Last week end of May:Muizenberg and Mzoli's

This week-end was dedicated to show our new American friends the further parts of the Cape Peninsula. We first stopped in Muizenberg, a little city on the way to the Cape Point, cherished by the surfers because one of the best waves spot! This place is really cute thanks to its multicoloured little houses on the beach and to the relaxed surfing atmosphere.

I also had the opportunity to taste the peanut butter crackers on this beach, which is something quite curious but not bad in the end. (I could actually have tried them elsewhere but I consider this step as really important in my peanut butter initiation, so I had to mention it).

We met with Eva, our Dutch flatmate who was surfing, and we went to Kalk Bay, a bit further south, still in the direction of the Cape Point, to eat in our favourite restaurant. Unfortunately it was closed but we could try a Cuban restaurant instead... Now I know I'd rather go to Cuba if I want to eat Cuban food!

Anyway, we went back to Simon's Town, even further south, the last village before the Cape Point Natural Reserve, where you can see penguins! The light was perfect, the sun was getting slightly red and we had the perfect view on Cape Agullas, on the other side of the gulf. Obviously, out of 5 cameras, no one had batteries anymore... no picture of this magic time!!!

On Sunday the 1st of June, we were invited by one of our colleague, Asanda, to have lunch at Mzoli's place, the most famous Braai place in CT's townships. That was also the first occasion to take our flat friends out. Each of the 5 friends we have draw a flat himself, that we are supposed to bring everywhere with us.

The atmosphere at Mzoli's is the best!!!
Music really loud, people everywhere, the car parked in the middle of the terrace, you can open the toilet only from outside (and you really don't want to be stuck inside....)
The weather was perfect, we had a table in the sun, went buy beers while the guys bought the meet we were gonna eat: you enter the back of the "restaurant", which looks like a butchery, you choose your meat (pork chicken, sausages), you put it on a trail, you bring to the backyard were they cook it on huge Braais... and then you can eat your huge trail of meat!!!!
Hummmmmm!
So good!
We spent more than 4 hours there, just eating, drinking beers, chatting, being stuck in the toilet...
The return was quite epic, since we were 7 in the car, plus the doggy bags we took at Mzoli's. That was good fun! As opposed to what most people would think if they've never been there, I truly believe that the township are just the best good-mood maker! There is so much life in there, it's totally different from the cold city centre, where the is no one except buildings on Sundays.

In the heart of Africa

I kind of skipped the week end because I didn't want to mix happy and less happy stories.
On the same Friday as when the United-staters arrived, violences arrived in Cape Town, and I spent a few days that I will never forget.
At the beginnings of May, on the 11th if I'm right, some violences started in Alexandra a township in Johannesburg. Fro several weeks the situation has been really tense because of "xenophobic attacks". The targets were the immigrants from the neighbour countries of SA, such as Mozambique, Zimbabwe but also Malawi, Congo, Somalia... because these people are accused of stealing the jobs from the "real" South Africans, of being responsible for the stage of violence in the country, etc...
There were huge riots in the townships of Jo'burg, burning people alive, stealing everything from their houses and shops, chasing and threatening them, which gave birth to the fleeing of thousands of people to the police stations, the churches, looking for safe places to stay before they go back to their mother country. These violences rapidly spread all over the country's big cities townships, and arrived in Cape Town on the 22nd.
At 10 pm, a friend of one of our flatmates Eva called her because they needed help at the Observatory Church to welcome more than 200 people. Once there, another woman asked who could go to another church to welcome other people there. Pauline, Eva and I chose to go.
When we arrived at this church, in the suburbs of CT, the priest was alone, thinking we were the girls in charge of welcoming the refugees (40 women and their children) and about to leave.
We had no blankets, no food, no mattresses, nothing.
We then waited until 2 am to have food and human support (some friends came to join us) and at 3 am no refugee was there. They were stuck into the central train station of CT, nobody wanted to go into the buses because one of them got attacked by people who wanted to burn it. There was a huge panic in the station and nobody wanted to move.
Finally, at 4 am, two buses arrived at our church, carrying 70 (instead of 40) men (instead of women and children).
Fortunately they had blankets (we hadn't received them yet) and we could give them tea and food quite quick and let them sleep.
That was my first contact with refugees, and I was surprised we were so relaxed. Maybe because we were really tired, or maybe because we just switched off the "emotions" button in our brain. It was still really breath-taking to see how far hatred can go out of something that seems so obsolete.
The day after we were a bit more organized and worked with our organization on buying food and making peanut butter sandwiches for the churches sheltering the refugees.
On Monday the refugees were to be moved to tents outside the city, what we call "refugee camps"... but apparently they were moved to the several military caserns.Today, some of them are actually living in refugee camps in Cape Town.
On Tuesday we went to a rally against xenophobia, where some important people (I will not go into details) criticized the violences and the government for being so silent.
This story is still not ended today (16th of June) although the situation seems to be 'stable'. That means that hundreds of the refugees are still in refugee camps, and the givernment is now trying to reinsert them progressively and bring them closer to their job, schools, businesses...
What I concluded of this experience is that this country is full of violence. We don't have such a grade of violence in France, so intense and common. This country is eaten by hatred and the highest level of violence. People do not just steal your bag, they do it pointing a gun on your head, they do not just kill their enemy, they burn him alive. Don't misunderstand me when I say "people", I’m not talking about the majority of the South Africans, and I cannot even blame or judge those who are responsible for these crimes. I will just finish my sad thoughts by a resumed quote of Antony Altbeker "maybe you know that crimes are bad, but when your brothers and friends are committing them, bad doesn't seem that bad".

I promise next time the post will be happier!

Real South African life can start!

Monday the 12th of May: back to work!!!

Here we are, Jane, the gap year coordinator, is not here anymore... WE are the gap year coordinators!

We have more time to get to know the kids we're working with better. 5 girls and 6 boys, so lovely, funny, clever, dynamic... They are a real motivation!

We also bought Jane's car, because it makes things so much easier, the transports won't drive us very far and I think it's the only way to see something in the week ends.

For our first week end as "integrated foreigners", we went to Franck and Amélie's, a couple of french people that I got to know through my mum. They manage a wineland in Stellenbosch, on the wine road. Their wineyard is precious, we had a great time eating french food

(shame I know, but soooo gooood!), tasting wines, chatting, picking up mandarines in the garden!

They are really lovely and it's good to see some fellow citizens!

Friday the 23rd...

9 a.m: Our life and destiny in SA about to change drastically, but we have no idea...

10 a.m: Pauline is away (buying some food as usual) and I'm alone, working at the office, when someone knocks on my door. I open and see three happy faces: the new american volunteers!!!

I welcome them as I'm supposed to, since our boss is not here, but I'm still skeptical about what to talk about with the people I consider as "Mac Donald's citizens"...

After 5 minutes, I realize that I'm partly wrong (I would never consider myself as totally wrong!) and that all the United-Staters don't eat only hamburgers nor vote for Mr B... ("B" like "Beeeerk"?).

That same night, we're invited to their house for the apéritif, we bring wine and they drink beer... Kind of a good start!

After that evening, we realized we were really lucky to have met these adorable people with who we will then spend most of our time here!

The week end after that, we went around the city to show them the best places of CT.

My favourite time was when we went up to the hills of Camps Bay, in between the sea and the Table mountain, to watch the sunset on a sea of clouds... Wonderful!

Trip with Daddy! (last part)

Back to our city, Cape Town. We're on the 8th of May.
What,s left to do for us? Museums, of course (there is always a museum to visit) and the Cape of Good Hope!
For the museums, I recommend the District Six museum, very interesting, although you must have an existing knowledge of the Apartheid context. The District Six was one of the central areas of Cape Town, where the racial diversity was an example and known to have a very lively atmosphere. In the 1960's, according to apartheid phylosophy and the need to separate people from different people groups, was adopted the Group Area Act (1966) and the District Six was
declared an 'only-white' living area. Without going into details, this act was attributing some
lands to each racial group, the White getting the best ones, even if other people were already living in the place. In 10 years, more than 60 000 people were displaced from the District to the windy Cape Town flats, where were developed the present townships. The neighborhood wasn't the only one affected by this segregation act, but it is one of the best known for the resistance its inhabitants opposed to the government.
In the museum, you can read testimonies from the people, it's really impressive to see all these pieces of life. You can also see a bench reserved for the White, there are the old streets name signs... A really good memory keeper of the atrocities of Apartheid.
That was for the "touristic guide' part!
Then we went to the Cape of Good Hope. After the regular picture with the "Cape of Good Hope" sign, we decided to climb a bit in the rocks, but not too much because we were all tired. This way, we were 30 minutes walk from the very southern-western cape of the African continent, after a 20h flight and 2 hours drive coming from France, but you would have to settle for the sign picture...
I'll go back there I swear, and I'll send the pictures!
But that was funny though, since we could see ostriches and penguins in Simon's Town1 They are so cute! you can almost touch them and they are not afraid at all (since they see 1000 ecstatic tourists everyday...). The best is when they walk or jump out of the water! So funny!

Last touristic guide comment, we went to the "Two Oceans Aquarium", at the Waterfront. It's known to be a beautiful place were you have thousands of sea animals from the two oceans. The thing is that they actually have thousands of animals, but they are stuck in one cubic meter tanks!
That is disgusting, and even though I really loved the adds to enhance friendship between sharks and humans (remake of the 'Jaws' movie, but instead of a shark, a toaster or a chair is going out of the sea, since they kill more men every year than the sharks, 4 people per year. By the way, did you know that 50 people die every year knocked out by a coconut?).
So I wouldn't support the aquarium because I really doubt the animals there are in a real 'reproduction of the natural environment', even though my advise might not be objective since I don't really like all the zoo-aquarium-animal jails stuff in general.
That was my WWF post. :)
Thank you!

Trip with Daddy! (part 2)

Mpumalanga and Kruger Park

Back in SA!
Objective of the day: reach our hotel before the night.
Failure.
We first stop in Pilgrim's rest, an old gold miners village, restored in the same spirit as it was before, pretending not to be touristic, although the prices and the concentration of shops and restaurants tend to demonstrate the contrary. A lovely place which makes you feel like in the 19th century in the US. I just hope we won't remember the place just as "where we had the most disgusting hot chocolate" (made with water) or "where we nearly fought with two guys that cleaned our car and were asking for more than 40 rands".

The Blyde River Canyon
We then went to the place we were expected to sleep, right in front of the "three rondavels", most famous and gorgeous place in the Blyde River Canyon, known to be the third biggest Canyon in the world. We could only realise the beauty of the place the next morning, when the day had come up!
We staid three days in the region of the canyon, planning to visit the canyon in itself on the last day. The thing is that we WERE in the canyon since the beginning without knowing it, because all we could see where cliffs with nothing in front of them, nothing comparable to what we call a 'canyon'. It's funny to think of it now, because telling it like that it look quite obvious (or stupid, choose the adjective) that we were in the canyon. But it wasn't that obvious I swear!!!
Anyway, we saw really beautiful landscapes, big water falls, the Bourke's Luck Potholes being my favourite because the water turns on itself and drew big holes in the red and black rock.
On the last day we left the mountain region to go back to the valley, where you can find maybe one of the most famous and exiting part of SA: the Kruger Park!

The Kruger Park
We entered the park through the Phabeni gate, Middle West of this huge park bordering with Zimbabwe (North) and Mozambique (East). The specificity of the park is the elephants. There’s a huge concentration of them in there, and we could already see it the first day. While driving towards our lodge, we could see one, then two, three, four and more elephants on the side of the road. After a couple of minutes, they decide to cross the road 5 meters (sorry united-staters) behind the car... and yes, there was this best picture to take of the baby elephant following his mum, not holding her by the tail because he was too small, but that would have made the photo perfect! Well, I made a movie of this so you'll have to wait to see me and my laptop to see it!
Arriving at the lodge, we saw a bunch of people stop on the side of the road, staring at something. The "thing" was a dying lion that people were happily watching at and waiting for the last gasp. I took a picture to show you but that was really disgusting of the human kind...
Anyway, we had a perfect beer-and-braai night at the lodge, enjoying the pleasant temperature of the air and hearing the roars of the rut male antelopes.
Day 2: looking for new animals to take pictures of (because let's face it, you don't go to a safari to enjoy the nature or study the animal life, you want to take the perfect picture with the lion targeting the antelope, who is drinking with the elephant and chatting with the giraffe), but tired of being in the car for three hours, we stopped at one of the few bars in the park. And while we were having breakfast, an elephant enters the restaurant's kind of terrace, making everyone running inside except one woman (who I suspect of being German according to the colour of her skin), which got stuck under her table while the beast was dubiously watching at her. I was more shocked by the local guards who were chasing him throwing eggs at his face than by the situation of the woman. I know an elephant doesn't feel the crash of the eggs on his skin but still, it is very humiliating...
We spent 2 days safariing there, seeing more and more elephant, until the point that we went to their water point, where they were more than 50 coming and going around us! Your don't feel like totally safe in this situation!
Then we went out of the park to go to a neighboring private reserve.
Although I don't like the idea of going to private reserves because you're not going on your own in the wild, and it looks fake, that was the perfect place!
We could have a real rest after 10 days of car, lying aside the swimming pool, going to safari like total tourists with a guide that was destroying the whole vegetation of the park to drive us to the animals we wanted to see. And the animals we wanted to see were lions... and we did see lions!!!
First we saw the mums and the simbas, and finally we saw Mufasa, lying in the middle of the road, waiting for us to take pictures (never forget your primary goal: taking pictures!) at 5 meters. Awesome!!!

We then went back to CT after two days in this little paradise.

Trip with Daddy!

On the 26th of April, my dad arrived!
For two weeks we've been traveling around the country. Our first days in Cape Town were dedicated to the re-discovery of Cape Town, and my favourite part was the Table Mountain!!! Windy at the top but such a wonderful view on CT and the neighborhoods!!!

Kwazulu-Natal: welcome to the Zulu Kingdom!

After two days in Cape Town, we flew to Durban, where we directly rented a car to drive straight to Hluhluwe (pronounce "chouchouwe" with a kind of elocution problem in your mouth) in Kwazulu Natal, North East of the country. We stayed three days in a game reserve (reserve naturelle) and saw sooo many things!
On the 'highways', people are walking on the side of the road, which made us think that since in France the life expectation on the side of a highway is said to be 20 minutes and people here live like that, obviously South Africans are much more resistant to car crashes than the French.
You can also buy pineapples, avocados and wood-made girafes on the side of the road, quite funny!

In terms of animals, we got friends with one elephant, one white rhino (or was it e grey one? never got the difference between them), several girafes, zebras, monkeys and antilopes.
We also went to Ste Lucia and the game reserve there, but we could only see rhinos, although the view and the beach were amazing there!



Swaziland

On our fourth day trip, we crossed the Swaziland border to enter the king Mswati II kingdom. Swaziland is quite bad known, although it breaks some of the world records in some specific areas. 40% of the population is infected by HIV, the country is one of the 42 enemies of the press freedom... It is an absolute monarchy with an unhidden personnality cult around Mswati II, you can findpictures of him everywhere in the country.

Apart from that, landscapes are beautiful but the two main cities where we went were quite disappointing, Ezulwini and Mbabane (the capital). We looked for candles during our two days there because it is supposed to be the country's specialty, but couldn't find any!
On the last day we went through the countryside and had more opportunity to meet people that looked happier to see us than the city men, and let us take pictures without yelling...
Then we crossed the Northern border of the country to go back to South Africa, in the Mpumalanga region.

Summary of my dream come true!

To start with, it's already been nearly 2 months that I am in here and i didn't write anything until now.
Therefore, I have to start from the beginning!!!

The first week
I left my home mountains on the 16th of April with Pauline Morin. We flew from Lyon to Cape Town.
On the 17th, we were in our first backpackers lodge. the comments about this lodge can be a lot...
Without entering into details, we were in the middle of nowhere, Pinelands, on the direct train line which links the townships to the center of CT (= dangerous for two girls that ave no idea of the context)
Petrus Jacobus (he wanted us to call him PJ but we rapidly found out his real identity!), the owner of the lodge, didn't tell us anything about security, not even that it might be highly insecure to take this train when you are two girls. We had to discover by ourselves that the public transport here was a real mess (by the way, some efforts will have to be done before the 2010 Fifa worldcup). Once you're in the center, if you reach the center, there is no train anymore. It is not recommended to take the bus either (still for security reasons). So you're just stuck into a perimeter that relies on your abilities to walk far or not!
Luckily, the "city bowl" (that's how people call the center since it is surrounded by three mountains and looks like a bowl) is not that big so you can easily see things just walking.

Our first days were dedicated to the discover of this new world: the different neighborhoods, the waterfront, the culture, the FOOD!
Here, i have to open a parenthesis, because contrary to what people may think, the food here is delicious, and they have really good meat, which they usually cook on what they call a "Braai" (barbecue).
Pauline and I rapidly adapted to the several meals that you can find here, and were released to know that we wouldn't be on a diet for the whole period we're spending here!

SAEP
We started working on the 21st. Norton is the president of our organization called SAEP (South African Environment and Educational Program) and is divided into three main programs:

• Early Childhood Development (ECD) works at the pre-school level, with creches
• High School Program
• Gap Year Program

Pauline and I were integrated into the Gap Year program, because the coordinator, Jane, was about to leave, so that we could replace her.
We work in an office of three rooms, with 11 kids (from 17 to 21 years old) who come from the CT townships (mainly Philippi, Nyanga, Guguletu and Kayelitsha). They already passed their Matric exam last year (=BAC) but need to improve their marks and to find funding to enter university. That's why they take a gap year to rewrite their exams, preparing them correctly, and learning how to develop in an other environment than the townships.

Our house in the middle of the street

On Tuesday we were entering our new house in Obs', quite happy to finally leave the doggy Petrus Jacobus and backpackers lodge.
Observatory is a neighborhood between the city bowl and the UCT (University of Cape Town), were a lot of students from everywhere live. In our house, we are only european students, so that a bit of a shame because we're not here to meet Germans, but they are lovely that's fine!
We have a big house on one floor with six rooms. We share the garden with two other student houses, and we have a swimming pool! The question is, ow can they call THIS a swimming pool?
1m large, 2m long and quite dirty, I'm not even sure that a duck could survive in it!
Anyway, that's a good atmosphere!