Yebo South Africa

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2015-10-04T13:23:00.000+02:00

I think today I really owe you an apology! I promised to write this post more than two months ago…but somehow I just couldn’t make myself write anything because on the one hand there wasn’t a lot to report about and on the other hand it would have been so terminatory for my year in South Africa. But now I am settled in Germany again and ready to tell you everything about it – except that there still isn’t too much to tell you.

Before our group of nine remaining volunteers – some had to leave earlier for internships – left our “home country for a year” we still had an End of Stay Camp at a lodge near the airport of Johannesburg. We all met there for one night and had some group sessions where we talked about leaving South Africa, our personal feelings and plans and the theory of the reverse culture shock. The sessions were quite short, so there was a lot of time to compare notes with the others and to enjoy some last beams of the generous South African sun!

On the first of August we all left for the airport. Most of us were quite happy and excited to see the family and friends so soon, some had to fight back the tears and were quite sad to leave the new country and friends and some already made plans to come back for university. We all definitely had very mixed feelings, but for me actually the positive feelings prevailed. I had a great year in South Africa, but there also were so many things that I was looking forward to in Germany, beginning with being able to walk outside on my own and even in the dark without having to be overcautious, riding a bike again, drinking sparkling water, jogging outside in the forest and many other little things.

After enjoying a last beautiful African sunset above the skyline of Joburg through the big glass windows of our terminal we could finally enter the big plain and only then we really realized that we were about to leave for good.

The flight itself was quite nice. We were flying overnight so that I could sleep a bit and for the rest of the time I explored the movie selection. After disembarking in Frankfurt the four of us that went on to Hamburg almost missed our connecting flight, but luckily we made it in the last seconds before the gate was closed. When we finally arrived in Hamburg at 8am our families were all waiting, we quickly said goodbye and then set out for our homes.

Since the very first second that I set foot on German ground for me it seemed like I had never been away, but in a positive way. I still have all those great memories but now it seems a little bit like a dream. Only when I meet the other volunteers this dream becomes true again and then it’s definitely a great dream! At home and everything with my family and friends is exactly like it was before and I didn’t have any trouble to settle at all. In the beginning I always had to remind myself that I don’t have to check the streets for possible dangers when walking outside anymore, but even these habits I gave up very quickly.

Two weeks ago we had our first of two post processing seminars together with the volunteers from Ghana, that we already knew from the preparing seminars, and some others from different countries. It was really cool to see the others again and to exchange everything that had happened and I think we all had a really good weekend. Of course we also had some group sessions where we reflected on our experiences – it was also nice to compare experiences with those from other countries such as Columbia, Mexico or Australia – talked about possibilities to stay involved here in Germany and also had the chance to share our criticism and suggestions for AFS’s future.

I definitely plan to stay involved with AFS, by joining the local AFS committee and by becoming instructor for seminars. For our second post processing seminar we have the choice between seminars treating various parts of development politics or a seminar that’s the first part of our training to become instructor. I chose the second option and so I am going to have my next seminar in three weeks in Rottweil. Then I will write another short report on the seminar for you and this time I will really keep my promise!!

In the meantime I just moved to Heidelberg for studying medicine from tomorrow. So now I am quite excited what is expecting me in the next few days and weeks, but nevertheless already looking forward to the next seminar!

My last holidays - East Coast and Kruger

2015-07-26T18:24:00.001+02:00

For the moment time seems to pass so very quickly! I just came back from my last holidays and now I’ve less than a week’s time left here in South Africa. Next Friday my End of Stay Camp starts where all of us volunteers will pass one last night at a lodge with our AFS coordinators and probably talk about our experiences.

For the moment I can’t really believe that I am going to be back in Germany in only one week. There seems to be so much left to do – so many things I still wanted to do, so many people to say goodbye to and of course packing my bags.

That’s why I don’t have time to give you a very detailed report of my holidays but anyway I think that pictures are going to give you a much better impression than any description could! To give you a very quick overview: my uncle from Germany came to visit and we travelled along South Africa’s East coast, starting with the Wild Coast and going all the way up via Durban until St Lucia where we left the coast and made our way to Kruger National Park. I really enjoyed these last holidays and especially Kruger was amazing! But see yourself...

I promise that you will hear from me soon – at the latest after arriving in Germany!

Lesson no 4

2015-07-18T12:28:00.000+02:00

South African English

Before I came to South Africa I sometimes wondered if it wouldn’t be boring just to improve my language skills, as my English already was not too bad, instead of learning a whole new language. But when I came here I quickly realized that the South African English has quite some peculiarities that I still had to learn. It starts with all the different accents that developed as English isn’t the home language of most South Africans. So it doesn’t astonish that you can hear the weirdest and most diverse pronunciations of some words. I often actually feel like every single person here has his very own accent not comparable to anyone else and influenced by the very own history. In the beginning all these different accents made it harder for me to understand some people than I had expected. But by now I think I got used to it quite well and don’t need to smile approvingly anymore hoping that it fits the situation after not having understood what someone wants to tell me even after asking several times. And I also learned lots of new South African idioms, most of them originating from one of the other 10 official languages. At this point I just want to share some with you:

Sharp – was probably the first and maybe most important new word that I learned here and can mean almost everything. Most of the time you use it to show agreement or thank someone and it’s often doubled up to sharp-sharp and combined with a thumb up.

Robot – In South Africa robots aren’t strange figures from science fiction movies but the normal term for traffic light.

Bakkie – many people, including me, are driving them: pick-up trucks

Braai – the South African barbecue.

Howzit (How is it?) – A popular alternative to “how are you?” that you are normally asking everyone you meet during the day.

Askies – the Afrikaans word for “sorry” and both words are probably those that you hear the most throughout your day as South Africans like to say sorry for literally everything no matter if something is their fault or not!

Lekker – another Afrikaans word that does not only mean delicious, as Germans might think. It can be used to describe all sort of things, including food, as “nice”, “good” or “great”. In the beginning it always sounded strange to me when people said things like: “That was a lekker weekend.”

Shame – is also a very important word in my South African English repertoire. Shame can be used in almost every sentence and means everything and nothing. You can use it to express pity or just say “shame” because you saw a cute baby. It works for any kind of sympathetic feelings.

Now, just now, now now – South Africans seem to have a very special relationship to time. That’s why they need many different expressions to describe when they are going to do something. I’m still not sure which of the three expressions is the worst, but I think it is just now what could mean every time in the next several days. Now is maybe comparable to later and now now is what comes closest to now. But there is one thing you can always be sure about: Even though it sounds so none of them actually means now!

Eish – A cry often used to express surprise or frustration or just to fill the silence.

I make a plan – A phrase that South Africans love to use!

Auntie – is coming from aunt and that’s how women older than oneself often are called. Also at work the children use to call me auntie, mam or teacher.

Is it? – also a frequently used expression to show your interest or again just to fill the silence.

Klap – “I klap you!” is often used instead of “I smack you!”

Volunteer at Camp Footprints

2015-07-11T16:10:00.000+02:00

Today it’s time for a topic that I already wanted to treat some time ago but somehow totally forgot to report about it: my stay at Camp Footprints some weeks ago. Camp Footprints is a project that organises camps for children with special needs. Lindy, the founder of the organisation that also worked for Cotlands in the past, invited me to come and work at one of the camps as a volunteer and so I spent a long weekend working at Camp Footprints. The camp took place at Phiri Camp in Dinokeng Game Reserve which is about 90 minutes’ drive from Joburg. The campsite was very nice, as there was a lot of space, a huge fireplace and nice bungalows for the night. Even though the children didn’t sleep in tents – it would have been quite cold anyway – sleeping bags provided the real camping atmosphere!

The whole program was set up and realised by Lindy, our group of 12 volunteers and the camp staff. Some of us, including me, already arrived Thursday afternoon, when we already set up some things and made a detailed time schedule for the program. Then on Friday morning the children arrived. They were a group of about 50 children from The Gateway School – a school for learners with special educational needs - at the age of 15 to 17. The needs of the children were very diverse. There were many children with ADHD, some autistic kids or with Down’s syndrome, some were physically disabled and lots of other disabilities but I also didn’t really get to know details about all of the children. Anyway I really liked the work with the children even though it was quite a challenge as I didn’t really have any experiences.

During the three days of camp we did lots of different activities with the children. Most of the time we divided them into groups and worked with several stations of activities from sack racing, egg and spoon race and other sporting activities to little dance sessions or soccer exercises. On the first evening we also had a big Potjiekos competition. A Potjiekos is a traditional South African stew that’s slowly cooked in a round iron pot over the fire. Four groups had to cook their own Potjiekos, set up a small restaurant and serve their dish to a jury that would rate the food, the atmosphere and the group’s teamwork. I was in the lucky situation to be a member of the jury so that I could try all the four stews and most of them tasted quite nice!

The rest of the evening was spent around the big fireplace with some singing and hot chocolate.

The next morning all the children had the chance to go on a game drive which was the first time for many of them. They were all really excited when we finally spotted elephants, giraffes and a lot of smaller game and tried to imitate the animals for the rest of the day.

In the evening everyone had to help planning and practising for our concert for the evening. With the help of us volunteers in three groups the children practised for a dancing, a singing and a drum part. After a lot of excitement the show was a big success: everyone had fun and all the children were quite proud of their performance. And to our luck after that they all wearily fell into their beds!

On Sunday morning the camp slowly came to an end. After breakfast, a lastquick game and packing up everyone proudly received a certificate and a group picture. Then it really was time to say goodbye what took quite some time because everyone wanted to hug everyone else. After that procedure the whole group got on their buses and left us behind, that we still had to pack up all the stuff.

Even though we only spent three days with the kids we all came quite close to them and it was fascinating what kind of secrets they committed to us after such a short period of time. They all were really amiable and it was a very nice experience to work with them!

Lesson no 3

2015-06-28T14:55:00.000+02:00

Load shedding

Load shedding is one of many words that I had never heard before I came to South Africa. But after living here for almost ten months now I had more than enough chances to experience it myself!

As electricity in South Africa is always scarce, from time to time it may happen that it doesn’t suffice to meet the country’s demand. In these cases the electricity supply in certain changing areas is interrupted to avoid a national black-out that would have much worse consequences. And that’s called load shedding. Unfortunately load shedding often occurs in the evening hours when it’s not only dark and cold, but also when people want to cook. But as South Africans are very creative there are already lots of load shedding recipes available on the internet!

There also is scheduled load shedding that’s announced in advance. In summer people said there would be a lot of load shedding now to save electricity for the winter, but actually I feel like the load shedding got more and more since I came here and gets even worse now that it is winter. For me that’s not even such a big problem, because as I live at work and I’ve got the big luxury that we have an emergency generator. But normal households don’t and even many facilities where you would expect it don’t. So it regularly happens to me that I arrive at the gym motivated to hit the treadmill and suddenly it just stops moving under my feet. But that’s a comparably small problem. I have much more pity with all those people that are sitting in their cold and dark houses without any electricity and even the batteries of cell phones and laptops are slowly dying – and that sometimes several days a week!

Baking cupcakes at St Mary's

2015-06-16T17:38:00.000+02:00

This Monday was a school holiday and I could finally fulfil the promise that I made to the St Mary's children to come and bake with them. During the normal school weeks it is always difficult because there wouldn't be enough time between coming from school, eating and doing homework. So when I arrived on Monday morning everybody was happy about the extra program because normally the children are often bored and don't know what to do on free days. They were even happier when I showed them what I had brought for decorating our cupcakes and I think that actually was the part that they enjoyed most of our baking session. In the end our results looked quite good even though I had to stop my assistants from burrying the cupcakes under a thick layer of colourful decor.

I also had my personal photographers that captured every step in pictures - sometimes maybe a bit blurred, but it's the memory that counts!

Lesson no 2

2015-06-08T20:59:00.000+02:00

Weather

South Africa is situated in the southern subtropical zone, but due to varying elevation and the influence of the Indian and Atlantic Ocean it has a wide variety of climates. The Eastern coast for example is especially in winter the warmest part of the country thanks to the warm Agulhas Current. The climate at the western coast and also many parts of the country’s interior is much colder. Johannesburg on the other hand is situated at an altitude of more than 1700 metres above sea level. I need to drive only an hour to Pretoria which is less elevated and where the temperatures can be about 5 or 6 degrees Celsius warmer.

So far here in Joburg the temperatures were quite enjoyable – even in summer. Most of the time they were between 25 and 30 degrees, on some rare days also up to 35 degrees. But because of the high elevation it’s very easy to get sunburned – especially for me with my rather sensitive skin – so that I sometimes only had to stay in the sun for 15 minutes until I started to turn red…In late spring and summer it was also raining almost every day. But not that long lasting gentle drizzling rain that I was used to from Germany. Instead it normally only rained in the evenings and most of the time only for less than an hour but so heavy that the streets seemed to turn into dirty rivers. Now that it is winter we haven’t had any rain for at least two months. That’s why it is very dry and bushfires are developing everywhere. Besides the winter temperatures for the moment are very cold! With up to 20 degrees during the day of course it is still quite warm compared to German winter, but at night the temperatures are almost dropping to freezing point. As our building is very badly isolated, my windows don’t shut completely and I only have a tiny little heater in my room I feel like living very close to the South Pole!

But what I really love about the South African weather is that no matter what season it is the sun is actually always shining. So even if it is cold for the moment you just need to go out into the sun to heat up - so it’s not comparable to the dark and uncomfortable German winter days.

Lesson no 1

2015-06-02T11:34:00.000+02:00

As I promised today I am starting with my "South African lessons" beginning with quite a serious topic.

Xenophobia

In the last months South Africa was making lots of headlines in the international press because of the increasing xenophobic violence against foreign nationals which already caused deaths and many more injured since the beginning of this year. Also in the previous years there have been xenophobic riots again and again that seem not to fit the picture of the united South African “rainbow nation”.

This year it all started in Soweto, Johannesburg’s most popular township very close to my place, when a Somali shop owner shot a 14-year-old boy trying to rob his shop. This incident caused a series of attacks and looting of Somali, Pakistani, Ethiopian and Bangladeshi owned shops all over Soweto. It was even reported that the police played an active role in the attacks and helped the attackers raiding the shops.

In March the violence spread to Limpopo, a province in the north of Johannesburg, where many more shops were looted and their owners violently pushed out of their villages. When on the 21^st of March Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini publicly said that foreigner should go back to their home countries instead of enjoying the wealth that should have been for local people many foreign nationals became scared because of his big influence under the Zulus.

In April the attacks also spread to KwaZulu-Natal, the easternmost province, and caused the first couple of deaths when people were trapped in their burning shops. In the following days clashes between looters, foreigners and the police erupted, mostly around Durban. Some country’s authorities already started repatriating their nationals and four refugee camps have been set up but luckily it looks like the situation calmed down a little bit in the last few weeks.

Even though I was not far away from the riots in Soweto I luckily didn’t see anything myself. But many friends told me that they saw people chasing foreigners or people looting shops. Furthermore the consequences can’t be overlooked as many shops only consist of burned ruins and other owners don’t dare to open their shops anymore. Also when I came back from my last holidays in April I was first a little bit chocked. We hadn’t heard about any news during our trip and then on our last evening before returning to Johannesburg we got a warning message from our AFS coordinator saying that a train full with Zulus was on their way from Durban to Johannesburg to chase foreigners. Without knowing what had been going on in the last weeks we were quite concerned because we didn’t know if we as foreigners could also be concerned – especially because our coordinator was talking about possible evacuation plans if the situation should become too bad. But back in Joburg we didn’t get into any trouble because the violence never was against white foreigners.

Last week I also met a woman that was in a shop during a looting and her face was completely disfigured by burn injuries. She will be marked by that event for the rest of her life and I think that there is no chance for her to be ever again able to walk around without everyone looking at her severe burns. Now I just hope that the riots finally came to an end, that there will be no more innocent people that will have to suffer like that and all the shop owners won’t have to live in anxiety anymore!

World Play Day

2015-05-28T22:46:00.000+02:00

Today is World Play Day and at Cotlands that meant a whole day full of many playing children. Additionally to our own Early Learning Group children this morning about 60 more children, lots of other visitors and the press arrived at Cotlands and the whole building was turned into a big play house. In different rooms and at our two playgrounds there were many different playing stations set up for the children: inside they could do puzzles, play with blocks or Lego, dress up in our Fantasy Room and paint pictures with many different materials. Outside they could let off some steam at the playgrounds, jump on the trampoline, do rope skipping, sack races or egg-and-spoon races, play Twister or climb the jungle gym. Then when everyone was exhausted and hungry all the children got a goodbye lunch. All in all it was like a big birthday party and the children really had lots of fun, but see yourself!

Finally a sign of life from me again!

2015-05-22T15:20:00.000+02:00

I’m very very sorry for writing so irregularly in the last weeks! I always have the best intentions to finally write a new post but then I just don’t find the time to actually do it … but I promise to be on the mend! That’s why I decided to write one “South African lesson” per week from now on. There are so many things here that already became completely normal for me so that I don’t even think about mentioning them in my posts. But I’m sure that for you many of these things wouldn’t be se self-evident and so they’re maybe worth their own posts.

To bring you up-to-date concerning my work at the moment I can tell you that quite some things changed for me. My project partner Stella, from who I wasn’t separated for more than one day in the last eight months, is already back in Germany since one week now. For me that means that I am living and working on my own now as the only international volunteer at Cotlands. After having done everything together for such a long time it is quite strange to be on my own now and of course it was much more fun together especially for enduring exhausting or also boring working days. But I will just see it as a challenge to do all this on my own now!

In my last posts I already complained a little bit about not having too much work to do at Cotlands for the moment but that also got better now as I am doing the same work on my own now so that I am quite busy now. I still do a lot of office work, in the last weeks I also had to help a lot with sorting store rooms and in the afternoons I still do the homework supervision at St Mary’s children’s home. Here I am now especially trying to help a 12-year-old boy that can’t read or write which was only recognized some weeks ago. Even the pronunciation of the single letters is still quite a challenge for him – and for me teaching him is actually quite a challenge too! For the moment I am making an own letter memory with him to introduce him to the alphabet and first words in a playful way.

Furthermore the children now plan to start a children’s home soccer team and want to play against other homes. So we are sometimes practising with everyone and playing some matches which is also for me a lot of fun because some of the children are quite good!

This week I also represented Cotlands at the “Citizen’s Golf Day”. Right next to hole 4 Louisa and me, luckily I was allowed to bring some help because otherwise I would have had to sit there on my own all day long, had our little Cotlands stand with a big box for donations and some prizes for our raffle. Everyone that wanted to play the hole had to – more or less voluntarily - listen to our Cotlands promotion and in the end we were quite satisfied with the collected donations and happy about our first caddy tour!

For now I think that’s all, but as I promised: You will hear from me soon!

Next stop Namibia

2015-04-29T09:24:00.000+02:00

The second part of our holidays led us to beautiful Namibia with its deserts, mountains and small German influenced cities. Arriving in the capital Windhoek we could directly see and hear many of these influences: Not only the city’s architecture reminded me of German towns but also many signs were written both in German and English. Also when we went into shops it often happened that people would start to talk German with us as soon as they recognized our accent.

In Windhoek we also had the chance to try a selection of local game meet. In a “typically German” arranged restaurant we all had to test the Bushmen’s Sosatie, a kebab with meat of springbok, kudu, zebra, crocodile and oryx, and they all tasted very good especially the kudu.

After Windhoek we went on to the Spitzkoppe, a strikingly shaped group of granite peaks standing out from the flat surrounding plains. Here we spent the night at the campsite that’s directly at the foot of the Spitzkoppe and for me it was the best camping location of the entire holidays. We were almost the only people camping there and as the campsites were quite spread we were completely undisturbed and could enjoy a beautiful sunset and sunrise behind the mountains. Furthermore as we were far away from any city and there were no clouds the starry sky was more beautiful than I’ve ever seen before. We could easily see the Milky Way and after the sunset we just lay around outside and watched the stars.

Then our way led us to the coast, to Swakopmund. On our way the landscape slowly but surely turned into dry desert until we reached Swakopmund where the desert’s sand dunes meet the Atlantic Ocean. In the city we could also recognize a lot of German influence and if we ignored the desert visible behind the last houses it almost looked like a small coastal town at the North Sea.

The day after we did a little detour to the north to explore the Skeleton Coast, an extremely dry section of the Namibian coast, which is known for its dense ocean fogs and its extremely inhospitable climate. The coast is characterised by lots of wrecks that stranded due to the feared Benguela current and many animal skeletons, especially those of whales. We also stopped at Cape Cross with its gigantic seal colony.

After that it was finally time to drive deep into the Namib! We pitched our tent close to the popular Sossusvlei, meaning as much as dead-end-marsh and being a combination of the Nama word Sossus (dead end) and the Afrikaans word Vlei (marsh), which is a salt and clay pan surrounded by some of the highest dunes in the world. Then of course it was time for our first desert hike. We had already climbed some smaller dunes in the days before, but for this day we had big plans: Dune 45 for sunrise, then Big Daddy and finally Elim Dune for sunset. Dune 45 was still comparably easy to climb and we reached the top perfectly on time for sunrise that bathed the red dunes into warm light. Then we went on to Big Daddy that is one of the world’s highest dunes with its 380 metres. Standing at the foot of the dune we couldn’t even believe that it should actually be 380 metres high but arriving at the top it felt like at least 1000 metres! Even though it was before eight o’clock when we started climbing Big Daddy it soon became unbearably hot (about 40°C), the top didn’t want to come closer and unfortunately we had left our water behind because we thought that it wouldn’t take too long. Foolishly we had also decided to go without shoes and the sand became hotter and hotter under our feet. But arriving at the top - even though we felt like just having run a marathon because climbing in the sand is a lot more exhausting than you can imagine - it was worth all the effort and we enjoyed a beautiful view over never-ending red dunes.

When we had made our way down - definitely the best part because running down the steep dunes feels almost like running in absence of gravity - with a little detour through the Deadvlei with its dead camel thorn trees we went back to our camp and allowed ourselves to rest a little bit at the pool because it was much too hot to move in any way. Then it was already time to climb the next and luckily last dune for sunset. To our great relief Elim Dune was not too high and after Big Daddy it seemed to be just a small sandy hill.

Then we went on southward, making a little stop in the Kokerboom forest near Keetmanshoop, which is a forest consisting of the quite rare quiver trees. After a short walk in the forest we continued to our last stop the Fish River Canyon. The canyon is the second largest in the world after the Grand Canyon and the viewpoint offered us a great view over the cragged canyon landscape.

The Fish River Canyon was already in the very south of Namibia what we unfortunately got to feel at night. Even the nights before it had often been quite cold compared to the high temperatures during the day, but this night I almost froze to death even though I had put on all of my warmest clothes since my sleeping bag was very thin and especially the ground was very cold - regrettably we didn’t have camping mats.

After a hot shower the next morning we made our long way back home to Johannesburg. And what we had already feared after the cold night at the canyon proved to be true: winter has come to Joburg! As long as the sun is shining the weather is still nice, but in the evenings it’s quickly getting cold now.

Even though we were all a little bit sad, that our holidays were over so quickly we all were relieved not to have to put up a tent before sleeping and to have real beds after sleeping on the plain floor for so long what our backs weren't really grateful for. It was also quite nice to have closed and illuminated rooms again because before we couldn’t do too much after the sunset as we often only had our little torches. But all in all I really enjoyed being almost isolated from everything without Wi-Fi and any luxury, especially in the Okavango Delta where we felt like on a survival camp. Also the very diverse nature that we saw was stunning and I can only recommend Botswana and Namibia as holiday destinations for everyone that likes the nature!

» part 1 of my holiday report - Being in Botswana

Being in Botswana

2015-04-23T13:13:00.001+02:00

After four weeks of silence during my traveling I finally report back from South Africa. As I rarely had any internet access on my holidays I wasn’t yet able to give you a short update but therefore you will get an even more detailed report now with lots of pictures. Today I’m going to start with the first part of our trip: our stay in Botswana and our short side trip to Zimbabwe.

The first stop in Botswana for Stella, Louisa, Magnus and me was Elephant Sands, a lodge about 1000 kilometres north of Johannesburg in an area with many national parks. Even on our way we already got fascinated by Botswana’s many animals that were so close to the streets – sometimes also blocking them – that we always had some elephants, giraffes or ostriches to watch during the long way. Surprisingly there were also hundreds of donkeys running around everywhere. Arriving at elephant sands it even got better because the lodge fully does justice to the nobility of its name. An artificial waterhole right in the middle of the lodge makes sure that lots of elephants are coming to the place at any time of the day as it is their only source of water in the surroundings. No matter if we were swimming in the pool, standing under the open air shower or lying in our tent we could be sure that the next elephant was not far away which could also be a little bit scaring for the night in our small tent. Also when we were walking around on the premises we had to be careful not to accidently come too close to the giants so that they might feel offended. I’ve never seen so many elephants at one place and so close to me before and we might have spent hours just sitting there watching them.

The next day we went further to the north all the way up to Kasane which is close to the border square of Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia. From here we already left Botswana again – but only for one day to go to the famous Victoria Falls at the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The waterfall on the Zambesi river belongs to the world’s three biggest falls alongside the Niagara Falls and the Iguazu Falls and is one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

Arriving at the falls we unfortunately had bad luck with the weather. Besides the fact that the spray and mist of the water made us wet anyway, it also started raining so that we quickly were dripping wet and also the view wasn’t as clear as we knew it from pictures. But still the falls and the surrounding jungle were amazing!

Back in Botswana our next planned stop were the Makgadikgadi Pans, the biggest salt pans in the world. But here our plans unfortunately didn’t work out as the rainy season had just ended and the pans were still very difficult to drive on and the chances to get stuck very high. So we had to skip that plan and went on right to the Okavango Delta - a very fertile and beautiful inland delta and home to many different animals.

Here we did a guided three day mokoro trip far away from any civilization. A mokoro is a type of canoe which is pushed through the shallow water by standing in the stern and using a long pole. It's the best way to get around in the delta and also used as a means of transport especially for the many fishers in the area.

Our trip was accompanied by two guides that would show the four of us around. We started early in the morning of the first day and with the mokoros our guides drove us deep into the delta where we pitched our tents. After a break during the midday heat and arranging our campsite – a toilet hole had to be digged and the fire lighted – we started our first game walk of about an hour until the sunset. Walking around the grassland near our campsite we could soon see lots of zebras and gnus. Our guide taught us a lot about the animals and how to read their traces. When we came back to our campsite we cooked over the fire and then it was already time to sleep as we would start our next game walk before sunrise. In the night we could also hear many animals pass by our campsite like gnus and even hippos. On the next day we did a long walk of about five hours and this time we also saw elephants, giraffes, warthogs, hippos, vultures and the cadaver of a buffalo. In the afternoon we had some time to try to drive the mokoros ourselves. At first it was a lot more difficult than it looked like but after some practising it worked quite well and was a lot of fun. After a short sunset cruise and another short game walk in the next morning it was already the end of our mokoro tour and even though the experience was great we were all really looking forward to a shower!

And then after ten animal-rich days it was already time to move on to Namibia, but about that I will write in my next post…

If you already want to see some more pictures you can find them all in my gallery!

» part 2 of my holiday report - Next stop Namibia

Promotion to official party planner

2015-03-28T00:43:00.000+02:00

Even though I still can’t really believe it, it’s almost Easter time, the weather is slowly changing to autumn and school holidays are beginning. For Stella, Louisa, Magnus and me that means that it’s time to travel again. Tomorrow we are starting to escape the momentarily rainy Joburg weather making our way to the north – but first some words to my work of the last days.

In the mornings Stella and me are still doing our normal work for Cotlands which means for the moment a lot of office work: no matter if it’s data capturing for incoming donations or sorting files we are slowly but surely becoming experts! But this week we also had some more interesting work to do. Cotlands is just launching a new “donate your birthday” campaign and we could help to set up a small advertising event. The campaign allows people in an easy online way on the Cotlands homepage to give their birthday over to the good cause and instead of birthday wishes they ask their friends for a certain donation for Cotlands. That’s why the theme for our advertising event was a children’s birthday party. We could help buying all the decoration, decorate the room with all the Cotlands-orange stuff and in the end we could take place in the “children’s party”. Invited were some press people, South African celebrities that are supporting Cotlands, some donors and staff members of course. “Donate your birthday” is going online on first of April, so hopefully it’s going to be a success!

But now to our travel plans… After already having seen many nice places in South Africa we are going to leave the country for the first time of our stay and go a little bit farer to the north to Botswana and Namibia. There are many stops on our schedule like the Okavango Delta, the Makgadikgadi Pans, the Namib Desert, the Skeleton Coast and maybe one of the highlights: A short trip to the Victoria Falls at the boarders of Zimbabwe and Zambia. We are leaving tomorrow morning at six in the morning and come back in three weeks’ time. I hope that I will be able to upload some pictures in the meantime otherwise I will report back with a detailed travel review at the end of April!

Finally new work!

2015-03-17T12:01:00.000+02:00

After many worries about our work we finally found something to do! In the mornings we still go on working at Cotlands and the amount of work is still changeful but in the afternoons we are working for St Mary’s now. St Mary’s is a children’s home near Cotlands that gives home to 60 children aged between seven and 21. Some of them are orphans, some were abused or neglected and some have been infected or affected by HIV. They live in six different cottages together with a house mother. In their cottages they have their bedrooms - single rooms for the oldest kids and 2-, 3- and 4-bed rooms for the others - a cosy living area, a dining area and a kitchen. The hole premises is quite big and they also have a lot of space to play outside.

Since last week we are going to St Mary’s every day at two o’clock. The children are going to many different schools so their homecoming times are also differing. When we’re arriving only some children are already back home. We look after them while they are eating their lunch and wait until the others gradually arrive. When everyone finished eating it’s time for homework at half past three. Stella and me both have our own cottage where we always help with the homework. In my cottage the children are aged between seven and sixteen and they are all very cute and nice. Somewhere between half past four and five when everyone finished the homework it’s time to go home for us. When there is some spare time in between lunch and homework there are many things to do with the children as St Mary’s has a very nice premises with a small soccer field, a basketball area and a little pool.

So far we really enjoyed our work in the children’s home because the children as well as all of the housemothers were very nice and welcoming. Furthermore after working with babies for half a year it is also very nice to work with some older children again because there is so much more that you can do with them. So far they were especially interested in German music so that we always had to bring our cell phones for playing Cro or Helene Fischer for them – only the best of course! They also tried to learn some German so that they are now always seeing us off with a cheerful “Tschüs”.

I’m really happy to finally have some satisfying work again and I already fond of all of the children!

Already halftime: AFS Midstay Camp

2015-03-08T22:54:00.000+02:00

After more than five months here in South Africa it’s already halftime of my stay, so last week it was time for our Midstay Camp which is one of our seven preparing and postprocessing camps. Before we have already had two preparing camps of five days in Germany and our two-day On-arrival Camp here in Johannesburg and we are still going to have an End-of-stay Camp and two postprocessing camps back in Germany.

Our Midstay Camp was basically about sharing our previous experiences, thoughts and feelings with the other German volunteers of our group and trying to find solutions for possible problems. At first we all had to present our projects to the others which was very interesting because even though we approximately knew what everyone else is doing it was quite nice to get some more details and personal opinions about the work. After that we talked a lot about our expectations that we had in the beginning - if they were met or if there are new expectations for the rest of the stay – about changes that we underwent, problems and challenges that we were confronted with and everything else that was on our minds. Even though some discussions could get a little bit exhausting all in all our camp was quite relaxed especially because of the nice location. The 15 volunteers of us, two AFS South Africa volunteers and one employee all met at a backpacker in the Drakensberg Mountains in KwaZulu-Natal, an eastern province of South Africa. The backpacker was very nice and big with a pool, Jacuzzi, sauna and good food and above all beautifully situated in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the mountains which was a nice relief to the hectic and noisy life in Johannesburg. On one of our five days we also had the chance to take place in a tour. Some of us went to Lesotho, which was only an hours drive away and some went hiking in the mountains – I chose the hiking tour and it was really great.

All in all it was a very nice week. I enjoyed to see everyone again after almost half a year and to compare all of our very different experiences. Unfortunately my project problem still isn’t solved and it looks like I can’t do anything else than to wait and see. Our babies are all gone by now so we are desperately looking for work most of the time. So far we found something to do for most of our working time – even though it sometimes was tidying up the cupboards of our co-workers which is not the most interesting or challenging job – and hope that there will be more for the next weeks.

Some bad news

2015-02-15T12:24:00.000+02:00

Today I unfortunately have some very sad news for you and especially for us Cotlands volunteers. For different reasons Cotlands had to undertake some changes in their offers and is now closing the Baby Unit. The Baby Unit was the last residential facility at Cotlands Gauteng after the closing of the facilities for older children in the last few years. The sixteen babies that were living here are now trying to be placed with adoptive families as soon as possible. Two of the toddlers already left this week and some more adoptions are arranged. The babies that can’t be placed fast enough will go to other children’s homes. Originally it was planned to close the Baby Unit by end of April but for the moment I think it even looks like everything would go quicker. For us that means that many changes are going to come. Since New Year we were working in the Baby Unit most of the days. Now that many babies are leaving there is increasingly less to do for us and by the time that it is actually closing we don’t know what tasks will be left for us. Our organisation will still go on concentrating on their early learning facilities but that’s nothing where we are usually helping or where we can even help a lot.

Cotlands will also be moving to another building because the current one will be way too big without the residential facilities. As far as I know a new building is not found yet but there will surely be no place for us volunteers to live. For the moment we are living in the Cotlands building so we also don’t know what will happen to our living space. So in the next weeks we will have to face many uncertainties – if we are unlucky we could even have to leave South Africa earlier.

Luckily we are having our AFS midstay camp next week. We are spending five days in the Drakensberg mountains with all of the other German volunteers and some AFS staff members. Besides the fact that we are already looking forward to see anyone again we will have a lot of time to discuss the arisen problems of everyone and hope to find a solution for our situation with the help of AFS. Until then we try to make the best out of it even though it is very annoying not to know what will be happening here in the next weeks and months.

Back to work

2015-01-28T21:13:00.000+02:00

Now it’s already three weeks that I am working again after our Christmas holidays - so certainly high time to tell you about what was going on here since we’re back.

When we had left Cotlands in December everyone was pretty much in pre-Christmas stress - many toys had to be prepared, lots of donations came in, Christmas presents had to be brought to community project children and some new babies found a new home in our Child Care Unit. So we wondered if calm would have returned in New Year and we were very excited if the babies would have changed a lot in these three weeks.

The first thing that we realized when we went to work on Monday morning was that calm indeed had returned – and it was even a lot calmer than expected because almost everyone was still on holiday. For us that meant that there wasn’t really any work to do except working in the Child Care Unit so we directly made our way to the babies. We had been a little bit scared that they might have forgotten us over Christmas but when we opened the door some excited toddlers already came running towards us hugging our legs. And like we had already feared they really had grown a lot. Two of them had learned to walk – we were a little bit sad that we had missed that – so now we have four children that are walking and running around always keeping us busy. Our oldest two-year-old child is even learning to go to the potty now – what can be quite exhausting because it doesn’t really always work yet – and they are all starting to babble away more and more. Two of the rather younger ones also learned to sit and the very small ones grew even though they are still tiny. Two babies had left Cotlands during our holidays and are now living in South African families, but in exchange we got four new babies, so that here are living eight babies that are younger than two months for the moment. As they are all still crying a lot we often feel like not having enough hands to care for all of them and it can be so exhausting because you can always be sure that as soon as you steadied one of them the next will begin to cry. One of them is even a preemie. She was born after seven months and even though she is six weeks old now she is much too tiny and I am always scared to break all of her bones when I am dressing her with the smallest baby clothes we have which are still way too small for her.

My favorite job in the CCU for the moment is playing with the toddlers. Especially those who already walk are getting more curious with every day so that we try to take them out for a walk or for playing at our playgrounds as often as possible.

Since New Year we also had to bring the babies to the hospital several times. They are all regularly going to their routine checkups, to assessments and depending on their needs also to occupational or physical therapy. All these things take place in different hospitals, so that we could already make very different experiences with South African hospitals. One of them that specialises on children living in children’s homes was very nice – we never had to wait too long, the waiting room was quite comfortable and we even got tea and coffee. The others unfortunately weren’t that nice. They were very crowded and we had to wait at uncomfortable wooden benches or sometimes even without any possibility to sit (and that’s a little bit exhausting if you are carrying a baby on your arms) for several hours. One time we even had to leave after eight hours of waiting without even being treated because they were closing and the baby only had an eye infection. After these first experiences with public hospitals in South Africa I definitely hope that I won’t get injured here in any way!

Some days we also had little baby emergencies. Luckily it never was anything really bad, but if the babies have temperature they are directly brought to hospital to be sure that it’s nothing serious. So it happened that we were called to the Child Care Unit some time in the evening and spontaneously had to work night shift until early in the morning like 4am so that the CCU would not be short-staffed during the absence of the social worker and the sick baby. And working night shift is much harder than we expected in the beginning, because you are not allowed to sleep or do anything that distracts you, you can just wait that a baby begins to cry and you can feed it or change a nappy and fight against your eyes trying to shut. When the call that they are ready and we could pick them up from hospital was coming we were always very relieved! On other days we got wake-up calls very early in the morning during the weekend having to drive a child to hospital, so sometimes it could be really exhausting because we didn’t have more than 3 hours of sleep several days in a row.

All in all it was very nice to see the babies again after such long holidays and it’s really sweet to see especially the older ones getting more and more attached to us. And we are also getting used to the work with the babies: By now sometimes we even manage to leave the Baby Unit without being dirty with porridge or pumpkin from head to toe! Also changing nappies or dressing the babies goes a lot faster than in the beginning. Nevertheless in the end of our working day we’re also always a little bit relieved to leave the CCU because being surrounded by crying children and talking nonsense all the day can really make you crazy!

Next week we will probably get our new roster and then we will also have to do some work in the Toy Library and in the office again. For now I’ll have to catch up with some sleep but you’ll surely hear from me soon!

Finally in Cape Town - Holidays Part 2

2015-01-18T20:45:00.000+02:00

After almost two eventful weeks of traveling the Garden Route on the morning of the 24th of December we all were really looking forward to finally arrive in Cape Town. We had already heard so many people enthusing about the "Mother City" that we were very curious to ultimately experience it ourselves. Only Marina already knew Cape Town and even lives there as she is doing her voluntary service in a garden in one of the city's townships. Lea, Louisa, Stella and me, all living in Johannesburg and Pretoria, hadn't been to the city before but with Marina we luckily had our personal city guide with us.

Full of expectations we set out for Cape Town early in the morning following the coastal route to our destination. Even during that drive our expectations weren't dashed because the route was one of the prettiest we had followed so far leading directly along the coast in narrow curves and offering a beautiful view.

Having arrived in Cape Town we were welcomed by many other volunteers from SAGE Net - Marina's sending organisation - with that we wanted to celebrate Christmas. We were all staying into a volunteer apartment and with so many people it was quite packed so that we had to sleep on the floor most of the nights but that wasn't a big problem and it was nice to have so many people around even though that meant that sleeping before 3 or 4 am wasn't really possible. The apartment is situated in Observatory, a slightly alternative student neighbourhood, and from the front door we could even see Table Mountain.

When we had introduced ourselves to all the new people we directly started cooking for our big Christmas dinner! We had planned to cook a lot of food and as we were cooking with many people into a rather small kitchen - additionally we had some problems with the electricity - the results weren't all perfect but all in all it was still a very nice Christmas dinner. Even though it didn't really feel like Christmas - probably because of the warm weather - we had a great Christmas Eve in Cape Town.

In the following days we started exploring Cape Town. To get a nice overview of the city we planned to start with climbing Table Mountain what didn't work out exactly as planned. At first everything was fine, the weather was nice and sunny and we enthusiastically started our way to the top. We didn't even have to climb far to already have a really beautiful view over Cape Town, but when we had finished half of the way up unfortunately a lot of fog came up... We could't see further than some metres anymore, it got really cold and the paths got slippery soon. Hoping that the fog would clear again we continued to the top but that day we dind't have a lot of luck so that we were relieved when we were all safely down again.

The next day our program was a little bit more relaxed: We went to a concert in the Kirstenbosch Gardens, a pretty Botanical Garden right at the foot of Table Mountain.

Another tour led us around the Cape Peninsula. We started driving along nice beaches such as Camps Bay or Hout Bay and then we followed the Chapmans Peak Drive that again led us directly along the coast and offered a beautiful view over the sandy bays surrounded by gentle mountains. Of cause we also couldn't let out to visit the South African Penguins, that are mainly living at the eastern coast of the Cape Peninsula, and to make a stop in Muizenberg, a surfer beach with the popular coloured changing rooms.

Then of course we had to go on exploring Cape Town itself and so we went to town and tried to visit the most important places: Long Street, Castle of Good Hope, the city hall, the Company's Gardens, Bo-Kaap, the University of Cape Town and a lot more.

And then it was already New Year's Eve. With 12 people we decided to celebrate in Langebaan, where the aunt and oncle of another volunteer own a house near the beach. Even though in the beginning we were not completely sure if we wouldn't miss something leaving Cape Town for New Year's Eve we didn't regret our decision for a second! The house was amazing, we had a delicious Braai and even the firework that we could watch from the roof was bigger than expected so that we had a great start into 2015.

Back in Cape Town a visit of a vineyard, for which the Cape region is popular, was part of the plan for our last day in the city. After that we enjoyed our last evening at signal hill watching the sunset above "Mother City".

Then, a lot quicker than we would have liked, it was already time to say goodbye, not only to Cape Town but also to Marina and all the others that had spent the holidays with us. So after 3 great weeks we headed back to Johannesburg with a heavy heart, hoping that it wasn't the last time of being in Cape Town and meeting everyone again.

All in all I had fantastic holidays and all the anticipation was definitely legitimate. For me Cape Town indeed is the most beautiful city I've ever seen. Even though the city itself maybe isn't even that breathtaking it is the combination of the city surrounded by the mountains and the sea that give it its very special charm. Furthermore compared to Johannesburg everything seemed to be so clean, the streets weren't that crowded and generally the cities are entirely different. Therefore in Cape Town the difference between the city and the townships seem to be even bigger than in Joburg. Also along the Garden Route we almost only saw comparably rich and touristic areas and it was striking that we saw a lot more white people than in Joburg. That's why I think that Cape Town and the Garden Route as the top tourist attractions in South Africa can maybe give a wrong impression to tourists and you can't claim to really have seen South Africa if you only traveled that small part of the country. In the meantime it was amazing how diversified especially the Garden Route was. Sometimes we had to drive for only ten kilometres to see the landscape change from flat beaches into gentle highlands and only minuits later we already were surrounded by the semi-desert of the Karoo. I hope to see a lot more of these different sides of South Africa in the next months and I'm already looking forward to my next trips.

But for now it's time to get some work done while a lot of things concerning our work here changed. Anyway that would be too much for now so I will keep you up to date in my next post!

» Also read Holidays part 1

A little travel overview

2015-01-14T22:56:00.000+02:00

As in my last post I bombarded you a little bit with names of cities that you probably never heard about before and even more don't know where they are situated I created a map for you so that you will get a better impression of my travelling route. Just zoom in and click on the marks and you can see the cities' names and pictures.

2000 km of adventures - Holidays Part 1

2015-01-09T20:19:00.000+02:00

After 24 days of Advent Calendar pictures now I will finally tell you everything concerning my holidays. I will try to make it as short as possible - and that won't be easy with about 1000 pictures to choose from - but anyway I will divide my post into a Garden Route and a Cape Town part so that it won't be too much at the same time.

Armed with lots of biltong (typical South African dried slices of meat) and pumpkin rolls Stella, Louisa and me started our big tour on the 11th of December early in the morning as we had 850km to drive ahead of us. Having arrived in our first stop Graaff Reinet we felt like beeing in a completely different country because everything was so different to Johannesburg. Especially the fact that we could walk around on our own in the dark felt really strange but that way we had the chance to directly start exploring the small city, that is one of the oldest in South Africa and popular for its architecture with many Cape Dutch and Victorian buildings.

The next morning we went on to Camdeboo National Park, a park surrounding Graaf Reinet that is known for its impressive canyons especially the Valley of Desolation. But we didn't only admire the landscape we also had the chance to get close to some animals, such as monkeys, zebras, springboks and lot of other boks that we hadn't heard about before.

In the afternoon we went on to the coast to Port Elizabeth, our first Garden Route (region between Port Elizabeth and Mossel Bay) stop where we stayed for two days - and again we felt like entering an entirely different world. In PE we especially enjoyed the beach that was not far from our backpacker and did two day trips - the first to Port Alfred, a small town with another really nice beach, and the second to Addo Elephant National Park, that is home to the Big 7 (elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo, rhino, shark, whale) of which we unfortunately only saw elephants.

On the 14th we went on to Jeffreys Bays where we met Lea and Marina, two other volunteers that wanted to go on with us. Jeffreys Bay is a very famous surfing spot, so of course we couldn't miss the chance to take a surfing lesson which was a lot of fun! The day after we also tried sandboarding which is like snowboarding in the dunes and a very nice compensation in a country that doesn't really get to see any snow.

As a quick stop for our way to Plettenberg Bay the day after we had already planned the next action programme: a stop at Bloukrans Bridge - the world's highest official bungy jump with a height of 216 metres. We had been looking forward to this for days - some more than others - but the real jump was even better than expected. Even though the last moment before jumping was quite scaring the seconds of free fall were incredible!

After so many adventures in our two days in Plettenberg Bay it was time for relaxing at the beach and a hiking tour that wasn't as relaxed as expected. For that tour we went to the Tsitsikamma National Park where we hiked to Suspension Bridge, a big rope bridge that is crossing the mouth of Storms River, and to a very nice waterfall. The hiking trails were very adventurous with a lot of climbing but the beautiful nature along the coast definitively compensated that!

Our next stop was Knysna, a cosy seaport surrounded by a big lagoon and almost unspoiled jungle. To explore the Knysna forest we did a mountainbike tour, again on very adventurous trails, so that we often weren't far from little accidents, but once again it was worth it and it was a lot of fun to ride on those steep, stony and rooty trails.

The day after we went to Wilderness, a very pretty small city with beautiful and almost lonely beaches. On our first day in Wilderness we were doing a short hike on the old railways along the coast that led us to a cave, where a man is living for 8 years now giving a shelter to homeless people. Many people had told us about his cave before but it was still very different to what I had expectes, decorated with lots of shells and furnished with wood and diffrent kinds of donations. Anyway it was very impressing and interesting to hear the caveman's story about God telling him to build up that shelter.

On our second day in Wilderness we did a day trip to Oudtshoorn and the Cango Caves.

Oudtshoorn is the South African centre of ostrich-breeding, so we visited an ostrich farm and also had the chance to do ostrich riding what was more like rodeo than real riding.

The cango caves were also worth seeing especially because we did an adventure tour. Instead of following the normal paths through the cave we explored it walking ducked down or crawling through gaps that sometimes weren't higher than 26 cm.

After those first eleven days we slowly left the official area of the Garden Route and went on along the coast because we had still planned two more stops before reaching Cape Town.

The first one was Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa. Even though the Cape's nature wasn't even more impressing than the nature we had seen in the days before it was very nice as we went there during the sunset and the feeling that the whole of Africa was lying behind us was kind of impressing.

Our last stop before Cape Town was Hermanus where we had hoped to see some whales but unfortunately the whale season was already over and we couldn't see any.

And then, after more than 2000 adventurous kilometres, it was already time to go to Cape Town for Christmas! But about that I will tell you in my next post that hopefully won't be too long in coming ... But in the meantime you can already see some more picture in my gallery.

» Also read Holidays Part 2

Day 24

2015-01-03T21:31:00.000+02:00

Day 23

2015-01-02T01:09:00.000+02:00

Day 22

2015-01-01T01:08:00.000+02:00

Day 21

2014-12-31T01:03:00.000+02:00

Day 20

2014-12-30T12:21:00.000+02:00