One Fine Day

Just a few sentences from me before I give you another Africa post from Michelle! I'm about to start my 4th week of work, which is still kind of unbelievable. I've been enjoying it for the most part, and I really like almost all of the people I work with. I have some entertaining stories I wish I could share with you all, but I hesitate to do so in such a public place because they involve specific individuals (ask me some other time and I'd be happy to tell); I also can't talk in much detail about the nature of my cases. However, I will say that I went for 2 weeks and 2 days without wearing the same pair of shoes to work, and due to the wonder of billable hours, I now think about my life in 6 minute increments.

Ok, on to Africa. PS formatting this from gmail took foreeeever, so I hope you all enjoy.

-----

Hello friends!

I've been woefully remiss in updating you on my Africa adventures - I actually wrote this update twice a few days ago, but my BB deleted it both times as I tried to send. Since then, I've been in Zambia and Botswana with no internet access - no data signal up there, and the power went out both nights that I was in Zambia. So Amar, if you're reading, I meant to text you when I arrived, but I couldn't! I'm alive though, sitting in the JoBurg airport and gnawing on some biltong.

So the strategy that Amar and I had decided on for our posts is that he would give broad strokes, while I would provide the detail. My trip is nearly over now, and I'll do more when I have a proper keyboard, but I just wanted to tell you all about one fantastic day we had.

After Cape Town, we flew to Durban, then decided to travel south to the Wild Coast - specifically, Coffee Bay. It's a beautiful, undeveloped stretch of coastline along the Indian Ocean. We decided that it would be the perfect place to learn how to surf. We woke up at 8, met our dreadlocked instructor Rayno, and headed to the waves. After what seemed like 2 minutes of instructions, Rayno tossed us out to sea. Amid many belly flops and nose dives, we each managed to stand up a few times - it was exhilarating when we did. Exhausting too!

Afterwards, we headed back to the hostel and met up with a group to hike to the Hole in the Wall. It's only 9km, but going up, down, and around hills that plunge into the sea stretched the hike to 4 hours. We saw whales and dolphins breaching, rock hyraxes, waterfalls, cows, pebbled beaches, and a handful of local children fishing.

I'd like to digress briefly to mention our tour guide, Joseph. Joseph was born and bred in Coffee Bay, and was awesome for the following reasons: 1) he did the hike barefoot, 2) he was funny and gregarious, and 3) he had the best repertoire of signature sayings ever! Every speech was precluded with a booming "GOOD PEOPLE!" and concluded with a satisfied "sweet!" (pronounced "sa-WEET!"). However, his (and our) favorite by far was "GET IN THERE!" It's a versatile phrase, used for such purposes as encouraging soccer players to score, telling people to drink, and shouting at kids to get out of the way of an oncoming car (modified to "GET OUT THERE!").

We finally made it to the Hole in the Wall, where we devoured grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches toasted over a fire. The hole itself is a hole (duh) that runs through a mountain that juts out of the water just off the coast. Wow, most poorly constructed sentence ever. Anyway, the waves come crashing through and are amplified - it's really a wondrous sight. After a bit, Amar, Abhay, and I decided that we had to do the jump - hardly anyone else in our group dared. We swam out, climbed up on a rock ledge at the top of the hole, and at Joseph's signal ("GET IN THERE!"), leapt out and plunged the 3 or 4 meters into the sea. I was terrified, but so glad that I did it.

At night, we visited the local village's headman. The Xhosa people of the area live in round green huts with thatched grass roofs, and his was the largest. Kids met us on the road and chatted with us as we walked, and we all settled in for an evening of food and dancing. Amar and Abhay sat on chairs, but I had to sit on the floor because I'm a woman (I endured some ribbing for this - more discussion at a later time). Girls performed traditional dances while other children sang and clapped. We ate samp and beans, mealie pap (for those of you who have been to The Shebeen, it's not quite cheesy grits), and soup with cabbage. We washed it all down with shared buckets of maize beer – it was called something like ung(click)oboti. There are so many different clicks, and Westerners can't really hear the difference, but I'm proud to say that I attempted to repeat the word while in Botswana and I was understood! Woo.

It was a fun evening - one of the village dogs came and plopped into my lap, we exchanged questions about culture with the villagers (typical dowry is 10 heads of cattle), and at Joseph's urging ("GET IN THERE! SHAKE THAT BODY!"), joined the villagers in dancing. Later, when we had left, the three of us went stargazing and marveled at the shooting stars and the unfamiliar southern sky.

Whew! Third time's the charm, hopefully this goes through. I have many, many more things to tell you all, but hopefully this will tide you over until I get home to a proper keyboard (typing a long email on a BB is hard enough, but I also haven't been able to cut my nails in nearly 3 weeks!). I'd love to see you all when I get home on Tuesday!

P.S. I met a TJ girl in Cape Town and a UVA kid in Zambia. Small world!

My Life as a Real Humon

I write to you all from the Ballston Panera. Read on to find out why!

Today will be the 3^rd full day that I’ve lived in my new apartment – my first apartment as a “real humon,” as Bryan would say. It’s a little weird to be living in an apartment that’s only 15 minutes away from my house. But don’t get me wrong. I am, for many reasons that I will not enumerate here, thrilled with my apartment. It’s just strange to be back in more or less the same area that I grew up in but not living in my house. I do like Ballston so far. I don’t know how familiar you all are with Ballston, but it’s almost like a mini DC. Lots of high-rise buildings, stores, and restaurants on every block. I’m also only a few blocks away from the Ballston Mall, which would be more exciting if the Ballston Mall weren’t sketchy and devoid of decent stores. I can walk to Starbucks in less than 5 minutes, though, and we also have a 24-hour IHOP right across the street from the Ballston metro. If you’re ever in need of a place to stay in northern VA, please let me know! I should warn you, however, that Dean R has already sort of claimed my couch for the remainder of the summer.

Anyway, my first few days here have been interesting, for lack of a better word. On Monday, after spending my first night at the apartment, I awoke with a dilemma. As I had done the bulk of my unpacking the previous night and we have yet to have our internet and cable set up (Bryan will sleep until 3pm whenever possible, so he of course was still asleep), I was at a loss in terms of having anything with which to occupy myself. I settled for taking advantage of one of the utilities that we did have at the time, water. Yes, I was so bored that I took an extra long shower, did two loads of laundry, and ran the dishwasher. Thankfully, Dean R saved me when he stopped by during his lunch hour. Then, Bryan and I decided to be productive in the afternoon and ran a bunch of errands, making stops at Ikea (where every item I bought aside from my dresser cost less than $2), Bed Bath & Beyond, Trader Joe’s (if you like wine, take note – we found some very decent bottles of wine, all of which were under $6), and the grocery store. We are both so tired of carrying loads of things to and from the elevator! I will be very glad when we are finally settled in. Michelle was supposed to come over and hang out with us that night, but she decided to, like, be a good child or something and spend time with her mom since she was leaving for China the next morning. So Bryan and I were on our own. We made our first meal in the apartment, drank a lot of good cheap wine, and had some quality roommate bonding. Until 5:30am. At least that’s when I passed out. Bryan apparently stayed up playing Zelda and didn’t get to bed until he realized that the sun was coming up.

Yesterday I tried stealing wireless from my neighbors to no avail. Apparently, the other residents of my building take their internet security seriously. I had one brief moment of hope when I discovered an unsecured network called ‘wahoowa.’ I got really excited and was so sure that I was finally going to be able to use the internet for the first time since Sunday – and on a network named wahoowa at that – but it was not to be. We are still internet-less and cable-less. To clarify, we have gone so long without setting up cable and internet because we didn’t know Comcast’s number, and, not having internet, it wasn’t like we could quickly look it up either. By the way, we now know that Comcast’s number is 1-800-COMCAST.

So I’ll end here for now. That was probably more mundane detail about my life than you’ve ever wanted to know, and my life is certainly not nearly as captivating as the travelogues we’ve been getting from Amar. Work starts on Monday for me, so maybe I’ll have something new to report then. And hopefully next time I’ll be able to write from my own apartment!