TravelStream™ news feed for member laurenharden on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/laurenharden en-us Copyright ©2010 TravelPod.com Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:42:00 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1228462860/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1228462860/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1228462860/tpod.html Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:42:00 -0500 Sawubona South Africa!

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Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Hi everyone!

Well I finished up my independent project. It was overall a great experience. Also while there, I got to go to Kruger National Park (in the way the locals do it...just driving around hoping to see animals). It was kinda a ridiculous experience but I got to see lions and giraffes and hippos and some more cool animals. The rest of my time in Rooibok was good overall- I feel like I learned so much and got to know some great people. I was also happy to get back to Durban and see all of my friends...and have things to do after 7pm.

The students had our own Thanksgiving Day meal, which was fun. Turkey is not big here at all so we had chicken and some other more traditional tgiving food.

Other than that I have been writing like crazy my big paper on the project I did the past month. I just turned it in and presented it to the class so now I am done with school for the semester! The program lasts about another week and then I am meeting my friend Kendall in Cape Town for a fun week before heading back to the states. I'm getting back on the 21st. Not sure if I'll write any more entries after this one, so if not- thanks for reading and I look forward to seeing everyone when I get back. I'll have tons more stories to tell and about a thousand pictures to show if you are interested! Salani kahle!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1226468940/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1226468940/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1226468940/tpod.html Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:30:26 -0500 Sawubona South Africa!

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Acornhoek, Mpumalanga, South Africa, South Africa

Hello from Rooiboklaagte! I am in the middle of my project in rural South Africa and it has been a great experience so far! Although I planned on living with a family, it has turned out that I am staying in a Catholic mission where I enjoy luxuries like running water, which is rare in this area. I eat my meals with three missionary priests- one from Portugal, one from Mexico, one from Ecuador. They all speak English, however with accents, so I am usually a little lost in the conversation (often about futbol). We eat lots of delicious fresh mangos from the trees in the yard, and I have also gotten a lot of pap, which is a stable in everyone's diet- somewhat of a cross between mashed potatoes and Styrofoam.

A young woman, Emerencia, has taken me under her wing and helps me endlessly with getting around and meeting people in the community. Her mother is one of the master weavers at Mapusha. I have tried to spend at least some time at the weaving co-op everyday, and I really love it there. The women are just wonderful; they are reserved but have such profound and sincere warmth about them that I feel very accepted. I have tried to help out there any way possible, such as with book keeping. I am also realizing that just my ability to speak English is such a privilege! Everyone here wants to learn English, so just talking to the women and helping them practice at whatever level they are at is something I can do to help. The most widely spoken language here is Shangaan/Tsonga, so my Zulu is not doing much good. The languages are similar, and some words are the same, but mostly I have just gotten down the greeting which you do about 50 times a day. Avuxeni (hello) Ku njhani? (How are you?) Ndzi kona (I am fine)- I had no idea that is how you spelled those until I just googled them, haha.

The weaving the women do is quite amazing. Everything is done by hand, from the spinning of the wool, to the dying, the design, and the weaving on huge wooden looms. They have set up a small loom for me to learn on, so I am working on my very own piece which they are excited for me to take home to show my mama! It is not easy at all, and several times they have stopped me because it is not even, but according to Gertrude, it is okay because I am learning. Gertrude's daughter, Wonder, is one of the younger women at Mapusha, and she is one of my favorites. She is really pretty good at English and her whole family is wonderful. I have visited their house a few times and there are at least fifteen people living there. Her fifteen year old niece is so great and wants to teach me everything, including how to "jive" (dance). I could go on for a long time about all of the wonderful women, but you can see them for yourselves at their website (http://www.mapusha.org/)!

Emerencia works at a primary school, so she has taken me there a few times to help out. It is really overwhelming because the school is extremely poor and it is just really apparent that the children are not getting a good education. I was in a third grade class while they were taking their final English exam, and it was so frustrating to see because the teacher just makes up the test on her own (they don't have a textbook for that class) and most of what she wrote was incorrect! For example there were sentences like "My friend name is Sarah" and "write the adress of your school." Also, the school seems to think that I am going to "save" them and get them lots of donations from America. They truly do need help, so if you are interested shoot me an email- hardle5@wfu.edu- and I can talk to you about ways to donate.

Lastly, I got to spend some time at the local hospital. Yesterday I spent most of the day shadowing a doctor in the HIV clinic. It was so interesting and also really discouraging. HIV is a huge problem here, as well as TB and other opportunistic infections. I would tell you all the details, but I don't want this to be a depressing blog- so just know that it was good to see realities of medicine in rural developing countries. If you have ever read anything about Dr. Paul Farmer, I felt like I was living his life for a day!

So yea, I am getting a pretty good look into the lives of these people. The poverty is really quite startling but there is a lot of vibrancy about the people too. There are parts of this culture I would love to take home and adopt into my own life. As one example, music and dance are such a huge part of their lives. The women often sing while they weave, prayers are sung, and dancing is not something to be shy about at all. This weekend while walking I saw a family all out in their dirt yard dancing, everyone from the little tots to the old gogo just loving being together and enjoying the music that is a huge source of joy for them- I love it!

This might not all sound that relevant to HIV, but in the next two weeks I will be interviewing some of the people I have gotten to know to see what they know about HIV and how they have acquired this knowledge. I also really want to know people's views/opinions on it, as these are often not the same as the scientific information they may have been given. I hope everyone is well at home. I am sad to miss the beautiful fall, but the warm African sun is very nice too. I have more internet access here than I thought, so feel free to email me an update on how things are going where you are!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1225438200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1225438200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1225438200/tpod.html Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:32:32 -0400 Sawubona South Africa!

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Durban, South Africa

Happy Halloween everyone! The last two weeks I have spent back in Durban, finishing up classes, and living in a hostel. I've been living in a very different part of the city than Cato Manor where there are a lot of nice restaurants and such, so I have gotten to do a lot of fun things like go to live music shows, art galleries, and hanging around my crazy hostel (when I wasn't writing papers of course). I have also spent a lot of time organizing my biggest adventure yet, which I am leaving for on Sunday.

As part of my program, we have the month of November to do an independent study project on pretty much anything we are interested in. So here is what I am doing...stay with me, this is going to sound random. Ok, so I am going to a rural village, living with a family, and spending part of my time there working/observing/helping in any way possible at a women's weaving co-op. I am using this organization as a way to become integrated into the community and build relationships with people in order to eventually be able to interview them about their lives, what they know about HIV, and what they think about HIV. I am also hopefully going to visit some organizations in the community involved in health and/or health education to find out as much as possible about sources of HIV education people in the village have. I am going to be there until about Thanksgiving, so this will probably be quite a personal challenge but hopefully a really great experience. When I come back to Durban, I will write a huge paper on it and finish up the semester. I'm sure I'll have a ton of stories to tell when I get back, so bye for now. Hope everyone is enjoying fall back home!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1224246000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1224246000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1224246000/tpod.html Fri, 17 Oct 2008 08:27:37 -0400 Sawubona South Africa!

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Durban, South Africa

I just got back from our second trip to a rural area, a place called Amatikulu. We were again paired up and assigned to homestay families, except this time we stayed with community health workers and spent our days shadowing them. The role of the community health workers is basically to visit people at their homes and educate them about different health issues-infant care, TB, HIV/AIDS, diarrhea, cholera, etc-and encourage them to go to the clinic if necessary.

Ok, so everyone had different experiences and mine was definitely not what I was expecting. First off, the program advises us to wear long skirts while we are in the rural areas, because it is culturally appropriate. For the most part I think that this is accurate, so I showed up wearing this skirt I bought at a flea market in Durban for less than a quarter and the t-shirt I had worn the day before-looking my frumpiest. To my shame, I was introduced to my mama, Phumeza, and she was this little diva in wide leg pants and this super trendy top. She also has a different living situation then most people in the area. She is not from this province of South Africa, but moved there because there was no work in the Eastern Cape where she is from. This means that she hasn't inherited her family's homestead of roundavels and land like most people. Instead, she lives with her two daughters in a housing area with rows of little bitty houses where each family lives in a single room. They have electricity but no running water in the houses. While this was not the romanticized countryside by candlelight experience I was hoping for, it is another reality of living in a rural area that was good to see. The other student I was staying with and I were allowed to walk to a neighbor's to use their toilet (byo-water), but as far as we could tell the family typically pees in a bucket in the side closet and we don't even know about the rest...anyway...The first night Phumeza asked us if we were going to sleep on the floor or on the bed. We thought that there were going to be five of us sleeping there and there was one big bed and one small bed, so we said that we had sleeping bags and didn't mind sleeping on the floor if that was easiest. Later we found out that the oldest daughter was not going to be home while we were staying there, but when it was time for bed Phumeza picked up the kitchen table and put it on top of the small bed, in order to make more room for us on the floor. So the first night we slept on a cement floor while there was an empty bed a few feet away, oh geez. The next night I asked if maybe one of us could sleep on the small bed and the other on the floor, and then she said we could have the big bed and Phumeza and her six year old daughter slept in the small one- much more comfortable for us!

During the day on Tuesday and Wednesday we went with Phumeza on all of her visits. She walks pretty far to get to different homesteads and visit families in the area. The system is definitely better than nothing, but it was also easy to see a ton of improvements that could make it a lot more beneficial to the community. The people we were visiting she sees about every two months, and they don't know when she is coming. So we would just walk into someone's yard and see who was around to talk to. If there was a baby in the house, Phumeza told them about the importance of getting immunizations and about giving them vitamin A. If not, she asked them what they wanted to learn about and gave them a spiel of about 10 minutes long. If they didn't care she picked a random topic. We saw some really sad situations- a fifteen year old girl at home with her toddler, a young boy who lives on a homestead alone because both of his parents are dead, some really small and dirty children, and an extremely sick old woman whose husband refused to take her to an old folk's home to receive the kind of care she needs. Phumeza was good about telling us what she teaches the people, so it was nice to see what kind of access (and lack of access) people have to health information.

Wednesday was my birthday, and while it was a good day it was a little sad to be so far from family and friends and not really have any kind of celebration. The closest thing I had to a birthday cake was canned peaches after dinner, but I am making up for it by celebrating this weekend back in Durban!

Thursday before heading back to Durban we visited a traditional healer and sangoma, which was really interesting. Traditional medicine still plays a big role here in South Africa, and not just in the rural areas. In fact my next door neighbor in Cato Manor was a sangoma! Speaking of Cato Manor, we have officially moved out of our homes and are now back in Durban living in hostels until November when we will be doing independent research. Ok, that is all for now- hope everyone is doing well!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1223275500/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1223275500/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1223275500/tpod.html Mon, 06 Oct 2008 02:56:07 -0400 Sawubona South Africa!

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Durban, South Africa

This past week was kinda crazy...
- The month of November we are going to be done with class and doing a big independent research project of our own design. I am actually getting really excited about it, but right now it takes a lot of planning and organizing and figuring out. I am still working out details, but hopefully I am going to be living in a rural area and learning about HIV. I am really interested in the huge stigma that 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 a community and finding out all of the ways that people are formally and informally educated about HIV, with the hopes of understanding the roots of stigma and behavioral choices people make. I'm still figuring this thing out, but I'll update you on it later!

- Wednesday instead of class we had an excursion. I went around with a hospice caregiver named gogo Gloria. First she took me and three other of my classmates to a local clinic that does primary care as well as a lot of HIV testing and treatment. From there she took us to one of her home visits, to see a sixteen year old boy named Sepezihle. While this is just one young boy in South Africa, I feel like his story paints a good picture of situations so many people here and all over the world are living with everyday. Sepezihle has TB and is HIV+. According to gogo Gloria, both of his parents died of HIV when he was young, and he was born HIV+. He only found out the cause of his parent's deaths and tested HIV+ in the past few months. Understandably, he is having a lot of trouble dealing with finding out he is HIV+, and has been going through some denial and become somewhat withdrawn. He is not yet on ARVs, the drugs that prevent the virus from continuing to get worse, although the fact that he has TB indicates that he definitely needs them. In order to be given ARVs, a test needs to be done to determine the condition of the person's immune system. HIV works by destroying the body's immune system, leading to secondary opportunistic infections that the body would normally be able to fight off. When the immune system gets to a certain point (measured by the number of CD4 immune cells the person has) it is determined to be AIDS. Gogo Gloria said that Sepezihle went for a CD4 count test, but the results were lost. He went again for the test and was expecting the results later that week. Another obstacle for him receiving the drugs was that he has to attend three ARV classes before he can be given the drugs. He has been in and out of the hospital and unable to attend the third and final class, so he will have to do that before being able to start the drugs. These classes are in theory a great idea, because ARVs have certain side-effects people need to be aware of and also because HIV is a constantly mutating virus so consistency with the drugs is essential to prevent the virus from becoming resistant. OK, sorry for the bio lesson, but it's pretty interesting right? We waited in the living room while gogo Gloria changed a bandage, and then we went in and basically just tried to chat with him a little. He lives with his gogo, who is also raising several other of her grandchildren (if you haven't noticed, gogos keep South Africa going for sure). Sepezihle was unbelievably thin, and not able to do much more than sit in bed. When he was asked what he liked and what he wanted to do later in life, he said he wanted to be a soccer player. He hopes to go back to school next year, and it was really good to hear that a lot of his friends and his teachers come to his house to visit him in the mean time. While leaving his house, gogo Gloria pointed out a church really close to his house. She said that they used to have their HIV support group meetings there, but that they had to stop because the church was being extremely difficult. Because they knew the people coming had HIV, they were super paranoid about the church being kept pristinely clean all of the time, out of fear of contracting the illness. This is just one example of how despite the huge prevalence people are still ignorant about the basics of the virus and how it can and cannot be transmitted. If I have learned anything about community health so far in South Africa, it is that the issues are incredibly complex and interlaced with culture. While poverty and lack of resources are definitely part of the problem, no solution is simple or can be successful without an understanding of the people and the culture.

- Thursday was my big Zulu exam, including an oral section. I am now able to have basic conversations in Zulu, meet new people and ask about them, talk about my family, say what I did or will do on the weekend, and some of the basics of grammar. While I still can't understand too much of the Zulu I hear on TV for example, I can have some conversations with native speakers. Hopefully I will retain most of it and be able to impress you all when I get back home!

- Saturday I went to the Durban Sharks rugby game. It was super fun and actually way too short- I was just starting to understand what was going on when the game was over! We had nosebleed seats, but the Sharks are really good and slaughtered the other team. I am officially a life long fan J
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1222666440/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1222666440/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1222666440/tpod.html Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:57:23 -0400 Sawubona South Africa!

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Durban, South Africa

Here are some things I have been doing in the past few weeks:
-Visited a special needs school and got to see their heritage day festival
-Increased the size of my South African family. My mama's husband is home on a 3 week leave from work- his work is something with African wildlife in which he travels all over to various parks and reserves. He is really warm and friendly, and although he literally sits and watches TV all day I enjoy having him around.
-Went with the other students and ALL of our families to the beach for a day and swam in the Indian Ocean
-Found a bakery in Cato Manor- yesssss
-Started studying for my Zulu final this week (my clicks are improving... somewhat)

-And, yesterday...I got to go to a Zulu wedding! One of my friends was going to a wedding in Cato Manor with her mama, and she was told that she was welcome to bring some more people with her-here it is totally appropriate to go to a party you weren't officially invited to. I am pretty sure that we were actually just at the reception and that the ceremony happened the day before, but we got to see the big white dress and everything. Ok, so the events were outside and inside a small tent a short walk away from where I live. The bride and groom walked out of a house (the bride had a charmingly gaudy white dress straight out of the 80s and the groom had a white suit with a baby pink vest). They walked out to the crowd singing followed by the bridal party (in equally 80s-tastic dresses and plenty of baby pink). After a little parading around they went inside the tent and all sat at a big table for the bridal party, while everyone else crowded into this tiny tent or watched from outside. My friends and I had been enjoying from the back of the crowd, until suddenly we were told to come inside the tent and sit at the tables. This one man who had sort of taken us under his wing found spots for all of us. Get this-one of my friends and I ended up sitting at the table in the front literally next to the bridal party, at the same table as the groom's mother. This was a little mortifying, but one of those situations when you just have to accept whatever hospitality is offered to you and try not to feel bad. There were lots of speeches (in Zulu) and group singing, and then the food was served. We ate a very typical South African meal- rice, beef or chicken curry, cole slaw, beets, and smashed butternut squash. It was definitely not the best meal I've ever had, but who was I to criticize? I wasn't even invited to the wedding!
After eating, most of the tent was cleared out for the presentation of the gifts from the bride's family to the groom's family. At this point the bride and groom had both changed into traditional clothing. It's kinda hard to describe, but she wore a colorful dress with a head wrap and he wore animal hide and leather- probably what you would think an African tribal man would wear.

[By the way, there are still a lot of traditional practices here- including the paying of lobola. Men are expected to pay the bride's family a gift of eleven cows in order to marry her (this costs an enormous amount of money, especially for the people in the area I live in). Today sometimes people just pay the money equivalent, but typically cows are still used. If the lobola is not paid, the marriage is not accepted by the families and many believe your ancestors will send you bad luck.]

Back to the reception...the bride's family gives blankets, pillows, straw mats, and bowls to the groom's family. There was a whole ceremony where individuals of the groom's family were called to lay on a mat on the ground and were covered with a blanket. Then they stood up and sang something, which everyone responded to. They then took their gifts and went off. All of the gifts were given in this way, and then the bride and groom cut the cake and posed for pictures just like we do it in the states. We were devastated to find out that the tradition is that you only get a piece of cake if you are married, but eventually the bride came over and said that it was fine for us to have some- hurray! Pretty soon the DJ was cranking some Zulu-techno, and we had fun on the dance floor. The open door policy to weddings means that there were definitely some random sketchy men around saying they wanted an American lady, etc. Luckily the mamas helped us out, and as usual there were a bunch of little kids around that befriended us. So we had a lot of fun dancing with the kids and then had to leave before the party was over, considering we had been there for over five hours! Overall, the wedding was a ton of fun and it was really cool to see some of the traditions we have learned about come to life. It is still really weird to stand out so much in situations like this, but really nice to constantly be so welcomed and warmly accepted!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1221629520/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1221629520/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1221629520/tpod.html Sat, 20 Sep 2008 07:22:11 -0400 Sawubona South Africa!

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Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Well, this weekend was great, powerful, overwhelming, enriching, confusing, inspiring, and discouraging- to name a few of the emotions I am dealing with at the moment.
Friday we drove to the Drakensburg mountains, where we all stayed in a big cabin without electricity and cooked over a campfire. Saturday we were free to relax and hike. I got up really early with a few friends to see the most amazing stars I have ever seen and go on a sunset hike, which was really beautiful. Later in the morning a big group of us set off for an 18 km hike, which took all day and had some amazing views- we even saw a few baboons!
Sunday we left and drove to Impendle, the rural community where we stayed. We got to the town and found out that we are the first foreigners to ever stay in the town, which was apparent by the number of stares we got. We were paired off and dropped off at our new homes for the next few days (there is a whole story with the dropping off, involving lots of cows and dogs and trying to drive a minibus with a trailer around tiny country roads to find houses of people who all have the same names, but anyway...). The family I stayed with was absolutely lovely. Six people, five cows, two dogs, and various goats and chickens live in a little homestead consisting of a few small buildings; two of them were a beautiful blue color that I was in love with. My family had some electricity but no running water at the house, but there was a water source a short walk away that they used to get buckets of water that were kept in the kitchen. We were treated extremely well the whole time we were there, with trays upon trays of delicious food being set before us and an overall very welcoming feeling. The mama, her brother, and the two teenage boys of the house spoke some English, and the gogo (grandma) and 4 year old girl only spoke Zulu. They were such a great family, and they even gave us Zulu names! Mine is Nontokozo, which means gladness (all Zulu names have literal meanings, so it would be like someone's name was literally Gladness, or Flower for example).
Monday we shadowed some home-based care givers on their rounds to various sick people in the community. This organization is really inspiring, it is a group of dedicated women who volunteer to visit people in their homes in order to bathe them and offer general support. At the end of each visit all of the women sing a beautiful prayer, a very powerful and emotional thing to experience in a round hut in the middle of nowhere Africa. We also had a lecture from various people of the community- a nurse who runs the local health clinic, a social worker, someone from a local non-profit organization, and the woman who runs the home-based care organization. There are so many dimensions to the problems the community is struggling with: limited resources, cultural beliefs, stigmatization, poverty, lack of proper education, gender issues... it was good to see that there is a strong interest in change and a want for help, but it was also a bit discouraging to be faced with such a complex problem and not be able to spend enough time in the community to really understand the situation.
We are now back in Durban and happy to see our Cato Manor families. We have another rural homestay in October, so it will be very interesting to compare all of these different communities we are able to become a part of. There are a ton of other stories that I could tell about this weekend, but this is already long, so I'll stop for now!

ps- here is a link to some more pictures... http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2065593&l=95f43&id=7205945
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1220868960/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1220868960/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1220868960/tpod.html Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:55:33 -0400 Sawubona South Africa!

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Durban, South Africa

Well we have settled into our new homes, but I am still trying to figure out where I fit into the South African dynamic. Besides when there are students staying in Cato Manor, absolutely no white people live there. This makes walking around weird because everyone stares and talks to you. It is hard to know exactly how to react because we have been warned that friendliness can be interpreted differently here, with unwanted implications (especially as a girl). I pretty much don't leave the house after dark (which is early since it is technically winter here although the weather is really nice), meaning that we are all getting into the local soap operas!

This weekend we had free time, and Saturday I went to the beach with some people. At first my mama said that it was not safe, because the public beaches have so many "bad people". But we ended up going to a private beach, which was SO nice. We went to this really nice area where we paid 5 rand (8 rand is about 1 dollar) to have access to a beach with security guards and everything. It was pretty much heaven, although we also couldn't help but think about how completely different it was than the neighborhood we live in and how out of place our Cato Manor families would be there. It is really hard because we don't want to live the elitist life while we are here, but safety is definitely an issue, especially for white Americans. On a lighter note, while we were eating lunch outside at a restaurant on the beach there were wild monkeys! I really enjoyed seeing them, and one even jumped on a table and stole some sugar packets.

Saturday night my mama's 4 year old grandson came to stay with us, and he is really cute. He doesn't know English but wants to do nothing but watch High School Musical. So I have now watched the two movies a total of 5 times in the past week and wanted to scream when they started one of them again last night. Sunday is mama Thandi's only day off, so after watching some movies she did her laundry in the bathtub, and we baked raisin cake before bedtime (about 9:30).

In class I am learning more Zulu, and we have started learning about the culture here and some of the health issues (which is the main theme of our semester). This weekend we leave for a rural homestay, so that is going to be a really interesting experience! I thought I was roughing it before, but this is going to be legitimately living in a hut in Africa...so yea, wish me luck!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1220516400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1220516400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1220516400/tpod.html Thu, 04 Sep 2008 04:22:13 -0400 Sawubona South Africa!

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Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Last night I moved into the house that I am going to be staying in for five weeks throughout the time I am here. All of the students on my trip are staying in a township outside of Durban called Cato Manor. I am staying with my South African mama, who lives by herself most of the time. Her husband works really far away, which is pretty common here. She has a daughter and 4 year old grandson that live nearby and I think the grandson stays with her every weekend. She speaks English pretty well, but there are definitely times when we aren't really sure what each other are saying.
Last night she made us a nice dinner of curry chicken, rice, salad, and butternut squash. The tradition here is to serve guests a whole lot of food that they are expected to finish, so luckily I liked it and am able to eat a lot of food as most of you know :) . After dinner we watched her favorite South African "soapie", which was really interesting because during the show they are constantly switching between English and Zulu (with English subtitles) in mid-sentence. After that show was over she all of the sudden got really excited and hopped up saying that she had something to show me. She came back with the two High School Musical DVDs, which was really funny. So we hummed along to Disney goodness and then went to bed.
The house is very small, but also very clean and I have my own room. Something that I was not expecting about the house is that they don't have shower. There is a tub with a bucket/large bowl inside that you fill and use to wash. This morning while she was taking a "bath" she heated up water in the kitchen, which I used to make tea. Then she came and poured it in a bucket and told me that it was for my bath... so opps! Haha, anyway I can take a shower sometimes in the house/school where we have class everyday, but will be a little dirtier than usual while I am here- all part of the adventure!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1220275380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1220275380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laurenharden/1/1220275380/tpod.html Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:34:41 -0400 Sawubona South Africa!

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Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

Hello! I arrived safely in South Africa after a long 18 hour plane ride. I only paid for 15 minutes of internet, but here is a little of what I have been doing the past few days. We spent the last three nights in a hostel outside of Johannesburg. The first day we went to Soweto, a township known for a famous student uprising during the apartheid and also because Nelson Mandela lived there at one point. There we went to a museum about Soweto during the apartheid. We also tried to go to Mandela's former house, but unfortunately got there to find out that it is being rebuilt and is closed right now. We also went to the official apartheid musuem which was really powerful. The next day we took a trip to the mall and also had our first Zulu lessons! So far Zulu has been pretty fun, mostly because we laugh at each other so much. The hardest part is that c, q, and x are all clicks in Zulu- and they are different types of click sounds. A lot of common words have clicks in them too, so it is not something you can just try to avoid (for example to word "no"). The next day we drove from Jo'burg to Durban and got to see a lot of the countryside on the way. Durban is where our trip is centered, and it is a really big city on the coast (meaning beach!). We are spending the first few days in a really nice hostel, and tomorrow we meet and move in with our host families, which is very exciting and also makes me nervous. Well, have to run. I will have a lot more to write about in the next week!
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