Delayed Departure

Also the night before I flew back to the States, my organization asked me to stay an additional week to give a presentation to a funder. Pretty last minute and stressful, but this is how these things happen. I had nothing going on back in the States, so I decided to stay. The following week, I took Tuesday off to Limpopo with Nadia to check out the biggest baobab tree in the world…and possibly the oldest tree in the world. It took us about 4 hours to get there. We left at 5am, arrived 9am, climbed the tree, and took the even longer way home, just driving through the country and enjoying a day off.

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The long good-bye

The night before I flew back from South Africa, my colleagues organized a really nice farewell party for me – an evening spent at a restaurant/bar down in Soweto with all of my colleagues and several other people I came to know over the course of the year. During an awkward hour, every single person there got up and said a good-bye to me. During an even more awkward 10 minutes, I got up and thanked them and said goodbye to them. It’s not easy to say goodbye to people you are likely to never see again…but if I’ve learned nothing this year, I’ve learned that people you care about, and people who have made a difference in your life, are with you all the time, even when they are not physically present.

With Fiks

I might not miss car-guards, but I will miss my co-workers.

A warm New Year’s celebration – I should have been doing this for years

Getting started at party number one

When we arrived back from Tanzania, Andrea and I had about an hour to get through customs and checked into our flight to Cape Town for New Year’s weekend. In the US, this would seem to be near impossible. In South Africa, it took us all of 10 minutes to get off the plane, go through passport control, get our bags and get through customs.

An added bonus to our trip to CT was that we were able to convince Ilona to come. too. We even got her on the same flight as us! Except that she got the date confused, missed her flight, and arrived later on in the afternoon that Thursday.  This made for a hilarious situation as Ilona had Andrea’s keys to her apartment in CT. Luckily, Andrea’s friends bailed us out and gave us a place to hang all day before Ilona arrived later that night.

Trying not to fall off the balcony

As New Year’s preparations began, I was worried it would be a bust. This has nothing to do with my love/hate affair with CT, or Andrea, or Ilona. The way I wrote that sounds as if I have a love/hate relationship with Andrea and Ilona. That’s not what I meant. I have a love affair with them…just not always with Cape Town. Anyway…it has to do with New Year’s Eve and the inevitable disappointment that comes from an evening full of such hype. But, I will say this is one of the better New Year’s I’ve had in a long time. This is likely because it was summer in South Africa as opposed to frigidly cold, like I am used to spending the holiday. We hit up a few parties, went hiking in Stellnbosch (where I was forced into eating mince (dried fruit) pie and fruit cake – ACK!), went hiking up Lion’s Head on Saturday afternoon, and even went to a cricket match with Bryden, his friend, and his mom on Sunday.

Ilona and I got back to Jozi late on Sunday night so we were pretty tired the next day. I went to work, she stayed at my place…and pretty much stayed through the rest of the week, too!

With Ilona at the cricket match...during a four hour rain delay. Luckily, there was beer.

Not a bad last week to spend in South Africa before heading Stateside.

2010 Year-In-Review

My friends from undergrad always write a Year-in-Review at the end of every year. It’s a way for us to all reflect about what’s happened over the past year and to use those reflections to lead us into improvements for the following year. Not necessarily resolutions like “eat less carbs” but things to help us enjoy life more fully.

So, here is my 2010 Year-In-Review:

biggest accomplishment: learning to appreciate myself

biggest failure: did not use free time to learn another language, experiment in cooking, or read! Sigh.

biggest good change: cut back significantly on worrying about everything all. the. time. allowing myself to live in the moment.

biggest bad change: keeping in touch with peeps (this blog only served as a way for me communicate less on an individual level with people I care about)

other notable changes and accomplishments: began volunteering for things I really care about (youth health education), rediscovered how much i love my siblings, created a life in a far off place, experienced a World Cup, became a good host to guests, discovered that I don’t hate running (!), allowed myself to learn to say “no”, allowed myself to learn to say “yes”, achieved a better work/life balance, began to truly believe that those i love are always with me even when they are very far away, was a good friend to my best friend, got my first sister-in-law (!), kissed a hippo, laughed a lot, played with a lion cub,  swam in the Zambezi River, saw lots of wild cats, slept under the stars, camped during a thunderstorm and only got scared once, opened my heart.

places i went:

South Africa (johannesburg, pretoria, cape town, kruger national park, durban, east london, port elizabeth, rustenberg, bloemfontein, ETC.)
dar es salaam
arusha
serengheti national park
tangire national park
ngorogoro crater national park
zanzibar
usambara mountains
victoria falls
livingstone, zambia
baltimore
boston
maine
dc
frankfurt

A farewell to Shiraaaaa

As my time in South Africa is coming to an end, I can’t help but think of all of those people who made my time spent here so special. For those of you who read this site regularly (so there are about 4 of you, right?), you all know Shira, who was another volunteer for the same U.S. organization.

Placed up by Kruger, her experience in South Africa was a bit different than mine, but given the fact that I saw her at least once a month, many of our experiences here are shared! Shira left South Africa before I did, so Andrea and I took her to the airport for one last hurrah before she left for the States.

So here’s to Shira, who made life here in South Africa infinitely more fun, funny and bearable.

Top Ten Memories of Shira (in no particular order):

1. Our first weekend of hanging out – consisted of going to see Freshly Ground with John and Janna, a flat tire, dancing sookie at an Afrikaans bar, staying out ’til 3am and sleeping on cushions.
2. World Cup – leg injuries and black eyes. Seriously, I can’t help but get injured with her around.
3. Marathon email exchanges about any and every single thing
4. Boot camp
5. Our “don’t say anything but…” plans
6. Week-long visits to Jozi
7. IGYN discussions
8. Weekend jaunts (Kruger, Cape Town, the Garden Route, etc.)
9. The long goodbye
10. Shiraaaaaa vs. Katieeeeeee

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1. World Cup – leg injuries and black eyes. Seriously, I can’t help but get injured with her around.

38 Days of Nothing

So it’s been about 38 days since I last posted. I could claim that it’s been 38 days full of nothing to report, but that would be a lie. Honestly, it’s been one of the most hectic periods of my life – much of it without access to email – but that is no excuse. It all involves lots of working, even more traveling, moving, then not moving, and interviewing for jobs.

So first up was my weekend in the bush with Alwyn, Attie, Ben and Nadia.  Alwyn develops game farms for a living, so he invited us up to check out one he’s about to launch. Or it may have already been launched. I can’t remember. I seem to have the memory the size of a dried up pea these days…

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Giving Thanks

Bagourke 2010!!

Since I am not in a good Thanksgiving mood, I decided to write a list of things I was thankful for to pull myself out of this spiral I’m in right now.

There are so many things to be thankful for – so here’s just a few of those things that make me happy:

Mom, Tim, Geoff, Michael, Mabu, remembering Dad, friends, my expanding family, my education, cookies, underarmor, speaking French, long slow runs when the sun is rising (or setting), afternoon naps, full moons, not throwing “like a girl”, midnight swims, long phone calls from old friends, trees rustling in the wind, laugh out loud emails, road trips, dancing around the house when i’m all by myself, dogs, stars in the African sky, dinner parties, playing wiffle ball in the backyard, holding hands, nail polish, musicals, big hair, books, sunscreen, hugs from people who really know how to give them, daisies, my past, a future full of adventure.

Bangs and a fanny pack? Good lord.

Battling Dragons in South Africa

In October, Margie and I had the brilliant idea to go hiking in the Drakensberg Mountains. In about a month, we (ahem, she) had everything planned and we were on our merry way down south to Kestell for a weekend of hiking.

I drove along with Margie, Rosemary and Sadia and met Trevor, Nadia, Dave and Ben down there for dinner at this super sweet Afrikaans bar, where we clearly didn’t fit in and where I looked like an idiot trying to play pool. I guess all those afternoons training to be a pool shark with Mariah in college didn’t work out so well. Okay, but to be honest, I really only remember “training” for a semester, so what could I expect?

After displaying my poor pool skills, we went back to the B&B, and headed to bed to rest up for the big hike the next day.

Here’s a  little background on the Drakensberg Mountains: Also known as the Dragon Mountains, this range runs for nearly 1,000 km from south-west to the north-east and covers the border between the KwaZulu-Natal Province and Lesotho. The Drakensberg is the highest mountain range in Southern Africa, rising to 3,482 meters in height – and it’s this height that helps them make an appearance in the disaster movie 2012!

We decided to take the Sentinel Peak hike, located in the Northern Drakensberg, which allows you to climb to the top of the Ampitheatre and survey the Royal Natal National Park below.

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The hike took us about 6.5 hours round-trip, including an ample amount of time hanging out at the top and terrifying climbs up and down a chain ladder that had a tendency to flail around in the wind.

I won’t get into details about what happened later that night, but let’s just say it involved a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches (hey, Kori – they put tomatoes in theirs, too! I told you I wasn’t weird), a child sleeping on the floor of a bar, star-gazing, a guy bypassing the women on the trip for Ben’s number, vegetables and a dirty jacket.

It was SO fun.

Banyana Banyana Comes Up Short

When I get older, I will be stronger...

Over the course of two weeks, South Africa hosted the 2010 African Women’s Football Championship, where sixteen matches were played and 58 goals (3.63 per match) were scored. This tournament was especially important as it influenced with teams would qualify for the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup to be held in Germany. For South Africa, it was do or die. In order to advance to the World Cup, they had to win this tournament. A loss? No chance for the World Cup.

Prior to the semi-final match between South Africa and Equatorial Guinea, a team of Show Me Your Number ambassadors, including myself, engaged with game-goers about safe sex. Handing out material is always an interesting experience. Unlike Americans, who do pretty much anything to avoid handouts on the street, South Africans take everything with pleasure – and come back for more.

Banyana Banyana warming up

Condoms tend to be a little bit more difficult to get rid of. People tend to be shy about taking them – well, the women anyway. The men, they’d take 50 if they could. In the end we handed out over 1000 condoms in under 20 minutes.

Once we ran out of materials, we went to watch the game, where South Africa dominated in the first half (without being able to score a goal) and fell apart in the second half, even accidentally scoring on themselves within the last few minutes of the game. It was pretty disappointing, especially since we are friendly with the captain of the team (who scored the accidental goal)

In the end it was Nigeria that beat out Equatorial Guinea for the title.

Vuvuzelas making an appearance

Unfortunately, the reason I’m not posting is not due to my hectic schedule

So during my skype date with my Mom last week (did I tell you guys I taught her how to use skype during an awesomely hilarious afternoon where I was upstairs in the house and she was downstairs and we practiced calling each other??), my Mom suggested that while I didn’t have anything to write about that maybe I could write about my work.

But the work I’m doing right now isn’t very interesting – I’m putting together some monitoring & evaluation tools for my organization. I’m also working on our next newsletter. And developing a database. And writing HR policies. Bleh. We have a bunch of community engagements coming up the next few weeks, but honestly, we’re having a bit of a lull over here. On top of that, we’re currently moving our office, so I’ve been told to work from home all week. This limits my interaction with people to my friend, Nick, who works at the movie store across the street and the people who blatantly stare at me while I’m running through my neighborhood in the afternoon. I have no idea why they stare at me – I’d like to think it’s due to the fact that I am incredibly stunning, but ummm…I’m not one of those pretty runners. I get red-faced and sweaty after about 5 minutes regardless of what shape I’m in, not to mention the halo of frizz that appears as soon as I step outside. Anyway…

It’s getting a little…lonely over here.

In the meantime, I’m spending a lot of time watching inspirational movies, to get myself in the right state of mind to apply for jobs. Like Bring it On! And Legally Blond. And every few days, I have a glass of Coke, which I never do. Since I don’t drink caffeine, a glass of Coke can work wonders on someone like me – sending  me into a job searching rage where I am incredibly focused and effective. I’m considering trying out caffeine in the am to see if it has a similar effect on my work outputs, especially given this “work at home” thing.

Until next time…