Africa January 2006

I got back from Africa about 2½ weeks ago and have been trying to recount my trip to several people and what I have learned (and keep learning after each trip) is that you just can't do the trip justice with an explanation and pictures (even though I took 750 pictures in the three weeks I was there). That said I will do my best to let you know what happened.

So Matt and I flew into Cape Town and met up with his college chum Peter. Since Peter is volunteering with the YMCA we decided to join in for the first week and help him out (By helping out of course I mean tagging along). Our first week was helping out with an organization called bridges of hope that works with orphans in the slums of Cape Town. We pretty much spent all morning playing with kids and letting them hang off of us attempting poorly to teach bible stories and lead semi-organized games. Our afternoons we were free and we spend much of it hiking/climbing the mountain in the middle of Cape Town. Then in the evening we cruised along discovering what the pub scene of Cape Town had to offer.

After that week we drove to Lesotho and worked at a Seventh Day Adventist hospital (http://www.malutiadventisthospital.org/) and volunteered there for several days. Seeing as my surgery skills are somewhat lacking I set up a wireless network for the hospital and helped build some staff housing. The hospital is amazing. It is completely privately funded and is the 2^nd best hospital in Lesotho. Over two thirds of the patients that come into the hospital have HIV/AIDS. I was really impressed with the staff there. They also have a nursing school on their compound and train a few hundred nurses.

Lesotho was probably my favorite country. It was very mountainous and though it was devastatingly poor it didn't seem to have all the corruption and crime that South Africa had. There had been an upswing in crime in the past several years but it isn't violent crime like the gangs in South Africa. Plus the country was gorgeous. It was so green and mountainous. We took a day and a girl on staff at the hospital took us down to the underground river which we hiked a long for a while to get to. It was pretty cool and the landscape is different than anything I have ever seen.

Matt Peter and I in Lesotho

Underground river waterfall in Lesotho

Underground river in Lesotho

Leaving Lesotho

After Lesotho we spent several days driving back along the coast slowly making our way back to Cape Town. In Coffee Bay we met this guy at our hostel's pub who was a local guide and he talked us into hiking to Hidden Falls with him. Being always ready for any adventure we all three decided it was the perfect idea. The next morning we got up and drove for an hour until the road ended. Then we had to hike for 4 hours to the river. Once at the river we had to swim upstream as there was no other way to the falls because of the cliffs on each side. After awhile swimming we finally got to the falls for a little cliff jumping and pictures. The falls was pretty amazing and totally worth the hike. The picture doesn't really put the falls in perspective very well but it was about 150 feet tall. We then headed back for our 4 hour hike. Well worth a day's hike.

The river below the fallsPreparing to swimSwimming to the fallsRiver to the fallsThe Falls

Our final day off we went to Knysna and spent the day boogie boarding and I wound up with the worst sunburn I have ever had. we closed off the day with a BBQ on the beach and eating as the sun went down.

Sunset in Knysna

Back in Cape Town we went to Pollsmoor Prison and helped out with discussion in some literacy classes. It was interesting to have discussions with 18-22 year old who had committed murder and was all caught up in the gangs in the slums of Cape Town. I can’t really describe what it was like talking to a person who had a 3^rd grade education, had killed someone and was in maximum security prison. Since they were under 18 when they committed murder they didn’t have life sentences. I talked to one guy who was getting out in 3 months. He had no hope and kept begging me to help him get him a job. He kept saying that if he couldn’t find a job on the outside he had no choice but to fall back into the gang that got him in trouble and got him in prison in the first place.

Townships

Townships

Townships

South Africa was such an unexpected country. There are 11 official languages in the country. In Cape Town you can go downtown and think you were in Western Europe or the USA or go to the outskirts in the townships and see hundreds of thousands living in tin shacks sometimes so crowded there were shack between the highways and off ramps. South Africa has 40% unemployment yet when you open any newspaper it is filled with job ads. What do you do with a country that has such a large population of unemployable (because of a lack of any job skills)? What do you with a country that has a third of its population infected with HIV/AIDS and may possibly have a third of their population die of it in the next decade and yet the president has denied to the public that it is a problem and questioned the very existence of HIV/AIDS. What do you do with a country where even the police are corrupt and they are paid off by the locals gangs. It was really an overwhelming experience.

Maybe God’s in control…

It has taken over a week to recover from the sunburn I got in South Africa and it will take more than that to process the whole experience.

nate