Facing Our Fate

As I ran through my few minutes of internet, trying to catch up on world news I just felt ill today. It seems as though all the glaring injustices I see in the world today have come home to hit hard and hurt God’s children.

First and most prominent to my life now, has been climate change. We are still dragging through the dry season here and it’s rough. By midday the temperature bounces around 105F and it’s super dry. Dust and dirt rolls across the courtyard of school penetrating everybody’s eyes and throat. This coupled with severe scarcity of water makes life tough. It’s so hot that everyone should be drinking water all the time but it’s tough when there is hardly enough water to go around.

I’ve been reading that the flooding in Pakistan is almost unimaginable and that over 1 million people are lacking basic necessities like food and clean water, let alone any chance at stability and getting a livelihood back. The UN is reporting donor fatigue and a major lack of resources needed to help people. I don’t blame donor either, many have just contributed to other disasters related to climate change. This on top of mudslides in China, the wildfires in Russia, the scorching heat in the US has made life very hard for many people including me. On the other side of things, Chile is desperately trying to save miners who spend a majority of their time underground in harsh conditions trying to bring up expensive dirty fuel that contributes to more greenhouse gasses. It strikes a chord with me that so many people and so much of our precious environment is sacrificed to continue the worlds dirty fuel habits. I don’t know what it will take to learn

Second is changing the way we eat in America. I saw that 300 million eggs were recalled. I’m not surprised as this has increasingly been a problem for America. Factory farming leads to more diseases and horrible environmental degradation. The way American’s eat meat is not sustainable. I’m going to put it out there and say that I now fully believe that it is morally wrong to support the industrial meat industry of America. Not to mention to the fact that other countries are following in America’s footsteps (Botswana). If you aren’t sure how I’m connecting the dots here or why I feel so strongly, please email me.

Lastly and also most crushing to my heart is the Democratic Republic of Congo. The other day a rebel group attacked a fairly large village and in the process of destroying most it, rebels ended up repeatedly raping over 200 women. These rebels do this not just for pleasure but as a weapon of intimidation. They forced other family members to watch as they repeatedly raped wives, women, widows and children. Just pause for a minute and try to fathom a large group of men running into your home or town or area in which you live and either repeatedly raping you or forcing you to watch as this was done to your loved ones. This has gone on way to long and must be stopped. The situation is really complicated but it doesn’t change the fact that as a world body we can’t collectively do something to stop it. The conflict minerals bill was a start but it’s going to take much more to heal the deep lasting wounds of the Congo.

I realize that I have quite a contrast here going from Tofo, a near heaven on earth to the despair of today but that the reality we live in. Heaven and hell are both present on this earth here and now and I feel called to push out hell and bring heaven to the darkest corners of the earth.

Slice

I meant to tie the last post with this one but it just didn’t fit. So after a couple of weeks traveling we arrived at a place called Tofo. It looked nice on the tronz, but pictures do not express how great it is. It really felt like a slice of heaven on earth or what I would call a thin place (from Celtic Christianity, also I really like Celtic Christianity, you should check it out) I really like the description of a “thin place”. Its a small little coastal town in the southern part of Mozambique that’s has a few little hostels and that’s about it. We had small straw hut bungalow with a straw mat floor over the sand that overlooked the beach. This was about $11 a night. I had read that there was a company that offered snorkeling with whale sharks (I think a whale shark is hybrid breed that a mad scientist from Germany created by breading a killer whale and a great white shark, not confirmed), manta rays, and dolphins. If this was going to be anything close to the previous game drives we went on, we might be able to see some seaweed and jellyfish. My expectations were low as we hopped in the boat. After 10 minutes, they can’t get the engine to crank. Sweet, good start. We have to get out and wait almost an hour for them to fix it. In that time I shared my awesome sand castle building skills with some folks from Holland. (Benefits of taking local beach trips every summer) Right as the waves broke through the moat and castle wall, the boat was ready to go.

We cruise out and drive around for no more than 15 minutes when the guide causal says, put on your fins and snorkel. Everyone scrambles and I was stuck with one fin way too large and one way to small. No Problem. He say “the whale shark is just there, jump in”. I’m thinking yeah right, and slid into the perfect chilled water with my mismatched flippers. Right when I jumped in, I looked around and saw nothing. The word liar came to mind. Then I turned all the way around and then realized just how big whale sharks are. This giant fish was swimming straight toward with its huge blood stained teeth. (Nah, I’m lying, whale sharks are filter feeders, but they are pretty damn big though). It was quite impressive. At that moment all my years of summer swim team paid off. They let those who are able, to just swim next to the whale shark as it was just cruising along. This equated to me, my roommate and a guy named Dr. Dennis who has spent his entire life studying whale sharks. There we were, just swimming about 300 meters with this peacefully quite giant of the ocean.

We repeated the process 3 more times with 2 more whale sharks and a herd (maybe the word school?) of dolphins. Too be honest dolphins aren’t that cool, they are way too fast. We also saw a monster humpback whale with its 3 day old baby calf just cruise right by the boat. All in all I would call it a success trip out.

The other nice thing about going to thin places like Tofo, is that you get to meet awesome people. People who take great risk for great reward. People who love to travel and can tell you crazy stories from across all continents. For example: Dave. Dave grew up in Edinburgh Scotland, had a normal life, studied biology in university and got a job at Xerox when he graduated. He worked there for 2 years and one day just said that he was done. He sold everything that he had except for a bag of clothes and got on a plane to South Africa. 3 years later, he is leading ocean safaris for one of the upscale dive companies in Tofo. I felt like I heard countless stories similar to Dave’s. People who are civil engineers who work really hard 8 months out of the year to save up to travel the other 4. People with non-profits in exotic areas with great need who have some time to themselves to unwind and can easily hop over to places like Tofo.

I know I’m repeating myself here but out of the I would guess 100+ people that I met only 3 were American and 2 had to spend a night in the Maputo jail. I met many people from all over the world, even people from not so developed countries like Ecuador and Pakistan.

So I guess what I’m saying is, what’s the deal America? Why can people get their travel on? Let go and go. Meet some new folks. It might make them more human and as an unfortunate side effect, you might care more about them.

I met this girl named Sarah, maybe from Germany? She had saved up a lot of money and decided to go surfing up the eastern coast of Africa. (Sweet deal right?) In her travels she met many street kids who are obviously struggling to make ends meet. They touched her heart. Instead of spending a majority of her time surfing, she spends time hanging with the street kids along the coast, teaching them new skills. They walk the beach together to find cool shells. She then teaches them how to make necklaces and bracelets to sell to people. She also tries to teach them a little bit of English so they can sell the things they make. She’s making little entrepreneurs out of them. I ended up buying 5 bracelets from some kids she helped. I know it’s not perfect but hey I think it’s great. She will continue on her surf trip up the coast but now she has greater purpose in her travels.

I want to leave you with that, the limitlessness. What can come when you take a risk, dive in and listen to your heart.

just to give you an idea

I thought of this song quite a few times while in Tofo

Guess Where Now

- This country is one of 2 British Commonwealth Members that was not previously a colony of England. (they were colonized by Portugal and the other member is Rwanda)

- This country was torn apart by landmines and is still trying to deal with them after a tough civil war.

- This country is the only country to have an AK-47 on its flag

- This country is home to around 300 of the worlds 1000 whale sharks

- This country’s tangerine season is July and August.

- This country just had China build them a $61 million football stadium on credit.

Nope, not Saudi Arabia (they have swords on their flag) it’s Mozambique! This was the first place that I really have been punched in the face by the language barrier. I previously thought that Portuguese would be relatively similar and I could float by with my Spanish. I now feel quite stupid for having that thought. The language aren’t that close. This country struck me with contrasts.

The capital Maputo is a lot bigger and a lot more developed than I thought. There is a visible gap between the very rich and very poor but not to the extent that the US or especially South Africa has.

I will start with one side of the contrast. We had an interesting bus ride from Maputo up to Tofo including blown out breaks and a horribly failed bus off-roading attempt that involved all the passengers getting muddy and sweaty pushing and pulling the bus out. This is not what I want to talk about though.

A friend of mine gave me this book called The Invisible Cure by Helen Epstein. Unlike Shaka, I genuinely recommend this to everyone. I had held off reading this book under the suggestion to read it while I was travelling through all the countries mentioned in the book. This was a quite interesting experiment. I remember passing Kalafong Hospital in Pretoria just two days after reading the chapter about the mysterious deaths of several AIDS patients in an experimental study by Triangle Research (which I believe is based in my second home state, North Carolina) and how African Renaissance man President Thabo Mbeki has helped hide the truth.

As I read and travelled alongside all sorts of people the book and real life collided like nothing I have ever experienced. On our bus trip from Maputo to Tofo a younger man staggered slowly onto the bus and with a huff sat down next to me. Too be honest, I wasn’t paying much attention. As the day continued, the sun rose and the heat came out. The man next to me ended up taking off his jacket exposing his arms and neck. Those around us collectively gave a low audible gasp. The man next to me had sores all over his neck, arms and legs. This coupled with his deep cough registered only one thing in my mind. It was confirmed when I overheard a lady behind me whispered to her friend, “sidia” which is a variation of the Bantu word sida which translates to AIDS. I had perused through the pages of this AIDS book, reading the staggering facts, and gross missteps on all sides of the battle against HIV/AIDS. Now it was sitting right next to me and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Not to say that I would do a lot. As the bus ride went on and everyone was out trying to push the bus out of the mud, this young man just sat in the shade. My heart just broke as I became increasingly covered in mud and sweat, seeing that this man struggled just to sit in the shade. I wished I could have intercepted all the stares, glares and dirty looks thrown his direction but I couldn’t. AIDS has ravished this entire country and the looks on people’s faces were mixed with judgment, anger, and sheer frustration as the disease could have affected everyone in a personal way. I don’t know a single word of the many local languages or any lame translated Spanish to Portuguese. I had nothing. Even in the toughest of situations, I usually whisper to someone, “you’re loved.” All I could do was sit and pray. Pray that life would go easy on him, pray that he has loved ones to care for him, pray that everyone else would get past their personal motivations and work together to give the best solutions, cures and hugs to those in need.

Sidenote: I recently had an article published in the Reject Apathy section of Relevant about AIDS and missed the mark. I get the negative parts and disconnect that both abstinence and condom use or church vs. UN/NGOs programs are not getting the job done. A better answer is the African grown zero grazing campaign or stopping of concurrent relationships. Apologies to everyone

I’m glad it’s not up to me. I’m glad that it’s bigger than me but it also hurts to not be able to do something. I think God has given us the power to bring about heaven on earth and obviously this young man whose name I don’t even know (this hurts too, that I can’t even communicate to know names, to be more human) has crossed my life for some reason. He’s not mine though, he’s God’s and sometimes maybe that’s all God wants you to do. Give it up to him. Trust that the unknowable depth of his love and power God has will hold this young man in his hands.

Please God, bless him for the remainder of his life. Be on his side, be the merciful God that I know and love.

I never really know where these things are going to end up. I originally was going to contrast this post with a slice of heaven on earth called Tofo but it doesn’t fit, I’ll save it for tomorrow.

Long Strange Trip

I usually like to write my blogs as a personal story intertwined with a challenging message and maybe some new information or knowledge or something new to think about. This is just going to be a straight up crazy story. This is also super long but hopefully thoroughly entertaining.

So we cruised into the mixed mashed Zimbabwean city of Bulawayo for a layover before heading back down to Johannesburg. Bulawayo is crazy little town filled with gorgeous rundown buildings, brand new Hummer H2s and untouched cars from the 1970s. We walked over to the bus station only to find out that the nice bus we are going to take was full. There turns out to be 3 other lesser known, lesser trusted services available and so we decide to take our chances. Each bus service tells us they are leaving at 2pm and that they will get us into Jo’burg at around 8am the next morning. After scoping out some busses, we choose to travel with the gang of 10 men begging us to hop on their bus. We still had a solid hour before leaving so I decided to venture out and grab some snacks and knick-knacks. This was when I run into very persistent drunk man (let me remind you it’s about 1pm). He doesn’t want any money but has decided that we have to be best friends. He wanted me meet his mother on the spot and when I politely decline he disappears after chatting me up for around 10 blocks. I think he’s gone until I come out of a grocery store where he is waiting for me. This time he is holding this huge strand of sugar cane and offers it to me as a gift. I mean I’ve eaten sugar cane before but wasn’t really in the mood to gnaw on the 4 foot piece offered to me by a random drunk man. He wouldn’t take no for an answer this time. I end of taking the sugar cane and sharing about a foot and half with this man. (The next morning when I woke up with my mouth ridiculously sore due to the fact that my previous sugar cane experiences involved using a pocket knife to peel off the hard outer casing while me and the drunk guy used only our teeth to reach the soft sugary insides. Lesson learned)

So I get back to the bus 10 minutes before we are supposed to leave. We continue to sit on the bus for an hour not moving. Usually busses in Africa are significantly delayed but reaching the 1 hour point is a tad long, so I jump out to speak to the “crew”. The driver tells me that he has called “mission control” and is waiting to get the affirmative for our departure. I’m a tad scared at this point because I’m not sure if were heading to the moon or South Africa. We wait another 30 minutes and then the crew piles on the bus as I think we are leaving. We end up driving around the block and park about half a block from where we previously were. I kindly asked what the deal was and was informed that the shack to the right of the bus was in fact “mission control”. We end up sitting there for another hour until we finally left Bulawayo for real. To be fair, one of the members of the crew apologized telling us that this was their first trip in 6 months. Goodie.

We are about 2 hours into the drive when I started to chat up one of the crew members. I noticed on the map that we will travel relatively close to a game park and asked if we were going to see some animals. (We previously had seen more animals on bus rides than game drives, so it was a fair question to ask.) This was his response, “it will be too dark by the time we hit that part but I got a dvd with animals on it” I’m quietly hoping that he has a couple of episodes of the Croc Hunter. I could really go for some Steve Irwin. So he fiddles with his dvd and the dvd player and his animal dvd just isn’t going to work. He comes back and says, “don’t worry, I have the next best thing.”

This proceeded into the best 8+ hours of TV I have ever seen. We ended up watching the entire mini-series (well the term mini-series does not do it justice, I’ll call it a mega-series) of Shaka Zulu Warrior. Shaka is apparently the great Zulu warrior who united many of the Zulu tribes. Please don’t walk but run to pick this amazing series up. I’m not sure who played the main character Shaka but he did a dang good job of not acting and keeping the same pissed off face the entire 8 hours. The story is a mixture of many Shakespeare and The Odyssey rolled into one. The epic battle scenes would most certainly rival Braveheart. I had trouble following the entire story but I did learn that Shaka is awesome.

I spent about an hour mourning the finish of such a great show when we pulled up to the Zimbabwe- South Africa border. It took about an hour to get through the queue of busses when it was finally our turn to go get our passports stamped out. We got out of the bus to see the efficient machine known as Zimbabwe had created another km long person queue to follow the km long bus queue. I’m not going to lie, sometimes things go beyond the point of maddening to the too ridiculous stage where all you can do is laugh. The ridiculously long line of people went relatively quick. Did I tell you this was about 1am?

We cross the border and kiss the ground as we are pleased to jump back into a developed country that appears to have a modicum of respect for time.

We were wrong. We had to wait another hour to get through the South Africa border. We arrived to the window for your visa right as they were having a shift change which brought more comedy. My visa stamper decided that she had to play not 1 but 3 games of free cell before she could look at and stamp any visas (she lost 2/3 games). John’s visa stamper decided that she had to spend 5 minutes dusting her keyboard. Were finally free, hooray, or so we thought.

Before hopping back on the bus the SA police decide that they have to do a “random” tighter personal check. They went down the row people from the bus and magically pick me, my 3 friends and 3 random Zimbabweans. As they were leading to who knows where I was debating what lines I was going to use while they checked us. I’ve been searched quite a few times going to concerts and sporting events and was debating on which joke to crack, “are you free Wednesday night?” “does your wife know about us?” You know the tongue and cheek stuff. As we enter the security check point aka the men’s bathroom, I realize were in trouble. The police officer quickly searches and dismisses the 3 Zimbabweans and then it’s just us. 4 white foreigners in a men’s bathroom with a cop holding an AK-47 at 2am on the South African side of the border. Iki bazo, it’s a problem, As he started to search my friends, I was thinking shit, this guy is going to want a bribe and I don’t got that much money. So the guy goes down the line and turns out that he just wanted to be very very generous with pat down and let us on our way. I would usually protest to such a physical assault but you don’t have many options when they got an AK-47 and its 2am.

We jumped back on the bus falling asleep to a blaring Lucky Dube dvd and ended up arriving in sketch Jo’Burg at 5am where everything was still closed. We had to stand in the cold until 6am when this gross fast food chain called Wimpy opened up and let us warm-up, eat some greasy food and reminisce on a long strange trip.

Guess This One

- This country was once called the bread basket of Africa.

- This country has has the highest population of the rare white rhino

- This country was the only to have a trillion dollar note

- This country holds 90% of the gorgeous Victoria Falls

- This country is the only one to be suspended from the Kimberly Process

- This country almost completely survives on an informal economy

Could you guess it? If you were thinking Zimbabwe you’re a champ. We knew we weren’t in Kansas anymore when they botched our visas and our British friend had to pay significantly more for being, well, British. Right when we crossed the border we were greeted by a nice looking younger man who offered us a taxi to Vic Falls from the border. As we walked with him we were approached by others who wanted to give us a ride. Others quickly out bid him and we asked the gentleman we originally met if we could trust him to give us a ride. In all seriousness he said quite easily, why yes you can trust me, I’m a police officer. At this point we weren’t sure what to think. We ended up riding with this very very old man who out bid the “cop” by $10. The “cop” didn’t seemed too pleased but the rest of the taxi drivers approved of our choice. (sidenote- he did have to start his car the way they do it in the movies when someone is stealing a car. Pop open the part under the steering wheel and connect the red and black wire till the car starts) As we were riding with this older man he explained to us that he was previously a lieutenant police officer. So the cop taxi service seems relatively common. As we were coasting along the torn road, a car whizzes by us and I hear our driver mutter, “oh shit” under his breath. This isn’t so comforting when you’ve just entered a country that botched your visas, has a genuinely crazy president in power (seriously, 2 months ago Mugabe made a deal with Ahmadinajad to trade uranium for oil) and you just turned down a taxi ride from the cops. It turns out the last part was the problem. I asked what was up and our taxi driver told us that the car that sped by us was one of the cops friends and was going to tell other cops in Vic Falls to arrest our driver for taking his customers. Great. I was just hoping it was within walking distance to our hostel. So we arrive to our relatively rundown hostel right as the cops pull up. I try to tell the cops that this man has done nothing and to not upset the heard of folks watching these new cops disappear.

Vic Falls is a quite nice bizarre town. It’s interesting that the people on the streets try to sell you trinkets are quite educated. Their English is good and they seem to know a little bit about what’s going on in the world. Unfortunately many of them have taken to drinking and later on in the day can become somewhat aggressive. It’s also not uncommon to see elephants, zebras or even lions cruising the streets at night. One evening we heard a loud rustling outside our hostel gate and looked up to see an elephant just walking by himself down the street.

Sorry this sounds kind of like a bummer but really Zimbabwe and Vic Falls were great. I cannot describe in words the sheer beauty and strength of the falls. It was amazing, a little slice of heaven. I felt like God was saying see, see how much beauty and power I can create. It’s a gift from me, please witness the awe and grander and know that I made that, experience me through it. Know that there is something even greater than these falls out there and that I want you to experience that too. Come say hello some time. Let’s work together to blend our places together.

I ended fully enjoying the gift of the falls by doing the bridge bungee jump, where when you reach 3/4s of the way down you can see this absolutely stunning upside down triple rainbow as you just peacefully bounce through the air.

We ended our time at Vic Falls with an overnight train to Bulawayo. I just want to tell you how magical this train is. It’s an old 1953 classic British high class train that literally has not been touched since then. It used to have a restaurant, electricity and toilet but those things are long gone. So for $10 they gave our own sleeper equipped with awesome blankets and pillows. We were even fortunate to have the date in which our blanket or pillow was either made or last washed, I’m not sure which one. Mine was dated October 1998. Not even joking, that was the best night sleep I had in at least 3 days.

Although the country is currently very rundown, I think the country is filled with promise. Its visible everywhere you go, of time when Zimbabwe was on top of the world and development flourished. The people of Zimbabwe are very kind as well as very resilient. Their creativity in very tough times is astounding. Overall, I really enjoyed my time in Zimbabwe. I hope and pray for wisdom to come to their leadership and a blessing of prosperity to reach those trying so hard to make ends meet. They really deserve it.

Just pure beauty

View from the bungee jump

Im not educated but this the the Rhodesian Railroad outline with ??? nuclear power something?

jumbo pony (not confirmed)

One Big Holiday

Just Working on Facts

I believe in climate change and I think that it is and will continue to negatively affect the lives of millions. I think developed countries need to significantly curve their emissions. This is a nice little article from New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/science/earth/15climate.html?_r=1&ref=world

What will it take for you to believe and change your actions?

Where in the World is me?

- - This country has the second lowest population density in Africa

- - This country is mainly covered in desert

- - This country gives each citizen that asks land and gives women almost double

- - This country’s currency is called the pula which is translated to rain. I’m going to assume that Fat Joe stole is “Imma make it rain” line from Botswana

- - This country is one of the few who has actually been able to capitalize on its massive amounts of resources. Well actually when I say massive amount I mean over 78% comes from diamonds

If you were thinking Botswana, you’re correct. If there is one thing I can say about Botswana is that they love chicken, especially when it’s fried. I’m not trying to be racist here but that country can eat some fried chicken, it was everywhere. As Dave Chapelle says, “I didn’t know I was genetically predisposed to liking chicken”

In general I wouldn’t suggest Botswana to someone on a budget. It has the wonderful salt pans (home to a ton of those cute little meercats) and Okavango Delta (largest inland delta in the world) but being one of Africa’s most stable and interesting countries, it has also developed tourism and really out priced backpackers. So we had an abbreviated stay and took a nice Mokoro trip through the delta but that was about all we couldn’t afford.

Again, we took mass transit almost everywhere and that leads to some interesting conversations. The first person we met was a sweet older, larger taxi driver named Raphael. He took us from our late night bus arrival to the wonderful Mokalodi Backpackers (really a top notch backpackers and the owner Hendrick was a pretty cool guy) and even let us make a pit stop at a local fast food joint that was of course, fried chicken. For the rest of our taxi ride he managed to list off all the fried chicken restaurants in the capital Gaborone. His list reminded me of Bubba listing off the different ways you could cook shrimp in Forrest Gump. “well see we got Chicken Lickin, Nando’s, Gallo’s, Chicken and Cow, KFC, have you heard of that one?” I answered, “Kentucky Fried Chicken? Yeah I think I’ve heard of it. I could bet I’m 6 degrees from the Colonel.” Raphael was great, gave a fair price for a late night decent drive. When we arrived, some kids wanted to set up transportation for the next morning. They failed to reach a price with Gabriel and ended up arguing for 30 minute bringing Gabriel almost to tears. Just a sidenote, if you have $200 backpack and a nice tent and are travelling from a developed country whose currency has significant value, don’t be (pardon my language) an asshole and bargain someone to their knees. It’s good not to get ripped off but don’t be a jerk face.

My next encounter was with Gracie, a nice woman who informed me that the people who live in Botswana are called Motswanans which I didn’t know. She also let know 20 minutes into our conversation that her uncle had his leg eaten off by a lion. This continued into a long conversation about how her village had a problem with a lion that liked to eats parts of humans but not really the whole person. Weird?

The last person I had the joy of meeting through transit was Baulo. Our circumstances were not ideal to begin with. We were the last folks to get on the bus, which means that you sit in the last row. The last row is designed for 4 people. I’m not sure if I have ever seen 4 people sitting in the last row. In this case, it was me, 2 friends, Baulo and 2 of his friends. When you do the math that equals 6 people in 4 peoples space. Usually this isn’t a problem but we all had our backpacks and Baulo, how should I say this, really really liked to eat fried chicken, was quite large himself. We had good old American conversation. He told about how he liked being single and how he likes to hit the clubs and “get chicks” he wanted me to accompany him to “the hottest club in Kasane”. He continued to tell me how much beer he can drink and that his favorite things to do are drink beer, eat fried chicken, drive his car, and watch TV and no he doesn’t like to watch football (soccer) he says, “its for skinny women”. As we said our relatively too emotional goodbyes, I thought hmm I think I could have had that exact same conversation in just about any bar or pub in America. So in recap, Botswana, make it rain, eat fried chicken and talk to the people.

The Okavango reminds me of the Okefenokee

The front of the Mokoro heading through the bug filled reeds

Where in the World is me?

- This country has the largest gold reserves in the world
- This country has 7 UNESCO World Heritage sites
- This country has thousand pound great whites that jump clear out of the water to eat seals
- This country is the most violent country in the world not at war
- This country is the most developed in Africa
- This country was recently host to the Fifa World Cup

If you guessed South Africa you are correct. We flew into the capital Johannesburg to start a tour de Southern Africa. I didn’t really have plans to travel south or be in South Africa at all but when the wonderful Rwandair had a major sale to go to SA, we packed our bags and headed south. This was the first time I have been back to South Africa since I went on a horribly misguided “mission trip” the summer of my junior year of high school. Although I frown upon that trip now, I don’t think I would be where I am today with going on it. With the whole other side of the equator thing going on, seasons are reversed. Living so close to the equator in Rwanda has made “winter” here no big deal but when you head south, it made me realized that it can get quite cold. I managed to keep a cold almost the entire trip.
Johannesburg was still sparkling a few weeks after hosting the world cup. The rainbow nation still had tons of banners and flags waving as they are trying to hold on to the spotlight of the World Cup as long as possible. Too be honest, winter in Johannesburg reminded me of a crisp fall day in one of the tougher neighborhoods in New York City. I can deal with some tough neighborhoods but Jo’burg was a bit intimidating to me. The sheer amount of barbed wire, electric fences, security guards with AK-47s (although this isn’t an uncommon all over Africa, just the amount of them was amazing) and strong racial tensions that could be felt from a mile away kept me on my toes our entire stay there. Apparently my cautions weren’t enough, I have returned to Rwanda sans one cell-phone.
My memories of SA were a little fuzzy because I had a little culture shook going to a legitimate developed country. I mean I know SA is called a developed country but you never know what’s being exaggerated or straight up lie in Africa. For example: while we were away, Rwanda had free and fair elections. You just don’t know how much truth you get but nobody was lying about SA being developed. Usually when folks go on holiday, they don’t go to the mall to buy shampoo, check the latest movies and lounge around the hostel or hotel and chat with folks but that’s what I wanted to do and spend every minute enjoying it. We walked around the mall, saw not one but two movies and enjoyed just eating something different than rice and beans. I’ll just say SA was a great lounge stop over.