over 200 photos by the time I unwrapped their little fingers from it.  They would take a picture of me with them and then run and show it to their parents.  They would then run to me and tell me that their parents wanted to meet me so I would go to their house and there would be adults sitting around inside a dark room.  They didn’t know whether to come out and greet me or not – most just smiled and stared as I played with their children.  One man ventured out and gave me the Zulu handshake.

Mid-afternoon I went into Mbali’s house for the meal she had been cooking for the previous few hours.  She LOVES to cook, so everything was homemade.  We had some chicken and cooked vegetables, rice with gravy, and spinach dip.  For dessert we had mauva pudding with custard.  It was so very tasty!  Mbali said that she doesn’t get visitors often because you need to be extremely careful about who you let into your home.  She explained that once you let someone into your home, they know what you have and that can be very dangerous.

Mbali cooking away!

During the time that I was playing with the kids, there were men walking or driving up and down the road selling food items such as corn and fruit.  I asked to take a picture with the corn sellers and they said OK so I went and stood next to one of them for a few seconds while a young one took our picture.  Suddenly the corn selling man who was maybe about 30 years old turned toward my face and started smelling me and grunting – it caught me by surprise so I jumped away… it made for a slightly uncomfortable moment.

To see an American was so exciting for everyone.  People would stare out windows and walk from around the corners and down the street just to get a look at the white visitor.  I felt like a celebrity!  In the townships, they are raised to see whites as superior to themselves and white skin is a sign of good luck.  It got busier in the evening as more people came home from work.  The streets were full of children running around and people socializing – there seemed to be a real sense of community.

In the evening, I peeled the kids off of me and went in Mbali’s house to sip wine with Lindi, Swazi, and Mbali until Mbali’s hairdresser came.  Mbali asked her hairdresser, Khathiwe, to come a little early so that she could see if it was possible to braid my hair the Zulu way.  She came around 19:30 and it was a success!  After a few practice rounds with my “fluffy” hair, she got it down and finished braiding my entire head within a little over an hour. 

During this time, Khathiwe, Mbali, and Swazi spoke of how lucky I am to have hair like I do and all of the work that they need to do in order to get hair like mine.  Mbali said that even though it is expensive, no matter how much money one has, an African woman always needs to have her hair and nails done.  We laughed and they explained that to get a weave sometimes takes up to two 9-hour days of sitting in a salon chair.  We also discussed the weird beliefs that some people have in South Africa.  There have been cases where people have paid 25,000 rand for a rat that they think will go out and retrieve money for them.  When it doesn’t come back, they are flat broke. 

At the end of the night (around 21:00), we called a taxi because public transport stopped at 19:00.  We said our goodbyes and made our way back to the YMCA.