Kidnapped by Afrikaans

Trip Start Feb 05, 2007
1
5
25
Trip End Apr 28, 2007


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Flag of South Africa  ,
Monday, February 12, 2007

It turns out that flying to Africa has been a travel back in time. But not in the way they make you think of Africa in the United States, as a sort of "uncivilized" world, it seems to have brought me right back to high school, well at least this weekend. Most of the volunteers were leaving for the weekend, I didn't know anything about the trip but I decided to take the adventure. It turns out we were going with some other Afrikaan men, ranging from age 22 to 35, but all of them acted like delinquent frat boys. I spent the weekend by myself, which was great. I found a quite corner at the resort that overlooked some mountains and just sort of digested what has been happening for the last couple of days. It left me feeling a lot better and refreshed and ready to deal with talks of tanning and dieting among the other volunteers.

The trip highlight had to be the hour drive out of Barberton to Badplaas, the other highlight was witnessing the most intensive drinking I have even seen. The Afrikaan men just never stopped drinking. They went to bed at four in the morning and when I cam back to the campsite at 8 in the morning they were trying to offer me beer. This wasn't what I had envisioned as part of my trip abroad, but it was interesting to see how these five Afrikaan men live. They made their disgust clear when they found out I was here to work in the creches with black children. They were rude and harassed the security guard when he came to tell them to be quite in the middle of the night. It was quite a spectacle, it was a part of South Africa that I didn't think I would get to see.

We also went to a restaurant called "gangsters", which featured a cartoon black-face smiley guy. That was the only time I wished I had a camera the whole trip, I could barley believe it.

The creche that I am working at is the best part of my stay. I am working with 13 children, which is great because most of the other creches have about twice that many. I had them rubbing leaves today to then cut out and paste on trees. They are learning about families so each leaf was suppose to represent a family member. These are pretty little kids and most couldn't get a clear rubbing to come out, but a taught a couple of the older ones to do it. The children have started to talk to me in Swazi, which is nice that they want to communicate but I have no idea what they are saying most of the time. I have never seen children so good at sharing, they flight with each other, but there was one new toy and all the boys sat in a line and took turns rolling the new car around.

This Sunday I am going to church with the teacher I work with, Binki. She is very kind and happy to have me around. Today I spent a couple hours talking with her and some of her family members about the United States and South Africa. She calls my home "from the other side." I also got an education in South African pop culture from her nephew who is about my age. Well I am running out of internet time, so I should go. But I have another spot booked for tomorrow, so maybe I will try and update a little more then.
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