Five Burnham Durban

... in Durban is limited. Despite almost constant rain, I've enjoyed walking around the city a bit and visiting several small museums.

Tomorrow I'm heading up into the northern Drakensberg mountains, where I hope the weather will be good enough to hike and ride horseback over the next couple of days.

Hello, well here I am again, I am at Hillcrest, just near valley of 1000 hills. My plans have been changed due to safety reasons and I am the orphan aid place earlier than i thought, I have had to adjust myself a bit and was discouraged but i am okay now. I am staying at a place of safety for teenage female orphans, there are three that stay there permanently, one who lost a baby and ...

... should be fun!

just realized this blog is becoming very open and not holding anything back! Hope your enjoying it all. Have spent way to much money but hey once in lifetime! would nice to have some feedback as you all seem to be reading this.

what i have learnt this week is that Americans are pretty cool and that i want to head there at some point for a while. Love you all!!!

finchy

trying not to fall................

... surrounds HIV and AIDS, because it has become very apparent to me while here that the stigma is a huge obstacle to all aspects of HIV prevention and treatment. Ironically, the stigma also makes it hard to do research and talk to people about HIV, so I can't exactly trampse around rural Africa asking people about HIV and their own experiences with it. Instead I think I am going to try and focus on becoming integrated into ...

South Africa is really... white. Durban is dangerous at night and there
is a huge mall. They have blackouts every day for two hours at two in
the afternoon, and even the malls shut down.

... myself up in time to return the rental car and make it to church at the German Lutheran Church. Aging is not fun!!! I've been to two more concerts at the UKZN Jazz Centre. The first one was Turkish jazz music, and the one last night was actually a combination of rap, hip-hop, and funk along with some poetry tossed into the mix. I ran into a visiting American consultant (i.e. extremely knowledgeable and ...

... Breast Milk Bank at Austin. It was far less clinical as they are not feeding the milk to very premature babies as is done with donated breast milk in the States, and they don't even have the facilities to do the microbiology testing. Since the Bank opened, Penny has not had a single child get sick from the breast milk despite the less than ideal pasteurization facilities. Penny is also a registered nurse and licensed lactation consultant. In the new ...

... for stealing money). Other ATM's such as bank or shopping-mall ATM's have been unharmed. After rigorous questioning, I set out from the hillside suburb backpackers for a three-mile walk into town and to the long beach front known as the Golden Mile. Here in Durban, the dead of winter means 75 degrees or so, sunny, and warm waters of 70 degrees. Pretty nice, although I was told there was a bit of a cold front recently. The city is bustling, and alive-feeling. Tons of different ...

... loco java what's it called coffee. I could see people were impressed and knew I was a man of moral fibre and a high risk adventure taker; I was getting a lot of passer bys stopping and pointing at me. Step aside Allan Quatermain, Introducing Bob Harding, King of the Jungle! The flight to South Africa was a comfortable ride and the films onboard were quiet good too. We got lucky on this trip and didn't get any kids looking over ...

... behind schedule only to hear from the women staff that several clients had come by and departed annoyed because they couldn't be bothered to wait. This included the "Canadian lady" whose African friend had called him directly from her cell phone to demand when he would finally be arriving. Gabriel feels terrible. "I thought, 'What is she going to think of South Africa just because of me? Will she think all of us are like this here?" he tells me later. So, he finds the ...