December and January: South Africa coast to coast, Christmas and Camp

OK, long time since an update so I’ll try to catch everything I’ve been up to.

First I’d like to mention the trip I made to Port St. John’s… which is the beautiful small town on the Wild Coast of South Africa. Its actually where Blood Diamond was filmed so you can imagine it to be quite lush. We left on a Friday…. Winding through foggy mountains and finally made it to the coast in 10 hours, to this little backpackers called Amapondo, which to fellow princetonians is like Terrace F Club outside, although I think there were less drugs. Actually probably more. Anyway.... There were tons of people just lying around in hammocks, hippies aplenty. We arrived late that night so we decided to wake up and see some of the place. We went on a “short” hike to this waterfall up in the hills, which ended up being a four hour trek… it was so jungly, yes that’s a word, tons of spiders (jen if youre reading this... you know how freaked i must of been) but it was so beautiful. It really felt like you were in a rainforest. We traversed down a creek bed, which had crabs crawling everywhere, and everyone managed to slip in one way or another. The waterfall was tiny but amazing and they had cliff jumping from 10m…. but you had to jump through a tree over a rock in order to do it. I kept my diving skills to the lower levers, but was content to practice my front one and halfs and make the fellow travelers jealous. From there we made our way down to the ocean. It was the first time I made it to the Indian Ocean so I was quite excited… .I literally ran toward it and when I jumped it I was shocked to feel how cold it is. Is this Africa or what? But it was a beautiful beach, surrounded by jungle mountains.. pay day was the night before so there were massive parties on the beach, drunk south Africans running around and dancing in the water, so it was tough to make it a peaceful day. We woke up at 5am the next morning just to see if it was a bit less crowded, only to find out that it was a special party that went from 6pm Friday night to Sunday night… 72 hours of straight African shenanigans I guess. At 6am though it was quite the scene, they were having some sort of baptism ceremony, with about 25 people decked out in ceremonial clothing, then in the background was reggae music, people running around drunk from the night before and then me, the Canadian, sitting just watching the whole thing. Very strange site, but cool. Pictures on facebook.

After my trip to Port St. Johns, I finished off some work at Baylor, mostly writing some reports and helping with the camp.

For Christmas, I did a big tour of South Africa over a weeks time so it was quite jam-packed. I made the trip down with a few of the doctors from work, some of whom I've gotten to know quite well the last five months.
We first headed to Jeffery’s Bay, which is home to Supertubes, supposedly the best surfing in the world. We actually got to watch professional surfers tackle these waves as dolphins competed for the same spot. This actually happens! and we were all pretty excited. The town itself is very wealthy and beautiful and is flooded with people during Christmas time.
Christmas day was nice.. but very laid back and it only occurred to me once that it was actually Christmas day… I guess when youre not at home you can kind of forget about it.. We spent the next few days hanging around. The crew of doctors and I just mostly hung out at the beach, ate a lot and played cards. I think we just needed to rest from Lesotho.
Lindy, one of the Baylor PAC docs and I parted ways from there and drove the garden route along to Cape Town. Its this seaside highway along the coast… we heard it was supposed to be spectacular but in the end, it was mostly just inland and we didnt get to see much. South africa... is actually an extremely beautiful place.. for the brief minutes we did see the ocean.. it was awesome and then it would turn into these massive forests and mountains.

We split the driving trip and stopped at this place called Knysna.... it was a pretty neat place... an old English town built on this bay with these huge bluffs... It was actually extremely interesting to see because it really defined what race is still like here in south africa. Every black person you see is either poor or works as a janitor; the whites walk around like they own the place.. because they do... the entire place is still completely apartheid. The coast was beautiful anyway, looking out to the rugged Indian/Atlantic... and thinking... i can almost see Antarctica from here.

Cape town came upon us in a foggy san francisco kind of way... and i was like... shit this place sucks. We got lost for an hour, but when we settled into our ubber posh hotel we started thinking everything was going to be alright.. The rest of the Baylor crew arrived from Mozambique that night and we all settled in, excited for our day ahead of us: shark diving.

We had to wake up at some ungodly hour, but as the sun came out the next morning I could tell why everyone thinks Cape Town is the most beautiful city in the world. Its tropical but cold... poor but modern... dutch buildings everywhere, mountains coming out of no where. We drove 3 hours to this place on the coast and hopped on a boat with about 30 other people. The captain of the boat circled around, using his expertise to find the great whites and then threw in some fish guts that drove the sharks towards us. He proceeded to tell us to jump into the metal cage so we could see them up close. It was pretty neat. They would put the fish right in front of your face and have the great white ram at the damn cage. Cue the jaws theme.

The next day we did some touring around town, and then some paragliding. We climbed up a moutnain and sailed off...a great town to just sail over. New years eve followed and it was a complete blast. We went out to a really nice dinner (the rand has dropped from 7R to 1$ to 11R to 1$ so everything feels ridiculously cheap and its wonderful). I did feel very special being on the other side of the world… remembering everything that happened last year and picturing myself in the US on the same date and never thinking I would be where I was a year from now. It was nice to think because I’m sure it could be the same way next year.

The trip was cut short because I had to make my way back to Lestustu for Camp ‘Mamohato, so in all I got a lot of driving in and saw lots of stuff but was just too short. The drive back went quikcly. I actually picked up a hitch hiker who provided some entertainment. He explained South african boer culture to me as he preached the bible and downed a 2L bottle of fanta. My boss then yelled at me for picking up a hitch hiker and I guess that is the end of that.

So since the new year: I’ve spent the majority of it at Camp ‘Mamohato, a kids camp for patients with HIV. Its basically there so the kids can have a fun week and learn stuff about their disease along the way. It’s a trial version of a Hole in the Wall camp, which was founded by Paul Newman and works with kids with terminal illnesses. At the camp the goal is to improve their outlook on life, their adherence to their medication and to provide them with an HIV community where the stigma of the disease doesnt effect them. You can imagine living a lie you’re whole life, afraid to tell your friends you have HIV. The idea of the camp is actually wonderful. I was supposed to just observe and plan but they ended up asking me if I wanted to partake as a counselor. It was really fun but exhausting, up at 5am and in bed by 930… every hour with the kids, if they wanted to go to the bathroom, we had to go with them.. They had to be in your site at all times, which is weird because kids take taxis by themselves all the time in the city and you always see a four year old running around, half nake with no shoes in town.

It was hard because I don’t speak much Sesotho so everything had to be translated, but I got to see a lot and the kids became more than just a patient but a real person. And they opened up and became happier every day. It was great and it was a nice change from being in the office the past few months. And plus I was mr. popular simply cause i was white. A nice change as well.

This last week was exhausting.. mostly just trying to write some reports and start up some new projects. I’m waiting to see where my next HIV testing event will be held and trying to take the key hold garden project to outreach spots and make it bigger.

I’ve got my mid year retreat for Princeton in Africa this coming week. Normally its in somewhere cool like Kenya or Cape Town but they are having it in this small town in the north of south Africa that I just happened to have already been. But afterwards I’m bringing my little Lesotho car to Mozambique, which is supposed to be a bit more “african” then where I am now… less infrastructure, more dangerous, tropical, beaches, and seafood! I’m also currently applying for fellowships and waiting for some interviews, mostly public health stuff in New york and DC as well as some children’s foundations in India, Nepal and Vietnam. Will keep you posted!

-Stu