One Month Back in Swaziland!

My blogging style is normally one blog per week; but since getting back we have been caught in a whirlwind of stress, long hours, inconvenient journeys, ridiculous heat and so so so so so many children. There are children literally coming out of my ears.
I do sincerely apologise to anyone who has been biting their nails down to the quick in angst, just wondering where all my interesting posts are. (I doubt there are many of you). As you will soon see I have barely had enough time to shower and eat this past month, and the near future doesn’t look like it will be bringing us any relief!  

Our first week back was very uneventful; it basically included sleeping, washing all our clothes (and my towel, it smelt DISGUSTING), trying to keep cool (and failing) and taking lots of showers to try and rid ourselves of the constant sweat. Well, the constant sweat was me; Ashley seems immune to the heat whereas I am the equivalent of a snowman lost in the desert.
We spent one creepy night completely alone in the darkness of hostel due to an insane storm causing a power cut; we didn’t get to eat anything as we couldn’t cook, and Ashley walked around with a head torch on. She loved it.
The new student’s orientation was that weekend, which we had been told we had to be back for. Turns out we didn’t have to do anything at all, and we had lost a week’s travelling. However we did probably save an awful lot of money being stuck back in hostel and not gallivanting around South Africa for another 7 days. The prefects decided to wake the ‘newbie’s’ up at 2:00am with vuvuzelas which sent me straight back to the early morning horrors of Leadership Camp, at least this time I could stay snuggled up in bed! Suckers.

Contact from the UK! Specifically Scotland.
On arriving back to Swaziland it was like the Highlands had come for a visit; one of last year’s volunteers Hannah Craig sent us out a parcel for Christmas, so we had cards to hand out to everyone and also some shortbread – which I was particularly happy about! Ashley’s Aunty also sent out 3 tins of haggis for everyone to try, so Ashley cooked up a nice little meal and we tucked into the surprisingly delicious substance that is haggis.
Big thank you to the Scots out there! Your culture and culinary delicacies were much appreciated.

Injabulo Preschool
We’ve also discovered the brilliant coming home surprise in the form of food donations at Injabulo! The first 4 months that we were here we hadn’t been receiving food donations of any sort; and normally the preschool received a donation every month so we could feed the children at lunch time.
So for 4 months we had been angrily ringing around all of the local people with the power, trying to source where our food was... Then out of the blue we arrive at preschool to find our store room completely empty of our resources (panic, we thought we had been robbed), and full of food. We hadn’t been robbed by the way, only badly reorganised.
So now we can actually feed our children! Thank you WFP (World Food Programme).
FYI; Ashley and I have tried some of the food, its brown mush that tastes like burning cigarettes... I think the caregivers might need a new pot.

Nelsiwe buzzing for the food!

The food that tasted like smoke, yum.

Last year we thought we had a lot on our plate with 60 children... but after our Registration Day turned into “Registration Week - pop by whenever you like and we’ll probably let your kid in because you’re in a bad situation and we can’t turn you away/your kid is really cute” fiasco; we have now managed to land ourselves with 76 registered children. Flip-my-life. 

Luckily one of the parents who was registering a child wants to help out with teaching at Injabulo; the idea is she will volunteer for a while and not have to pay school fees, then she can receive a share of the money like Nelsiwe does. This makes our lives the tiniest bit easier because we have another body to help out... It also makes Nelsiwe’s life a whole lot easier on the days that she’s alone with all those crazy children!

This isn't even one full class...

Nelsiwe also said to Ashley and I that “when you are not here it’s like I am walking alone through a desert with no shelter, but when you are here it’s like there is a big biggg shelter over me and I know that everything is alright” – what a cutie.

Everything started out pretty peachy at Injabulo this year, yes there were a lot of children but they were kind of behaving themselves... Until this week.
Ashley and I arrived early to Injabulo to find the store room COMPLETELY ransacked, it looked like we had been robbed by a heard of blind elephants. We had a bit of a rant and a rave, complained about the state of the place and decided that we would have a meeting with Nelsiwe about the mess. Then we knuckled down and tidied it up, for an hour. Later on that morning when we were sorting out payment with Nelsiwe and Bongkile (the parent volunteer) we left to classroom to find the kids had gone into the store room; they pulled EVERYTHING out from where we had tidied it away to, strewn books all over the bloody village and decided that puzzles work better when the pieces are buried in dirt. It was worse than before.
As you can probably tell, we were not happy. At all. Ashley had a bit of a screaming fit and shouted at all the kids to go home, we screamed on about never going into the store room, respecting toys and not throwing books. I walked into the trashed store room, stood alone and took a breather; I was so furious I was about to punch a wall, and with there being so many children about the place one of them was bound to run in the way and would end up with a black eye or something... Plus Ingrid (our Desk Officer and Director of Project Trust!) is coming out to visit us in 4 days, so it would be rather bad on me if I looked like a child abuser, might just get repatriated for that. 

Moriah Centre

Moriah Centre has also increased in numbers this year! It’s about time too; the preschool has 7 teachers and there are only 4 classes, last year the largest class had 10 pupils in – when you compare those statistics to Injabulo you can really understand just how much we have to battle to complete the easiest things. So now there are 4 classes with 15 students in each, still easy as pie to manage and now more children can come to preschool!

Since coming back Ashley and I are the designated kombi drivers for Moriah Centre; we drive the kombi that has been donated by the American Missionaries, so that should mean we have lovely, calm stress-free mornings because we drive (rather than walk to) Moriah, right? Wrong.
It is currently summer in Swaziland, and also the rainy season. For the past month it has been chucking it down almost every night, and there’s been a fair few thunderstorms with tornado like winds, supreme lightning and annoying power shortages. Therefore all 3 dams in the country are flooded, and all the rivers are high, which means that no one can cross the bridge from the village ‘Game 5’ to our area of Big Bend. Every morning we have been leaving before 7am to walk 20 minutes to Ubombo Primary School (UPS) to collect the kombi, then we drive to Game 5 pack 5 teachers and about 30 kids into the kombi and drive them to preschool with our fingers crossed, hoping that the police doing traffic checks don’t look too closely into our windows.
We then drive them all back after preschool, and walk back from UPS in the blazing heat. Even the days we’re at Injabulo we’ve been doing the Game 5 run, so in between running Moriah people around we have been getting on 2 public kombis to Injabulo in the middle of nowhere, teaching, waiting (sometimes for 2 hours) for kombis back, taking everyone home, walking back from UPS and then cooking for soup kitchen. Hectic. ‘Working 9 ‘till 5’, I wish... try 7 ‘till 6.  And that’s not including paperwork.

Swaziland, please stop raining and let everyone walk across the bridge. Thank you.

However, we have had some pretty funny times since returning;

• We missed the very first day that all the kids came back because we were at Injabulo, but Mary (one of the teachers) told us that “yesterday was like a funeral, all the kids were crying like someone had died!”
• Cecelia one of the cooks decided that she was going to bash the curtains in the church hall while we were doing singing and dancing with the children... This unleashed a plague of horrible black insects that look like evil grasshoppers, they jump in all directions like tiny reflex balls on steroids and for some reason have appeared in our lives in their thousands since coming back. Summer must be their breeding season. :( The kids were running around and screaming while I was squashing anything that came near me; meanwhile Cecelia and Gugu were calmly using brooms to herd up the insects into enormous black writhing masses in the corners of the room before disposing of them with an industrial hoover. I am not exaggerating, there were literally thousands of them.
• Ashley finds a dead snake.
• Nonhlanhla and Khanyisile (two more teachers) beat down a tiny bird that was flying around the church hall with some flags... They were charging around like nutcases, wielding these flags for about 10 minutes, they nearly smashed through the windows and brought down the ceiling fans! They didn’t kill it as Ashley and I originally thought; only traumatised it enough so that it lay still while they were walking around with it pretending to eat it, and telling everyone not to free it because they were saving it for lunch. “No, not dead, just tired. It’s meat, for the fire, for BRAII! It’s nice.”“Where is it, I want my lunch. I want to eat it, want my lunch.” Ashley and I freed it, that’s where it went. To be honest, I think she was kidding about having it for a braii that day. But I don’t doubt that she probably has killed and eaten birds on other days.

Florence getting in on the action!

Nonhlanhla with her lunch.

Freeing the bird from its fate.

My re-enactment of how they were chasing the bird around - this is much tamer actually! But similar things went on for a good 5 minutes. 

 Soup Kitchen

You will all remember the money we raised before Christmas to buy shoes for the kids at soup kitchen, and to buy presents for our preschoolers... Anyway, we had a fair bit of that money left over, so we decided to buy every child at soup kitchen a lunchbox and water bottle – this way they all have a container to bring with them for the food, we don’t have to serve them 2nds into their bare hands and they can take clean water home with them! A pretty sound investment if you ask me.

New boxes!

 We also hand out loads of rejected clothes from girl’s hostel, they all leave stuff behind when they go home for the Christmas holidays and we ended up getting most of it! Amongst this large collection of clothes was a swimming costume, maybe a woman’s size 12... and Aunty Vina claimed it for herself. Now you have seen pictures of Aunty Vina and she is not a small lady. But she was incessant “For meee! For Durbaan!” So she’s going to be hitting the Durban beaches in a pretty tight black one-piece, you work it Vina!

For DURBAAAAAAN, hahahahahahaaa :D

We’ve seen Aunty Vina have quite a few freak outs in the last month; the first was over her maize crops.  A sponsor gave her maize seeds to plant in a field so she can grow it to feed the orphans who live with her; apparently a patch in the middle of the field has been stolen and she went mental at all the kids one time we were there! She thinks that either they stole the maize, or their families, or someone that they know... Thing is it could’ve been anyone, but they all got an earful, bless.
The second freak out was directed at one girl from soup kitchen; she accused Aunty Vina of keeping soup kitchen food to herself. One Friday we didn’t have transport so we couldn’t go to soup kitchen, therefore the kids were expecting twice as much food the next time, but there wasn’t because we had forgotten to defrost it. One of the older girls turned around to Aunty Vina and (I assume) accused her in front of everyone of keeping the food – which she didn’t do because we just hadn’t brought it. Safe to say Aunty Vina wasn’t best pleased at the accusations and she verbally tore a strip off this girl. I can’t say I’m not surprised, she comes under a lot of scrutiny from certain jealous people in the community, and if gossip starts (whether it be false or true) things could get difficult for her.

We have also been introduced to the Swazi drink ‘Buganu’ by Aunty Vina, which is a beer made from the marula fruit. Marula fruit trees are very common in Swaziland, and the marula season begins each year in mid Feburary – May. Everyone is Swaziland has a massive celebration of the marula fruit, and every year the Kings holds an annual Marula Festival where different families present the Royal family with some of their home brewed Buganu. Then everyone gets drunk as hell.
It’s a cloudy white substance and basically tastes like very strong beer, it’s about 8.7% and I can’t say I’m a massive fan. But it’s traditional and I can say I’ve tried it, so that’s good enough! Everyone who drinks it gets absolutely steaming, and apparently it brings out an uncontrollable urge to eat meat, and livestock thefts increase significantly during marula season... Interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50tlF3kGbT4 - hit this link and you won't regret it!

Hostel

Aunty Rose has been an absolute STAR since we got back from South Africa, her banter has excelled over the Christmas holidays and she genuinely makes me wet myself at least 3 spectacular times in a week. You have no idea about this woman, really, check out my ‘Aunty Rose’ post as there are a few more gems on there!

THE STORY OF THE BLACK MAMBA – one day at hostel Ashley and I headed down to the staff room at school, only to find all of the teachers gathered outside the computer room. We had no idea what all the excitement was about so we decided to investigate. Turns out that the IT teacher had been sat working and not realised that there had been a black mamba snake coiled up on the computer table next to him! Mambas are deadly venomous and a black mamba bite would leave you dead within 2 minutes; don’t even try getting to a hospital, you might as well just lay down and think about all the lovely things that have happened in your life.
Anyway, we went inside the computer room to have a look at the snake because since being in Africa we haven’t come across one, even though they are all over! After feeling a bit tense in the room we left to allow the security guards to dispose of the mamba. They came in wielding a double barrelled shotgun and a large plank of wood. There was some discussion over whether they should turn off the electricity and shoot it (not a great plan as they would have destroyed some computers), or wait until it slithered into an open space and shoot it. Neither of these plans happened. In the end they took the plank of wood and beat it to death. It was quite exciting.

Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary and Kathy and Richard’s New House

After a hectic week on project we decided to get away for the weekend; we caught a public kombi to Manzini and were treated to a restaurant dinner by Kathy and Richard at a rather fancy Portuguese place. We were then taken to their new house, which is MASSIVE and overlooks the hills and countryside of Manzini. There are 3 large bedrooms for the two of them, a swimming pool, two verandas and you could have a game of five aside football in their lounge. 

The next day we moved onto our backpackers ‘Sondzelas’ which is inside Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary, we walked down an unmarked dirt track for 5km in the blazing midday heat with no idea where we were going. Finally we arrived and headed down to main camp that night for a spot of Swazi Dancing! 

This track was ENDLESS. We walked right into the horizon of this photo I swear, and even further. 

Sunday morning we went for a walk in the sanctuary, we headed over to the lake and walked the ‘Hippo Trail’, unfortunately we didn’t see any hippos but we did see our first zebras! We also had our lunch kindly paid for by a group of people who were HASH-ing in the sanctuary. Allow me to explain... Rich people from Swaziland and Mozambique had met each other at the sanctuary to do what they enjoy the most, drinking and running. We were talking to 3 people from the HASH group for a few hours in the restaurant and they offered to pay for our food and drinks, score! We also caught a lift back to Manzini with one of them in return for helping out with a weekly food shop... great deal.

Oh hi Zebra.

Finished walking the Hippo Trail

Braving the animals, trooper.

It has been a stressful few weeks back, but now we’re starting to get back into the swing of things. Ingrid is coming out for a visit this coming week, so we’ll have some pressure on us! Nah, just kidding, we’ll cruise it, Swazi vols are the best vols after all. ;)

Kate xx 

“SHUT UP. Justin Beiber’s DEAD?!”

First things first, let’s talk about New Years Eve!

During the day about 20 of us decided to head down to the beach at Camps Bay; unluckily for us there was a strong wind blowing over the ocean, and it was crashing angrily into the sandstorm of a beach... no sunbathing and swimming for us then. We decided to go to a nice restaurant for a pizza and cocktails instead, it was a little pricey for our backpacker budgets but it was NYE, so I didn’t feel guilty indulging myself on the culinary delights.

That evening we pre-drank in the backpackers to save some money when we were out; our usual pubs and clubs had put door fees on for the event, so we were going to be a little more strapped for cash than usual. Pre-drinking quickly turned into a massive game of ‘Never Have I Ever in Africa’, which was basically an opportunity for everyone to reveal things about their partners to the rest of the volunteers, which is both hilarious and embarrassing! 

I headed straight out of the backpackers and straight into Bob’s; as it turned out that was where I spent the whole evening, it was mental. Free giveaways on the door (not so free when you realise you’re paying to get it) included a plastic whistle, a colourful wristband and a chupachup, those whistles were blown all night long by every person in that club... The noise was still ringing in my ears 2 days later; it was so bad I was pretty damn sure that I had tinnitus. 

My two highlights of the night are as follows; (the first) I was dying of heat and possibly dehydration but the bar man refused to serve me anything other than alcohol, so he decided that the way to cure my problem was to dump a jug full of iced water over my head – what can I say, it did help! The second highlight, and possibly my favourite includes the free whistles, drunk volunteers, Maccy D’s and everyone’s undoubted love for Gangnam Style. After Bob’s we were feeling pretty hungry, so about 7 of us headed up to McDonald’s at the other end of Longstreet; we suddenly realised that once you walked a few buildings away from Bob’s no one had whistles, so we took advantage of that fact. We whistled the tune to Gangnam Style whilst proceeding to do the Gangnam Style dance up the middle of the busy (but traffic jammed, so perfectly safe) road. A few drivers and passengers were probably harassed on the way, and we received some dirty looks from the classier establishments that we passed... but it’s New Years Eve! CELEBRATE IN STYLE PEOPLE. More precisely... CELEBRATE IN GANGNAM STYLE.

2013 baaaby!

The last day and night in Cape Town were spent in the beloved Mitchell’s Scottish Ale house, and a rare early night was taken due to the fact that Ashley and I had to be up at 4:45am (along with the Outward Bound girls and two of the Polokwane girls) to catch the Intercape bus to Sedgefield... we were going to visit their OB project!
Nicola and Amelia (Polokwane) slept in and we had to ask the bus to wait for them, Intercape leaves at 6am on the dot and they woke up at 5:45 in their backpackers. After running to the bus station with 100 litre backpacks on not only had they just completed some kind of impossible physical feat due to adrenalin, they managed to make the bus. Close call.

Sedgefield

Due to last minute plans Ashley and I didn’t actually have a place to stay in Sedgefield, we thought that it should be fine if we tagged along with Nicola and Amelia to their backpackers hoping that there were some free beds or sofas that we could crash on. Typical that the one backpackers we don’t book into has the most unhelpful and unfriendly manager EVER. Since travelling in Africa I have realised one thing, backpackers are awesome and the people who work in them are normally pretty cool and laid back. If you walk in and there are no beds they ALWAYS sort you out, and don’t treat you any differently from those who booked a place.
This woman was a different story. Oh no, we were the biggest inconvenience in the WORLD. The annoying thing is that she had one bed, so the only issue was that there was one extra person. Ashley and I offered to share the bed but both pay the full price (pretty good deal for her I’d say), but noooooooo, we can’t share a bed, if we do it everyone will want to do it. Really? Even if they did want to it would mean she’d be making twice as much money on the same amount of beds, idiot. Not a great business mind in my opinion.
Anyway, after a lot of huffing and puffing she agreed to put out a mattress in one of the dorms (hallelujah), but we could only stay for 2 nights, on Friday morning she wanted us out. She put it just about as nicely as that too. For the two days she treat us like we were the plague, granted she did eventually get around to any queries we had, but it was with a face that looked like a baboons arse.

Then again the backpackers had jacuzzi's on the roof... So all was well. 

We head to La Piazza on our first night in Sedgefield to meet up with the OB girls for dinner; they’re really close with the owner, Gary, who is a little bit of a legend but keeps buying us shots all night even though we’re on our Cape-Town-Come-Down. This is what I’ve decided is the best way to describe the feeling when you’ve stopped partying and your body has gone into some sort of shock from the lower levels of drink ingested. You start to feel tired early on in the night, your throat hurts and you are blocked up from your toes to your brain – pressure centred in the nose area.
We all down the shots and decide it’s time to head home. Everyone apart from Ashley. She’s been on the Jager all night and isn’t ready to go anywhere, so she stays at the restaurant herself and parties with Gary and his staff. In the morning I discover her hungover in her dorm wearing a Jagermeister t-shirt, cap and lanyard with another top strewn on her bed. The story is that she was dropped off at the backpackers at 4am after being bought free drinks all night. I don’t know how she does it, she’s a machine. I was almost sleeping on the table in La Piazza at 10:30.
The amazing thing is she’s up for it again our second night there! We wind up playing beer pong with some guys from our dorm in the backpackers, and she doesn’t seem fazed by the hangover at all. I have to admit, I didn’t really feel like drinking that much but beer pong is awesome! I will definitely be cracking that one out a parties when I return – so be ready everyone, cause I am goooooooood. Well, I’m okay but Ashley and I both managed to throw the ball at such an angle and speed that it span around the inside of the target cup before plopping into the drink, I wish more people had seen it, it was pure skill. Remember those charity machines in supermarkets when we were younger; where you pushed the pound coin in and it span around and around in circles before dropping down into the hole at the bottom? IT WAS LIKE THAT.

The girl’s Outward Bound base is gorgeous, there’s a lake surrounded by rolling hills and paragliders are always floating just above the hilltops. I was a tiiiiiiiiny bit jealous because I had been really interested in Outward Bound, but I love my project too much to be envious of it! We had a lovely swim in the lake to Reeds Campsite (our accommodation for the night since that morning we had been made backpackerless), and emerged from the lake looking like Chewbacca because all of the mud and dirt in the water sticks to the fine hairs all over your body. Sexy sight! 

The Chewbacca lake!

After swimming we decide to set up camp early so that we’re not wrestling with poles and guide ropes in the dark; on our walk down to the campsite we get a lovely surprise in the form of a completely naked old couple driving their car in what they clearly expected to be a very rural area, the smiles on their faces indicated what they had been up to, and they clearly hadn’t been expecting any company! The part that ‘topped it off’ (hahaha, you’ll get this in a minute) for me was that we all saw the lady lean over to her (I presume) husband who was driving and strategically place a basketball cap over his ‘man-parts’, that’s right lady we all saw you! What makes this story even better is that once we got to the campsite there was another car, two people were already inside and the third was stood outside of the car finishing off dressing themselves... what can I say, there are a lot of randy pensioners in sleepy Sedgefield! You DOGGERS.

Our spot at Reeds Campsite!

Despite having two 2 man tents Ashley, Lucy, Lauren and myself (the happy campers) decided that we could all squash into one. This was lovely and cosy when we first got there and it was freezing cold, however as the night and film we were watching progressed the layers started coming off and our small tent turned into a sweat box. I had a cramped and restless night’s sleep, I could not find an angle where the tent was long enough for my body and getting out of that tent into the cold night to go to the empty one was not an option.

Sedgefield is a beautiful little town on the Garden Route and is home to the fantastic Wild Oats Farmer’s Market, seriously the food there is to die for and there are hundreds of little stalls with jewellery, bracelets and crafts – so as girls we were all in heaven.
It didn’t really feel like we were in Africa though, it’s very Westernised and there were so many white people! Most of the population is white, which was really strange for us compared to Big Bend. It felt more like a little town in the Lake District (but with better weather of course) than South Africa.

In Transit

Intercape, we meet again. As we’re lining up we realise that it’s assigned seating, damn, we’re going to get a really rubbish place. Or are we? The one in a million happens, the lottery win of coach seats, the creme-de-la-creme of over-night travelling... we score top deck front seats! Not only is this the prime road viewing position, but we have at least twice as much legroom as anyone else on the bus. I could not be happier. This lasts until my iPod runs out of battery... 30 minutes in.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Intercape company, please allow me fill you in on a few facts. Intercape are a company with STRONG Christian beliefs, beliefs that they don’t keep to themselves. They pray before we set off travelling, and they pray once we have reached our destination. But that’s quite nice, I respect that, it’s just everything in the middle that drives me crazy. All of the content that is fed over the speakers or shown on the TV is Christian; Christian songs, Christian cartoons, films with plots that are biblical and the very worst are the short VT’s of American farmers from the deep south giving their views on passages from the Bible. First the accent then the opinions – it’s enough to make me throw myself straight out of that top deck front window. By all means keep your beliefs to yourself; just don’t use cheap travel as a way of trying to convert people.
To escape this I did the only thing left to do, I slept. We arrived in Johannesburg at 7:50am Sunday morning; I had not been looking forward to this part of our travelling as we have heard our fair share of horror stories about J’burg. Unless you’re in the very rich areas you have quite a high chance of being axed to death in the car-park of Shoprite (true story, this year’s J’burg volunteers saw this happen with their own eyes). We were in Park Station, not a rich area and not a white area, I’m not going to lie, I was very apprehensive about getting off that coach.

Thankfully our Christian coach conductor found us ‘a guy’ and he walked us safely through Park Station to where the Swaziland bound kombi’s were parked. All was well and we made it back to Swaziland in two pieces, one named Ashley and the other named Kate.

Swaziland

J’burg was NOT what I needed to be worried about! Getting off the kombi in Big Bend felt like I had just been happy slapped by a bag of burning hot coals. The heat was immense; I have never felt anything hotter in my life. 47 degrees Celsius, whaaaaaat?! I should be the hottest thing around here ;) Not like that though, I mean body temperature. Anything over body temperature should not be allowed. Ashley and I almost died walking from the kombi park to Sisekelo laden like donkeys with our large backpacks on the back, small backpacks on the front, and two shopping bags in each hand... the only positive thing was that we were excellently counter balanced.
24 hours of travelling later and 48 hours of not sleeping in a proper bed meant that we both crashed out almost instantaneously.

South Africa, you were brilliant. But it’s good to be home.

Kate xx

P.S. The title of this blog is yet another quote from Ashley. A few people were discussing some news that a paparazzi guy had been hit by a car and died while trying to photograph Justin Beiber. Upon only hearing part of this story Ashley jumped up from her seat and screamed the words “SHUT UP. Justin Beiber’s DEAD?!” No Ashley, calm down. She is rather a fan, her trauma was visible. It was pretty funny and deserved some recognition, so here it is.  

Chunder Dragon

This week has been our first 7 days of Cape Town, and we’ve seen though some great (and also not so great) times.
If I’m perfectly honest we’ve all been living for the night, we have established our local watering holes and some people have created names for themselves.

Our favourite places on the not-so-long-street that is known as Longstreet are; Bob’s, a club run by an English man, it is a firm favourite because they give out free shots for karaoke singing and pole dancing. The Dubliner, unfortunately is quite expensive, but it is an Irish bar with live music so the atmosphere is really great! Stones; a club/pool and snooker house, (for all you Darlington residents, I believe it is probably like Riley's). Last but not least comes The Food Inn; who undoubtedly fed the 30+ Project Trust volunteers for the 10 days on cheap Indian food, and never failed to provide chicken tikka sandwiches stuffed with chips after many a great night out.
A more classy area to Cape Town is The Waterfront; there’s a large shopping mall, outdoor amphitheatre, canal boats on the river and fancy restaurants... Among all of this is a Scottish Ale House that goes by the name of Mitchell's, and over our stay in Cape Town I can safely say that we all became rather fond of the place. I’ll miss the times we spent there listening to the lads shouting obscene football chants at the South Africans after watching a game; “I bet they’ve never even BEEN to England, and they support MANCHESTER UNITED?! They’re just glory hunters, that’s all they are!” 

Longstreet is great for teenagers on holiday as there’s everything you need right on your doorstep; however it has to be one of the most dangerous places I’ve come across since I’ve been in Africa. It is a hotspot for petty crime, pick pocketing, muggings and people with fraudulent tendencies. You have to have your wits about you every second of every day which can get tiring after a while, but if you do look out for yourself and your things you can have a brilliant time! Luckily I managed to have a fantastic stay on Longstreet and didn’t become the target of crime but other volunteers weren’t so fortunate; we experienced stolen bags, money swiped from people’s hands on the street, stolen phones, tricks at the ATM’s, laptops stolen from backpackers and muggings. But despite all that everyone carried on in true British style, picked themselves up, borrowed money and went out to hit it on the night and forget about their problems!

Christmas Day was spent in a cave on table mountain; our backpackers organised the trip and we all paid E200 (£14) for the privilege of joining them on Christmas day with food, drinks and 70 odd bottles of champagne. Unfortunately to get to where the party was at we had to complete a short hike from where the truck dropped us off (at the bottom of a shale slope) up to the cave. This doesn’t sound so bad until you add in all the variables which made it hell. Firstly it was midday and scorching hot, we all had to pitch in with carrying the food and drinks up to the cave (I was stuck with a large pudding in a metal bowl, which heated up in the sun and caused the pudding to melt into some sort of slop which did not want to stay in the bowl), and to top it off we were all hung over due to our Christmas Eve partying the night before.
It was all worth it; the views from that cave were spectacular, we had food drinks and music and all looked very festive in our free Santa hats from Bob’s the previous night. Unfortunately it didn’t feel like Christmas Day, but it was a really lovely Tuesday! Plus, how many other people can say they’ve spent Christmas Day on one of the (newly appointed) seven natural wonders of the world?

Me, Sam and Sam (the Botswana boys) and Ashley

This week I decided to experience some African culture; a few of us went to the District 6 museum to broaden our knowledge on the whole subject – unfortunately the museum wasn’t really in a logical order, so I’m not an expert on it but we did learn some interesting things. The same day we went to see the Hobbit at the cinema, which was AWESOME and made much more sense than the District 6 museum.

This week also saw my brother turn 17, which is crazy; I can’t believe he’s so old! We had a little Skype session on the morning of the 28^th and then Ashley, Sam, Georgia and I went for a Mexican meal at ‘The Mexican’ (which was great and really filling, damn I love Mexican food) and all the volunteers headed out for a flat party! Two of the Cape Town volunteers had us all round for the night, apparently it was a good party – unfortunately for me I can’t remember, however a few embarrassing photos have given me the jist of how my night went. Said photos have also given me the nickname ‘Chunder Dragon’, and I will now always be remembered as the girl who drank too much vodka, chundred everywhere and star-fished in the freezing cold out on the balcony. What a legacy I have left behind me.

Before I made a fool of myself, having a nice time with everyone... why Kate why?!

The next morning I was positive of how my night had gone, I had the second worst hangover of my life (those of you who were at my 18^th house party will know that was the first worst hangover of my life, so you can gauge just how bad I was here), and I was still at the flat. Not at my backpackers. There were 4 of us who had stayed behind, and it took us all well into the afternoon before we could move far enough to get a taxi back to Longstreet. I was hungover and shoeless (don’t ask why) and there were 7 of us in a 5 person taxi... this isn’t even counting the driver. I spend the rest of the day in bed. It was a rubbish day.

The day after I’m still feeling pretty rough, but it’s getting to the point now where we’ve been in Cape Town for a week and not really done any sightseeing, so we’re all feeling a bit guilty for wasting our time... We make a desperate decision and head to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope with some German volunteers that we had been bumping into on our travels all along the coast. We see some African penguins, climb to a lighthouse to overlook the massive expansion of ocean (at some point you can see the joining of the two oceans (Indian and Atlantic), and have a scramble on some rocks at the Cape of Good Hope. They really are beautiful places and I felt a bit happier for actually seeing more of Cape Town than Longstreet.

Cape Point 

Cape Point - somewhere out there is the Indian and Atlantic oceans joining together.
How cool is that?!

View back to the mainland

Myself, Lauren, Yolanda and Ashley
(Two out of the four girls from the Outward Bound project in Sedgefield, South Africa)

Nice little view from our scrambling adventures up the rock face :)

These holidays are going too fast, I can’t believe they’re nearly over!

Until next time, Merry Christmas (for this week) and a Happy New Year <3

Kate xx  

Fear is Temporary, Regret is Forever

When you’re stood in a shower alternately washing yourself with shower gel and 3 pairs of pants with soap powder, you get the sudden realisation that you should make an attempt to wash your clothes before you run out completely.

So, we’ve hit the Baz Bus’s compulsory stop over destination – Port Elizabeth. Apparently there’s not really anything special to see here, so we only spent the night before moving onto somewhere more exciting. However in our backpackers we met another Project Trust volunteer; Gabriel, from York and he’s on a township project. So the planned early night went straight out of the window and we stayed up until 4:30 chatting about our projects and travels – we felt sorry for Gabriel who had to get up for the Baz Bus at 7:00am, but we had a great night.

Jeffries Bay

We make our own way to J-bay on public kombi’s because the Baz Bus are rip-off merchants and don’t have any room for us. Even though we paid extortionate amounts of money for our tickets and we called them up to book our places MUCH earlier than the advertised ‘72 hours in advance so you’re not disappointed’. We hate the Baz Bus.
Anyway, Baz Bus hating aside Jeffries Bay is amazing! Our backpackers ‘Cristal Cove’ is right on the beach and there are loads of surfers walking around. It’s exactly like the Boardmasters Festival at Cornwall... apart from the weather is much better!
We have a very mature 45 minute stroll along the beach for some calamari, and on the way back we have a swim in the once again warm ocean. I don’t know what happened between Coffee Bay and Jeffries Bay, but the water at East London was FREEZING – Indian Ocean, waddup wid dat?

Turns out the Polokwane girls and Gabriel are also in J-bay, so we walk to their backpackers and meet up with them for the evening. We head to this place called ‘The Mexican’ for a live music night; it takes me a good 45 minutes to get served at the bar because the place is so packed. I make the logical decision of stocking up on drink and buy myself a few bottles so I don’t have to go back to the bar for a while. You wait so long to get served you actually sober up in between drinks! It’s probably a smart ploy to make money, everyone has to drink more than usual to get drunk. Touché.

Storms River

Turned out to be an unplanned stop! Because Baz Bus are rubbish (we hate the Baz Bus), they didn’t have room to take us the last 40km from Storms River to our backpackers, Wild Spirit Lodge in The Crags. Therefore we were thrown off the Baz Bus into the heat, dirt and unknown... backpacks and all. Alright, maybe I’m exaggerating, we were dropped off at Dijembe backpackers in Storms River. The staff were all really lovely, gave us free tea and coffee and kindly let us stay the night.

Is this the prime place to chill, or is this the prime place to chill?

We bump into the Polokwane girls AGAIN, this time is does come as a surprise because we knew that they were staying in Plettenburg Bay (which is further down the coast from Storms River). We decided to go tubing and heard familiar screams on our way down to the river... Turns out the Baz Bus royally screwed them over and they couldn’t get on it at all, so they had to hire a car to continue their travelling. So with their new found freedom they travelled back up the coast to Storms River to do the very popular activity that is tubing! Tubing is great fun, you basically sit in a sturdy rubber ring and travel down a river going over rapids, floating calmly and climbing up rock faces to jump into deep pools. It was exhausting work on my arms as we were on the river for a good 3 hours or so, but it was definitely worth it.

Our instructors told us that the last cliff jump was 12m high, and that only 14 girls had ever done it, so obviously I was well up for increasing that total. I’d done coasteering in Newquay, Cornwall before and had jumped from higher places so I was a little bit overconfident.
On the way down all the jumps that we did were a little bit hairy, the 8m jump was set back into the cliff so you had to jump at least 1m forwards to clear the rocks below and land safely in the water. This was a little nerve wracking, however I didn’t expect the 12m to be quite as dangerous! I am telling you, the ‘jumps’ that we did on that river would never be health and safety accepted in the UK, if you put one foot wrong or didn’t push off hard enough you would have kissed rock-face.

I’m not going to lie, standing on that tiny outcrop I was s****ing my pants, I’ve never been so scared in my life. Even when I get scared it’s not normally from doing activities like this, I love this stuff! I couldn’t work out what was happening to me, every time I pushed forwards to jump my foot wouldn’t move, it was frozen to the rock. My heart was pounding and I was looking sceptically at the 2m rock outcrop that I would need to clear in order to survive the jump. My hands were shaking, my voice was shaking and I’ve been told that I was stood there for half an hour.
I didn’t jump. Excuse the language, but all that can be said is that I pussied out. Big time. I’ve never been angrier at myself for not doing something. Now I was just an unknown statistic on the side of the girls who didn’t have the guts to do the jump.
The worst thing was that Ashley screamed like a little girl on the 8m, but she still managed to jump the 12m, now 15 girls are mental enough to hurl themselves off that cliff – good on Ashley!

The Crags 

We finally get to Wild Spirit backpackers and it is again, beautiful. So far for me this backpackers and Amapondo Backpackers at Port St John’s are in tied 1^st position when it comes to the most amazing locations! The views are gorgeous, we are surrounded by thick forest and the mountains fade out on the horizon as far as the eye can see. Looking out over our balcony from our dorm room there’s a sea of green below us, and within 20 minutes you can walk in either of 3 directions to get to a waterfall, the magical forest or the ‘Big Tree’.

Climbing a big tree, before 'The' Big Tree!

Friday 21^st December brings the dreaded Apocalypse, so I go to reception before breakfast and book myself in for a bungee jump at 5pm. Why not.
All 4 of us go on the short hike it takes to get to the waterfall and find ourselves in a place written about in story books; we cross the rickety wooden bridge over a glimmering plunge pool and climb up to where the waterfall is cascading down the rocks. The water is freezing cold, but it’s too stunning to not swim in!
After the waterfall we walk to a farm stall for lunch and find the best deal ever; fresh milk for E5.50 per litre, that’s about 40p. Fresh milk in Africa is a rarity for us as we get given UHT milk, nasty long life rubbish. So we empty out our 1litre bottle of drinking water onto the ground and fill it up with the fresh, non-UHT, organic and cooled milk. Words cannot describe how much we loved that milk, however we did have to buy another litre before leaving!

THE BUNGEE

There’s only one word for it, it was SICKKKK! Driving to Bloukrans Bridge I was pretty nervous, but as soon as I was there and had on my harness I was ready to go. The guy harnessing me up even asked me how many bungee jumps I had done before, and when I told him this was my first one he seemed surprised and commented on how calm and chilled I seemed to be – so at least I wasn’t a nervous trembling wreck like I had been on the cliff jump the day before.
Once my group got to the bridge it was even better; we walked along a covered grate walk over the valley (so there were some amazing views) to the middle of the bridge, I thought I had just walked into a club. Obviously it wasn’t dark dingy and foggy but there was blaring music and all the guys who worked there were dancing about all over; firstly they were clubbing and secondly they were working at a bungee site. It was such a good atmosphere and got you pumped up and ready to go! Unfortunately I didn’t jump to a brilliant tune, but that didn’t take away from the experience.

After my freak out on the cliff jump I wasn’t too sure how I would feel once I got to the edge of the bridge... Luckily the guys give you a pretty swift count down so you barely have time to think about what you’re doing! ‘5,4,3,2,1 BUNGEE’ gets you to jump pretty quickly, and if you don’t jump they push you, so I knew that one way or another I was going headfirst off that bridge.
I don’t recall bending my legs and pushing off at all, but I definitely jumped... The first split second that I was in the air I felt my body spasm and try to pull back, I think it was a reflex that was telling me ‘no, don’t do this, what the hell are you doing?!’, and then it was over and I was falling. I watched the valley pass me by upside down, and saw the river below getting closer and closer... and then came the bounce back up.
When I watched other people jump the bounce back up looked quite violent, their bodies were jerked at strange angles and the warning of ‘retina displacement’ was fresh in my mind... but I didn’t feel it at all. The most amazing part of the whole experience was after the bounce when my body was free in the air, it feels like you’re flying (instead of plummeting headfirst to the earth) and it is the calmest and most peaceful I have ever felt in my life. A calm, peaceful bungee jump, a little bit contradictory I know, but that’s how it was for me!

Mossel Bay

Saturday 22^nd December, everyone is still alive. I am so surprised.
We Baz Bus to Mossel Bay and again meet up with the Polokwane girls and Gabriel at their backpackers. We have a lovely meal together and then hit the bar; Daisy and Ashley ask for free shots and get given something that is an absolute killer – this then leads to some hilarious events including cartwheels on the beach and unhappy beach wardens.

The next day we’re due to head to Cape Town! Baz Bus isn’t due until early evening so Ashley, Daisy, Sam and I decide to go sea kayaking. We’re doing doubles and Daisy and I are terrible; we can’t go in a straight line and we zigzag our way along the coast by heading directly to shore, then out to sea then back again towards the shore. I’m pretty sure we kayaked twice as far as Ashley and Sam, but we were about 40m behind them all the time! 
Then the inevitable happens... the Baz Bus is early. Normally it’s late, in fact it’s rarely ON TIME, but today it’s early. We’re fresh out of the sea and not even at our own backpackers! Luckily we packed that morning so the driver lets us jump on as he was stopping by our backpackers anyway and we manage to make it... just. We’re in swimming gear and wet, but we’re on the Bus and on our way to CAPE TOWN!

Thank you Baz Buz express service, we just caught you in time and now you’re on your way STRAIGHT to Cape Town... Baz Bus, I think you may have redeemed yourselves in my eyes just a little bit. Express service means that we get to Cape Town around 9:00pm instead of in the middle of the night and we meet some of the South African volunteers and go out on Longstreet!

It’s going to be a LEGEN-wait-for-it-DARY 10 days!

Kate xx

P.S. The title of this blog is a poster I saw at the Face Adrenalin bungee jump, rather motivational don’t you think?

“One five minutes, one five!”

Sadly it is time to leave the beautiful Amapondo backpackers in Port St. John’s and move on... I will surely miss the thick jungle and amazing views.
So it is back to the Shell Ultra City (a petrol station where we have been spending quite a lot of time due to the Baz Bus shuttles) and then we move on to Coffee Bay! We were all excited at the prospect of spending some time in Coffee Bay as it has had a great reputation among the past Project Trust volunteers, so we were about to find out for ourselves why it was so amazing.

Coffee Bay
We arrive and it is beautiful, it is a tiny little place with a couple of beaches and hills that you have to wade to across a rivers’ mouth to reach, and the landscape is pretty much untouched. We had a walk to the ‘main part’ of the town which is home to; two backpackers (Coffee Shack and Bomvu), Kaleidoscope Kafe (a little hippy shop and cafe, who also sell the most amazing homemade passion fruit ice-cream!), a pizza place on the top of a ridiculous hill, an Indian run family store (who have all of their products behind what looks like prison wire, so they’re clearly conscientious about safety) and... well, that’s pretty much it.
I’m lying, that’s almost it; I’ve nearly forgotten about the jewellery ladies! As you hop across stepping stones over a little river to reach this area the grass banks are lined with ladies sat on blankets selling their handmade jewellery. Unlike stall owners in Swaziland these ladies don’t sit quietly and hope you will buy something...
As we passed by what must have been 15 stalls all selling the same thing we had 15 ladies all introducing themselves to us, telling us we must buy from them and saying that we must remember them and come again tomorrow. I smiled apologetically and said that I had no money and carried on walking, Ashley however stopped to have a look at one stall and that was the end of her. As soon as she was stationary all the ladies grabbed pieces of jewellery, sprinted from their stalls and threw themselves onto Ashley; within seconds she was laden with necklaces, bracelets and anklets, and she was surrounded by women so desperate to sell that their approaches to customers were more intimidating than friendly. In the end she paid for pretty much everything that had been attached to her body as it was the only logical option for escape!
This happened to us every time we walked past, which was a few times a day. I took on the inspiring motto of “if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball” and zigzagged my way through the danger zone with my reflective aviators on so that no one could catch my eye.  

Arriving, it's a tad cold, but the weather will soon pick up!

Our accommodation at Sugar Loaf backpackers! Finally I get to stay in an African hut!

 Tuesday morning starts with disaster, we booked a surf lesson for 7:30 in the morning and set an alarm so that we could get up and walk to Coffee Shack in enough time. Unluckily for us Ashley’s alarm decides to not go off and we get a call from the backpackers at 7:20 asking where we are and the answer is in bed. We all jump up that second (it is the quickest we have ever moved on a morning), throw on some clothes, grab our swimming gear and run to Coffee Shack which is about a 10 minute walk away. At 7:25 in the morning you do not want to be running for your life in flip flops on a dirt track wearing nothing but a bikini and a top. We made the surf lesson though and it was pretty fun! The water in Coffee Bay is as warm as a bath because it is the Indian Ocean, lovely.

We spend the day sunbathing and swimming on the beach and then head off for some pizza and ice-cream, I love holidays. 

Nothing says "Welcome to Africa" quite like cows on the beach...

Me not having a poo on Coffee Bay beach, just unfortunate timing!

Mmmm! Sun sea and sand <3

That night we decide to get in touch with some African culture and we head to Bomvu backpackers for the free drum lessons around the campfire! Considering I am the most unmusical person in the world I really enjoyed the drum circle, the guy lead us with some simple beats and we just copied him, when there’s about 20 people all playing in time on the dijembe drums it sounds quite impressive (even for a bunch of amateurs).

Dijembe Drums

Looking sunburned and sweaty, sums up my time perfectly really!

 The next day is hell, Ashley and I contracted third degree burns from the beach (the boys weren’t as bad), but none of us can move very far. My lips have blistered (which has never happened before in my life, and I’m very familiar with sunburn) and my face is so red and shiny I look like a prematurely born baby. Ashley looks like she has skin disease because she sun-creamed in patches before getting bored and presumably giving up. We took advantage of the aloe-vera plants growing in pots around the backpackers and cut off big leaves to take to the bathroom, there we spent half an hour covering ourselves in think, green sticky (but amazingly cooling) goo.

East London
LANDAN BABY! We head off to East London from Coffee Bay, and on the way back to our favourite petrol station (Shell Ultra City) we pass buy Nelson Mandela’s house and old village! WE SEE HIS REAL HOUSE, WHERE HE LIVES! And just like the Queen when he is home a flag flies from the rooftop, but when we passed there was no flag, because he is in hospital.

The Big Man's house.

We bump into the Polokwane girls at the Shell Ultra City; they’re getting off the Baz Bus to head to Coffee Bay. It’s so strange seeing them again after all this time, they visited us within our first 3 or 4 weeks into our stay in Swaziland, but when I see them again it doesn’t even feel like we’ve been apart for very long!

Our stay in East London was quite a long one, so we took advantage of the time and fitted in some activities. We went sand boarding on our first full day; sand boarding for those who don’t know is basically snowboarding on a sand dune. What we didn’t think about when we booked it was that in order to sand board DOWN the dune, you had to climb up it first. Unlike snowboarding there aren’t any lifts to the top; so in 30 degree heat and bare foot on scolding hot sand we were jogging up this sand dune, carrying our boards and struggling against the constant sand avalanches which hindered our progress.
Physical exhaustion (and embarrassment about how unfit I have become) aside I had a great time! Ashley, the Sam’s and myself bit the dust, literally, many times but before the end of our 2 hour lesson we all managed to make one full run down to the bottom! Sam Rutherford was so hardcore by the end he managed to snap his board in half, good effort my friend.

The next day we set off for a family friendly animal park; not the normal choice of destination for a group of 18 year olds but there was one good reason we were heading there... lion cubs. Need I say more?
For 30 rand (£2.15) you had access to view all the animals at the park (tigers, lions, crocodiles, cheetahs, rabbits and some of the biggest tortoises you will ever lay eyes on), and the opportunity to play with lion cubs! Money well spent.
It was a pretty funny day; I managed to electrocute myself on the cheetah enclosure (which is also on video because Sam permanently has his camera on to document everything that happens) and we found a llama that looked exactly like Ruth (a woman who worked at Kaleidoscope Kafe in Coffee Bay). Therefore we entertained ourselves for a good 30 minutes doing voice-overs to the llamas in a posh Johannesburg accent; it was almost like Ruth was with us.   

Howzit Ruth?

It's not everyday you get mauled my a Lion Cub :D

So, that’s it for this week! I’ve seen some more beautiful places and I’m definitely catching the travelling bug. 

Kate xx

P.S. The title of this post is dedicated to the one and only Petros, the best Baz Bus driver South Africa has to offer.

Petros: “Ok guys, we have fifteen minute stop, yes? Everyone back here in one five minutes... one five, one five!”

We love Petros.

Sockpoi at Amapondo Backpackers

Next time I will be playing with FIREEE, trust me.