I once was lost.....

2/7/11

Sawubona! Unjani? (Hello! How are you?

Well, I have not updated my blog for a while now. I am long overdue for another entry. Things have just been so hectic here over the last week or so that I haven’t had adequate time to sit down and process my experiences, for the world to read. As you can see below, I have begun to upload some pictures of my stay here in South Africa! Do not be alarmed by the bar and lounge photos…I’m not there every day, and those are not representative of my entire stay here. Those pictures are the most recent ones from last weekend when the program had a few days on the town, away from our homestay families. We stayed in a backpacker (hostel) called Tekweni (based on the Zulu name for Durban eThekwini). The lodge had quite a hippie/liberal/carefree college student type atmosphere. It almost felt like college on the beach. My friends and I frequented Cubana, a bar and lounge….it was very nice, inexpensive according to American standards, and it had everything: good food, drinks, and hookah! It was a nice get-a-way considering I have been struggling to get the things that I am used to back home: air conditioning, a hot shower, a table to put my food on, mirrors (so I can shave), ice cubes, and oh yeah, can I say AIR CONDITIONING?

It is incredibly hot here, although I have experienced worse. St. Louis gets pretty hot in the summer, but here it is a different type of hot (I like to call it Africa hot!) I think it is the proximity to the South Pole that is probably making it hot (I’m just postulating, I am not sure) last night though, I could barely sleep. I was lying on the bed (not even in the sheets!) In my boxers completely drenched. I could not find a comfortable position to sleep, and at one point between full consciousness and sleep, I had a semi-dream semi-hallucination. Crazy right?! Wherever I go, there is ABSOLUTELY no A/C (i.e. my homestay house, and the house where we have our classes). Anyway, those are my complaints thus far. It’s just something I have to get used to. Although, I don’t think I will ever come to terms with the lack of trashcans and napkins…..their absence has really made me realize how reliant I was on them…

Back to my weekend travels. We stayed in town, and my friend Esther and I decided to get lost on our way to Victoria Market. Okay…we didn’t intend on getting lost... it just happened, but it was one of the best experiences I had thus far. We first rode a minibus taxi to the Workshop, a shopping center right next to City Hall. There we ate a little Indian place, which has good, cheap food. We then successfully found our way to the Market on the People Mover (We were informed that the People Mover busses were meant for tourists only, not locals... so many locals don’t even know what the bus is for). We made our way to the Market and walked around the block. This is when I felt like I was really in an African urban center. Let me see if I can paint a picture of what I experienced. Let’s start with the smell. Think body odor in heat, add the smell of curry and other spices, ripening fruit from stands, and grills going cooking meat on the side of the street for people to buy. Now imagine the sounds… taxi’s beeping every five seconds to attract potential clients, the sounds of Zulu, Xhosa, and Sutu all with their numerous clicks ricocheting off of one’s ears. Along with that is the continuous soundtrack of African drums, techno, and American pop and traditional African music from multiple radios. Now imagine being on a crowded sidewalk. Established stores on one side, while on the other are street vendors. There are ladies walking around balancing tremendous loads on their heads, and men are handing out pamphlets for Zulu traditional healers. I hope that gives you some Idea of what we experienced. There I found gifts that I will probably take home. I bought a little music maker for 60 rand (about 8 USD). That seemed pretty cheap, but as I was leaving, the shopkeeper was speaking to another, and they both laughed at me…I think I w supposed to haggle the price…eh, either way, I got a deal.

After we left Victoria Market, we walked in the outside spice market a bit more (we saw more traditional healing and hanging chicken carcasses, to name a few of the sights). After looking at how the poor population of RSA lived, we were to meet our friends at gateway Mall, the biggest mall in South Africa. We had a time though! We wanted to find a minibus taxi—they are cheap (4-6 Rand). The only downfall of those taxis is that they drive CRAZY and motor vehicle fatalities are the number 3 cause of death in the country. We spent two hours in the hot sun, walking from taxi bay to taxi bay asking the drivers if they go to Gateway. If they didn’t understand English or our heavily accented Zulu, they pointed us in a different direction, which got us further lost! We found a taxi later in Warwick Junction…a place we were warned NEVER to go because it was so dangerous… needless to say we made it to the mall safely. The mall was incredible and huge! Even bigger than the Pavilion (which if you recall, is bigger than any mall I have seen back home). It was so interesting to go from Victoria Market, where people are there trying to make a few rand a day…to Gateway Mall, the epitome of opulence. That just goes to show, how alarming, how steep the disparities are between the haves and the have-nots.

When I got back to my homestay, my Mama commented “: Ezelle, you lost weight this weekend!” Zulu mama’s are sticklers about their kids… they want them to be FAT, and apparently I wasn’t fat enough anymore. She has given me even bigger helpings of food to put some weight back on my bones.

Well anyway, I think those are all the adventures I will share at the moment. If anything else happens, I will be sure to let you all know. In the meantime, I have bunches of work to take care of!

- Until Next Time!