Hello! I know I begin each blog pretty much the same, talking about what a horrible blogger I am. My sister recently created a blog, and I think she already has more entries than me!! Her link is www.heartfeltyarnwreaths.blogspot.com , everyone should go and take a look at the beautiful things she has created! Anyways, it is now almost February, I can’t even believe it! I’ve been in South Africa for 18 weeks now, the time has gone by so fast, but in some ways it feels like I’ve been here forever! I’m now staying in Tableview, a suburb on the other side of Cape Town, from where I was staying before in Muizenberg. It was strange, a week or two ago I went back to Muizenberg and was surprised by how much it felt like I was returning home! I spent both Christmas and New Year’s here. Christmas didn’t really feel like Christmas, it was so hot and windy! But it was a good day. I went to Hillsong in the morning for a Christmas service, then I had lunch with my old volunteers in Muizenberg, then I had a lovely dinner with my new volunteers at our house. For New Year’s, me and my friend, Bar from Israel, got free VIP tickets (valued at R500 each! (approx $70?)) to a party at The Fez, a place that both Paris Hilton and Leonardo DiCaprio went to when the World Cup was here!
I have started working on the penguin project at SANCCOB (South Africa Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds), what a crazy experience that has been!! When I first arrived, they had over 400 penguins! I was working 12 hour days, 5 days a week, which was a shock at first! There was a point where I would literally wake up, go to SANCCOB, come home, go to bed, dream of SANCCOB, and repeat. It was hard at first because since we were so busy, there wasn’t time to properly train me, so I got stuck doing a lot of the less fun jobs. At first I was shocked to think that I would be chopping up fish for them, but now it’s pretty normal, some of the birds can’t eat whole fish, so you chop off the head and tail, and then cut the rest into little pieces. But, two weeks ago, we started releasing some of the penguins back into the wild! We now have maybe 100 or 200 penguins, so it’s a lot less busy. As a result, I was properly taught how to feed and tube the penguins, and am now loving working there! It’s so funny how you begin to learn the different characteristics and tendencies of each penguin. For example, my favourite is currently 644! He’s the funniest little swimmer, he gets so excited whenever we put him in the water. 487 is a nightmare, such a wriggler, trying to feed him is quite the struggle! So in that way it is kind of similar to working with the children, you learn how to deal with each one of them. My favourite birds there are the cormorants, we have maybe 10-15 of them right now? They are so funny to observe.
I have had some interesting experiences there! Trying to catch kelp gulls while they are flying in the aviary was quite the thing! However, the coolest thing I’ve done there is stuck my arm down a pelican’s throat! We got this pelican in a few weeks ago, he was in really rough shape, blinded in one eye, they almost euthanized him, but decided to give him a chance. He’s doing a lot better now, he can see fine, and he has a lot of colour back in his face! It’s so funny whenever you go near him, he’ll snap at you and it makes this really loud noise! Unfortunately, he still has to be force fed, so you have to take the fish one at a time, and push them down his throat and then massage it down his neck into his stomach. It feels so cool in there! So usually I’ll be the one sticking the fish down, but the other day my friend tried to teach me how to hold him for the feeder. It didn’t go so well! First, you grab his beak with one hand. Then you get his body (with his wings in) between your knees, but then you somehow have to hold that tight while getting your feet in front of his body as well. It was the whole feet thing that caught me, I ended up looking like I was riding him pretty much! Very funny.
I also had the chance to go on one of the releases last week, which was amazing! We drove up to Betty’s Bay (about 2 hours from here), as there is a thriving colony up there already. We made a semicircle with the boxes on the beach, and then let them go! We put one adult in the back so that he could herd them in the right direction. They ended up splitting into two groups, one group heading straight out into the ocean, whereas the other group lingered near the shore by us, but they too eventually made their way out. It was very cool to see! I hope that they are able to find fish out there, although I was reassured that the adult would show them what to do, which is good.
( i would put up more pictures, but I just looked at my internet amount left, and uploading that one picture took up so much!! so go to my facebook to look at pictures of the rest of the stuff!!)
Other than that, I haven’t been up to too much. I’m trying to think what I’ve done over the last month, as it’s been at least that long since I last wrote!!
Hmmmm.
Well, I went to Hout Bay one day, and went on a cruise out to Duiker Island to see the seal colony there, it was phenomenal, hundreds of seals on this tiny island! There were tons in the water as well, it was really cool to see them swimming about, I now have about 50000000 pictures of seals haha. After the cruise, me and my friend met this guy in the harbour who was feeding a wild seal, he said he had been doing it for 26 years! The seal would respond to his voice as well, it was quite cool! It reminded me of one of me and Katie’s favourite childhood movies, Andre. Anyways, so we bought him a fish, and I got to feed the seal! You hold the fish out over the water and he jumps up and takes it out of your hand. Super cool! My friend actually did it with his mouth, which is even cooler! I passed, as I couldn’t bear the thought of putting raw fish in my mouth. No thank you!!
A few weeks ago there was a Red Bull surfing competition at Camps Bay that I went to. Unfortunately, the waves were not very good that night, but it was still really cool to see!
My friend Tim is starting up a new organization out here in South Africa (www.dreamstoreality.co.za) so I have been helping him take some pictures for his website and whatnot. Very excited to see it get off and running! The other day, me and him got 15 tickets sponsored, and were able to take 15 kids from the township to a big doubleheader at Green Point Stadium! That was lots of fun. The first game, Vestos vs. Supersport, was average, but the second game, Ajax vs. Kaiser Chiefs was insane!!! The game itself was very exciting, and the Kaiser fans are RIDICULOUS. I was cheering for Ajax, but it was still funny to watch them all get riled up!
I finally got to the District Six Museum, that was so interesting. For those of you who aren’t aware of what it is, it’s a museum that tells how all the coloured people were kicked out of District Six, and their houses demolished, when the Group Areas Act went into effect. So sad to read some of the stories. I am definitely going to read up more on the history of South Africa when I get home. It has such a fascinating story. The thing that hits me the hardest is how recent it is. Although I do find it very sad to read about things in the 1700’s, it resonates more to me for some reason when I think that all of this was happening 40-50 years ago. Especially since the effects are still here so strongly today. You look at the townships all over the place, and think of how the government just took them from their houses, from their communities, essentially their lives, and shipped them off to a remote area, separated by race, and put them up in these tiny shacks. Whereas before they could walk to work, they now either had to pay for transportation, or find a job closer to home. And they demolished their old houses that were perfectly usable, just because coloured people had been living in them. Such a waste of resources, but also, so demeaning! South Africa has so much potential, you can see it in the country’s pride, in the spirit of the people, but they have a long way to come. It is rather discouraging when you go into the townships and see how they live, compared to the mansions at Camps Bay. I understand that every country has struggling areas mixed with wealthy areas, even in Winnipeg, the difference from Wellington Ave. to Higgins St. is astounding, but here, it’s different. There is such a great amount of poverty. If you go to the outskirts of Khayelitsha (a township about 10 minutes drive from Muizenberg), as far as you can see is shack after shack. I believe it’s the second largest township in South Africa, after Soweto, which is actually a group of townships. I would love to volunteer there, but it is definitely not a safe place to be at all, I’ve heard some pretty scary stories about Khayelitsha! I would be interested to know what the wealth distribution is compared to the population.
Anyways, now I just have to go to Robben Island, and then I’ve done pretty much everything I wanted to do!
Funny story about Nelson Mandela actually. So, I have a friend who knows someone who works at the hospital in Wynberg (about half an hour from me), and they texted her saying that Nelson Mandela had been hospitalized there. The press had no idea, and they really didn’t want it getting out, it was very hush hush. I decided that I wanted to write him a card, get him flowers, and try to sneak them in! I am so in awe of him, and everything he did for the human rights movement, and knew that I would never again get a chance to do this! So the next day, I walked to Pick N’ Pay on my lunch hour, and got him a card and everything. I was in the middle of writing it, when my friend called me and said that he was out of the hospital!!! I know I should have been happy to hear that, but I was sad that I wouldn’t be able to try and sneak him a card. Either way, I decided I will just send him the card in the mail. Not the same, but oh well!!
As I mentioned before, I went back to Muizenberg a week or two ago, and just spent all morning on the beach with some of the kids from the township, it was so good to see them again! Hopefully I’ll be able to go back there one or two more times before I go.
I have been spending as much time as possible in the sun, whether it’s at the beach or out by our pool (my new volunteer house is soooo nice, and yes it has a pool!!!). I know that in coming home soon I won’t be seeing the sun for 3 months, as I will be holed up in my room waiting for the cold weather to leave, so I figure I should make the most of it now! It’s about plus 30 here everyday, sometimes hotter. So I will definitely go crazy when I come back to Winnipeg!!
Speaking of Winnipeg, I actually have a story about that!
I was at Hillsong Church the other week, walking around after the service, when I thought I saw a substitute teacher I had back in Grade 4. I chastised myself, thinking, “You’re in Africa, you don’t know people here silly.” A minute later, my friend was introducing me to this woman and her husband, saying that they were Canadians! We quickly compared stats, and l learned that they were from Winnipeg, and they live in Charleswood (the neighbourhood I lived in until I was 14)! So then I just decided to ask on a whim if their kids who were with them went to LCS (the school I went to for 13 years). Turns out yes, they go there, and they know my brother, who is in grade 10 there, and my mom, who teaches kindergarten there! Their son is best friends with my brother’s best friend’s younger brother! How crazy is that!!! So then I say how I thought I recognized her, turns out that her sister was the teacher that I was thinking about! They mention their last name is Guenther, and since LCS does have a big family tree, I decide to ask if they are related to the legendary subs, Mr. and Mrs. Guenther. That’s the husband’s parents!! I was so in shock, I didn’t know what to say! I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but being so far away from home, it was so strange to be discussing street names and people with someone who actually knew what I was talking about! At home, I am a pretty patriotic person, but I feel that my patriotism has been heightened by my stay away!
The million dollar question is when am I coming home. To be honest, I’m still not 100% sure, but I think it will be sometime in late February. It’s funny, from before I left until now, at some point I have considered going to every continent (except Antarctica) after South Africa. My plans have changed about a million times, and they will probably change a few more times before I get home.
As of right now, my penguin project is scheduled to finish January 31st. After that, I have nothing booked, no plane tickets, nothing. I don’t quite want to leave South Africa just yet, so I was thinking of staying here for a few extra weeks, celebrate my birthday out here. I am now thinking to work at SANCCOB a couple extra of weeks, just have to determine prices and budget and all of that. After that, I could stay at the volunteer house in Tableview, or stay at a hostel in Cape Town, haven’t quite decided yet. And then make my way home sometime soon after that! Whether I come straight home, or stop in New York, or elsewhere, hasn’t been fully determined yet, one step at a time! But from the looks of things, I should be home in late February! I can’t really believe that. South Africa really has a big place in my heart, I know that I will definitely be back here one day! However, I am getting very excited to see everyone again. I am so amazed at how well I have been able to keep in touch with some of my friends, I almost feel like I talk to some of them more out here than I do at home haha. I don’t know how people traveled before there was internet to keep in touch with.
