Victoria Falls Trip Photos

Photos from our Victoria Falls trip.  We started in South Africa, drove through Botswana to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, walked across the border into Zambia, and back again: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7sjcQPcHAlsTUpzUDE5U3M1OGc&usp=sharing

Two highlights for me were:
1) Seeing the double rainbow at Victoria Falls.  It was too wet to take our camera to this point, but here's the gist of what we saw (photo from flickr.com):

2) Our day in Zambia, specifically going to the local market...thanks to our fantastic taxi drivers we were able to escape from tourist-land and enjoy the sights, smells, sounds (and stares) of the local market in Livingstone, Zambia.

Photos are here!

So I finally got around to getting some photos uploaded and organized.  These are pictures from our first 4 weeks here in South Africa when I was actually blogging regularly:  https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7sjcQPcHAlsVGJaQ3Y3STdVR0k&usp=sharing  (Apologies for the lack of captions...it wasn't immediately obvious to me how to do this in Google Drive and David just went to bed...)

Blogging has fallen to the wayside in part due to other things...my parents were here to visit for a week, followed by a road trip up to Victoria Falls.  David and I both are involved in a number of service projects here that we want to make sure we finish as best we can before we leave.  And it's easy to blog about the ignorant foreigner-in-a-new-culture stories and laugh at ourselves, but much harder to put words to the things we are learning, wrestling with, and the social injustices we see.  One manifestation of this is that I have been trying to estimate what a living wage would be for someone living in Sweetwaters.  From what I can tell, no (white) people from Hilton who employ (black) domestic workers from Sweetwaters have any idea what a living wage would be to pay their employees.  And I wonder what a fair, living wage would be for the lady who works for us once each week.  So I have been on a mission to find out and share the results.  Anyways...things like this have taken the place of blogging.  Hence the silence.  But we are still here, thankful beyond words for this opportunity, and trying to make the most of it!

And my sister-in-law, Steph, is a real, legit, could-be-published writer...you should check out her three blog posts on our trip to Victoria Falls:  http://bridginghope.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/flamingos-the-president-and-ak47s-botswana-and-joburg/

Updates on previous posts.

1)    David tried his Springbok juice.  He described it as some kind of mysterious, flat soda.  Happy Father’s Day!

2)    Last night David and I went to a fantastic Bed and Breakfast place on the Midlands Meander.  In chatting with the host, I told him about how Matthew managed to get a shonogololo (millipede) into his mouth until Matthew (and the millipede I guess) was rescued by Aunt Steph.  So as I feel like the worst Mom this guy had the best, most reassuring story ever.  He told me he had a friend in grade school who enjoyed eating shongololos.  Yep.  You just snap off the head, snap off the tail, and sluuuuurp out the guts.  And he assured me that this friend did not just do it to gross out the girls.  It was just a free, tasty treat.  So no need for me to worry about Matthew.  Now that’s a great B&B host, right?!

3)    Stu (the guy who heads up iThemba where Steph works) asked me how I liked watching the Springboks game last weekend.  It was my first experience watching a rugby game.  I told him that I enjoyed it, minus the tons of alcohol involved.  And I told him that it was interesting to watch from the perspective of someone who currently does not understand or appreciate rugby strategy.  To me it looked like mad chaos on the field, and then at the snap of a finger, all of the players on both teams are in long, beautiful lines stretched across the entire width of the field.  And I thought, wait a minute, I know what this reminds me of:  marching band!  Yes!  Rugby really has some parallels to marching band!  Plus, in rugby the players do not wear protective gear, and arguably ought to, just like in marching band.  Plus, I thought, which would I rather have crash into me at high speeds: a big rugby player, or a high-school kid with a tuba?  I just don’t know.  Both scenarios sound frightening to me, and yet we send them out there with no protective gear for the sake of entertainment.  I am on to something, no?

“I guess you might say he gave me the world.”

Today David and I are celebrating our 8^th Wedding Anniversary:-)  Celebrating our anniversary today (with the world's best hot chocolate...what else?) and being here in South Africa made me think of the movie “While You Were Sleeping”.  It is a movie with a perfect blend of ridiculous humor, love story sentimentality, cheering for the underdog, and of course a happy ending.  And Sandra Bullock is fantastic.  David can quote large portions of the movie.  While I cannot touch David’s movie-quoting abilities, my favorite quote from the movie is at the very end when Lucy and Jack are newly married: “Thank goodness my Father was right.  Life doesn’t always turn out the way you plan.  But Jack, Jack gave me the perfect gift: a stamp in my passport.  He took me to Florence for our honeymoon.  I guess you might say he gave me the world.”  Happy 8^th Anniversary David! I love you and thank you for giving me the world!

The other night David and I sat down and just wrote out a list of some of the highlights so far, from our first two weeks here in South Africa.  I don’t have time to write out stories for all of these, but I want to capture them to be able to remember them.  So, in no particular order, and knowing that these won’t make sense to most people (sorry...bad premise for a blog post), here are some of the highlights thus far:

1. Braai at Talida and Johann’s house.
2. Springbok rugby game in Durban.
3. Hiking at Queen Elizabeth Park Nature Reserve and seeing three zebras up close.
4. Going to Jubalani Kids Club in Sweetwaters.
5. Touring Sweetwaters and seeing some of the gardens that iThemba is working on with NonJabs
6. Going to uShaka marine world.  Especially the toilet bowl water slide.
7. Fruit smoothies with Steph at the Indian Ocean/Durban beachfront
8. Talking with Machenini about environmental issues here in SA, and his family’s involvement with the ANC and fighting apartheid.
9. Playing games and visiting with kids at the children’s burn unit in a government hospital.
10. TopTots with Matthew
11. The Royal Show
12. Watching Timothy visit a creche (preschool) in Sweetwaters.
13. Meeting our neighbors, the Zulus, who have son Timothy’s age, and a daughter in high school (babysitter!)
14. Wandering University of KZN Durban and finding the jazz music students who gave us two private concerts.
15. Generosity beyond my wildest dreams from so many…the Binions for letting us stay in their house and use their car and everything they own.  The UBI community for welcoming us and answering a million questions.  Christ’s Church and how they have amazingly demonstrated Matthew 25:35 and what it means to welcome a stranger…by loaning us kids stuff, babysitting, invitations to join Bible studies, homes for the kiddos to play, rides, advice on x,y and z, and providing a place for David to work.  And David and Steph…for your time, good conversation, explaining a million things and being our cultural translators, rides to everywhere, re-teaching us to drive, introducing us to Phil Vischer podcasts, help with the kiddos, and organizing a bijillion things for us to experience:-)

 I KNOW I’m super slow to post pictures.  Sorry.  Someday…

A South African Father's Day

Similar to America, South Africans celebrated Father’s Day yesterday.  So we celebrated David yesterday, with South African influences.  David chose to go out for lunch at Spur, a very not PC (in the US sense) sit-down hamburger place.  The restaurant has a Native American theme, with a warrior as a mascot, and the restaurant is full of cartoons of sort of like how Native Americans were portrayed on TV in the 1950s.  A no-go restaurant theme in America.  But other than that, Spur is great.  The real winner in our world is that they have a super play area for kids while you wait for your food.  Don’t think McD’s playland.  Spur has coloring, computer games, movies, blocks to build towers, stuff to climb, etc.  Plus, the play area is staffed with two attendants to help watch the kiddos, so that parents can get a break.  Thanks to the rough South African economy and cheap cost of labor here, I’m told I can go to Spur and get a hot cocoa and an hour+ of babysitting for two kids for $1.70 (the price of a hot chocolate at Spur).  I just need to learn how to drive there by myself first.

But back to Father’s Day.  One thing lacking here in South Africa is decent ice cream.  They have what they call vanilla ice cream, but don’t be fooled!  My survey of Americans in South Africa showed unanimous agreement that it is vastly inferior to vanilla ice cream in the States.  When I first tasted “vanilla” ice cream here in South Africa, I had to ask Steph what flavor it was.  So in honor of David (who loves ice cream) we made homemade ice cream yesterday afternoon.  We unsuccessfully looked for the electric ice cream maker, but the hand cranked machine ended up working fine in that we had to earn a few of our calories before eating them back with interest.  We made real vanilla ice cream, and also vanilla with Ghirardelli chocolate chips (from the States, as semi-decent chocolate chips are also impossible to come by here).  Delicious beyond words.

After eating ice cream, David opened his Father’s Day gifts from the kids.  Each of them brought home gifts that they made or assembled at school to give to David for Father’s Day.  Matthew made a handprint, and the teacher’s assistant attached it to a nice bag of trail mix…I was impressed that a mother/baby class sends home a legitimate gift for Dad.  (Not that those sentimental art projects that I did in school all growing up weren’t legit…)  Timothy’s gift was particularly South African.  It included 1) Biltong.  This is a snack sort of like beef jerky, except the flavor is about a million times stronger…very popular around here.  There’s an entire shop devoted to biltong across from the grocery store in Hilton.  2) “Springbok Juice”.  It’s a very small bottle of bright green liquid.  We don’t really know what it is.  Cream soda here is green, so maybe it’s just cream soda.  But when Steph first saw it, it reminded her of the small sample of vodka that she and (Brother) David got at the opera.  And I know that Springbok (the SA national rugby team) fans like their alcohol… we actually went to see the Springboks play on Saturday. (They played Wales…SA won and we know a lot more about rugby now!)  At the Springboks game we observed that alcohol and rugby are even more intimately intertwined than beer and American football.  We observed one guy at the rugby game walking through the concourse while carrying three pitchers filled with beer.  Yikes.  So anyways, maybe Timothy just gave David vodka for Father’s Day.  Or maybe green cream soda.  David said he’ll sample it tomorrow and report back on what “Springbok juice” actually is.

Two Stories in Ascending Order of Tastiness

1) Yesterday I was at David and Steph’s house (where they are kid and house sitting for their neighbors) when I noticed from across the room that Matthew was putting something that looked like a big plastic toy in his mouth.  He was sitting just outside the door of a room that was strewn with kids toys…nothing out of the ordinary here.  No problem, let the kid explore with his mouth.  Then Stephanie shrieks something about an animal being in his mouth.  I wonder if I’m having hearing problems, or maybe Steph was referring to the dog outside having caught something?  Stephanie runs to Matthew to rescue him and I figure I ought to follow right behind.  When the locals are shrieking I should probably be concerned about something, right?  Stephanie explains that the thing in his mouth (that still does not look like an animal to me) is actually a bug called a shongololo.  They’re about 4 inches long, a type of millipede, and they roll up into balls…something like a gigantic pill bug, but in a spiral shape.  So when it clicks that he’s eating a bug I try to spring into action and stop Matthew from biting this millipede but I am overcome by how gross it is I can hardly touch it, never mind that my son is chewing on it.  So Steph to the rescue convinced Matthew open his mouth, she extracted the creature, and tossed it out the window.  Note to self:  South Africa has 4 inch millipedes that, when rolled up, look to me like plastic toys.  And also maybe my eyes are worse than my ears.

2) David finishes work each day at 6pm, so that the last 4 hours of his work day line up with Eastern time zone work hours.  A few days ago we were trying to get to David and Steph’s house for small group by 7pm, so we decided to find a restaurant in Hilton to have a quick dinner before small group.  Hilton, however, could be described as BedAndBreakfastLand…a sleepy town that apparently does not believe in restaurants open past 6pm.  Except for one called “Jaxx: Food with no attitude” (still wondering what that means).  We walk in and see that this is a nice place to eat, maybe the kind of place a couple would go to get away from kids and enjoy a fancy dinner out.  But, for us, it’s this or rummaging through the car for leftover Marie biscuits (sort of like graham crackers).  So we take a seat.  Apologies to the table with the beautiful arrangement of flowers…maybe Matthew throwing food on the ground will be in the background of someone’s engagement photos.  We learn that this is a place that takes its food very seriously; the kind of place that serves food on huge plates and just a tiny piece of food in the middle with lots of garnishes artfully placed with some drizzle of sauces all around.  It felt sort of criminal to feed this to a 1 and 3 year old who are happy with fritos and canned peas…but kids need to eat too.  In the end it all turned out okay enough.  They brought out two free “kid-chinos” – a tiny mug of frothed milk with chocolate sprinkled on top.  The kids were still kids, but overall we all held it together.  And the crazy thing was the final bill to feed 2 adults and 2 kids, including tax, tip, a dessert, beverages, and everything: $37.  (Easily a cost of $100 in the States.)  The lower cost of food here relative to the States helps to offset the $88 I paid to fill up the tank of gas on our 5-passenger car:-)

First Snow Treat of Winter

That was the newspaper headline last week when we had a cold snap here in Hilton.  At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s late fall/early winter here in South Africa.  The big local news last week was that you could see snow in the distance on the Drakensburg Mountains.  (We looked and couldn’t see any, but I’ll trust the locals are not just pulling my leg.)  That means it’s really cold here and people who heard my foreign accent were apologizing to me for it getting down to about 35°F at night, and assuring me that it would warm up.

We are from Minnesota, so we know cold weather.  And even anecdotally comparing ourselves to others in Minnesota, we enjoy cold weather more than most.  So before our trip when the Binions told us their tricks for saying warm (microwaving denim rice bags, be sure to pack warm pajamas and good socks) we sort of chuckled.  I mean really, it basically never snows in Hilton, and in Minnesota we get multiple feet of snow each winter.  How shocking to my system could it really be?

So, um, yeah, trust advice from the locals.  It gets cold here.  Really cold.  The crucial difference is that homes here have no central heat.  So when it’s 40 degrees outside, it’s quickly 40 degrees inside.  That makes getting out of bed in the morning a beast.  They do have space heaters, electric and gas, but they are fire hazards to run at night.  (And the big gas heater makes us nervous with kids around…so they go to bed and then we can enjoy the nice gas heater.  It’s bed time for the kiddos so Mommy and Daddy can warm up!)  So keeping warm at night requires old fashioned layers of clothes and blankets.  It sort of reminds me of late fall or early spring camping in Minnesota, in that you just bundle up, tough it out, enjoy all of the non-weather-related things, and look forward to that nice warm mug of hot cocoa in the morning.  Yes, it is sort of sacrilegious here to prefer hot cocoa to tea, but people have graciously overlooked that deficiency of mine.

With the cold nights, it’s tempting to do what David did last Sunday morning.  It was cold, so he put on his fleece lined jeans with his pajama pants underneath as another layer to keep warm.  But then fast forward to noon, and it’s 75°F and sunny, and David was melting.  Most days the high is in the low to mid 70s and sunny.  On Saturday, Timothy was wearing his winter hat around the house in the morning.  He left it on when we went to a kids club in Sweetwaters (the poor and black part of town…more later on Sweetwaters) and insisted on keeping the hat on when it was about 65°F out and he was running around.  So he stuck out from the crowd, being the 1) only white kid besides Matthew who 2) has a way serious winter hat and 3) doesn’t know when to take it off.  *shrugs*   A side note, but at this kids club in Sweetwaters I was witness to games of netball, soccer, and floor hockey all being played on the same field at the same time.  There was just one small dirt patch available in between a parking lot and a cliff/dropoff, so everyone just all played around and on top of each other.  Chaos reigned, and much fun was had.

People have asked us why we would come visit South Africa during their winter.  Most South Africans would prefer to be in the Northern Hemisphere enjoying summer right now, so that makes us a little crazy.  But David and I are odd ducks.  (Apologies to our kids who did not get a say in when we came here.)  We prefer cold nights and warm days like it is now over the crazy hot (90°F+) it gets here during the summer.  So, yes, we are at peace with the fact that we are missing a summer in 2014.  We will have 21 months of essentially no summer.  Although there are things we miss for sure, this is okay by us.