The Journey

My Southern African holiday has come to an end and I am happily back with the children.
Words and pictures can't do justice to the incredible experience Joyce and I had. We tasted, smelled, heard, and felt the heart of Africa. The experience will forever be etched in my heart. I didn't know how much 17 days could change a person, or how much joy and sorrow I could feel within a few days, or that I was capable of sitting on a bus for 24 hours!! I don't even know where to start in telling the story. Perhaps I'll just start at the beginning and see where it goes...

Our first destination was the small beach town of Tofo in southern Mozambique. It is situated on the very tip of a coral reef and thus hosts an abundance of brightly colored fish and turquoise waters! Our first stop would be Maputo and from there we thought we could find an easy way to reach our destination only 600km north. We heard about a youth hostel that offered a shuttle service at 5am; we would arrive in 6 hours giving us the day to play in the sea. We waited and waited for the shuttle to come. Finally at half past six we asked the security guard why the shuttle was not coming. He spoke no English but found us a taxi driver to take us to the closest public transport rank in order to find another way to Tofo. We arrived at the hub right as the sun was rising and the hustle and bustle of people selling and trading fruits and vegetables and earrings and toilet paper and bread and cameras and toys had just begun. We found a van heading north and hoped on. Then we waited. And waited. And waited until 9am when the driver decided the van was full enough to go. That's the thing about Africa: transportation is not quick or reliable. The music started pumping through the cheap speakers and we were off to the the sea! Or so we thought. Twelve hours later and five mechanical failures behind us the van finally wouldn't start again. We were still one hour from Tofo and it was dark. Only the driver spoke some English. He offered to call us a taxi to take us down the road to a hostel he knew of. As we were waiting by the road I noticed that our driver was underneath the broken down vehicle with a lit candle trying to fix whatever was wrong. Thank God there was no gas leak!

Without going into too much detail we found our way to the beach the following morning. The hostel owner in the town of Inhambane (where we ended up) was from Petermaritzburg South Africa,the same area we volunteer in! He took us to the beach where we soaked up the sun rays and enjoyed every palm tree and coconut. At this point I had started to get sick with a severe sore throat and fever. I pushed through and enjoyed the day at the beach. Our day ended with a huge feast of crayfish, prawns and calamari steak! Mozambique has the cheapest fish I've ever seen and the hostel owner cooked it all for us!

We had to return to Maputo the following day in order to catch our bus to Johannesburg, our next destination. Again the hostel owner was so helpful and happened to be on his way to Maputo as well. We arrived much quicker and safer than our way of arrival but the driver of this small bus thought it a very good idea to start playing the loudest African dance music at 4am!!! We got no sleep.

Now about Jo'burg. Statistics say it is one of the most unsafe places in the world with your chances of being raped, murdered or robbed very high. We only had about 24 hours. For the evening we stayed at the hostel and met some of the nicest people ever and had great conversation. The following morning we drove to Melville, a hip/trendy area, with some new friends from the night before. We ate cake and enjoyed some shops and that was the extent of our time there. For me it was disappointing that people scare you so much with all this "black-people-will-try-and-kill-you-so-stay-away-from-them" nonsense. Now having been many places as the only white person I see that people are only as scary as you want them to be. Which means to me that flashing a smile and saying hello breaks down all the walls of racial injustice and prejudice. By taking chances and allowing yourself to be the only white person on a combi taxi or hitching a ride like the black Africans do, you realize that fear is what keeps white people from interacting with black people. The media, the government, everyone, wants us to believe that black people are bad. They have succeeded in spreading this propaganda so well that the white people of South Africa now willingly segregate themselves from the black Africans without the law of apartheid to make it mandatory. Now its just a choice. A choice that is still being validated because of the fear we allow ourselves to believe. I really hate it.
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And that is as far as I'll write for now. In a couple of weeks (hopefully) I will tell the rest of the story.
Things at at the project are going unbelievably well. I am having a hard time realizing that in 6 short weeks I will be back to my previous life. I am not looking forward to it. Somehow through all the chaos and frustration this project has really shaped me in many important ways. I will miss the kids and aunties and gogos so much, and surprisingly the volunteers have also become great friends. I have learned that 6months is not enough time to really experience something new... Its only now that I am feeling at home.