Africa Part 4 - Beach, mountain, fish and wine in South Africa

I don’t know where to start…. I have seen and done and experienced so much the last three weeks in South Africa and I am full of impressions. And my diary is full of them too, never written that much in a diary before… So be prepared, although I will try to make it shorter than in my writing book, it might be quite long….

Beach close to Muizenberg

Late on a Sunday I arrived Cape Town, and was driven to a volunteer house in Muizenberg. That was the place where I would stay and work for the next two weeks. It lies on the other side of Table Mountain for Cape Town, has a beautiful, long beach, many surfers, and mountains rising up from the beach and ocean. Quite nice:-) And finally, some salt water again! Indian Ocean on when side, atlantic ocean on the other.

Luckily, I didn't meat any sharks...

I lived in a house with a lot of other volunteers, mostly younger people, and most of them from US, Canada and Australia, and some from Europe. A bit challenging and special to in a house together with that many people (or maybe I am a bit too old for that now...;-) ) but it worked out well. Nevertheless, after one week I could move too another of the volunteer house, with fewer people, having a little more space, and a bit more quiet. This house, however, was situated in an area where the criminality was slightly higher, so housebreaking was quite common, and I lost my two pair of shoes the first night.... Hopefully the persons who stole them needed them more than me. And I am in Africa, so obviously, barefoot running should not be a problem. And I bought myself a pair of flip-flop shoes, which anyway is a “must” living/traveling in a surfing / beach town...

Sunset from Lions Head

Security and safety here is not what I am used to... If the poorer people get the opportunity to steel something from you, they will! (Although, better they do that, than hurting you...) My VISA card was also stolen, first by the ATM, and then by some criminals when at the time when I tried to call my bank to block the card. And getting out alone in the dark is also something you shouldn´t do here. Very strange and unusual for me used to Norway and Switzerland. And a bit unpractical, you need to plan things different when you know that you can´t be alone outside after 20 o´clock in the evenings... Luckily, the sun rises before 5 o´clock in the morning, so morning runs was not a problem :-)

My volunteering working here was through an organisation that supported schools and children centres. I was in the sport program meaning that I worked in a school where we organized the sport lessons for all the classes. In general a good thing, the problem was that we were quite many volunteers, so I didn´t feel as useful and doing that much as what I had hoped and expected. But the people love playing with you, and that you are there, so hoepfully we still could make a different in the childrens lifes. Quite opposite to what I experienced in Kenya, where the children almost seemed a bit afraid of you, at least they had very much respect, they ran at you and throw themselves at you when you arrived. Also, although you met them for the first time. After coming through the doors in the children centres, you suddenly had 2-3-4 children hanging around your neck asking questions, talking, playing with your hair, etc.. Quite an amazing experience...

I also had three days in the surf programs, which means that we go surfing (or trying to at least) ourselves in the morning, and than afternoons, after school, the children arrive, and we play with them and look after them in the water (where some of them also do surfing), and on the beach. Not too hard working, but still, hopefully, we mean something for the children. The surfing went quite well, or I wouldn´t say that I really surf, that needs a bit more practicing, but at least I am able to catch the waves myself, and stand up on the board. Then it makes fun when I am able to do that. One of the days (due to the wind and weather) there were a lot of fishes jumping around us when we surfed, and also a seal or two. Amazing. One fish actually jumped into the arms of one of the other, and he could carry it back on the beach. Easy way of fishing... :-)

Cape Town

Besides the working, there was a lot of other things to do in this cape region too. Go hiking, running, stay on the beach, visit the small neighbouring towns or cape town....It is really a beatiful place, with great landscape and nature. And the city Cape town is also great; Really cool goods and food markets, the waterfront and the harbour, beaches around the cities, and table mountain behind the city, 1086 metres high – amazing. And it is sooo nice here! Of course I hiked Table Mountain (very special with this huge plateau), Muizenberg (the mountain behind the town I stayed), lions head (sunset walk), and I also went to Cape Point, and did a little bit of hiking around there, where the Indian and Atlantic ocean meet. Beautiful :-) Although getting to Cape Point was not as easy as I thought (Although not that far away). My plan was to take the train to the next town, and then hire a bike. When I got to the next town, it turned out, they didn´t have bikes there, although they had said they had. So then I planned taking the next train to the next town (closer to cape point), of course the next train didn´t arrive (The trains are not as polite as in switzerland...), so I hd to wait for a while. In the next town, I though if Icouldn´t find a bike, maybe I could find a taxi, but there were no taxis going there driving to Cape Point. Cape Point also lies in a national park, with a high fee getting into. But finally I found a travel company organising tours to Cape Point, and I could join another group going there. And although a lot of difficulties getting there, it was worth it:-)

Cape Point

Cape of Good hope

The African pinguins

Else, they have a really funny english dialect here in South Africa (At least the black people here), it is difficult to explain, but I will demonstrate for you when I come back :-) They have a lot of nice citites, and very special is it that outside the cities, there are the townships, where the poorer people live. (Small and many “houses” in a rather small area) So it is very obvious still pretty divided here. And they have very nice weather here (At least at the time I was here), warm, and a lot of sun. I barely had any rain during my stay here. It is quite windy, though, but that is sort of nice too :-) And nothing else to expect located as it is....Talking about weather, it is not only in Switzerland I have been told now that the norwegian yr.no provides the best weather forecast. Also here, one of the guide told me that he used it, because it was the best... :-)

Sunset from the beach where we
stayed in Sedgefield

After the two weeks of volunteering working, I went to Garden Route together with 3 other of the volunteers and a great local guide. It actually turned out to be two guides on the way back because of a broken car....And they knew a lot about South Africa and a lot of other things too, and knew a lot of nice places (I think I know two of the best guides in South Africa now, so just tell me if you are going to south africa and need to know) We were 5-6 people travelling together on this tour, and had 11 different “nationalities/origins”, quite amazing. And I  have really learned to know so many great people from all over the world during my stay in Africa. A long the Gaden Route we watched great green landscape, and visited sanctuaries with lions, baby lions, elephants (We could walk together with all this animals) and monkeys. Else, we visited some nice, sometimes well-hidden, beaches and towns.

The last week in South Africa was no working, just travelling around. First I visited Stellenbosch. A very, nice, quite old city, with very special and beautiful architecture. They nature around Stellenbosch is also very nice, and great for hiking, running, cycling, and with many natural reserves, and a unique and huge variety of flowers and plants. I went hiking and running the two first days. And the third day I rented a bike (A good way to get used to left side driving..:-) ) Else Stellenbosch is of course known for wine. And I visited a lot of very nice wine farms, and cellars. I learned a lot about wines and grapes, and the natural surroundings here, and how they influence the wines, had guiding in cellars, and on and around the vineyards. Very, very interesting.

And of course I did wine tasting (together with a very nice group with people from Sweden, Germany, and Austria), and also wine and food matching, and wine and chocolate matching. Absolutely great! And they are so friendly and nice here, and can tell you and learn you so may things!! The wine is also very cheap here :-) A glass of wine in a restaurant typical costs about 15 kroner (2-3 CHF), and that´s the price for doing wine tasting too (You then get to taste 5-7 different wines). And the wine is very, very good here too! And it is amazing how you can taste the difference before and after you have a bit of food or chocolate, and how the food and wine matches. And talking about food, South Africa has great food!!! This is the country to visit when you like good food (and wine)! And if you love sea food /fish like m, it is great! :-) And I have also starting to not only eat but also really enjoying potato chips (Yes, taste can change, cheese in Switzerland, tea in Kenya, and now chips...), but the potato chips here are really more potato and less chips, and very good :-)

Left side driving...:-)

After three days in Stellenbosch, I rented a car and went too the west coast. This part of the country consists of small fishing villages, nice long beaches, a very unique bird (and sea) life (with many wildlife reserves, not many people, and not at all many tourists. But it is very very nice, very unique, and wild. I loved it. And of course, great sea food!! And very cold water (12-14 degrees). Although the air temperature was about 30 degrees. The atlantic ocean is cold! Especially in the summer due to the wind from east, that blows the warmer upper layer of water away from land and offshore. Very special. Still, of course I had to go bathing, it was a nice cool down in the warm weather. And because of the wind, you dried up again as soon as you went out of the water. And at the same time got some “sand peeling” from the sand on the beach blowing all over you (No wonder not many people were on the beaches.... :-)).

Left side driving went much better than I had feared.... My largest “problem” was that I turned on the windscreen wiper everytime I wanted to use the flasher for right or left :-) But the last day I got another challenge too, because I somehow managed to stumble in a stone outside the house door my last evening in South Africa....and injured my right arm. But hospitals are also part of a country´s culture, which I at the end then also got to know.... Probably it´s only a muscular injury, and I managed to safely drive to Cape Town, and on the nice roads along the coast, and aroud Table Mountain, and back to the airport.

And then, after 6 weeks in Africa, it was time to fly back to Switzerland. The 6 weeks went incredibly fast, and I wish I could have stayed longer, although it is and will be great to come back to Switzerland and Norway, and meet friends and family again, also some new friends and family members:-)

But I will come back, I think I have fallen in love with Africa :-)

Some more pictures here: Photos

Africa Part 3 – Safari in Masai Mara

The airstrip

After Ngumbulu I had one weekend in Kenya before my flight to South Africa. After some considerations, I decided to use this weekend to experience some more “real Africa”, and go on Safari (Another option was the beautiful Indian Ocean city Mombasa). So from Nairobi, I took a small plane Friday morning to Masai Mara national park. The airport in Masai Mara consisted of a gravel airsrip, and that’s iit. Never seen anything like that. Not even a building, quite funny.

A 4WD car and 2 Masai people picked me and 4 other people up and we drove to the camp. On the way we already saw zebras, different antilopes/gazelles, elephants, giraffs,  and a lot of lot of wildebeest. I had never seen them before, so first I didn’t even  know that word, so Wikipedia had to help me so that I found the Norwegian word (gnu), so now I know what it is. (That was the case with many of the animals and the English names by the way) And I had no idea that it existed so many of them. There are like millions of them. And each year at this time the travel to Serengeti in Tanzania for Christmas vacation, and actually stay there until june/july. Then they come back to Masai Mara national park again. They were all over the place, but still, the guide told us, it was actually rather few, because a lot of them had already crossed the Mara river on the way to Serengeti.

The camp we were going to live in was a small camp, place for about 20 people. And it was a tent camp. But it is the most luxurious tents I have ever seen. Really amazing. Everyone had their own tent, with a big bed, table and chairs, bathroom with water toilet, and shower. Really nice!! Then there was a restaurant tent, a library tent, a bar, and outside it was a fire place, and a couple of relaxing places with chairs, couch and hammocks. Really nice! And good food in the restaurant! Since we were in the middle of the park, surrounded by wil animals, we were not allowed to walk away from the camp. But if we wanted to go down to the river (some hundred meters away), a couple of the masai people, that also guarded the camp, would follow us, so we could see crocodiles and hippos.

My tent

In the camp I could finally have coffee again too. The funny thing however, I would never had believed that about myself, was that I still preferred the tea-milk-mix…. And I who loves coffee, and don’t like black tea… Very funny….

The two next days we were out on game drive with our 4WD. In addition to the animals I already mentioned we saw baboons, wart pig (Pumba), mongoose (Thimon), buffalo, impala, eland, Thomsens gazelles, black rhino, cheetahs (Gepard), hyenas, lions, a lepard hidning, ostrich, vultures, storks, jakals, foxes, serval, termit mounds (They are huge), and a lot of birds. Amazing, and funny and incredible! Like being in the middle of the movie Lions King… We also had picnic breakfast on a small hill, overlooking the savannah and the river. So beautiful! 

In the evenings we were sitting by the fire place, drinking, talking, and listen to the African night, and the animals… During the nights we could also hear the hyenas and the hippos making noices around our camp. (But it was not scary as we were well guarded by the masai people.)

Me and my Masai guard :-)

It is also fascinating how all these wild animals live together, and are lying on the savannah pretty close to each other, although the lions, for instance, would eat the zebras, wildebeasts and antilopes if they were hungry…. But as long as they were not hungry they didn’t bother the other animals, and the other were not afraid either. (The zebras would know if they were in danger, the wildebeasts are simply too stupid to be really afraid) Quite amazing…..

Wildebeasts crossing the river

Some minutes before we left the camp on Sunday, we could also witness an amazing sight, that we actually had searched for the last days. A thousand of wildebeasts crossing the river, just in front of our camp. Trying to survive, escape the stream, the crocodiles and the hippos and come over to the other side. That was probably my most exciting happenings of them all from my stay in Masai Mara.

Sunday evening a left Kenya, going to Cape Town and South Africa…. So next episode will follow from the point where the cold Atlantic meats the warmer Indian Ocean….. and were the black and white people live side by side, with all the opportunities and challenges that gives….

  

Relaxing...:-)

Rhino

  

Wildebeasts in the sun rise...

Lepard has got a wildebeast

   

Africa Part 2: A very different way of living – Ngumbulu

Finally, the travel report from my stay in the village Ngumbulu is here. I am now in South Africa, but I will start with telling about Ngumbulu anyway. (Some of you have already got a report in Norwegian, but I will now try with a shortened English version too, for all of you non-Norwegian-speaking people…And excuse me for the not very good English...and that the pictures are a bit unorganized... ) Ngumbulu seems already like a long time ago, although it is only a couple of weeks.

Living in Ngumbulu is totally different from all I have experienced in my life…And it was an amazing and interesting experience.


After the hike in Mount Kenya, I met Samuel and his family in Nairobi. Samuel manages all the development projects in Ngumbulu.He is from there, but he also lives in Komarock, just outside Nairobi with his wife and 4 children and house keeper. I spent the first weekend with them in Komarock. Although for most of you, regarded as a pretty simple and small house (Mainly one room, plus three bedrooms, and bathroom), it was a big and luxurious house compared to houses in Ngumbulu. Didn’t do very much during the weekend, staying in the house (walking outside alone wouldn’t be a very good idea), relaxing (Although doing almost nothing is not very relaxing for me). But nice anyway, very nice family!

Monday morning we went to Ngumbulu. Ngumbulu is a small village, you can barely find it on google maps… Although small, in area it is quite large, there are houses spread over a large area, so not densely populated. If you want to see more about how it all started, check out www.aidinaction.no. The houses are all pretty similar. They consist of an outer wall of red bricks, and a roof. That’s it, more or less… Although some have a bit bigger houses. Samuels house is situated a little bit outside “village centre”, together with the houses of the other five brothers, and his mother, like in a sort of small community . A guesthouse (for me) is also at this farm. The standard of these houses seem to be somehow above average standard in the village. Normally every farm has one house for the kitchen too, because they always cook with fire, and then it is good to keep it in an own 1-room-house. And between all the houses, it is a very very beautiful courtyard, with a large purple tree. When at home, we sit in the nice wood chairs under this tree, or around the fire place in the evenings. By the way, it seems like chairs are more or less the only furniture here. They don’t have tables…

Although the village recently has become electricity, that only goes to the centre, so most houses don’t have it. They don’t have water either, but the 3G network works very well here..:-) (seems to be more important than indoor water and electricity) The development centre though, which is the centre and office for all the projects here, and newly opened has electricity. So they had a couple of computers for instance. Some of the work I did here was teaching basic computer skills. That was quite challenging mainly due to very slow internet connection (mobile modem) and slow computers. In the centre they also have a poultry, a bakery, some plants etc. This was were I always started my day here in Ngumbulu.

The kitchen

The first thing to experience here was the African Time. Things happen or are done, when they are done…And there is no hurry. Making a plan that implies a specific time doesn’t work (Most people don’t wear watches). That makes planning somehow different than usual and it has to be done in another way. When asking about when, or also, how long or things like that, you always get funny answers like yes, or something else, but seldom/never an actual time, duration, length… Always vague answers, also to most other questions. Quite fascinating…

Things here aren’t very efficient…. but very relaxed. At the same time, that isn’t necessarily only wrong, or bad. It is simply a life without stressing. And many people here probably also have other expectations to life than what we have, and then they don’t need to be that efficient for instance. Hakuna Matata, no problem, it will be OK. That is the attitude for everything. And it is a good attitude! ;-) Anyhow, things have changed the last years. Although not efficient, most people here have now a great willingness to work, and are working more and harder then in previous time. And this willingness is surely more important than efficiency. I tried to be relaxed about everything too. It mostly worked really well, actually. Except for one day, when we were out of the office, and suddenly we were stucked a place for more hours, and I wasn’t prepared for that, and had forgot my knitting things…. A hard time, but I survived… :-)


When they saw me knitting by the way, they found that very funny and interesting, and were impressed (All asking how much I sold the products for),and wanted to learn. So I also had “knitting school” during my time here. They had a facinating optimism and self confidence when learning. First, we switched using my knitting needle. But when day, I wanted to try to buy someone for each of them. So me and another, we walked (of course) to the next “city”, 8 km away (There are not many cars in this town, no buses, but quite a lot of motor bikes, so part of the way back, we had a “motor bike taxi” (They sometimes drive eith up to 5 people on one bike). In the town, I didn’t find correct knitting needles, but I found something that was almost good, and then I also found a metal worker. He did a good work, and finally we got something looking like knitting needles…. :-)



But back to the time. Ngumbulu lies almost on equator. This means that sun rises shortly before 6, sun sets about 18.30. And that makes the frame of the day. You wake up with the sun, and start the day, you can’t work when it is dark. So in the evenings there is fire, eating, stars at the African sky (nice, idyllic and a little bit magic mood), talking (mostly in ki-kamba, so I am sitting there, having no idea what is happening), and then bedtime. Doesn’t matter if you are a child or a grown-up here. You fall asleep when and there you fall asleep, simply like that.

And when it comes to eating; I get a lot of food here, although in Africa….. And I like the food here very much, specially the Kithera, which is maize and beans, mixed with salt and butter, possibly pies sometimes. Else, we ate typically rice, potatoes, ugali )like polenta, maize porridge), tomato, possibly goat or hen or cock. For breakfast, default was white bread, butter, and sometimes egg. I am not a big fan of white bread, and this is also not a traditionally breakfast, but that is more the “luxurious” breakfast here. It is difficult to explain that white bread is not my thing, but I managed to make “witabix-porridge” quite often, and then I was very happy… Traditionally, and sometimes now too, they had millet porridge, or kasawa (arrow root), for breakfast. Both these I find very good. Unfortunately I mostly didn’t have that here.

And then of course the tea. Kenyan black tea, made with milk and water (and sugar). mmm ;-) At least, when I after a couple of days manage to stop the sugar in the tea. Yes, I love this tea-milk “mix”, I don’t even miss coffee, which is very strange and unexpected, since I love coffee and actually don’t like black tea… (But taste changes, apparently, like the swiss cheece…) But the normal version here, with sugar, I find quite unsavouriness…. But that’s obviously how they like it here, and they think I am quite strange, which prefer it without sugar…

The primaty school in Ngumbulu

By the meals, you can also notice the “ranking” quite well. For instance, I am sitting there, watching the other are preparing, serving etc. And also the men, and the higher ranked do that, because other people are actually employed to serve you. I don’t feel 100% comfortable with it, but it is how it works here. Before each meal, they always come with a mug of hot water for washing our hands. And then we start eat, and since we have all washed our hands, eating from same plate, and with the hands (sometimes we did that) is not a problem. In general, making a mess by eating, losing remnants on the ground etc doesn’t matter here (Neither inside or outside) . We (they) wash afterwards…

On my birthday however (by chance) , I was allowed to help a little bit… with the tool they got and use, which is a knife, not very sharf, and that’s it more or less, peeling and cutting vegetables with that, in the air, no cutting board or table is a bit challenging actually…:-)

The children in the school are
coming towards me

The ranking is also very evident in the schools. The pupils have very much respect for the teacher. And when I visited the schools, the children were partly shy, partly full of respect, and a little bit afraid. They were approaching me slowly, all together, getting closer and closer, the nearest ones being pushed from behind, until they were quite close, an amazing sight…

So, back to the work days here… The first two days we did a lot of walking, looking at/showing me all the projects around. Planting of papaya, mango, moringa, eucalyptus etc… Making dams, bore holes, visiting the children centres, and schools that are being build (Deeply respect and honour to Anne Louise!!) What made a deep and huge impression was going to see the river, or “river”, as there was no water flowing there, just some dribbling, two metres below the river bottom (see picture..), and people walk these 3 km each day, to get water from here…. I really hopes it starts to rain soon!! (Or hopefully it has already started) Else, many will starve… The plants need the water, and the people and animals too.

The river....

Collecting water
from the river...

We walked for some hours and kilometers per day, but still very calmly. After all the walking, I was asked if I was tired (I guess I was supposed and expected to be that) When I said I wasn’t tired at all, I am quite used to do quite much more per day, they found it a little bit strange…They suggested I was maybe used to flatter terrain, which made me smile, in my opinion, you can barely get it flatter than here… :-)

At the centre we also had a biking day (Of course baking about 160 scones is a full day project involving a couple of people), and test production of papaya juice, where I was considered the expert on that…

After couple of days living in Ngumbulu, I realized there are no dangerous people or animals here, and since I anyway was awake before 6 every day, and the work started later (no stress, also not in the morning), I took a morning jog. People found me (again) very strange doing that. There are no runners here, there are no point of running like that, just for nothing. ) In Kenya, you’re probably either one of the best runners in the world, or you don’t run…) But sometimes I partly got company of children on the way to school, and one day I got company of a little small barefoot boy, running the whole morning tour with me (Also chasing away some stray dogs). He had no problem keeping up with me on the running :-)

Another morning, it suddenly came a short and heavy rain when I was running. It got very slippery, almost like soap or ice, and very muddy. Although I also fell once, I felt cleaner than in a long time after this morning run…. I was used to wash myself with wet napkins. Occasinally I had some rain water available. I am in general not very “fastidious”, but after 2 weeks in Ngumbulu I was really longing for a shower…

Life in general changes here when it rains. First, they all start to collect water in all buckets etc that they have. Then you use the opportunity for washing, clothes and house. This is no more important than going to work (Anyway, you wait going away, for work, until the heavy rain has stopped (wouldn’t have worked in Trondheim….) No point hurrying. Also, the rain really destroys the roads.

Weekends was also working, but more calmly, and also church of course. The people here are Christians, and in general “more” than us. I think religion, and the solidarity and unity and hope this represents is more important for people having a more unsecure life… The people in rich and developed countries doesn’t have the same need for it, it seems so at least. So each Sunday, it is church time. (And there are often more ceremonies during the week too) I went too the church too, the African Inland Church, in Nairobi and in Ngumbuulu. An experience, and very different from what I am used too. Much less organized and structured (as the African life in general), sometimes as if it was not planned at all, just impulsive. For instance, in Ngumbulu, the pastor suddenly aska me to present myself, and then he ask if someone has an English version of the bible, I can borrow for the rest of the service. It is a lot “happier” service, it has more rhytm, a lot of music, singing, and dancing. It is very nice I think. And they are re ally good at it! Wow, they have impressing dancing skills, and rhytm. In Ngumbulu, we suddenly had a song that also I knew; Head, shoulder, knees and toes…:-)

The church room

In Ngumubulu, it turned out to be a long day in church, but it wasn’t only the service. But there was an somwhow unnoticeable transition from the serice, to a church meeting/voting, and then to dance practice. So I never found the occasion to go out from the church. But at some point during the practice, I realised it was OK to go out (There were no other left in church, only the people practicing). Outside, I met the pastor, and then he invited me to have lunch with him and some of the other church leaders outside the church.( We had Ugali) Besides, the church is also just one big room, with a roof, and chairs inside, that’s more or less it.

Else, I also had birthday during my time in Ngumbulu. I didn’t have any celebration (Don’t think grown up people have that here. I mean not everyone know they birthday from the older people so…) But the two other women in the office celebrated me a little bit the traditionally way, and that is washing the person having birthday. Washing means throwing a bucket of water over you, while singing the birthday song, a quite unique birthday celebration for me! :-)

After two weeks, my time in the nice and pretty quit village Ngumbulu was over. I was getting used to the life here, to the funny, slowly way to walk, to the people and the culture, but at the same time longing a little bit for some more “action”… At the end of the week we went back to Nairobi (Ready for Safari), coming straight into the big traffic jam there…. Wow, cars everywhere, no one following the rules, all cars having bulks, and a lot of queue. So glad I don’t have to deal with that daily…. Life in Ngumbulu is a lot easier, nicer, more pleasant and less hectic...

That was life in Ngumbulu. A good village, and a lot of nice and friendly people. I will come back. Who will join me next time?

And the travels report from Africa are to be continued, next chapter Safari in Kenya, followed by ocean, mountains, surfing, wine, working etc from South Africa….

Super market in Katangi

The toilets

Getting water from the bore hole