So I assume you are all in full post-spring break mode. It’s the time of year where I’m usually close to giving up on school, dropping out, and going to culinary school instead. But, seeing as I did not have a spring break here, I’ve skipped it entirely. Instead, I’ve gone straight to “done with classes” mode, and it’s rockin’. I am moving next week to Pietermaritzburg, a city about 45 minutes from Durban and the provincial capital of KwaZulu Natal. There I will be working in a public hospital in the HIV clinic. I will be volunteering and observing and hoping to learn about anti-retroviral therapy. Should be fun!
Since you’ve heard from me last, I’ve moved out of the township and been living on Florida Road, a trendy, strangely European neighborhood. It’s pretty much the exact opposite of the township, which is interesting considering the two are only about 15 minutes apart. It’s almost as if they’re two separate countries. My apartment is connected to a hostel that is constantly filled up with a rotating cast of travelers.
Florida Road is filled with a bunch of British expats and decided that from now on, I will have a British accent and pronounce it “oregaaano” and “al-u-minium”—I guess the accent doesn’t really carry over to print. I’ll just convince a bunch of freshmen next year that I’m from London. A lot of South Africans hate our American accents, so we are forced to try to adopt new ones. The Afrikaner one is quite hard to imitate.
I also attended a drum circle last night. Let’s just say I don’t think I had fully lived until last night. I don’t know how, but my life changed. Anyway, I digress.
Someone finally taught me how cricket works, which is kind of necessary information to know over here, but it’s slow, super-British, and way too boring to explain. Though I gotta say, I love that the referees wear safari hats.
Not long ago, I spent a week in a rural town in the Drakensburg Mountains, staying with a host family and generally learning about rural life in South Africa. Freaking epic. Despite lacking running water, electricity, and, for the most part, floors or ceilings, I loved it. There were baboons! I named one Rafiki and pretended I was in the Lion King. Oh, and my host father apparently was just let out of prison for “getting revenge” on some men who had killed his brother. He was super nice though. The people there gave me a Zulu name that means, “lucky girl.” I made friends with the herds of goats and cattle that lived in our yard.
Anyway, at the moment I am off to a music festival on the beach so I will check y’all later.
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