The Cederberg!

One of the advantages to studying abroad with a program (I came with AIFS) is that you usually have trips built into the price. Last weekend we went on a Fri-Sat-Sun trip to The Cederberg. It was fantastic! The week before this trip was an absolute nightmare for me. I had five papers and a test. I had to skip classes in order to complete everything on time... it was bad. So you can imagine how excited I was to escape to the mountains for the weekend. It was about a 3.5 hour drive. We have a little over thirty people in my program so we made a very nice caravan rolling down the road.

We pulled into the place we were staying late Friday afternoon. Before we left I was under the impression we were going to be camping. I've been camping before and I probably wouldn't have classified this as camping. We stayed in some pretty sweet "cabins". (They were more houses than cabins though). Once we got settled we had a very lovely Braai and we got to sit around the fire and just chillax until bed.

The next day was the big hike up to the top of the mountain. I was told this was a very difficult hike and I was exhausted from my week so I opted out. I made the right choice. It sounded like a very difficult hike indeed. I stayed behind and had the whole area to myself. I found myself a slightly less challenging path and headed out on my own. I walked through a valley area with a river and I had mountains and wildflowers all around me. I climbed to the top of a huge rock with my picnic lunch, my journal, my bible, and a book and had myself a very nice afternoon. It was so nice to forget about classes and stress. I'm constantly amazed by the beauty found in creation.



Later in the afternoon I met the rest of the group back at the "camping" area. I tagged along for some cliff jumping. It was a nice 20 minute hike to get to the area we were aiming for so I felt like I got my fill. It was another beautiful area. I decided to skip the cliff jumping as well. Keep in mind it's winter in South Africa right now. The water was FREEZING! I couldn't believe there were people who actually did this. I put my foot in the water and decided I would have died if my whole body were submerged. This picture is obviously not me. This is Bree and she's a dancer... that should explain the toe-touch. Sorry, I still haven't mastered the art of rotating pictures. That night we went back to the campfire and had a very yummy potjie. On our last day everyone was very sad to leave and go back to reality. We took off in the morning and went to see some cave paintings, had another picnic, stopped to sample some world famous wine, and made the trek back to Stellenbosch. A much needed break for sure.


On a side note... spring break is less than a week away!!! We're taking the week to tour the Garden Route. I should have some hectic stories from that trip... think world's largest bungee jump. It seems crazy to think I'm halfway through the semster. That means I'm that much closer to graduating :) but I'm that much closer to leaving South Africa :( It's crazy how fast time has been going!

I guess that's one way to meet the neighbors...

Imagine this situation with me...
It's 1:30am. I'm tired and kinda cranky because I've put my laundry off too long and I need clean clothes for a trip to Cape Town the next morning. I'm just minding my own business and killing time while I wait for the washing cycle to finish so I can load my clothes in the dryer and go to bed.

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH

BANG!!!!! (and not just any bang, it shook the walls)

I had no idea what happened. I thought it might have been thunder by the way the windows rattled but then I remembered they don't have thunder storms here. My roommate ran into my room and asked me the number for 911. (looking back there could have been many jokes about that but at the time it really didn't seem appropriate). She said there was a really bad accident. A third roommate ran into the house and we all looked around for the number. After about ten seconds I grabbed my phone and ran out the door. The the whole time I was running I was trying to remember how to do CPR and praying nobody's life would rely on my skills.

Across the street from my house somebody had driven their car straight through a stop sign, through a front gate, through a yard, through a column, and into a front door. It looked awful. There were bricks all over the yard from where the column had been crushed and the car was almost unrecognizable in the font half. A campus police car was already on the scene and told us that he had already made the appropriate calls. My roommate and I assumed the driver had been killed (since the whole front of his car was completely smashed in)and started freaking out about that. After a few rescue vehicles came and were able to get the door off the guy was able to walk out of the car. He was very drunk and very shaken up but some how he came out with only a bloody mouth. Luckily the since the car hit the column first and hit the front door nobody in the house was hurt either.

After we realized nobody was seriously hurt I got a chance to see the humor in the situation. This was the first time I had a chance to meet most of the neighbors and it was 2 a.m. and everyone was wearing their jammies. It was a good chance to get to know each other and talk about how stupid/lucky the driver was.

The good news is...
-Everyone is ok.(except for the fact that the driver is probably going to be in pretty big trouble)
-Campus police were on the scene within a minute. Ambulance, fire truck, tow truck (x3), police cars, etc. were on the scene within three minutes. The response time for an emergency in my neighborhood is phenomenal.
-Now we all have the emergency numbers programmed into our phones.
-The neighbors all seem to be really nice. (except the lady who makes all of the noise complaints against my house)

Never a dull moment.

BTW. The picture was taken two days after the accident. You can see that everything was mostly cleaned up but the column is being held up by logs instead of... column material

Sokkie?

Let me first start this post by saying I've never been a fan of dances or dancing or anything along those lines. I'm one of those people who go to dances and refuse to dance... yeah, I'm that person. So you can imagine how trilled I was to go to a South African Sokkie. So what is a Sokkie? It's not a term I had ever heard in the U.S. so I'll go ahead and give my best description for my American readers. In my English-Afrikaans dictionary it's simply defined as "An informal dance". That's really all I knew about it before I went.

I've been going to a weekly cell group (small group) as part of the church I've become involved with. It's only been a few weeks and I've come to really love the girls in my cell. We talk about anything and everything and I've picked up on three constants to these meetings; laughing, crying, and coffee. So what does this have to do with Sokkie? Well, every week they're always talking about going to the Sokkie on campus. It's right after cell and they always try to convince me to come. Because I really don't like dancing I've always got an excuse on hand to worm my way out of going. Last night they finally broke me down. My excuse just wasn't fast enough and they found a way in. "No, no, I don't want to stay long either" "I'm probably not going to dance anyways" "It's an important part of the culture here"- this is how they got me. I finally gave in to the Sokkie.

I went home and got ready for my first Sokkie. When I met the girls back at the dance I explained that I was simply there to soak up the culture and then I would try it out the next time I went (because I was sure there would be no next time). Upon walking into the room where they were holding the Sokkie I could tell that it was more than just "An informal dance". I would describe it more as "Swing dancing on crack". It was crazy! Unlike most dances I've been to in the U.S. there were tons of people out dancing (and it was clean). I saw some amazing dancers, it's definitely the most entertaining dance I've ever been to (think flips, twirls, and dips). The girls I was with all had lots of guy friends and it was really fun to watch them all doing there thing. Then, despite my very specific wishes, somebody decided it was a good idea to get one of the guys to ask me to dance. Against my better judgment and after the forceful encouragement of a gaggle of girls, I agreed. I believe my fist words to this specific gentlemen were "I'm sorry this is going to be a train wreck". Luckily he was a really good sport about the whole situation. He was really nice and he would explain things to me so I didn't feel like an idiot. The good news is I was so focused on doing it right that I didn't even think about how stupid I looked. Sadly the extra weight I left in Kenya + lots of twirling and spinning = frequent stops to make sure my pants didn't fall down. It's ok though,it was so much fun! It turns out I don't hate all dancing... I like Sokkie! Praise God that I've found people that can persuade me do things I don't want to do! I'm pretty stubborn so it's no easy task. At the end of the night it was good to be able to say I would go to another one (and actually mean it)!

Infection Control.

This has been a week of safety precautions...

-First of all I'll go into a little detail about my service placement. As part of the curriculum for my service-learning class I spend 6 hours at a site in the community. My assigned location is at a pediatric hospice... When I first heard those two words together I just cried. Something about kids and hospice... it just shouldn't go together. Before my fist visit I knew absolutely nothing about the organization. Apparently it used to simply be a hospice. Period. After parents died as a result of AIDS their orphaned children went to this place so they could be comfortable while they were in the end stages of their own life. Thankfully this isn't quite the case anymore. It's evolved into a really great agency. About 50% of the kids are HIV+, a few others have other terminal illnesses, and the rest were brought in as a result of abuse or neglect or something along those lines. Many of the kids have suffered from severe malnutrition, many have fetal alcohol syndrome, TB, etc. In the last few years they've introduced the HIV+ kids to ARV treatment. From what they tell me it's been very successful and they now have very few deaths (about 10% instead of 100%). With most of the kids you can tell they're sick. I think it's probably a combination of the side effects of the medicines they're on and their weak immune systems. Some of them are tiny, some are really delayed developmentally, many have a constant ear infections, almost all have nasty runny noses, swollen abdomens, some of the worst diapers i've ever seen (and I've seen some nasty ones)... it's hard. They can't tell us much about the kids due to confidentiality but I don't know if I could handle hearing what they've been through so maybe it's better that way.
I go three times a week for two hours each time. For the first hour I simply play in the nursery where they have about 25 kids from birth to two years. During the second hour I go with another student from my university into a smaller room with four of the older children. Our job is to get them stimulated and socially engaged to the point where they can move out of the nursery into the other half of the building with the "big kids". These kids are pretty behind developmentally so this will be a big task... I'm really excited about it though. They're really good kids.
It's interesting to go from working at Daycare facilities in the U.S. where there are millions of safety precautions and very few infected children to South Africa where there are very few safety precautions and many, many infected children. One visit from DCFS and I think the place I'm at now would be shut down forever...

-and apparently I've come to South Africa in the middle of a pandemic... or something. Last week was the first death in South Africa from Swine flu and he happened to be a student at my university... living on my campus. Needless to say there has been a little panic here. One of my roommates has a confirmed case of swine flu (and he's taking it like a baby) and five others have some kind of flu. Luckily they've quit testing for swine flu since treatment is the same no matter what. We have a running tally on our white board to keep track "Swine flu: 6, Pool House: 5". I may be on the loosing team but it least I'm not sick. Don't worry about me I'm taking vitamins and drinking lots of water and washing my hands.

I don't want this to sound like a negative post because it's not... that's just whats going on here. I'm loving South Africa and I'm learning a ton. Even if I get swine flu and can't leave my bed for a month I'll still be happy I'm here. Plus there's some good news..
-As of today the exchange rate is the highest it's been since I've been here. (Yay for the U.S. dollar being worth more!)
-I have a great small group made up of mostly South Africans.
-Tomorrow I get to sleep in later than 7am.
-I had tons of fun with Amanda over the weekend.
-Monday is a federal holiday so there's no class. Happy National Woman's day on Sunday!
-The weather is supposed to be good this weekend :)


Life is good.