C5

Last night we had the farewell for our floor. We share the C5 kitchen (even tho I technically live in B). It was heaps of fun. We had cake and the others drank goon! Very classy.

Here are some of the girls i'm really really going to miss!



This is Snarni from Swaziland


This is Noku


This is one of the beautiful Mbali's (flower in Zulu) - (she ran the auction!)


This is the other Mbali with Ali.


I had a bunch of stuff that I have to leave behind, and I was a bit worried about how it would go... but Mbali got really into it and turned the whole thing into this auction! It was the funniest thing ever - the girls got so excited over the craziest things - like highlighters, stick-it-notes and other stationary, then Ali's face wash and things she was leaving behind!


I'm really sad about it all today tho - i'm really really going to miss everyone! And the reality is i'll never see them again! Sigh. Well its been a semester I won't forget!

angle rock

This is angle rock hostel and its AWESOME hamocks - the most comfortable hamocks on earth! I'm really hoping that Dad, being the construction genius that he is, can whip me up one when i get home! I took lots of photos of them so he can do just that!

Ali and I headed out to Angle rock for a long weekend not this weekend but the last. It was so sweet - aside from the fact I was sick for most of it. But it had cable TV so when I felt too crap to do much else I sat and watched lots of movies. It was nice to have access to TV again!

There were also resident pooches who were very cool - made me miss the poodleman even more tho! This dog was crazy, one time I caught him squished up against the wall asleep in the most uncomfortable looking position!


The beach was also very nice - went for several walks along it - I swear the coastline here is EXACTLY like home!


The hostel was really cool - there was random comments graffited onto the walls from past guests, and awesome art work all over the place!
Thought you'd like this one Chrissimo!

And the crazy Hippo!

And I like these ones but can't help but be somewhat irritated by their racist undertones!


Can you believe this one!




This is the view from the deck - pretty swish eh?


Rob - the owners, was REALLY cool! He was so nice and kept offering to go to the chemist for me and stuff! He also really likes cacti!


This is the hostel - like with octagonal rondivilles!


We also had an oven for the first time in 3 months! was very exciting, made roasted butternut! This is me being domestic and cooking stirfry!


This is the mirror that the dogs broke while chasing monkeys!

Valley of 1000 Hills

So a little while ago Molly (sweet lady whose car we rescued) took Ali, Amy and I to Valley of 1000 Hills for the day. It was so much fun. We had lunch together and cake to celebrate Molly's birthday. Then went to Fey Zulu which is this Zulu cultural place. We saw the Zulu show, which was really cool. I actually learnt more too - the cool hats the women wear are like the equivalent to our wedding rings!

Here is us in the hut where they told us about Zulu life.



Here is some of the dancing


This is a Sangoma and her apprentice


we also went to a crocodile farm

It was awesome - the crocs were huge, and I saw anacodas, and a whole range of snakes!

Also Molly is the most amazing lady. Most of the people here, especially the white South Africans, irritiate me sometimes coz these racial slurs just slip out during conversation. But Molly is so open minded, and i mean this in the best way, especially for her age. She has lived through the bullshit racism of Apartheid and the stereotypes the government used yet she is totally unaffected by them. She is also totally tough! She's been taking on her housing estate in a legal battle for the past yeah. She's totally fearless and sticks by her convictions and stuck it to them! They tried to charge her this massive illegitimate bill for accomodation and bullied otehr residents too, when she refused, they tried to evict her! But she sought out legal aid and beat them! I'm really very very impressed with her - I hope we get to meet up again before we go. She's the coolest lady ever!

Ushaka Marine World!

Hey all

Ali and I went to Ushaka Marine World yesterday! It was soo cool, way better than I was expecting! But unfortunately I have no pictures coz after thursday's fun run in with potential mugger I wasn't game to bring it. Which is a shame coz there would have been so MAD photos!

We went to the aquariam first - and I really get your addiction to fish and aquarims Christina - it was soo cool! I saw baby hammerhead sharks Alex - they were so cute! and bigger sharks - black pointers or something, this bottom dwelling shark and other big ones about 3m but they're not that dangerous. And these HUGE turtles, loggerheads and something else... and these jellyfish that glow in the dark, and starfish and an octopus and so many crazy-ass fish! LIke with weird noses and fan flippers and ones which were fluro orange and blue! I had no idea that those colours occured naturally... it was soo cool! I wish I could show you pictures. Oh well.

Then Chrissie, you'd be so jelous, I saw the penguin feeding! They are African Penguins and were pretty funny! I really hope we get to see some in Cape Town - i think we should be able to, not sure when they migrate tho...

Then we saw a dolphin show. Dolphins are way bigger than I thought they were! I was quite shocked. But there were amazing! they are soo smart and i have ethical dilemias about them being in captivity and performing tricks and stuff, but i was still very impressed! they sing and do flips and splash people and can do the hola hoop on their nose! Yes, its incredibly exploitative but dolphins do play in the wild too i guess.

We also say a seal pantomine. Which had humans acting and the seal coming in different bits and pieces - it pushed one of the actors off a 2m drop into the pool, then dived in to the theme song of Baywatch and pulled them out again! It was pretty funny! He/she kissed people, and held his/her flipper oven his/her nose in embarrassment!

So yeah, very touristy but a fun day out! Saw lots of amazing fish I had no idea existed and saw some cool animals! Then had a two hour bubble bath when I got home! Was very nice!

Mugged...

So the weirdest thing happened the day I finished my exams on thursday. The exam went pretty well - and I'm now finished my entire undergraduate degree! That's pretty exciting!

So after my exam myself and Ali went to Victoria St markets which is a bit dodgy but not too bad. To get back to workshop to catch the taxis home we walked along a fairly main street, but not the main drag. When we first got here people told me stories of how people will watch you on your phone then come up to you and really quietly demand your phone or wallet or whatever in really crowded public places during the day. And if you say no and try and make a scene or something they stab you. Very much like that scene on the train in Tsotsie for anyone who saw that AWESOME movie. So the lesson was if anyone ever asks for your phone or whatever, you give it to them. So i'd known this, and I know a guy from Germany got mugged in Workshop a few weeks ago, but he was there after all the outside stalls had shut down and just before it gets dark which i think is just plain stupid. Then there was a news story about a french tourist who was stabbed outside the townhall - right next to workshop in the middle of the day - but I don't know why, like if it was an attempted mugging or whatever, the article didn't say. But in general I thought I was always careful: never answered phone in public downtown, kept only small amount of cash on me and in different places on my person, and was only there during the day when lots of people were around... and figured I should be fine.

So as Ali and I were walking back from Vicotria St markets along a road I thought was fine, I hear something about 'phone' in the background. I just ignored it and kept walking coz i'm so used to hearing hawkers trying to sell you crap. So as it got closer I kept walking and said 'no thanks' figuring someone was trying to sell me a phone. Then all of a sudden from no where this guy cuts me off by jumping in front of me, grabs my hand and says quietly but very seriously 'No I want YOUR phone'. I didn't even think, but for some reason my first reaction was to lie through my teeth and answer 'I don't have a phone'. No idea why i even said that - it was a gut reaction. So he steps across to Ali and I say again without thinking 'No neither of us have a phone, we're only here for a week'. Then I can't exactly remember what happened, but he sort of laughed and said 'look at your sister she's so scared she wants to run away' and I think i said something like 'yes, your scaring the crap out of us' and then it got weird coz he said 'im joking' or something and we kind of almost ran - walking incredibly fast away and he was laughing. So I'm not totally sure what happened. I'm convinced if i gave him my phone he would have taken it, but he also didn't stab me when I didn't - which i'm incredibly grateful for!

Talking to Ali, apparantly he came up behind us and i was like 2 steps ahaed of Ali. He was saying "I just need a phone, I just need a phone" and all i heard was 'phone' so like a ditz i had said 'no thanks' and kept walking. Ali was thinking 'shit what are we going to do' but didn't have time to react before he stopped me. Then she couldn't beleive what I said and told me she kept watching his hands expecting him to pull a knife! So all that makes me think he was for real... i don't know it was all so weird. But it all worked out for the best - i lost neither phone nor wallet and didn't get stabbed! All in all a good day!

PS next time (which hopefully will not happen) I will try and just hand over the phone...

Itala Game Reserve Fieldtrip

I tagged along on this fieldtrip as I thought it looked pretty intersting in relation to my honours next year on community based natural resource management. What I was told by a guy in the class (Andrew brandishing bone above) was that it was a visit to a game reserve run by the community. It turns out that its not really that at all. Ithala was a farm - a massive farm for the most part that was sold back to the government in 1972. The white farmers didn't actually live there but there were local African labour tenants who did and who worked on these farms. You can still see the rememants of their rondivilles which is an odd testimony to their forced removal - they weren't compensated like their white bosses. Eventually years later they won land rights, but for some reason kind of sold/traded them to the game reserve.

Staff at the reserve came and talked to us about their community projects/schemes. There is a development levy, where R2 (less than AUD$0.50) goes into the fund from every day visitor. Residents from the community (200-300 000 people) can apply for funding for projects. The staff proudly drove us nearly 2 hours each way to see the school and health clinic that they had built. And even through my barrage of questions about how the community actually benefit they gave me some pretty convincing answers - for example while they respect 'traditional' representative structures (ie through chiefs) they will accept ideas from anyone (esp women - i asked) in the community. So their rhetoric sounded decent, but we didn't spend enough time to see if they really benefit at all. Oh and they have a policy if a villager or their goat is skilled by a stay lepard or something. If its an 'introduced' species - like the black rhino they bought in to stock the game reserve they will compensate the people (but very little from what I heard) where as if its a 'local' species - lived in the area before the game park, like the lepards for example, they do nothing but get upset if the villagers kill the lepard. And there are no fences, so the lepards can go EVERYWHERE! No one else seemed as concerned as me that the lepards, massive and tempremental black rhino and elephants etc can go whereever - including on roads! And into a nearby game reserve where people can hunt game for a fee - apparantly they're negotiating about what do when someone shoots an animal from the reserve that protects them... another complicated issue.

Anyway, enough of the politics - here are some pretty pictures!

This is where we stayed

One the morning before we left we crammed 16 people into a landrover and headed out to see some rock art. On the way i saw 3 giraffes sitting down! It was awesome i really wanted to see them get back up again! it would have been amusing im' sure.

so as we were coming down from the mountain/hill we saw these black rhino really closeby. Black rhino are really territorial and dangerous apparantly - the white ones won't really bother you but the black ones are quite likely to attack, and they are HUGE! I couldn't belive how small they made the landrover look! So Paul, our tour guide and cook (who made gormet food to DIE FOR!) went down to try and scare them off. He stuck to the trees as rhino apparantly have a bad sense of sight (but good smell) then banged rocks and sticks to try and scare them. It did very little at first but eventually they moved a bit so that the landrover was between Paul and the rhinos, then Paul rather stupidly made a run for it and made it! He drove closer to us and made us kinda run back to the car - he was not impressed that I was taking photos of the rhinos but I think it was fine!


We also saw tortises where were awesome! Zebra, impala and a whole range of impala like animals, guinea fowl, eagles and other birds, waterbuck (which have this awesome perfectly round white circle on their butts - it looks like they sat on a toilet seat that has just been painted), hundreds of warthogs (looking much like Pumba from the Lion King), ostriches, monkeys, baboons, frogs and lizards, a rock dussy and wilderbeast! So i feel my safari is still lacking big cats, but maybe that can be ammended during my travels with the family!



Here are the last of the photos!

WOW!

I know that it's a massive understatment to say that Apartheid was bad - but it really was. This doesn't come as a revelation to me, but has been a bit more personalised recently I guess. As part of my fieldwork for a class I got to speak to people in a 'coloured' community in Wentworth. For those of you who like me didn't know what 'coloured meant', it was basically what we call 'half-caste' in Australia. The children of 'mixed relations' as they call it, are coloured. I know this definately counts for African/White relations but I think it also applies to African/Indian or Indian/White. Basically somehow this is an offical racial class here. Coloured people had to live in coloured areas during apartheid.

So one of the ladies I met was telling us about the community garden she works in in Wentworth (what I was researching) and I think I asked something about whether she learnt about gardening from her family - can't quite remember the context, but I do very distinctly remember her answer. She said she had gardner/farmer blood in her but never knew her parents. I'm bad with dates, but she was born 2 months before the really oppressive legislation that forced the seperation of the 'races' was introduced. So as a two month baby for whatever reason (maybe the colour of her skin, the shape of her lips - something absolutely ridicous and trivial like that) she was classifed as coloured while the rest of her family was not. She was removed and placed in an orphanage where she lived till she was 18. Can you believe that? Insitutions like orphanages are bad enough anywhere in the world - you always hear about the insitutionalised violence, emotional and sexual abuse... it goes on and on. But to be put there when you have a family who was willing to raise you is beyond me. She has been deprived of her family and childhood. I can't even imagine what that must feel like.

One of the others lady's stories was just as uplifting. She was incredibly open about her life - but in a way that almost made me feel WOW had made her an example/case study and wanted her to be so open - but I don't know that for sure. Anyway, back to her story. She was one of several kids from a very poor family. In SA I know now that you will recieve a pidly amount of child support from the government till the kids is 10 years old (coz clearly at that age she/he's no longer dependant!). So when all of the kids in her family passed the age of 10 they literally had no income. There is freakishly high rates of unemployment, its like 40% here in Durban - the third largest city in SA and thats in 2006. And absolutely no unemployment benefits, so people are pretty desperate. Basically this girl was forced to become a prositute to support her family. She was a sex worker for a long time from what I can tell. She now has AIDS - she has quite bad TB and a huge range of other AIDS related health problems. I asked her a question about whether she felt proud of growing her own food in the garden and I think she misunderstood and answered "I'm have no pride, I'm a simple person" or something to that affect in the most downtrodden way I've ever heard anyone talk. It made me sooo sad. Like you know that feeling deep in your stomach like you almost want to be sick? i felt that.

These women had THE most awful circumstances thrust upon them and its ruined their whole lives. I know I should have already worked this out, but I am so grateful for the circumstances I've be fortunate enough to land it. And luck is really all it is. Had I been born in a township here and had no money to go to school and consequently no skills for employment (and I'm talking today in 2006) there is a good chance that prostitution would be a pretty viable option. People know vaguely about HIV but no thinks that long term when you or your family are hungry today. Its such a fucked up situation and its still the same for the most part. I know apartheid is over and for some its improved, but largely its improved for the few who were doing pretty well before. There is still a fairly similar number of people living in absolute poverty here - like literally maybe 1-2km from where I sleep at night. Cato Manor sounds very fancy, but its actually an 'informal settlement' which means everyone there lives in little shanties illegally - no real facilities like sanitation or running water and no legal rights as they are all techniqically squatters. and there is no security in a little shanty from the drunken gangs of men who also live there. I can't even imagine what that must be like.

Drakensburg & Lesotho

I've just had an AMAZING weekend in the Drakensburg mountains. The scenery was breathtaking! It was different to what I was expecting (I thought it would be more like Hogsback) but I think that it was better that way! On the first day we only had an afternoon, so Ali and I went for a walk around near the hostel, it was quite pretty.

Then on the second day we signed up for a 5-6hour hike. I was a bit aprehensive - that sounded like a lot of walking uphill to me! But I'm unbelievably glad we did it, met some cool people - 2 Kiwis, a Dane and a Dutchperson and our guide Simpewai. Plus I did a lot better climbing that I thought I would. Clearly the running has made a bit of a difference! We started at 2500m above sealevel and finised at 3120, so I climbed 500m in about 3 hours! I think that's pretty mad! It was a steady climb for most of it, but the last leg was rock climbing and scrambling up this ravine - it was a lot tougher than I thought it would be! But still heaps of fun. This was the only ladder of the climb.

Me placing my rock on top of the Kairn to signify me conquoring the ravine!

The weather was really good going up - nice and sunny so we got a pretty good view, but at the top it changed really quickly and we got hailed on! Fortunately it didn't get tooo cold - and i had enough warm stuff and my trusty huge raincoat!

This is the start of the second highest waterfall on earth! How mad is that - and I climbed up to the top of it! I was pretty impressed!

On the sunday we did a day trip to Lesotho. It was AWESOME! Lesotho is the country with the highest low point on the planet! Its all mountains, which makes for some breathtaking scenery, as usual it looked better in real life, but this does give you an idea!



We visited the school, heard how it started in a stable of the chief before 1943, when the first building was built. Then in 1976 the kids and teachers built the second building! I can't imagine doing hard labour in primary school! but clearly they did a good job coz its still standing! This is one half of one of the buildings - grade 3 is taught on one side of the room, grade four on the other! Down the other end of the classroom grades 1 and 2 are taught - so basically 4 classes are run simulatenously! This guy was waiting for church, which is also held in the building on Sundays!


Next we climbed up into the hills a bit to see some rock art. I was really sad because the local kids have scrached away and graffitied the paintings, which are 1000s and 1000s of years old! Our guide, Power, was one of the 9 teachers at the local primary school and he told us all about the San people who became the Bushmen in Kilahare and other places today - its too long a story for my blog, but its really really interesting - so let me know if you want the full story!

Some of the local kids followed our group up there, they were very cute!
Everyone in Lesotho wears a blanket! I guess it is soo cold so often it makes sense!

Then we went to a Sangoma. This lady was 72 years old and cured 3-5 people a day, most of the common complaints were headaches, stomach aches, back pain and other minor ailments. You would have loved it Chrissie - given your recent essays on traditional medicine. I asked her how she became a Sangoma. She said in 1968 she became incredibly ill - lost her sight, was partially paralysed and generally not in a good way. She tried local healers and Western doctors but no one could help her. Then in a dream she saw all these people in red, including her grandfather. They were all ancestor Sangomas. They told her she had to see a lady (another Sangoma) and that only this lady could help her. The ancestors had chosen her as a Sangoma. She went to see the lady as instructed and beads were placed on here head (seemingly worn by all Sangomas), slowly she started to get better. She spent 11 years training with this lady and is now one of the most respected Sangomas in the region - people come from all over South Africa and Lesotho to seek her wisdom and some her training. It was soo interesting talking to her (thro a translater), i learned heaps about how Sotho medicine works and the connections to the ancestors. Plus the Sangoma admired my fashion taste! She liked my kneelength skirt! So i was pretty chuffed!

We also tried some local beer (better than Zulu beer, but really kind of sour) and traditional food - also scrumptious! So all in all I had a MAD day! Very exciting! Learned heaps and so amazing things. Plus the area we were in is only visited by the hostel I was staying at, so it is still very much untouched (ie not a tourist trap). So I really appreciated that too - everyone we drove past waved at us and stuff, all very friendly, all the kids wanted photos too (but that is pretty common I guess).

The other 'interesting' aspect of trip was the return home. We spoke to the hostel before we left and they told us not to book anything home, as some of the activities finished later and that they would help us when we got there. As it turns out that was a lie! They made us pay to use their internet and phone to book our tickets home! The guy also told us there was no way we'd make the 5pm bus home, so we tried to book the midnight bus but that coach company kept rejecting Ali's credit card details, so we had to book the 1.45am bus (monday morning). So as it turns out, we reached the pickup point at 4.30pm, so we hoped to get the 5pm bus home. It turns out every bus company except for ours stops at a different point, and of course our company has no 5pm service. So we sat waiting for an hour and half for a bus that never came then did the rounds of the fast food places at the stop. Starting with Wimpy, where we ate dinner. And Chrissie and Roz I watched the South African Survivor (silently) in Panama! We decided to try and hitchhike home rather than wait the full 9 hours, so randomly started asking the nice looking couples at Wimpy, but everyone was going to Jberg! Eventually the manager asked if he could help us (potentially worried we were harrassing his customers...), he was very sympathetic and rang the hotel at the stop to ask if we could have a cheap room till our bus came, but we decided what they were asking was too expensive. Then at 8pm when Wimpy closed we migrated to Nando's. We also made friends with the manager there - he invited us back to his house to wait for the bus, I felt a little uneasy about that so in the end we didn't go. We played cards in Nando's till about 11.15 when all the staff eventually went home. Then we moved again over to the 24 hour takeaway Wimpy were we hung out with the ladies working there watch Exectutive Decision and Smallvile! It was pretty fun. And the bus came 1 hour early, but didn't have our names on the list! Apparantly they a.) don't usually even stop at our stop unless its marked to pick someone up (and we weren't on the list) and b.) they usually totally fill the bus with standby travellers in Jberg so there are usually no seats! Clearly the travel gods were smiling on us coz they let us on board anyway and we had a seat each (tho not together). And we continued on uneventfuly till Durban (arrived 4.30am ish). There were no cabs there at the station and when we asked the driver for directions he conned the other driver into driving us home! So that was nice! So i've had a total of 3 hours sleep today 5am - 8am, then i got up and went to WOW. I'm actually feeling pretty good! The weekend was totally worth it! I've been to the higest country on earth! And into Free State province, where previously the only thing i'd heard about was it was an area with lots of Afrikaans who still enjoy going out and shooting bb guns at the 'kaffirs' for fun!