Hello all,

So this is more of a cultural post about my weekend and what I saw.

On Friday the weather was rainy and extremely cold for this time of year. It was probably in the 50s and there was no sun at all. Then on Saturday morning there was more rain and gloomy weather. By mid morning though the sun came out and it had warmed up a little. We started the day by going to a small town that had a population of 67. There is actually no crime in the town and it is an interesting area. It is not a township but it not rich at all. The roads were pure mud and we would walk through the mud and then the stream covered part of the bridge so we had to walk through that as well. After lunch we then went to the Valley of Desolation for a little hiking and to see the view. The view was amazing and you will have to Google the Valley of Desolation to see what it looks like. It is a huge cliff and when you look down you would see baboons and other wildlife running around. After all of this we then went to dinner in the Township nearby. This was probably the most shocking part of the trip. This is because even though you see the Townships on television and everything it is just not the same. In case you do not know Townships are the extremely poor areas in Africa. They are the kind of areas you see in the movie, “Slump Dog.” They are the areas where there are shacks thrown together with tin and anything else you can think of. Dirt surrounding these shacks with laundry hanging on and around it. If you are lucky you have light in the area and have fences around. There is no plumbing, no shower, not clean running water that I could drink out of and so on. About 99 percent of all the men, women and children in these areas have AIDS. It is a trap for the people who live in these areas. In this Township the people spoke Afrikaans and if you received an education you could speak a little English. An I-phone or blackberry has enough value to feed an entire family in this area for over a month. This area is a trap though because of the HIV/AIDS, little to no education and the fact that they do not have much money. It was heartbreaking to see but a great experience. It was just hard to believe that the people we were interacting with had AIDS and did not have the proper medicine to help maintain the virus throughout their body. Because they do not have the proper medication children die young and the life span is not more than 40 to 50 years and sometimes much less. Animals are abused in this area by being kicked around or they are malnourished. The food was amazing and we saw a different side of Africa which we wanted to see. We ended up staying in the Township for dinner and a local family made it for us. So our main part of the meal was Springbok which tastes a lot like roast beef and is very tender. Then we had two types of bread. One was cooked on the open fire and the other was deep fried. Then we had rice with vegetables and something else that looked like corn but tasted like potatoes. I think it was called Sump but I will double check later. Then for dessert we had a type of bread with vanilla custard on top. After all of this was done some of the local children came over and started dancing to some music. It was so nice to see kids ranging from the age of two to 17 dancing and having fun together. The two little boys who were around 2 years old could even dance and had a very fun time. Their parents hung them over the fence for us to grab and those two little boys had so much fun. By the way there was no grass either all of the children were in their bare feet and dancing in the dirt. Even though these people have so little and live a simple life they make the best of their situation and have fun. Please know though that not all parts of Africa are like this though. Hope you enjoyed this and if you have any questions just ask.

Andrea