Township Tour and Robben Island

For our last full day in Cape Town, we had set up aTownship Tour and ferry trip to Robben Island. The driver, Titus, picked us up at the hostel a bit before 9. I noticed that his name is the same as the gorilla group that we tracked in Rwanda, haha. We asked him if our first stop could be the District Six museum. District Six was a neighborhood in Cape Town where prior to the 50s (and the harshest apartheid legislation), blacks, whites, and coloureds had lived together peacefully and the community had been vibrant with the arts in particular. But it was one of the last neighborhoods to be subjected to relocations. This meant that all the blacks, coloureds, and Indians had to leave the area, and were relocated to townships in the "cape flats" - clearly a much less desirable neighborhood than in Cape Town itself. Once they got them out, the apartheid government bulldozed all of the houses, apartment buildings, etc where the black people had lived. The only thing they didn't destroy was churches, since they felt only a communist would destroy a church, and even though they hated black people, I guess they thought god wouldn't punish them if they left the churches.

The District Six museum is actually in an old church in the area. It portrays the artsy history of the area, complete with people's stories and profiles of community members, what their lives were like before and after relocation. It was really interesting to learn that after the apartheid government fell, there was a "take back District Six" movement, where former residents reclaimed their old properties and started to move back into the neighborhood.

Driving through the district on our way to the townships, you could see just empty spaces...with a church in the middle of a field. Titus said that the churches used to be surrounded with homes and schools, but that they had all been knocked down when the people were relocated. We drove about 15 minutes to Langa, which is the first and oldest township. It is currently home to about 250,000 people and has one health center. Driving in we saw the skeleton of a police station that people had burned during freedom riots (we later saw the current police station as well). We stopped near some run-down looking apartment buildings, where we were introduced to our local guide, Yandisa. He was a good-looking 27 year old guy who was born and raised in Langa (I was instantly in love, ask Sam). He first showed us the bottom of the line living conditions. It was a room about the size of a Village C dorm room (small) - containing 3 beds, and was home to 13 people! The three beds were just single beds, with the people's stuff all piled on top. Yandisa said that 2 people's share each bed, and then the kids sleep on the floor in the main room (a common area shared by the 4 rooms like the one we saw in the complex. ). It was just staggering to see. Yandisa said that things were actually better for them BEFORE - under apartheid. The first room we saw cost about 20 rand a month per family - less than $3. Next we went to a small apartment, that you had to go up exterior steps to reach. It was a small 2 bedroom apartment, with the cutest little boy ever who was playing air guitar like a rock star! The kitchen was very old looking, with a small electric burner. Each unit has a little box where they turn the electric on and off so they can monitor exactly how much power they are using (and so how much they have to pay for). 7 people lived in this particular apartment, which seemed to be about the norm.

Next Yandisa took us to a kindergarten, where the kids sang and danced for us. They were so super cute. One little girl was playing the drum, and she was really good, and looked so intense while she was playing, it was kind of funny. Sam took a bunch of videos of them as well.


Yandisa encouraging the kids, while they sang South Africa's national anthem in two different languages. They were just adorable.

We then went for a walk to where the shacks are - this is what we would call slums in East Africa. We stopped at one where they were selling crafts and Sam bought a really cute little painting, with raised up buildings made out of soda cans. Inside the shacks:


When it rains, they have to be super careful because the roofs leak (see how they're not exactly solid/substantial) and it can get dangerous when they use the electricity. Any shacks that were built after 2006 technically aren't allowed to be there, so the government comes through and spray paints a blue x on any that they determine to have been built after 2006. So some of the more clever Langa residents have painted their shacks blue so that when they put the x on it, you can't tell:


Clever stuff. Just seeing these townships after our week in basically luxury in Cape Town was like a rude awakening. It's insane to me that people live like this in the post apartheid era. Things were supposed to get better for the Africans in south Africa - but it seems like conditions haven't really changed much in the last 50 years or so since people were relocated to the townships. We walked by a house that Yandisa said is his favorite. It's an actual single family house on a corner, painted yellow, with an impeccably kept garden. He said it makes him sad the the younger people don't keep their gardens anymore, but this house is owned by an old lady who he said is always outside weeding and gardening - we actually saw her as we passed by. S there are single family homes there, just super close together with very little yard space or space in between the houses - like row houses except they don't actually touch, basically. These are about 300 R/month - like $40.

When we left Langa, we drove through Nyanga, another township. Pretty much the same kind of set up - and there are TONs of these townships, all out in the cape flats to the east of the city. The slums/shacks around the townships are continually growing as people move from other parts of South Africa to Cape Town and can't afford to live in the city, so they just set up a shack on the edge of a township and that's home. The disparity in Cape Town is incredible - East Africa is just, everyone is poor, so the slums and shacks are just part of the landscape almost. The rich of East Africa are very few and far between, and they're not Western-rich. The rich in South Africa, are like rich people in the US, and the poor are like the poor of East Africa, so the contrast, like on the N2, the major highway into Cape Town that goes though many of these townships, is just startlingly unimaginable.

We arrived at the V&A waterfront and Titus picked up our tickets for us for the Robben Island ferry. We grabbed a quick lunch after he left us there, and then were on the 1 o'clock ferry to Robben Island. Once you arrive on the island, they put everyone on buses for the tour. The tour guide on the bus is a former political prisoner. Ours was a great guide, he asked what countries everyone was from, and as he gave the tour, managed to work in a tidbit about that country. We stopped at an overlook where you could look out to Cape Town, and see Signal Hill, Lion's Head, and Table Mountain.


We also drove by the lime quarry, which was where Nelson Mandela and the other political prisoners worked on the island. Limestone is very white and bright in the sun, and they weren't allowed to wear sunglasses for I think the first 7 or so years that they worked in the quarry, and many of the men suffered partial or complete blindness as a result.



The lime quarry. The political prisoners also used this as a place to stage some of their protests. They would work slowly to prove a point, they would use it as time to communicate amongst each other and to learn from each other, as many of the prisoners sought degrees via correspondence courses with London universities while they were at Robben Island. Next the bus stopped just outside of the actual prison, and there a new guide met us and we went inside. First we went into the F block of the prison, which was where our guide had been imprisoned. It's a fairly large cell, but it housed 60 men. Today there are not only bars on the windows, but glass, too. When the prisoners were here there was no glass and they had minimal blankets. It gets pretty cold in Cape Town, especially out on Robben Island when the wind picks up, which is most of the time. F block was where the political prisoners were who weren't as "important" - so not the guys like Mandela and Soweto. They were kept in the B block, where they each had their own cell, so as to minimize communication between the prisoners. We saw the B block courtyard, where Mandela did his exercises, and where they chopped up pieces of rock into finer gravel. There was also a famous picture of Nelson Mandela in the courtyard where he's wearing a nice outfit with a jacket - the guards gave them nicer clothes for the day the Red Cross was coming to visit. The African prisoners had to wear short pants which Mandela in particular took offense to, and so he led a series of hunger strikes, slow work strikes, and other methods to show their dissatisfaction. The we went inside and we got to see Mandela's cell, B7:


They said it was 2 meters by 3 meters. So tiny to spend 18 years in.

Then we walked back to the boat dock and took the ferry back to the waterfront. We walked back to the hostel along the Sea Point Promemade, past the Mouille Point Lighthouse:


We got back to the hostel and started getting out stuff sort of packed up so we wouldn't have to pack in the morning. We had an 8:30 dinner reservation at Quay Four on the waterfront, but we got down there a little early so that we could ride the ferris wheel (finally). What a bummer, it wasn't working when we got there! Or wasn't running, but whatever. Either way, it's like the sketchiest ferris wheel ever, since we kept trying to ride it and never could! Infuriating. Our dinner was really nice (started off with sushi for each of us, then I had a sesame crusted rare tuna steak, uhhhhmazing). We had a very nice time, including a table overlooking the harbor. Pretty sweet.

Returned to the hostel, and we hung out for a while with our trusty Brazilian bartenders, Renan and Jose. Overall a very enjoyable time for our last night in Cape Town. In the morning, Sam left a bit before me, singer her flight was a few hours before mine. I took a taxi to the city center and then the shuttle to the airport. Flight to Jo'burg went fine, and t the airport I had a steak (obviously had to spend the last of my South African rand!) and my last Savannah Dry (kind of like a cider that they had there, really good). Then it was time for my EPIC 18 hour flight back to DC. I watched The Vow (awful, the only reason I don't totally regret this is because it was that long of a flight), Pleasantville (an always enjoyable classic), The Shawshank Redemption (first time seeing it, very much worth it), and Valentine's Day (had seen bits and pieces of it, but never all the way thru, it's trying too hard to be like Love Actually, but it was just ok). Got home and Gary picked me up as planned, so all worked out.

I'll try to get it together enough to write a final reflection... But if not, it's been real.

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FINS to the left...

The driver for shark diving picked us up, as promised, at 6:45 am. I had foolishly taken my malaria pill without food (they'd be serving us breakfast when we arrived in Gansbaai) so on the ride there I felt kind of sick. We arrived at the shark place where they had breakfast all ready for us, which was really good. I noted the pictures of brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Leonardo DiCaprio (along with Halle Berry, Anderson Cooper, and other celebs) who have done the shark diving there. I think Matt Damon must have done it right after the shooting for Invictus wrapped (said he did it in March of 2009). Anyway, we walked down to the boat, the Baracuda. On the boat we were told they had clean towels, a toilet, and even soft drinks and sandwiches for us. We headed out. Also on the boat with us was a father and son from New Zealand, a German girl studying abroad in Stellenbosch, and a rather large dude with a tourist guide. They filled us in on the key info, that we'd get our wetsuits on out on the water, and how to behave in the cage. They stressed heavily that when the tell you "down!" you have to go down, or it could somehow be dangerous. Also that it's key that everyone go down into the cage at once or it could scare the shark away.

We arrived at "Shark Alley", where there are rocks with about 50,000-60,000 seals - aka 50,000 reasons that you may see a shark on the trip. The seals were so cute! Very fun to see them. Then the crew starting throwing fish chum (like liquified wasted parts of fish bodies) to attract the sharks, as well as a tuna fish head attached to a small floating buoy that they'd throw out on a rope and the pull back in when a shark came over. Right away we started seeing lots of great white sharks all around us in the water. Then they gave everyone wetsuits and we out them on. Sam and I at first thought we had to wear the hoods on the wetsuits which made us both pretty claustrophobic. Add to this that the boat was rocking like crazy and I was feeling pretty seasick (I was surprised by this since I've been on/around boas my whole life and had never felt even remotely seasick before. So I was pretty glad when the time came to get in the water - I was the first one in the cage!

The cage holds 7 people at once, so all 6 of us fit in it at once. There is a bar wrapped in yellow rope that you kneel on just below the water level, and you rest your butt back against these gray floats they have along the back of the cage to keep it floating alongside the boat. Then when they yell "down!" you use your hands to push down and then you stand on the bottom of the cage and look up toward the surface to see the shark go by. They put kind of like a huge necklace of weights over your shoulders so that you can stay down easily for long enough, usually about 7-8 seconds. The first shark we saw from the cage was just terrifying, but then I realized that they really couldn't care less about the people in the cage. They are totally focused on that tuna fish head and the fish chum in the water, taunting them. Now this didn't mean that I was going to be sticking any limbs outside of the cage, in fact they very seriously warned us against doing this, because you could easily lose a limb, after all. Me in the cage:



They had waterproof cameras you could rent for R300 (in the neighborhood of $50). So I got one and took pictures, but then decided not to actually get/pay for the pictures, if you decide not to take the pictures then the. Don't charge you, so since we got pretty good pics above the surface, and the underwater ones weren't so super we decided to skip it.

The shark diving is soooo cool. Great Whites are literally in arms length distance from you. If you had the guts/stupidity to stick out a hand to pet them, you could, assuming they didn't take your hand for a snack.


Sam got out of the cage before I did since she felt so claustrophobic in her wetsuit (understandably so). So she took pics of the sharks I was seeing underwater, from the boat. I basically stayed in the water until they made us get out, partially because the sharks are awesome (my life is like shark week!) and partially since I knew if I got back in the boat I'd feel super seasick again.


Cool. Me and Sam in our "triumphant post-shark dive wetsuit picture":



We got back to the place (after the son from NZ puked over the side of the boat - they told us to focus on the horizon and have a Stoney ginger beer if we felt sick. I did use this method but it was definitely imperfect) where they had hot soup and bread for us (Sam and I totally were so into the sharks/I was so sick that we completely forgot about the sandwiches on the boat!). Then they showed us the video, which was pretty hilarious. We decided to skip that too, since they said its fixed so you can't make copies and at over $50 each that seemed ridiculous.

Then the dude drove us back to Green Point, but we had to drop the German girl off in Stellenbosch and this weird borderline creepy woman (probably a cousin of the creeper woman with red hair at our hostel, Sam will be the only one to truly appreciate this reference), so we ended up not having time to get to the botanical gardens after the way we had hoped. Instead we cruised down to the Sea Point Promenade for the sunset... But it was super foggy so we really didn't et a good sunset at all! We had dinner at Sotano, a Mediterranean place in Mouille Point by the lighthouse there on Beach Road. Very nice. Then we hung out with Jose (one of our two favorite Brazilian bartenders) at the bar while we wrote some postcards (including one to the Tombs!)

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Table Mountain, Wine, and CHEETAHS!

Sunday morning, we woke up with the plan to take on Table Mountain and the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. But Sam wasn't feeling well (stomach bug stuff) so we decided just to kind of take it easy. As we were driving toward Table Mountain, we saw the sign for Signal Hill. In our guidebook it said that you should go and watch the sunset from Signal Hill, but since the car was due back at 4 that day, so we wouldn't have been able to drive up for sunset... and based on the drive up it seemed like it would have been a pretty long walk just for a sunset. But at the top of the hill we had some great views, of Cape Town city center, city bowl, and all of the Atlantic seaboard, Green point (where the Green Point stadium, and our hostel, A Sunflower Stop are located), Sea Point, Muille Point, and all the way down to Camps Bay. We could also see Lion's Head (a sweet mountain thats kind of adjacent to Signal Hill) and Table Mountain.


Me with Table Mountain in the background. Pretty sweet view.



With the Atlantic suburbs behind me. (kind of our neighborhood, including Sea Point). After we drove down from Signal Hill, Sam was feeling really rotten by then. So we headed to Table Mountain but decided to nix the hike. This turned out to be a really good decision since 1. Sam was feeling bad, and 2. on the way up when we saw the sheer rock faces, we realized that maybe we weren't quite "fit" enough to scale a rock wall. We drove to the lower cableway station, from where you take the cable car up Table Mountain. The cable car takes 10 minutes to ascend and the floor inside the car rotates as you go, so you continually get different views as you go up. It holds 65 people, so its a bit bigger than the gondola at Snowbird (Rich will appreciate that reference). Up at the top, Table Mountain is FLAT. Its well known for this all around the world since its very unique. There are all these hiking trails up there (really walking trails). We did one of the shorter ones since Sam wasn't feeling so good. The views were UHHHMAZING.


Cable car descending. Obviously Visa is a proud sponsor.


View of Lion's Head (left) and Signal Hill from Top of Table Mountain. We decided to come down before Sam died of stomach pain... so we rode the cable car down and then I got directions from a taxi driver to take Sam to the Mediclinic, which is like a chain of hospitals in Cape Town. So they did some quick tests and turned out they thought she had a stomach virus. So they prescribed a whole bunch of drugs for her, and we had to find the pharmacy to go get them. Then we decided to get some lunch, since her drugs had made her feel a bit better by then. We went to the McDonalds near Long Street (which is parallel to Loop street where we had to return the rental car to). McDonalds was amazing... I swear their chicken was just better than a chicken sandwich there would have been in the US. Of course my sandwich was obscenely spicy so I ended up downing a ton of water as well. Sam felt a lot better after having McDonalds... American remedy to the rescue! It was awesome.

Then we found the car rental place to bring the car back. But they said they were going to charge us a fine because the car was so dirty... remember the off-roading we did in Agulhas. So rather than pay a 388 rand fee for that (over $50), we drove to a gas station where we filled up and then also got them to give us some water and cleaner and one of those window squeegees and we just cleaned the car on our own. So when we returned to the Hertz dealer they said we wouldn't have to pay the fee. We decided to wander on Long Street, where we passed by Mama Africa (restaurant we would go to the next night) and the Pan African Market (cool African restaurant and market that was closed! bummer. Need to make our way back there). We then caught a cab back to the Sunflower Stop.

For dinner we caught a cab to the V&A waterfront and did a little pre-dinner shopping. Getting our cab was kind of funny, since usually to get a cab (you can't really just hail them on the street here) we just go to the bar at the hostel and ask the bartender to call a cab for us. So we asked Renan, our trusty (hot) Brazilian bartender, "Hey can you please call a cab for us?" and he responded, "You want a pizza?", and we almost died laughing. But we eventually communicated that we needed a TAXI and he called it and we arrived at the waterfront soon enough. There are a TON of stores there, so we started out by browsing through the mall. Sam and I each got a pair of Havaiana's at the Havaiana store that have the South African flag on the strap and has the big 5 on the flip flops themselves. Awesomeee. We got dinner at the Cape Town Fish Market, which is a restaurant that has a rotating sushi bar. We sat at the bar, and there's like a conveyor belt that goes by that has all these different sushi dishes on it and you just take off whatever you want as they go by. This is of course a dangerous system. I had two dishes of sushi and also ordered a platter that was a sauteed Angelfish with calamari, which was incredible. We were bummed out because the ferris wheel that they have at the waterfront was CLOSED. So we vowed to return to ride the ferris wheel.

Then yesterday was our wine tour! Kevin, our tour guide/driver, picked us up at 8:30 am and we were on our way. There were 3 other people in the bus, an older Australian couple and then a kid from Brazil, who oddly enough didn't drink. We can't figure out if he just didn't know what kind of tour he had signed up for or if he just didn't get it or what. Weird. Our first stop was Fairview, which is a super famous winery that Sam had requested that we go to. We tasted 6 wines there and also got to taste cheeses! The cheese was incredible, and I bought two different kinds of fruit infused cheese (one with apricot and one with cranberries). I am just hoping that I can get it home without it spoiling. They said if you check it and its in the cargo of the plane it should keep it cool enough, so I hope thats right. The next stop was Solm's Delta. This one is a very interesting winery because they put 50% of their profits in a trust that goes to the education, medical bills, housing, etc. for their employees. This is one of the few wineries that has actually made steps to deal with the conditions and the way things were under apartheid. But Solm's actually makes a difference. We tried about 10 wines there, including an "experimental wine" that was a honey wine. It was actually really good. Sam ordered a case of 6 bottles to get sent to her home in NYC, and one of the bottles in it has my name on it! For some reason, you couldn't ship bottles to NJ - unsure why that was, especially considering that you could ship them to Hawaii, Alaska and Wyoming, all of which I think are much more difficult to get to/ random, but whatever, I don't make the rules.

After Solm's we went to Lanzerac. We tried three wines there and then had a picnic lunch that Kevin laid out for us. Pasta salad, ham sandwiches, salad, cheddar cheese and chips, and a yogurt sauce, and some really good bread that he had bought at Fairview for us. Lunch was amazing and really nice. We ate in the courtyard of the Lanzerac winery, which was just beautiful. Then we tried one more wine there after lunch. After lunch, Kevin drove us through Stellenbosch, which is a very old town in South Africa in the heart of wine country. Its a university town and has a ton of old buildings. Next up was a Brandy distillery. This was kind of an extra bonus and was very nice. When we entered they gave us all a brandy cocktail that tasted like peach nectar and was awesome. We got to try a 10 year aged and a 12 year aged brandy. The 12 year old one was just a bit smoother and richer flavored, but I wasn't really able to finish the 10 year old one.

The next stop was Spier winery, where we didn't taste any wines, but we got to pet CHEETAHS. They have a cheetah outreach center there, where they have several cheetahs. None of the other people petted the cheetahs, but they went in where you can just look at them. Sam and I were totally into it and went in to pet the cheetah. Our cheetah was named Joseph, and he was a 10 year old cheetah who is the oldest cheetah at the outreach center. Getting to pet him was SO insanely awesome.





This was just ridiculously cool to get to do. Then we proceeded onto our fourth winery, Vergenoegd. Here we saw them herding their ducks back into the winery for the night. They have these running ducks that they send out into the vineyard during the day to eat slugs and stuff and protect the plants (they can't send them out when the vines are ripening though or else they would eat the grapes). The ducks were hilarious to see running back into the winery. We went inside, and the building was like an old style Dutch house with a thatched roof and a gable in the center. Kevin said that they had the gable there because when the thatched roof would catch on fire, you needed the gable over the door so that as you run outside the burning thatch doesn't fall on you. We tried 9 different wines there. They only had one white wine, one rose, and the rest were all reds. They are really known for red wines. I got one bottle of the white ("Running Duck") and one of one of the red wines.

That was our last winery and then we headed back to Cape Town. Again on the way into the city, we drove past all of the slums. They are just staggering in their size and expanse.

Once we got back to the Sunflower Stop, we regrouped, and walked down to the V&A waterfront, hoping to ride the ferris wheel but it was closed! Allegedly, it was reopening today (Tuesday), so we are going to try it again on Wednesday. So we passed on the waterfront and took a cab to the City Center to go to Mama Africa. They specialize in game meats. I ordered grilled Springbok (basically tasted like lamb or beef, kind of a weird hybrid) and Sam ordered the mixed grill platter with crocodile, ostrich, springbok, kudu, and venison sausage. I tried to venison and the ostrich (both were yummy), but had to pass on the croc because it was a kebab with peanut sauce on it. So crocodile is still on my list to try. Once we were done with dinner, the band had started playing at the restaurant. It was a really cool African band with a lot of xylophones and two singers who were absolutely boss, so we stayed for a bit and checked that out.

Then we had to head back to the hostel since we were getting picked up this morning for the shark diving at 6:45 am! So that meant we would have to get up at 6:15 am to be ready in time. So we called it a night. Next entry will be today's adventure of shark diving, and our trip planned for tomorrow (Township Tour and Robben Island). Lates.

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If its a cape, we are GOING!

South Africa is awesome! Sam and I are having a great time. Thursday we met up in the Johannesburg airport, and got lunch at Wimpy's, which is a chain here in SA (its kind of like a Friendly's), which was amazing and took credit cards! Unreal. We were on the same flight to Cape Town and got our seats switched so that we could sit together. We made friends with the flight attendant, Phillip, once we realized that wine was free on the flight (South African Airlines). Just delightful.

Upon arriving in Cape Town, we got our rental car, and hit the road! Driving on the left has been interesting, but after three days I'm pretty much used to it. I got honked at on my way out of the airport parking area, but then I was good once I got on the highway. Its kind of a kick to see speed limit signs of 100 and 120 (we figured out that 120 is about 75 mph, so it is pretty fast!) We drove out to Arniston, which is on the East coast of SA, on the Indian Ocean, just north of Cape Agulhas, which is the southernmost tip of Africa. The drive there was just beautiful, and we took a bunch of pictures on Sam's camera that I'll get from her eventually. As we were driving out of Cape Town, we passed a huge slum, which kind of surprised me. Everything else we were passing was so nice, and then all of a sudden this slum popped up out of nowhere. I guess the disparities here between rich and poor are pretty intense.

Our B&B in Arniston was called the Arniston Lodge. The proprietor was this little old guy originally from Germany named Erwin (Pronounced like Irvin). He was so friendly and super nice. The place was really cute and very welcoming. He had a fire going in the living room, and so we sat by the fire for a while before bed. We had dinner at this little restaurant run by a local woman named Willene, called Willene's Kitchen Restaurant. Its literally just like at her house, and she makes pretty simple South African food. It was super good. We had bobotie, which is kind of like mashed up meatloaf with curry and egg, and then you put chutney and grated coconut on top. It was awesome. We also had some kind of local fish that I forget the name of, and these pumpkins she made that were all sweet with cinnamon and basically ended up being like a dessert with our dinner.

In the morning Sam and I walked just down the road from the B&B to check out the Arniston Harbour. The area is an interesting blend. To the right of our road was more like beach houses and summer homes (didn't seem to be many people around there) and then to the left was more of a traditional fishing village (this was where Willene's was). We walked along the beach near the summer homes, and I waded into the Indian Ocean. Very exciting. The water was surprisingly warm, but then when I got out, the sand was so cold against my feet that they went a little numb. We wandered around a bit more and headed back to the Lodge, where breakfast was waiting for us. Yogurt with granola, bacon and eggs, toast, tea, and OJ. Just wonderful. After breakfast, we consulted with Erwin for directions and hit the road to head to Cape Agulhas.

There were two ways to get there, one was all on paved roads and about double the distance and the other kind of cut across on dirt roads and so was much shorter. We decided to try it out on the dirt roads. We kind of missed the turnoff for the road (we actually think that we turned off too soon) and ended up on these weird little farm roads that went all through fields and lots of crops and sheep. The road wasn't even a dirt road, just a car track on either dirt, gravel, or grass. Finally about half an hour into this, we reached a locked gate blocking the road and decided to turn back. We found the correct dirt road and asked a local to point us in the right direction, which he very kindly did. By this time, our car was DISGUSTING from driving through lots of huge mud puddles and splashing all over. Classy. Once we found the right road, the drive to Agulhas was pretty easy. We stopped on the way to get an electrical converter (the plugs here are very weird, and I dont think they are even used anywhere else in the world! They are apparently the old Britist style). So what we got was a plug that has two places on it for a French style plug. I had French adapters, so we plug those into this thing, and then plug our stuff into the French adapter. Awesome. We also stopped at this beach where there were huge waves (we'd later see even bigger ones at Agulhas, and along the Cape of Good Hope as well) and saw some seals playing in the water!

We arrived at the site for Cape Agulhas, where the L'Agulhas lighthouse is. We walked down to the Cape itself, about a kilometer from where we parked Erwin (we named the car after the man who ran the Arniston Lodge!) Cape Agulhas isn't so spectacular as the Cape of Good Hope (its more gradual, you can't really tell its a cape), but it was a really cool spot to visit.


Here we are with the marker for the cape. After this we walked back to the lighthouse and climbed it. I love lighthouses. This one had three very steep flights of wooden stairs (really like a generous term for ladder) and then one ladder the rest of the way up. Its not a very tall lighthouse, but it was SUPER windy everywhere at the Cape, and the lighthouse is up on a hill, so it was visible from aways away.

After that, we drove to Hermanus to have lunch. On our way there, we stopped in Struisbaai, where there is a harbor that we visited where you are supposed to be able to see stingrays. The tide was very high however, and we were told the best time to see them is at low tide. So we didn't see the stingrays, but got some nice shots of the Indian Ocean and the boats at the harbor. For the drive to Hermanus, we stayed on the paved roads after our previous adventure of the morning. We stopped at a winery called Misty Mountains and did a quick wine tasting and bought a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, which we are saving for our last night here. Driving through Hermanus, we stopped to let a guy cross the street, and he got so excited that he literally jumped into the air and smiled excitedly at us. I guess people don't stop here to let pedestrians cross. Sam and I got a big kick out of it. Then we found the Harbour Rock Grill and Sushi Bar, and had a late lunch of sushi and thai food. It was really good, and the restaurant was all the way out on a pier where you had a beautiful view of the harbour going out to the ocean. Just lovely. We even had a wonderful dessert there as well (I had a pavlova.... mmmm). Then we got back on the road and drove to Cape Town to get to our hostel.

This proved to be somewhat of an adventure, as the hostel, the Sunflower Stop, is located at 179 Main Road, and there are about a million "Main Roads" in Cape Town and the surrounding area. So we naturally wound up at the wrong one, which was an apartment building in the area near the University of Cape Town. The gate opened, and we drove into the complex. Then we realized it was wrong, and re-mapped the hostel on my iPad, and got an idea of where it was. But then we realized that the gate had closed and we were stuck inside! I went to look for some kind of office to try to get someone to let us out. The complex smelled like hot dogs and seemed pretty empty. Finally a dude in a spongebob shirt and one of those ridiculous long eared caps came in and I explained to him and he said he'd have his friends open the gate from their apartment. So a few minutes later the gate opened and we were free from that place and finally on our way again!

We arrived at our hostel, and were told it was ok to park our car just on the sidewalk out front, so that's what we did. We met Renan, from Brazil, who works at the hostel and runs the bar there. We settled our stuff in, took a nap (we have our own room, bathroom down the hall), and then got ready to go out. We wanted to go to the Ice Lounge (its an ice bar I had heard of here, if you don't know about Ice Bars, google the Absolut Ice Bar in London to get an idea of what I'm talking about) at the V&A Waterfront. So we got a cab over to that area. Our cabbie was hilarious, when we got to the waterfront he called out the window to a cop, "hey where is this ice place?" obviously the cop was quite confused, so the cabbie elaborated for him "everything ice!". Needless to say, the cop was pretty unhelpful. We then wandered around the V&A waterfront area, only to find out it had closed about a year ago. We ended up at Mitchell's, a bar there that did exist. From there we moved on to Sgt. Pepper's on Long Street, which is where the real bar scene in town is. Overall a fun night.

This morning we headed out around 8:30 to drive down to the Cape of Good Hope. We stopped at KFC (don't judge!) for a quick chicken breakfast, which was uhhhhmazing. Then we go going, driving through the Western most part of Cape Town, along the Atlantic Ocean. We drove on Chapman's Peak Drive, which features 114 turns and sheer cliff drops both above and below you on the road. It was a gorgeous drive. It was lucky that this wasn't my first day of driving on the left or I might have been freaked out a bit, since the road was kind of narrow, and really curvy.


Me and Sam at one of the overlooks on CPD. We drove all along the cape, crossing over to the eastern side after CPD. We stopped at Boulders Beach, where you can see African penguins. They are apparently not too friendly, as they bite and they smell bad. Inside the park, they have a boardwalk that you walk on all the way down to near the water, where you can see tons of penguins just hanging out on the beach and jumping about in the water. This was really cool to see. Pictures are on Sam's camera, so coming soon.

We then continued our drive to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve. Once you enter the park, you drive for quite a ways until you actually get to where the cape lighthouse is up on all these rocks of the cliff. It was just beautiful out there. We hiked up to the lighthouse (sort of a hike, it was about a 15 minute walk, but it was just up all these stone steps). From there you can see both sides of cape point. Cape of good hope is a separate little cape just a bit to the west of cape point and you can see it from the top. We took the funicular tram back down to the bottom, and then we drove to the cape of good hope. At the lighthouse:







We are a long way from home! On the way out of the park, we saw all these ostriches. We found out that apparently there is an ostrich farm there, and they just all wander around. At the top of where the lighthouse is (you can't actually climb it, bummer), we saw a dassie, which is a small rodent like thing that is the closest living relative of the elephant. On our drive back, we stopped in a little town called Kalk Bay that Sam had read about in her book. Its just a cute little bayside town, and we had a late lunch at Kalky's, which is a very classic local place where they claim to have the original fish and chips. It was incredible food, and came out super fast as well.


This is REAL fish and chips. This dish puts the Tombs' version to shame (we all already knew their fish and chips sucks thought). We then drove back to cape town (about half an hour from Kalky's) and went to our hostel. We ventured out to the grocery store to buy some food since there's a nice kitchen here and we can cook stuff. So we made some tea and grilled cheese and just kind of called it an early night.

Today the plan is to go to Table Mountain (you take a cable car that rotates on the way up to the top), and then to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Hopefully I can write a post after today.

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Red Chilli Safari

Well I'm on the plane to Johannesburg now (my stop en route to Cape Town where I'll meet up with Sam, we're on the same flight from Jo'burg to Cape Town) but I figured I should try to keep up with the blogging as my trip winds down.

So Sunday morning Cait and I left the Red Chilli hostel in Kampala to head out on the Murchison Falls safari. We were in a safari van with a family (Nancy and David and their 21 year old son, Gabe). They were really nice, which is good because on these sorts of trips whoever is in your car you end up spending a lot of time with. The traffics getting out of Kampala was (as is typical) pretty bad. After a few hours we stopped in Masindi for lunch, where I attempted Mexican for the first time in Africa. I had beef fajitas, and they were actually pretty good. From Masindi, the rest of the road to Murchison is a dirt road. It was as usual, quite bumpy. Once we entered the park, we still had about another hour and a half on the road. We started seeing a lot of baboons. They are really quite interesting looking with their bright pink butts. Quite unique.

We arrived at the camp. They spent a lot of time warning us about the warthogs that frequent the camp. They apparently have an incredible sense of smell and if you have any food or food-smelling stuff in your tent, they can smell it and will come and basically tear the tent apart trying to get to it. So any food we had we had to leave in a box behind the bar where they could lock up at night. They also said that the baboons don't have as good a sense of smell but that they are smarter than the warthogs and so when they see the warthogs sniffing around a tent they'll go over and actually unzip the tent to get in and then go through all your stuff to get to the food. So Cait and i put all our food, and scented conditioner, toothpaste, mint Chapstick, gum, etc. in the box. When we woke up in the morning, I found a mint crisp Cadbury bar in my backpack... So I guess they didn't smell that one after all.

The first day at the camp we got there around 5, so we just hung out and had some drinks and dinner and celebrated Cait's 30th birthday. I bought her a beer and we even had banana fritters for dessert. This was bananas battered in a batter that tasted like funnel cake, fried, and then had honey on top. All for 5000 UGX, or about $2. Very nice.

Monday morning we woke up at 5:50 to leave the camp by 6:30. You have to make sure you leave early because there's a ferry over to where the game drive is and it leaves at 7 and only fits 8 cars. So if you miss that one, you have to wait until 9, by which point you will not get to see as many animals because 1. They are more active in the early morning and 2. The other cars will scare them away. So we got there and we're the third car in line, so it was no problem. Then when we got to the other side we all ran and got into the van as fast as we could so that we were actually the first car into the park! It was quite masterful.

The game drive was good, although not to the level i had experienced in kenya. They dont let the vans go off-road (they have Ugandan Wildlife Authority rangers that ride in each van to enforce this. They also know all about the animals and plants and so they serve as your guide on the drive) so the animals are further away from you since you can't just go tearing off to wherever they are. We did get to see two lions. One was a male hat only had 3 legs, apparently poachers come in and lay down these wires to cripple the animals, this lion had encountered such a wire and ended up losing his leg. Our ranger, Ronald, said that they had a type of vet that came in to do surgery on animals that stuff like that happened to. Intense. We also saw giraffes, elephants, Jackson hartebeest, and LOTS of Ugandan Kob. The Kob is a type of antelope that appears on the Ugandan crest, and they are really beautiful animals.


Giraffe:



I must say, I really love safari. They drove us down to a part of the Nile (I believe it is the Albert Nile) where there are a ton of hippos to see.
It was VERY sunny in my eyes. I had an immensely hard time keeping my eyes open for pictures out there!

After the game drive, we took the ferry back across and lunch at the Red Chilli rest camp where we were staying. I had a steak and onion sandwich with garlic mayo that was actually incredible, but I could taste the garlic for the rest of the day!

In the afternoon, around 2:15 we went out on our boat cruise up the Nile (this means actually heading south, which is upstream) to the base of the falls. It was SO hot, so the breeze on the boat was much welcomed. We got to see more wildlife on the boat, including some elephants more close up (which Nancy in particular was excited about, since she is super obsessed with elephants). We saw a lot more hippos and a ton of different birds that one of the boat guys identified for me while I kept a list on my iPad. Closer to the base we saw crocodiles. They apparently hang out in this kind of alcove where it's calm and catch lots of fish there. When the fish go over the falls they get very weak and kind of crazy and so at the bottom it's a very good place for the crocs to feed. You would absolutely not want to jump out there and go swimming. Also the current, even quite a bit downstream from the falls was very intense. We got decently close to the bottom, and they showed us there are actually two sets of falls. The main one is Murchison falls. The whole Nile used to go over it, so it's very rough! In 1959, Winston Churchill commissioned the building of a bridge over the falls, which was completed in 1961. Then in 1962, there were such heavy rains that the river flooded a ton, and not only did it wash out the bridge, but the water got diverted and made a second set of falls. Since 1962 was the year of Ugandan independence from Britain, they called this second falls Freedom Falls. It's volume of water per second is about 2/3 of Murchison, but both are just sick volumes, if you consider the whole Nile goes over them, it's a LOT of water. We stopped by this little island where you could get out on a big rock and take pictures. It was awesome.
Then on the way down the river, Cait and. I had a Nile Special (beer) on the Nile. Pretty awesome.


Back at the camp, I took a shower (all they had was cold water, but it was so hot out there, that I honestly didn't mind it) and we ordered dinner. We sat with the family (the Toole's) for dinner and chatted with them most of the night. It was so buggy out that that I didn't stay up late and retreated to my tent a bit before 9.

Then Tuesday was the last day of our safari. In the morning we drive to the top of the falls, where a ranger took us on a short hike to take pictures of the falls. This was just incredible, and by far my favorite part of the trip. We got to get up really close to the top of the falls, and there were rainbows everyway you looked. There was one overlook in particular, where you just got misted constantly, and I had to keep wiping my camera lens dry situation it would even work!


And lots of rainbows:


Murchison falls from a distance:



It was just gorgeous and a perfect end to our trip. On the drive back, we again stopped in Masindi for lunch, and this time I went with the goat muchomo (goat sautéed with onions and peppers). I really like goat actually. It was surprising that at the place we ate the goat was actually more expensive than the beef. Of course, we go there right after two other tables had just sat down, so our food took over an hour to come out!

We finally arrived back in Kampala and met Lisa at Red Chilli hostel in Kampala (in the Bugolobi neighborhood). We showered and I attempted to repack/organize my huge suitcase. We took a matatu to Centenary Park in Kampala for dinner and went to Efendy's, a Turkish/middle eastern place, where we had dinner and some houka. Yet another celebration for Cait's bday, and we ended up staying out past 11 (super late for us!).

Yesterday (Wednesday) we just slept late and then had breakfast and spent the morning using the Internet at red Chilli. Then we headed out via matatu to the city center. We found the coffee shop, 1000 Cups, that was Lisa's landmark for the craft market she was taking us to. It was soooo hot when we got there that rather than diving right into the craft market, we had an ice slush (kiwi flavored slush, omg it had ICE = awesome!).
Walking through Kampala in the heat can be almost unbearable. Then Cait and I hit up the craft market, as if I needed to buy more stuff. I got a pair of the beaded flip flops they sell everywhere here, a cute sundress, and a small cross body bag, as well as some earrings. All of this was under $30 total. Awesome. The. We returned to 1000 Cups for lunch, where I had the weirdest salad I've ever seen (it was a Thai beef salad, and despite the strangeness, it was really good). Then we set off for the Nakumatt, to show that to Cait (I had already been to Nakumatt in Kigali and Nairobi).

Kampala is a pretty typical East African city. It's hot and crazy. They actually do have some traffic lights but they are really just a suggestion. They painted a few crosswalks recently and no one uses them, or stops when people try to cross, so it seems the paint was a waste of money. the traffic is awful, since there's really like two main roads that cross the city, and everything runs into those roads, so there's huge traffic jams everywhere. When we were in the matatu and sitting in traffic, the driver just put on the parking brake and turned off the engine (which really amazed me, since usually matatus will just let their engine run for hours while they wait for passengers to fill up, or even while they are getting gas!). After our jaunt through the city we went back to the hostel, where we sat out with out feet in the pool and Lisa fed nuts to the monkeys while I freaked out about it. I'm not a fan of monkeys I guess.

We had dinner at Red Chilli, while watching YouTube videos on my iPad (our favorite is the Michael Bolton and the lonely island song about Jack Sparrow) since we are deprived of all such luxuries in Matuwa. We had brick oven pizzas for dinner (actually very good pizza, even by US standards, impressive). Doug arrived around 10:30, and we drove to the Keba In. In entebbe. About 20 minutes after we got there, Doug and Lisa drove Cait o the airport. I attempted to sleep, but the mosquito nets were mounted funny, so the net was on your face while you slept and it was insanely hot in my little room. Woke up at 5, and Doug drove me to the airport. They don't have a drive up option, so we had to lug my stuff across the parking lot and up stairs while it was pouring rain. Fun. Then they randomly had to search my big suitcase, which just bothers me since obviously I'm not a terrorist, and I had all my stuff packed just so. My bag weighed in at 27 kilos, but they didn't charge me for overweight, so I guess maybe they let you have more than 50 lbs? (23 kilos would be 50 pounds) so who knows. At any rate I'll hopefully have a lighter bag after South Africa, since I'll be giving Sam my extra shampoo and whatnot.

I got on the plane to Jo'burg ok, and the flight isn't full, so while I don't have a row to myself, there's no one in between me and the guy on the aisle. I'll be posting this when I land in Johannesburg, which should be in about an hour. I'm soooo excited to see Sam, and nervous to drive on the left side of the road in South Africa! We are cafe diving with great white sharks. The good news is that when I pee my pants in terror, I'll be in the water, so it'll be ok. More later!!

(uploaded from my hostel in cape town, the sunflower stop)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

"Well done!"

(this was originally written on Friday the 27, but was deleted. Rewrote on Sunday the 29, and posted on may 3)

Sooooo I'm in Kampala driving toward Murchison falls at the moment. I spent some good amount of time detailing my last week and a half in Matuwa, and blog press (the app for iPad that I use to write the blog) decided to tell me that it posted that entry, but actually ate it and it's lost. Bummer. So here goes:

I believe I last posted last Wednesday... Thursday and Friday as I recall we're pretty standard clinic days. Worked on my projects (visual aids/grainsacks, girls group plotting, CHE stuff, etc). Over the weekend, Lisa and dug had been planning to take cait to Sipi, but Leonard and our Ugandan board of directors showed up at the clinic on saturday morning, so they ended up having an all day meeting and no one went to Sipi. Saturday was pretty miserable with raining alllll day. I had a meeting of girls group at 2 on Saturday, and I did a lecture on the reproductive systems that turned into a lecture on family planning.

In the afternoon after the meeting, Cait and I walked p to the school that is past the clinic from where you can see Kenya. There were a ton of little boys there that were harassing us generally and trying to get into our pictures. They were kind of entertaining, but it honestly does get annoying having little kids intermittently shouting "how are you!" and "muzungu!" at you allll the time.

Saturday night we played cranium with Doug and Lisa. It was quite fun. O Sunday, the three of them left for Sipi, of course when the boda bodas came for them it was pouring rain. Here are their hilarious boda riding in the rain outfits (especially take note of Doug here):



I spent the rest of the day just reading and being super lazy. When Aidan made dinner for me, I invited her to eat with me, so that was nice. Then I convinced my mom to call me, we talked for about an hour and then I went to bed early. It wasn't such a relaxing night, since Kaiya, Lisa's dog, was kind of worked up with Lisa gone. Lisa had said I could put kaiya in their side or in my apartment for the night, and I kept her on my side before I realized around 2 am that that was a bad idea. She was just restless and pacing and unhappy, but by that point I was too tired to move her back to Lisa's side.

Monday they were still at Sipi, so I was just working on my visual aids in the office (I got to sit at Lisa's desk and hand out money to the staff for lunch and all, so I felt all important). Tuesday was a CHE outreach, so Cait and I went along. It was to Bukibumbi, which is the village where Jennifer lives. I was in a group with Stephen Kuloba, Rose, and Jesca. After we visited about 7 homes and it had started pouring rain. We went back down to Jennifer's house for the lunch. Lunch on CHE out reaches is kind of a big deal, since you get meat and matoke (along with posho, bamboo shoots (I can't eat them since they are made with g-nuts), beans, etc.) this is key because Tuesday at the Clinic is the one day that we have meat (and matoke, but this is less of a big deal). So it's nice not to have to miss meat day at the clinic when we go on an outreach!

Here is Rose from my group teaching family planning (note her excellent use of the job aid card!):



Me and all of the CHEs outside of Jennifer's house after the lunch:



Wednesday and Thursday were then pretty basic clinic days. I was trying to finish prepping all of the materials for girls group, namely the RUMPS project. This is the re-usable menstrual pads, and I was planning to have the girls in the group make them on Saturday, so I had to coordinate with Anthony to get all the supplies, and then cut up all the fabric and everything to make kits (each girl would get a kit with the supplies to make 2 of the pads). I did successfully get this project done, and when the group met on Saturday, about 15 girls showed up and each got to Make two of the pads. I'll have pics eventually, but I haven't uploaded them from camera to iPad yet.

Wednesday night we had another round of cranium and we discovered that Lisa is really the key player - whichever team she was on however we mixed up the teams, her team always won! A highlight of cranium was my attempt to hum "hot in herre" by nelly - try to hum this, and you'll see what I mean!

By Thursday I was finishing up making the notebooks for the data set lisa is going to be collecting. We have notebooks of patient info from 2010, before Lisa took over the clinic and now we will be collecting more data to make a comparison and see how we are doing with patient care, etc. Thursday night was chicken night (I didn't realize this until Doug told me, but Aidan actually buys a live chicken every Thursday, and has to kill it, clean and pluck it and then cook it for us. Amazing.), so Doug and Lisa ate dinner with us. We went to bed fairy early because Friday morning before Cait left we were going to try to climb the rock mountain that is out our front door. Well Friday morning at 6:30 when we were going to go it was pouring rain, so we all went back to sleep and just had a normal morning.

Cait and Lisa left for Jinja around 11, so they would have time for Cait to buy some souvenirs in town that day, and then they would raft on Saturday. I finished up my projects, and then was supposed to lead the pregnant women's group at 2, but Patrick had mixed up the time apparently when he was supposed to tell them about it...so no meeting happened. I ended up packing up my supplies from my "office" in the lab, then doing some packing. After a wonderful dinner of meat stew and matoke and chapatti for my last night, Doug made popcorn (I actually think they maybe use blue band to make movie theater butter, since that is what we used and it tasted exactly like at the movies at home!). We watched fight club, excellent times.

Saturday morning, I just finished up my packing, and had girls group meet a 11. I taught about the menstrual cycle and then showed them how I make the RUMPs. Emma arrived a little after one, and we got underway. after a brief stop on the road to Mbale to wash the car, and a stop in Mbale for me to hit the ATM and both of us to get a snack, we proceeded to Jinja. I had a late lunch at the Source, an Internet cafe, and then we went t the Nile River Explorers hostel to meet Lisa and Cait. Then we had to stop back in Jnja for Cait to pick up the paintings she had ordered from Angelo, then we finally headed to Kampala.

Around 10 we arrived at the Red Chilli hostel, and went down the road o a bar, Zone 7, to get some food. They had a big screen up with lots of music videos, which proved a source if constant entertainment. basically a lot of Ugandan music is to take an American song (preferably a Rihanna song), and then add some grunts in Lugandan. The video is a blended mix of the Rihanna video and the Ugandan rapper usually paired with a bunch if ugly white girls. Pretty entertaining.

So today is Sunday. This morning Cait and I woke up and had breakfast at Red Chilli, and then left on our Murchison Falls safari. Also in our safari truck is a family (dad, mom, and son) from north Carolina. The dad works for duke. I was polite and kept my mouth shut. They seem nice. We are driving out to Murchison today, then tomorrow we will have a game drive and a boat cruise to the base of the falls.

I cannot believe I am finally done with the entry. As the Ugandans would say after a good days work, "well done!"

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At Home in Matuwa

Well its been awhile since I last posted, mainly cause not that much has happened! Caitlin (Cait - a new volunteer, a resident from Wisconsin, not to be confused with Cait the volunteer coordinator, they spell it the same way) arrived on Thursday night with Doug, from Entebbe. Thursday I just worked on assorted projects of mine around the clinic. Friday was more of the same. Friday night we all ended up staying up really late, listening to comedy routines and random stuff from Doug's hard drive and just hanging out.

Saturday, Lisa, Cait, and I went over to Bududa. We stopped first at the Arlington Guesthouse, where I hung out with other Cait while the two of them went to the FIMRC guesthouse so new Cait could meet Ryan, who manages the clinic there now. Since I had already been to the FIMRC clinic and guesthouse and to Kikholo, I figured I could skip the excursion.

Then Lisa and Cait decided to run to the Zaale's, I hadn't brought sneakers so Dr. Cait (this seems better than calling her new Cait all the time!) and I decided to just walk there, about 3 miles. Well this was fine until I started to get a stomach cramp and feel REALLY sick on the way there. We were actually just about at the turnoff in Bunaporo where you turn to get to the Zaale's, so I ended up just taking a boda the rest of the way and then resting for a bit when I got to the house. This was really the first time since I've been here that I felt sick at all, and I'm not really sure why. Weird.

So we had a typical night at the Zaale's, really good food, and they make you stay up way later than you're used to to talk and hang out with them (this means staying up past 10 PM, shocker!) In the morning, we had to talk our way out of the house, since they always try to get you to stay overnight. Then Dr. Cait, Lisa, Lacey, and I went back to Matuwa. Lacey came up with us since on Monday the TOMS distribution would be at Bupoto Primary School, which is much closer to our guesthouse than to the Arlington one in Bududa.

Sunday afternoon, we just vegged out, eating easter candy that Doug had brought back from the US (they have starburst now where you can get just the red flavors, imagine that!), watched a bunch of Lonely Island videos and then watched America's Best Dance Crew until the laptop died (we didn't have power from last Wednesday until yesterday, so one full week). It was raining pretty bad and totally gross out, so we ate a big dinner and just did nothing the rest of the night.

Monday Cait and I went with Lacey to the TOMS distribution at Bupoto Primary. I have pictures but I've already uploaded a bunch of TOMS pics and I'm lazy. It was a good school, quick and decently organized. The only real glitch was that since they are all out of the smaller sizes, we only gave shoes to P4 through P7, so the younger kids were pretty bummed I think.

Tuesday, Cait and I went to Jan's clinic, the one I went to previously with Rachel. A British resident equivalent, Charlie, was there too, so I got to shadow/work with both her and Cait.

Yesterday, Cait and Lisa went to Mbale so Cait could see Mbale Regional, Cure Hospital, and Jan's Hospice, and to do the shopping. I worked on clinic projects, and making materials for my Girls Group curriculum.

I should mention that Monday night and Tuesday night the neighbors were BLASTING music all night! One of their family members had died, and they do this for several days after the death, just to let the whole sub-county know about it and to draw attention to themselves. So we really didn't get much sleep all week. Monday night I took a sleeping pill, and Tuesday night I took some Benadryl to try to sleep, but by last night I was so exhausted from two essentially sleepless nights that I didn't take anything. I'm still tired. They played the music last night, which was mostly drowned out by the rain. It has been raining really hard! I guess the rainy season is finally here. Honestly on days like today and yesterday, it doesn't really affect me, since the clinic is right next door and I could do work in my living room in the guesthouse if I really didn't feel like going anywhere.

I loaned Aidah, our housemom, my Georgetown hoodie last night since she was so cold! It was super adorable how she put the hood up and tied it and then tied her headscarf on over it (I took a picture, but I haven't uploaded from the camera to my ipad yet).

Today I spent some time in MCH with Cait and Agnes, who is maybe being hired as a midwife by the clinic. Irene, our old midwife, was fired, and they are trying to replace her, so different midwives have been working here on sort of a trial basis. Agnes seemed to really know her stuff. I shadowed while they examined two pregnant women, and I even got to feel for the head and the height of the baby and listen to the heartbeat. It was pretty cool. Maybe ob/gyn is back in the picture... hmmm

The afternoon I mostly spent doing my projects (Grainsacks, girls group visuals, etc.), including some grainsacks for the meeting of the Pregnant Womens Group that Cait and I have organized to lead tomorrow. So I made visual aids for preventing STIs in pregnancy and PMTCT of HIV (Preventing Mother To Child Transmission). I've also been finalizing my personal statement and resume for our Gtown Pre Med committee application process, which if I do them right the first time, I won't have to do as much for my actual medical school application. Cool.

So that's pretty much the past week. I also just emailed the deposit for the Murchison Falls safari that Cait and I are doing next week. I leave the village to head to Kampala next Saturday, the 28th - its ridiculous that I only have 9 days left in the village! This weekend Cait and Lisa are going to Sipi Falls, and I'll be staying here to lead my first Girls Group meeting... so hopefully that goes well.

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Entebbe and Back

I think when I left off, I had arrived at the hostel in Entebbe. Entebbe backpackers is quite a place. I didn't take any photos there (I'll be back for a night before I fly out to South Africa), which I don't think was any major loss! I was in a dorm with 8 beds, and both nights all the roommates were guys... there was one kid, Ekky, who was from the UK, who was about my age, but everyone else was like creepily old. The hostel in Kigali was pretty much all people about my age, maybe a little older or younger, but this vibe was just completely different. Unlike at Discover Rwanda Youth Hostel, I don't think you go to Entebbe Backpackers with the intention of making lots of friends to hang out with.

So I stayed there Sunday night, and Monday morning I set out to see Entebbe. There's not much... pretty sure I covered all of it in a day. First I went to Aero Beach, which is on Lake Victoria to check that out... you pay 3000 shillings (about $1.20) to get in, and they gave me a ticket so I was able to go back later, which was pretty sweet. Then I went to the Entebbe Botanical Gardens. It was pretty nice, and I had a guide who was very knowledgeable take me around. He smelled like the local brew (like reeked... it was Easter Monday at like 10 am!) and pretty much guilted me into giving him a 20,000 shilling tip (about $8) after already having to pay a 10,000 shilling admission fee ($4). This is RIDICULOUSLY expensive for East Africa, especially if you consider that for both my safari and gorilla guides, I gave them each $20, which I considered to be a good tip, and I was with the safari guide for 3 days, and the gorilla guide for 2. I was with this local-brew-smelling-brah in the gardens for mayyyyybe an hour.


These are royal palms. I did get to see a lot of stuff, I was surprised by how much it was trees and bigger plants and not as many flowers. But still very cool. He said that they filmed Tarzan there (like the old version? I'm not sure since I'm sure I haven't seen it), and showed me the vines and whatever where they filmed:



It was a very scenic spot. Then it started to rain, so he walked me to the edge of the garden where there start to be hotels and restaurants. This was when he finangled the tip out of me (he had already mentioned it earlier, so it was pretty ridiculous). I ended up at Goretti's Pizzeria, where the ovens weren't ready yet to make pizzas, and so I got the cheapest thing on their otherwise overpriced-for-touristas-menu - Goat Brochette. This is basically like seasoned grilled goat on a skewer along with some onions and peppers. This place served it with matoke (not the mashed up kind, just literally the cooked green bananas, tastes the same both ways to be honest), the place in Kigali my first night served it with matoke chips (fried, therefore, better!). I actually really like goat, I can't believe Kigali was the first time I had it, and I think I've had it 3 or 4 times now. Its kind of like a slightly tougher, fattier lamb, but its quite good on the skewer.

Then I caught a boda with little time to spare (since it took them about an hour to make the brochette) to the Uganda Wildlife Education Center, where I was supposed to be there at 12:30 to leave on the boat to Ngamba island at 12:45. Ngamba island is a chimpanzee sanctuary on an island in Lake Victoria (Entebbe is right on the lake shore). Well I got there at 12:40 and literally RAN to the docks, where I met this woman named Christine who worked there. She SUCKED. She was like "oh we tried to call your hostel and cancel on you earlier this morning." I said that was ridiculous, that I had made reservations weeks ago, and had confirmed them TWICE (true). She made up some bullshit story, and I called her out on it (I used the word bullshit, I really hope she understood me) and got VERY mad. I talked to her supervisor on the phone and let her know that even for Africa, this was horrible customer service, and that as soon as I got a decent internet connection I intended to go on all the travel review sites and write truthful, poor review of them, and her in particular. Well she got all worked up about it, and they were trying to get me a spot on the boat, but it obviously wasn't going to work since they had overbooked it.

At this point I was kind of over going at all, since the boat trip was going to be $107 USD in total, and I had just spent a ton of money on the rest of the excursions. But I didn't let them know this, and I continued to rant and rave. As it turned out, no one got to go since the water was too rough. So I chalked it up to getting to see some monkeys in the park, and having an extra $100 in my pocket to use in South Africa.

So I went back to the hostel where they were watching Vertical Limit (pretty bad movie), had a Nile Special, and then Ekky was going to go to the beach so I decided to tag along. We walked there, the long way, and finally arrived around 3:30 or so. We were the only people there who spread out towels and sat on the beach. Everyone else was dancing, standing by the water, and partying it up. I went in the Lake and made friends with a bunch of teenage Ugandans who tried to get me to teach them how to swim... unsuccessful. Its pretty weird here that most people don't know how to swim, even the ones who live on the lake.

Then we were sitting on the beach having a beer (Club) when two kids rode by on a camel... and I decided I had to do that. So here it is:



It was pretty awesome. We definitely stuck out like sore thumbs (whatever that means) at the beach, since we were sitting on towels, I was wearing a bikini, we were clearly foreigners, etc. Some people came over and asked to take a picture with us. Weird. Little kids came over and just bothered us, and finally we took a couple pictures of them and they went away. It was just a weird place, people were obviously weirded out by us. Before we left, we made sure to take some touristy shots on the airplanes that they have there (its a weird place):



We walked the shorter way back to the backpackers, and then later I went to dinner at the Red Rooster sports bar (just down the road from the hostel) with Ekky and another of our roommates, Ricardo (a Brazilian working for the UN in South Sudan).

Tuesday morning, I took a matatu to Kampala, once we hit traffic I got off and took my life into my hands by taking a hair-raising ride on a boda boda to the Elgon Flyer bus station. Grabbed a bite up there, and then took the noon bus to Mbale. Got in at around 4, ran some errands for Lisa (stuff for me really, like bread and candles and mosquito coils, also passion fruit for cocktails!), and then took a matatu to Bubulo and a boda boda from there up to Matuwa. Quite a day of traveling. I was supposed to travel back in a private car with Emma, since a new volunteer Cait was supposed to get there (hence the order for the trip and the ending in Entebbe and waiting until Tuesday to return to the village). However, her flight from NYC to Istanbul got delayed such that she missed her connection to Entebbe, and now will get in very late tonight (actually I think technically it'll be Thursday morning), so she and Doug will come up together on Thursday. So I got to ride the bus. Awesomeeeee.

Today I just worked on the grainsacks I need for the Girls' Group (menstrual cycle and Tanner stages of male and female development). This meant I ended up covered in flour... like disgustingly so. Good thing tomorrow is laundry day.

We also have two visitors today from the FIMRC clinic, residents from Philly (I think one is an MD and one is a DO, not sure). So they saw patients today and are staying over tonight before going back to Bududa.

I also realized that in exactly one month from today (May 11) I'll be back home... crazy. I'm in the village for the next three weeks (drive to Entebbe on May 2 and fly out to SA on May 3)... so posts will be less exciting than they've (hopefully) been. More later.

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Rwanda, continued

Continuing off my earlier post...

The Finnish woman (the slow one in particular) was INFURIATING. I pretty much channeled my mother and expressed my rage. I was just really getting annoyed, and knew that if I was assertive and said something, they'd split up the group. And I was right, because once I vocalized my concerns, the other guy chimed in, and they did split the group. Honestly, this snafu didn't even register on my radar once we got to the gorillas.

They are just so big and majestic. You're soooo close to them, it is really incredible. One legit brushed up against me, I couldn't believe it. We got to see pretty much all the age ranges, and even the three week old baby I posted the picture of earlier.

Our group was the Titus group. They split off from another group awhile back, and Titus' son is the silverback who is the leader now (the one I posted a picture of earlier, but here's another one):



He was HUGE. Sam likened him to king kong! Sam took a bunch of videos on her camera that I stole, so I'll post to fb or show them to people when I'm back. Sam was super stoked to go to the gorillas, and it's not that I wasn't excited but I didn't really know what to expect (she had done more research about the different families of gorillas and whatnot). But the experience blew me away, it was so awesome.

After, Jean-Louis drove us to Gisenyi, on the shores of Lake Kivu, and just across the border from Goma in the DRC. It would have cost about $200 US to cross the border, so we were content to merely look across the many rope borders they have. There are like 2 legitimate border crossings, and then there's just like streets that go from Rwanda into the DRC and there's just a rope and you're not supposed to cross. Some of these crossings have a guy with a gun there. Jean-Louis said that the kids can cross there on their way to school. I guess some of the kids end up going to school in another country, which sounds pretty crazy to me, haha.

We found a place to exchange money by the border, so Sam was able to convert some Tanzanian shillings and have some money! Yay. Then we went to our hotel, the Palm Garden Resort. It was a really nice place. Our room was about 100 meters up the road from the main compound, but it was actually really nice. Nice hot showers, and a cool common room next to our room that had a fire going in the fireplace for us when we got back up there from dinner. View of Lake Kivu from the resort:


It was really nice. We got up MaD early today to catch our bus to Kili, and from there Sam went to the airport to continue her airline nightmare. Her flight got messed up again, and apparently she's connecting to Kili through Nairobi and won't get back to Arusha until about 11 tonight. Ugh.

I headed to the Hotel Des Mille Collines (hotel of 1000 hills, Also is rwandas nickname/slogan), the hotel that the movie Hotel Rwanda is based on (the hotel where they filmed that is actually in South Africa, not Rwanda). You can pay to go in and use the pool, so I swam and hangout and had lunch poolside. It was just a beautiful place and the weather was actually really nice.


The pool (it says Hotel Des Mille Collines on the bottom of the pool). This pool apparently kept the 1200 people staying here during the genocide hydrated. And I have swum in it.


Me by the sign. The security guard was super cool and insisted don taking these for me haha. He also made me take pictures of him guarding and gave me his email so I can send them to him. Then I took a moto (what they call a boda boda in Rwanda) to the airport, and flew back to Entebbe, where I am now. Staying at the Entebbe Backpackers hostel where I have been watching football with a bunch of people, using the Internet, and just had a hot shower.

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GORILLAS

Thursday night I went to the airport in Kigali to meet Sam. She had had quite the experience in getting to Rwanda... At the Kili airport in Arusha, precision air said they had no record of her buying a ticket, even though she had already bought and paid. Then they would take a credit card so she could buy a ticket and had no ATM at the airport, so she got driven to an ATM to buy her ticket. So by the time she arrived, she was pretty frustrated with the whole thing.

We dropped her stuff at the hostel and went to the Chinese restaurant just up the street for dinner. It was actually really good, and we had a very nice time catching up. In the morning, our driver, Jean-Louis, arrived to take us to the gorillas! But first we went to the Kigali Memorial Center (genocide museum), which was a very nice museum and an interesting and sobering experience. Following the museum, we went to try an ATM for Sam, but she has MasterCard, and apparently everywhere n Rwanda only takes visa. It was another element of frustration to the trip. Also, since it was good Friday, a lot of stuff was closed, and the. Saturday was the national holiday (beginning a week of genocide remembrance), and Sunday being Easter, we knew she wouldn't be able to get money out later. Ugh.

The drive out to volcanoes national park, was just stunning. Jean-Louis was super awesome and kept stopping so we could take pictures. Once we had checked into our hotel, we drove out to lakes bulera and ruhondo. The view from the mountain top we were on was amazing. The two lakes are separate, but they have built a sort of dam so that it provides hydroelectric power. Bulera is at higher elevation, so the water flows down Into Ruhondo. We also got to see the super nice lodge at the top of the mountains where they had a fireplace and it's $600/person per night. Unbelievable.

We went to dinner at a place called Hotel Muhabera that was in the lonely planet guidebook and just down the street from where we were staying. It was pretty good, and we were super tired and knew we had to get up at 5:45 so it was an early night.

Saturday morning, we woke up at 5:45 and had breakfast, then left for the gorilla tracking! You drive first to the park headquarters, where they split everyone into groups and tell you which group of gorillas you will be tracking. We were assigned the Titus group (the head silverback, titus is pictured on the Rwandan 5000 franc note, which is pretty cool). Then you drive to the actual place where your tracking starts. They have trackers out in the mountains early in the morning so that when you start tracking, they tell your guide where the gorillas are and they can basically take you right there. Or group was 2 older women from Finland, and a younger couple (the guy as from "nowhere" and the woman from Switzerland). Well the two old women turned out to be a problem, as one of them literally couldn't hike more than 30 seconds without a break. The one guy had a flight to catch and Sam and I were going to lake kivu and wanted to get there before dark. So after we kept stopping repeatedly, we convinced the guide to let us split into two groups. So the younger couple, Sam, and I went ahead and another tracker met us at the gate to the park. This was after hiking for about 2 hours. Then we finally entered the park, and hiked for maybe another 20 minutes or so, before we got to the point where they go over gorilla etiquette with you again, and you leave your bags and walking sticks to actually go see the gorillas.

Gorilla etiquette means no eating, spitting, drinking, pointing at the, flash photos, etc near the gorillas. When they approach you you're not supposed to touch them (but they can touch you, I called this the "strip club rule"). If they come near you, you squat down and make this grunting noise that tells them you respect them and bring no harm.

The first one we saw was a blackback - a male who is not the dominant male. Even this guy was just huge. They're so big, especially when they stand up, you really can't help but to be a little afraid!
Our first


blackback:

The we saw the silverback next, even more huge!



We saw about 8 in total I think, including a mom and her 3 week old baby:



It was just an insanely incredible experience... About which I'll add more later, since I paid for one hour of Internet at the Hotel des Mille Colines, and it's almost up! Also will write about lake kivu, gisenyi, seeing the DRC, and hanging out at the "Hotel Rwanda", where I am now!

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Kigali/Genocide Memorials

So Lucas (one of Alix's cabbies) picked me up Wednesday morning and drove me to the Nairobi airport. Lots of traffic, and it was raining - it seems the rainy season has begun. We made it there in plenty of time and I had time to get a snack, hit the ATM, and change some money. I found crispy m&m's at the duty free shop which was uhhhhmazing, so I got them even though they were $9 US because you can't get them at home anymore!

The flight was fine, it stopped in Bujumbura (Burundi). Kenya airways was super nice, we got a hot towel as soon as we boarded, the plane was empty, food was good, and they had diet coke as well.

Got to Kigali, got my bag, some money at an ATM, and took a cab to my hostel. It is called the discover Rwanda youth hostel, and is pretty much the only hostel in Kigali. I got directions to get out and see the city a bit. I took a boda to the UTC (union trade center) which is like a brand new mall in Kigali with a nakumatt (like an east Africa Walmart), they also have them in Nairobi. I camped out at a juice bar with good Internet and worked on my premed committee app for a bit. I then checked out the craft market located right behind the juice place. I wandered around the city center for a bit, and just checked it out. Then I went to another craft market, Capulaki, which is a really nice one with lots of little stalls and tons of people calling out, "sister! Come look here sister!" I didn't even buy anything.

I'm super impressed with Kigali/Rwanda. Everything is super clean and organized, particularly compared with Uganda or Nairobi. I actually saw trash cans on the street, which was definitely a first over here. The boda drivers all wear helmets and the passengers have to wear a helmet, too. The boda drivers have a helmet for you when you get on, and all the drivers wear a vest so you can identify them. The taxi drivers at the airport also had a uniform, they were all wearing suits with ties! It was very legit, and nice to know you could take a cab without worrying about anything, which you just wouldn't do in Nairobi. The city itself is beautiful. Once you're here it makes send why Rwanda is "the land of 1000 hills". The whole city of Kigali is built on several hills, so most of the buildings are on top of hills and on the hillsides, and the low parts are all green and natural. So the landscape changes a lot as you drive thru the city.


Last night I went out to dinner with 7 other people from my hostel. We just went to a little local place down the road from the hostel. I had goat on a stick and banana chips. Most of us got the goat, which was quite good. I also got to try the Rwandan local beers, Mutzig and Primus. Both just regular lagers, like the rest of the beers in east Africa. Dinner was fun, the people at the hostel are all really nice. We had a beer when we got back to the hostel, and just kind of talked about where people had been and where they're going. It's a lot of solo people, which was nice, since I'm solo here too until Sam arrives.

This morning I had breakfast with Neil, who was leaving today, Catherine (who is here from the UK doing research for her PhD), and Christina (from Germany and volunteering in Zambia). I made my plans to go to the two churches that are genocide sites to the south of Kigali, Ntarama and Nyamata. Catherine and Paul, another guy staying here, ended up going with me, so it was nice to have company. We took a boda to the Nyabugogo taxi park, where we bought tickets for the matatus. So different than in Uganda, where you just get on! the matatu took us to Ntarama, and we had to take a boda about 2k to get to the actual site.

The church there is covered by a metal roof, like a carpark sort of structure to protect the original roof and structure of the building. Inside the church are floor to ceiling shelves with skulls and other bones on them from people who died there. The windows are all broken, from grenades being thrown through to hit people inside. Tutsis had taken refuge there before in 1992 and been saved, so they thought they could just go there again, but this time they were not saved. Hanging from the rafters and other shelves along the sides of the church are all the clothes of the people. They are all stained with blood and dirt and simply the sheer number of clothes can give an idea of how MANY people were crammed into this tiny church. Just being there felt very unreal, and very emotional. It's just hard to imagine all of these horrible things happening to people. Seeing the clothes and the bones is a more realistic reminder, but it's still hard to actually visualize...


This is the first church we went to (Ntarama).

After Ntarama, we took bodas down to the main road and about 5k until we got to Nyamata. The church there is a lot bigger. Our guide said about 10,000 people died there, and that again, people had sought refuge there in 1992 and thought they'd be saved again, but they weren't. The attackers used bombs to blow holes in the metal bars of the doors. You can see the holes in the ceiling above and shrapnel still stuck there from the bombs. The walls on the outside of the church are all covered in blood stains - they have varnished over the stains to preserve them. Inside the church, all of the benches are covered in the clothes of the people. Clothes are piled over a foot high on all the benches and other surfaces in the church - basically there were enough people in there to be many, many times over the typical capacity. They've built a sort of crypt down below the church where some skulls are displayed and where there is a casket of a woman who was raped by at least twenty men and brutally killed (the attackers shopped a sharp spear up her vagina, all the way up through to to herald, and she died like that. At the other site, they also described killings like that, so it sounds like a pretty common method - just horrible). The guide said the raping was pretty standard, but that they wanted to put this woman in the casket because hers was particularly awful and to honor other women who were killed the same way.

Inside the church, everything is draped in purple and white satin ribbons. The guide said the white means hope and the purple means sadness - so hope after sadness is what they mean together.


Again, illegal photo from inside the church. The white tiled part is the crypt is described that they put in after the genocide. Out back behind the church, they have built crypts that house the skulls and bones. The skulls are on shelves:



4 shelves from floor to ceiling. This is less than a quarter of the space in the crypts, and they are all filled. There are also caskets, each of which houses the bones of about 20 people. Just the sheer number of people, clothes, skulls, bones is staggering. It's just hard to wrap your head around that this actually happened. Here where I am standing. The guides are very matter of fact and clearly saddened, but they also show a lot of hope. It is clear that in 18 years, Rwanda has come a long way. I asked the guide at Ntarama if people still considered themselves Hutus or Tutsis and she said "we are all Rwandans now".

After Nyamata, we got lunch in the little town there and took a matatu back to Kigali, while it started pouring rain. Catherine went to go to the Kigali genocide museum (that I'll go to tomorrow with Sam) and Paul and I went off in search of sneakers for him, which we didn't find at an appropriate price. Then took bodas back to the hostel, where I have now written this and am about to leave to meet Sam at the airport. The next post will have pictures of GORILLAS (and likely be a bit cheerier than me talking about genocide the whole entry - but it was a valuable, good experience to go and see these things).

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