This is from March 5th
So my last week in brief:

School as usual in the first half. Left on Friday to Cobham, a rural area 3 hours away from Durban. We hung out as a group for 2 days hiking, seeing baboons, seeing Bushmen rock art from 100-200 years ago (people riding horses, cows, people dancing and fishing), having too many cook in the kitchen over a gas burner and a camp fire. The hike for all day and absolutely breathtaking-probably the most beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen. We were staring at Lesotho all the way there as well-it was only at 15 kms away. After hiking there I can see why Lesotho never got colonized. It was (basically still is cuz that’s the way things work) a British protectorate like Swaziland and Botswana (and Israel)-the area is completely surrounded by mountains and cliffs.
We stayed in a Laura Ingalls Wilder-Africa style lodge with no electricity, lots of bunkbeds, candle holders attached to the walls and stone fireplaces. Very centering, especially waking up on Sunday at 6 to clouds hanging in the valleys, running past grazing cows and tea plantations and climbing a hill/rise to do a panorama of the mind.
Sunday early afternoon we left to drive to Impendle, the rural village we stayed with until Tuesday. Impendle is divided into 4 wards and covers a huge physical area but is very sparsely populated. We of us went 2 to a family. Emma and I stayed with a gogo, 2 of her daughters-Thule and Ntombi (25 and 27) Ntombi’s 1 year old whose nickname means explode, 12 year old who is one of the children of gogo’s deceased by AIDS daughter (the other child is 13 and goes to a school for the mentally disabled in Pietermartzberg). Their house is big-spacious kitchen, 2 small storage rooms, living room with a fuzzy tv, 3 bedrooms, a “shower” room (plastic bucket with a drain). However, its falling apart-its made of mud and sheet metal roofing. They have electricity and a light bulb dangling from the ceiling in each room but don’t always have access to clean water. They bought access to a government pumped tap but it is often shut off and then they have to draw water from the river 2 kms away. Ntombi said “white bugs swim around sometimes so we have to boil it.” We ate well!! Slaughtered a chicken and helped pluck it, ate butternut squash, spinach, pap (mealie meal), jeqe (steam bread that is absolutely delicious and I will teach you all), potatoes, beans. Ymm! That was a combo menu of two dinners cooked by wood stove. Poor ventilation-smoke filled the kitchen because the pipe was bent at a 15 degree angle so it was less than airtight.
Shared a bed with Emma and Thule so the cooler Drakensberg (mountain range we hiked and were living in there) air was staved off. Interesting observations: family interactions were much were positive in the rural area. The baby in Cato is rarely positively stimulated whereas this baby was cuddled, helped, stimulated, etc. Mama are the same age, same family around, same unemployment. Lots to problematize here. Food for thought.
Spent Monday visiting homes in what Emma and I have coined “illness tourism.” After a lesson in futility trying to push our van out of a mud pit (when dirt get poured on, roads swell to impassable and houses fall down), we made our way to Beatrice, a homebased care nurse. She is a wonderful lady and it was unfortunate that 22 of us were paraded through to people dying of TB, AIDS and diabetes (yes, here people die of diabetes) in their mud roundevals. I learned a lot but felt incredibly uncomfortable to be tourists to suffering.
Monday afternoon was spent in the clinic’s meeting room listening to a social worker, the clinic head nurse, and a white South African ex-engineer AIDS denialist that has moved with his wife to Impendle to solve AIDS with proper nutrition and organic gardens. An interesting fellow to say the least. Cured himself from TB by drinking herbs and eating wheat germ after “almost being killed by DOTS.” Some of his ideas are legit-eating healthy does stave off lots of problems. But denying HIV and AIDS don’t exist is another story entirely. Frustrating especially because the power he has a white educated male prancing into a rural illiterate impoverished community is so so dangerous.
Same kind of parading on Tuesday morning to a school “greening” project: an environmentalist from the government is trying to set up greening in schools. Ie putting grass where there was previously none. Only glitch is this area was no access to potable water. How can the government build a garden?? Beats me. The difference between paper miracles and reality is starker at times than others, but always stark.
Finishing the week with school. Free weekend in Durban and then heading to Amatikulu, another rural area where we’ll visit and live with community health workers, help with a beading project, visit a sangoma and a school.


Mom-I got Aunt Gayle’s package!! Thanks so much!! I left the card with her email on it at home and wanted to email her right away. Please forward this to her and Bobi and Zadi and Grandma. So excited to disperse my goodies. Anything I don’t will be going to Emma who is going to the other northern corner of KZN (an area bordering Mozambique and Swaziland) to work with a project integrating orphans into school settings.
Lots of love! A package…hmmm…its pretty expensive to ship stuff. I don’t need anything except for your physical persons to hug, so unless you-ll have been busy discovering long term breathe holding, I’m good.

Kisses!!