7 September 2011: Quick Same Day Abortions

Well my streak of a little over a month now of not being in the same place for more than a week is going to continue for at least another two weeks. I have spent the last week in Tzaneen going through orientation at the Small Enterprise Foundation (SEF) and this Saturday I will start my move to Butterworth, Eastern Cape, where i will be spending the remainder of my time here.  I will be traveling to Polokwone for the night Saturday then will be getting a ride to Joburg Sunday to catch a plane to East London and then drive to Butterworth . This is happening so soon because some other people from SEF were making the trip to Butterworth this weekend so they thought it would be good if i traveled with them (which i am thankful for). The only problem is that they still have not found me a place to live in Butterworth. For the time being i will be in staying at the guesthouse that the other people from SEF will be staying in for their visit, the difference being that i will stay there until they find me permanent accommodations or come up with another plan.

My time in Tzaneen has been great. I am living in a very comfortable flat (condo) across the street from SEF’s main office with 4 other interns (one from Italy, one from Canada, and the other two are American and from New England at that).

Home Sweet Wildevy

SEF Head Office

The flat is much nicer that i expected with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths upstairs and this downstairs…

Kitchen & Dining Room

Living Room

We even have a large back patio which we braaied (South African barbecue) on this weekend complete with boerewors (South African sausage) and Black Label which i missed so much from my time in Cape Town last summer.

Back Porch From Our Balcony (yes that's a pool)

View From My Window

It has also been great to have this week to be with the other interns up here in Tzaneen so that they can help me get my bearings and settle into the culture with some other Westerners around.  In our attempt to understand what is going on around us it seems like all of our conversations some how lead back to talking about apartheid, Nelson Mandela, or possible solutions to the many social problems we see. Some things are just different here. For example we went out to a bar this weekend and were questioned by a few Afrikaners why we would hang out with black people (we had brought some of our black co-workers to the bar with us). These issues of race and my hope for racial reconciliation is part of what draws me to South Africa. I can imagine it is kind of like living in the 60’s or 70’s in the States after segregation. I think it’s important to listen to them though because it is their country and there is some truth in what they say even though i don’t agree with their point of view (I believe one man described Africans as lower than snake sh*t…made me want to hit him). For example they kept saying that the black’s keep running businesses into the ground. Sure it is a fact that the black population is less educated and therefor might not make the best business decisions, but the reason for that goes back to apartheid. I don’t know what the solution is but it’s really interesting to hear different perspectives…especially living out here in Tzaneen (i guess Tzaneen would be the equivalent of the deep south in the States). What makes things easier here is that everyone speaks English although it is no ones first language. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about what i am eating so  other than the braai when we splurged a bit we are living on a budget so a lot of beans, rice, this thing call Chakalaka which is a spicy south African vegetable relish, and pap, a porridge/mashed potato type thing. Life here has been pretty slow, not much to do so a lot of down time of just reading and movie watching. It is a good change of pace though and i am trying to rest up. Hopefully it will get a little more exciting this weekend because the Rugby World Cup starts and that is a huge thing here so I’m looking forward to that.

I am taking my first trip out to the field tomorrow to see a center meeting and i am excited to finally get out of the office and see how SEF works. I will try to post one more time before i leave for the Eastern Cape because i am not sure how internet access will be when i get there.

Until next time I will leave you with this, the strangest advertisement i have seen in a long time…..

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2 September 2011: This is Africa

So I have made it safely, although not that smoothly, to South Africa! On my previous trips to Africa there has been a saying “TIA” or “This is Africa”. It pretty much means that you have to be flexible because things are done a bit differently here.  The story of my travel here quickly made me realize that this is Africa.

My original travel plan was to leave Boston on Sunday fly through Amsterdam and arrive in Johannesburg airport, have a man that runs a hostel near the airport outside of Joburg pick me up and stay the night there, then have him drive me to the bus station in the morning to take a bus to Tzaneen where i will be staying for my orientation, have Wednesday to settle in here and start work on Thursday. Hurricane Irene had other ideas though and my flight Sunday was canceled. Luckily i was able to grab the last seat on a plane to Joburg on Monday but that pushed everything back a day and i had to try to change my reservations with the hostel and bus. Because of the time difference I was not able to contact either on Sunday and had to wake up early Monday to try to change everything before i had to leave to catch my plane early Monday morning. I thought i had successfully changed my bus ticket (I will explain later) but i was not able to reach the guy who was supposed to pick me up in Joburg. Running out of time i resorted to sending him a few emails and hoping for the best as i got on the plane.

Now, because my plans had changed I was flying out of Boston through DC to Atlanta, then had a direct flight from Atlanta to Joburg. I spent a total of 12 hours traveling in the Unites States, then it was a 16 hour plane ride from Atlanta to Joburg all the while not really sure how things would turn out once i landed in terms of accommodations for that night. I arrived at the airport with no sign of my ride (which i had expected). I took out some money, got some change, and used the payphone to call the hostel i was supposed to stay with and got the house-mom on the phone who only spoke broken English and all i heard was “Take taxi, take taxi” on the other end before the phone ran out of time. At this point i had two options, I had the number of a hotel near the bus station (Park Station, the largest train station in Africa) in Johannesburg so i could make my way there and try to find the hotel, or take a taxi to the hostel and hope for the best. I heard the bus station was very dangerous from a few people on the plane so i opted to take a taxi to the hostel.

I finally arrived at a house with no sign of light or any life for that matter from the house. The cab driver had been calling the house mom for directions using the number i had because we could not find the place for a while. I grabbed my bags and the house-mom came out and welcomed me, assuring me i was in the right place. As she took me to my room the place turned out to be gorgeous. The rooms were comfortable and clean and in the backyard there was a swimming pool and a restaurant and bar under a thatched roof. As I was walking to my room through the backyard a drunk man stumbled up to me and slurred and introduction of himself as the owner (and the man who was supposed to pick me up from the airport). I learned later that he had been drinking all day which explains why he didn’t pick me up (probably a good thing). He passed out shortly after i arrived, so i was still unsure whether i had a ride to the bus station the next day. Luckily there was a women staying a room over who also needed a ride the next morning at the same time so we decided we would wake him up together in the morning. There were only three people staying at the hostel, an American man who now lived in Belgium who was an African art expert and had been doing research in the Congo, an Italian man who was a photographer, and the woman next door who was from England but worked in Botswana doing wilderness tours. The only other person there was the house mom. She was a sweet hard working woman from Zimbabwe that seemed like she did most of the work around the place and stayed, i think alone, in a room behind the restaurant/bar area.

The next morning we successfully woke up the owner and he drove me to the bus station. When I arrived and went to get my ticket from the reservation desk i was told that they had given away my seat because i had not paid the change fee in time since i had had to change my ticket from the day before, and the bus was now full. I explained that the man on the phone had not told me about this deadline for payment  and explained my situation. I’m still not sure quite how, but they got me on the bus and i was finally on my way to the final destination.

The bus was extremely comfortable, even better than buses i have taken from Boston to New York. On the bus i was finally able to relax and take in the African landscape. The ride was about 7 hours and the further we got from Johannesburg the more beautiful it got. For most of the trip it mostly looked like this…….

We then passed Polokwane and started to travel up into the mountains and the landscape dramatically changed. It was a beautiful scene of mountains and rolling hills with red clay dirt and green grass spotted with villages and farms. As we slowly drove passed a high school the kids started looking intently into the windows of this large bus, i assume not many buses travel up here to Limpopo, and they started pointing and waving as they saw my white face sitting in the back of the bus. This immediately reminded me of my time last summer in Cape Town traveling on a very similar bus with students from Northeastern where the same thing would happen. It was at that moment where i finally felt relaxed and a sense of excitement set in as is I realized that i was fulfilling one of my dreams, to return to South Africa.

I have been here just two days now and am settling in fine. I live in a beautiful flat right across the street from the office with 4 other interns (All amazing people) and I started my job at the Small Enterprise Foundation (SEF). The first day I was able to sit in on a meeting with some of the operations managers that i will be working with which got me excited for my work to start.  I am extremely excited for what i am going to learn. Even this morning, as i was reading through the operations manuals, i was learning so much about how mirofinance really works with lessons learned from SEF’s 20 years of experience.

Tzaneen is a beautiful town up in the mountains (its actually the second largest “city” in the Limpopo province) and is a self proclaimed “tropical paradise” according the the welcome sign. We have a grocery store and mall like you would see anywhere else right across the street, and even a few bars in the area that the other interns took me out to on my first night to welcome me. I am excited to explore more this weekend and I will let you know what else i find!

"Downtown" Tzaneen

Mountains around Tzaneen

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