**Here's the details from traveling & everything...settle in, it's a long one. Some of it's from while I was traveling and some's from today. :)
TRAVELING DAY ONE: Wow. So I don’t really know where to start. It’s only day 1, not even to South Africa yet, and I already have a lot to say. So, as we know, I made it to Atlanta. Right before getting on that flight I was pretty much a wreck. I must have told Ivan it was the last time I’d talk to him like 3 different times. I texted him and waited for a response, didn’t get one, so I texted Jeff and made him tell Ivan to give me something before I had to turn off the phone. I literally didn’t want to put the phone down because it was like my last connection you know? So I cried a little when I was settling into the plane and then it started filling up so I had to buck up. The guy next to me was Travis, an American who lives in Cape Town, has lived there for 2 years. For whatever reason that was a huge comfort to me. Someone who knew both sides, rather than a South African who didn’t understand the U.S. you know? So anyway, he just told me not to go out alone at night (duh) and avoid taxi’s. (Apparently they are run by Nigerian’s and it’s this huge crime circle or something), be careful with the food—just common sense, if the restaurant looks questionable, don’t go in because they may not be following the rules (cleaning and cooking food right). So that was the gist of our talking. Other than he likes SA better than the US because he feels people are nicer, more connected, more caring etc.
The flight itself, all 9 hours, really wasn’t that bad. I watched “27 Dresses” and “Mad Money,” listened to music, read magazines, watched TV shows, had dinner (cheese pasta…yum). Then we landed in Dakar. My first disappointment came when I learned we couldn’t get off the plane. (There was a 2 hour layover scheduled and I thought we could get off). Nope. We had to sit tight, I took my next Dramamine and fell asleep. Four hours later we were still sitting on the plane. Apparently there’s a mechanical error. They tried to fix it….but here I sit in Senegal nearly 12 hours later! So what happened was we sat on the plane for awhile (about 12 hours total at this point!!), got onto a shuttle bus, moved into the airport for about an hour, then got on a bus for 2 hours to a resort, where I sit now! Now, the resort itself is beautiful…wonderful beachfront view of the Atlantic, an oasis really of green and birds chirping. Downside…can’t drink the water in the room, sharing a room with a stranger (although she’s very nice, from South Africa but lives in San Diego now), there is no internet access (GASP!), no phones, no TV…I can’t even plug my computer in to watch my own DVD’s because there’s different outlets.
Delta was so kind as to pay for us each to make phone calls for 10 minutes. I called Ivan 3 times with no answer…which just made me cry. All I wanted was to hear his voice. But he’s sleeping. So then I called my mom to let her know what the deal is and to please call Ivan and tell him!! So now I’m trying to pass the time typing this all up, without totally killing my battery.
So, I’m not upset about all of this really. Obviously it would be nice to just get where I’m going but this “little” detour has already been quite an experience and an education.
Let me just say, as we exited the shuttle, Travis (the American in Cape Town, who travels a lot), says, “The airport in Baghdad is nicer than this.” Great. The next 2 hours of that bus to the resort were nuts. First of all, every building just looks like it’s abandoned, but it’s not. People live and work in it, although I’m sure some of them are abandoned. Everywhere is just littered with garbage, TONS of it. There’s just broken up concrete piled up here and there. Women really are walking around with buckets of water on their heads. People are shoeless. Some are wearing traditional African wear, others dress just like you and me. There are no lines on the roads, it’s just drive wherever you need to get where you’re going. There are tent like things set up with metal roofs with everyone selling the same things. There are just people everywhere. Just walking the streets, even on the freeway, just walking along it. Vans and trucks are filled with people and then there’s more hanging off the back of the truck. It’s everything you’ve seen In movies. My roomie, Yael (the South African who now lives in San Diego) asked me as we were driving through if I was shocked by seeing it…I said yes and no…yes because it’s shocking to see it really is what you’ve seen and imagined. In the midst of cars there are horses, donkeys, and goats either pulling something or just wandering around. This goes on for nearly 2 hours until we magically, finally, arrive at the resort. Which by the way, the humidity is ridiculous. I took a shower, stepped outside, and literally needed to shower again. You know the movies that take place in Africa and everyone is always sweating in them…it’s no joke. Anyway, gotta go. Thinking I’ll nap now since I’ve been up for about 30 hours, minus a couple cat naps .
TRAVELING DAY #2: Ok, so I’m finally here (Cape Town) but there is already so much to say that I’m just going to write on this same blog, and get everything down because details I knew I wanted to write are already slipping from me.
So, after my wonderful nap at the resort it was time for dinner, which I didn’t really eat because I’m terrified of the food! Yael has told me the fruit and veggies are the best here but I am waiting a week or 2 for my vaccines to kick in before I eat the fruit. At dinner I met LaQueisha, who is from New Orleans but traveling to Durban, SA on business. She’s been through Katrina and the whole bit. Very nice girl. Obviously I ate with Yael too. She and her husband (also South African) have now lived in the U.S for 16 years. She is a preschool director and has two kids, is super funny, nice & helpful. She is flying in for her sister’s wedding, and she gave me her mom’s & sister’s phone numbers in Johannesburg (Jo-burg as they call it) in case I need them for anything while I’m here. I also met Bernecie, who is from Atlanta but has been working in Zambia for the past 3 years. Her time in Zambia is almost done and will return to the states. She was a great contact to meet—she works for the CDC (Center for Disease Control) on the Global AIDS program. I debate about going into working internationally, so exchanging info with her was awesome. She is the director of the program in Zambia. She was also nice and super helpful. So, we “eat” dinner and then settle in to watch a cabaret show that the people who just served us dinner will now be acting, singing, and dancing for us!! Let me just say this was one of the cheesiest things I’ve ever witnessed. I didn’t know whether I should feel bad for them that they had to do this, or if they really thought it was entertaining or what. To top it off, it was in French. So we couldn’t even laugh at any of the jokes or anything. But while sitting there we met two more girls, Grace from Atlanta who’s on a 2 week missionary trip and Amanda, a first year med student coming to do med student stuff in a clinic somewhere. They too were nice and fun. We all exchanged email addresses so hopefully I’ll get pictures from that night from Grace. We just sat around talking until almost midnight. Then we headed back to the room—which by the way, they were actually more like individual huts, not rooms- and they had two tiny beds in them, two lamps, a bench, and a bathroom. So we showered again, and then had to meet our buses at 1:00 a.m. We head to the buses, which was a weird ordeal anyway—they were trying to organize it too much and it was chaos. Keep in mind, their speaking French and VERY broken English, so it was nuts. Finally we leave for the airport. About 30 minutes in all the buses pull over and we sit…there are locals venturing towards the buses and it’s 2 a.m.! A French man on our bus starts yelling at the driver that we’re not stopping here, keep moving! Turns out someone on another bus had left something at the resort so they stopped. Our bus ended up moving again (Thank God). So we get to the airport, go through “security” (the thing would beep as we walked through and the guy was just sitting there reading a magazine not even paying attention!) Anyway, then we sit at the airport for 2.5 hours before we start boarding again. To do this we go through security again, this time they open our bags, search through everything, take our water, and all but pat us down! In the airport I met Izzy, a guy from Cape Town on business in Houston, who assures me to stick with him when we land and he will take care of everything. So, we get on the plane and at this point, the 8 hours is nothing compared to all that’s happened, and I’m happy to sit on a plane that’s at least getting me somewhere!
Finally, we’re in Jo-Burg. I go through customs, get my luggage, find Izzy, and away we go. About 10 minutes to walk to the domestic side of the airport where, luckily, the South African Airways ticket lady was super nice and felt for us. She fixed everything and booked us on the first flight (about 30 minutes off). Then the baggage men were telling me my bag was too big…oops…but Izzy explained our situation and they took it! When we got to our gate there was a 30 minute delay. So I was FINALLY able to get online and email Ivan & mom. AHHH! Connected again! I wanted to call Ivan but I figured I’d just start crying from relief so it was easier not to. Email was enough.
So then a 2 hour flight to Cape Town, get my bags, walk out and see my driver, Keenan, holding the AVIVA sign. Hallelujah!
FIRST NIGHT IN CAPE TOWN 6/9: Ok, so, Keenan drives me the 30 minutes to Table View, the suburb of Cape Town where I will be staying. We get to the house and it’s exactly as the pictures showed it (yay! You know you always hope things will be how they appear). So Keenan shows me around a bit and let’s me know that Megan, the volunteer coordinator, will be going over everything tomorrow. I met a mother and daughter who were still up (at this point it’s about 1 a.m. here by the way). They are nice. The mother, Debbie, is just here for the week with her daughter, Heather, and then will be heading home. They are from New York, but Heather goes to college in Colorado. So I finally got to use the phone and called Ivan & Mom. Connected again! Yay! Now that I can be in contact anytime I want to everything is totally fine. I don’t even feel that far way, aside from the time difference.
FIRST DAY IN CAPE TOWN 6/10: So I went to bed about 2 a.m. I am in a room that is upstairs and right now there’s only one other roommate, Kathleen, who is from Boston but goes to college in upstate New York. She also will be working at Home of Hope with me. So, I got up about 7:45 (although I could have slept all day probably, I just wanted to get on their time as quickly as possible). Today was our cultural tour. So it was me, Kathleen (who’s been here for 4 weeks already), Heather & Debbie, and then we picked up 3 girls (Jennifer—Texas—she’s a teacher, Sheena—from London, and Courtney—from Canada), who all live in the other volunteer house in a different area.
So, Ursula was our driver (She and Keenan take us where we need to go all the time and are our guides as well). She was born & raised in Cape Town. First we went to “District 6,” which is a place that was really affected by apartheid. (Let me back up, I don’t know how much you all know about South Africa’s history regarding government and race and all of that—apartheid is basically when new government took over and separated Whites/Coloreds (yes that’s what they’re called, any non-white, but not black), and then blacks. Apartheid only ended in like 1994). Ok, so in district 6 there were all groups of people living. When apartheid started (I think in the 60’s) they came in and knocked down all the buildings where the coloreds/blacks were living. It was now white only. The people were moved to what are now townships. So today we went to several different townships. Some we just drove through, some we stopped. I’ll try to give you a visual. Just imagine shack after shack with hardly any space between, made of wood and covering in tin. They look like the size of our porches or bathrooms or big closets. There’s no running water, no electricity unless they’ve wired it themselves into their houses from the electric poles, and they use outhouses. On top of that, just add garbage everywhere. That’s the best I can do to explain at the mo, but there’s much more to it…I’ll send pictures sometime in the next week. We stopped in one at the community center. The government built the center but it’s now up to the people to keep it going. They go here to make crafts, learn simple trades, and do things like this to make money and keep the kids out of the streets. There a million things I wanted to buy so I didn’t buy anything! That’s the problem here. There’s so many people you want to help and so many things you want to take with you that you don’t know what to do. I could give away every penny if I wasn’t careful. So while we were there a couple of the men wanted to put on a short play for us. It was about them getting to vote for the first time and how happy they were. They were good actors by the way. and were so happy to share their experience with us. After this we kept driving through more townships, stopping at a “healing doctor” in one (yes, kinda like a witch doctor, although it’s funny because he was wearing regular ‘American’ clothes, but had a headdress on, haha). We walk into this building and it’s totally dark with dead animals, skeletons, and deer legs hanging from the ceiling….and plants just piled everywhere. I did get a pic with him—will come soon. It was interesting. Then we grabbed some lunch and went to Ursula’s house to eat it. After that she dropped myself, Debbie & Heather at the mall so we could get some groceries. Then it was a 10 minute walk home and here I sit! I needed to write this all and get organized before I could feel settled.
Oh oh oh, one more thing. We stopped at “Vicky’s Bed’n’Breakfast,” the smallest Bed & Breakfast in South Africa. She is in one of the townships---with the wooden walls & covered in tin---we went in and talked to her for a bit. Got to look around too. Oddly enough, inside the ‘house’ was pretty cozy, if you get used to the tin rattling around. Then we walked across the street to “Beauty’s Bed & Breakfast.” She was inspired by Vicky to start hers, as Vicky is very well respected in the community and does a lot of good work for everyone, and she didn’t want to disappoint Vicky so she started the B&B. However, her passion is sewing J She sews clothes to sell, and teaches other women & children to sew so they can make money for themselves. She’s also HIV positive, and has multiple medications to take a day, although they are free and provided by the clinic. At Vicky’s & Beauty’s they have boxes sitting out for donations, and at the community center too. See how you could go broke? You want to help everyone. We also went to “Gloria’s Kindergarten.” She takes in all these kids for only 50 Rand a month (which is roughly like $6), she feeds them, cares for them, and teaches them. This place I did drop some money, I had 20Rand in my pocket and have that to them. These kids were sooo cute! It was naptime when we saw them, although they weren’t asleep yet, so they were giggling, waving, and posing for the camera—then grabbing it from your hand to see their picture! This building too was the wood & tin kind and small. It had 3 rooms and a kitchen. Each of the rooms where about the size of my bedroom I’d say (12x12ish), and in one there were 35 kids lying on the floor! Another room, smaller than that, had about 15-20 kids I think. What’s crazy, is that this is a GOOD option for the kids. You know? Ursula told us if we want we can go stay at Vicky’s for a day or two and volunteer at Gloria’s if we’d like. I might. I dunno. It would definitely be interesting to stay in a township. Ursula assured us we’d all be safe with Vicky though since she’s so highly regarded in the community.
Whew. So that’s pretty much everything so far. Around 6 p.m. all the volunteers strolled in from their projects—some from Home of Hope, and some from working with the penguins. They’re all making their dinners and everything. Everyone seems really nice, the house is nice, and comfortable. So that’s all for now. We’re all caught up. I start working tomorrow, so they’re will be a post coming about Home of Hope!!
Bye!
