Now that I'm home already, I'm getting lazy but I do want to finish up this blog before everything leaks out of my memory so here goes, albeit abbreviated. Once I met my brother at the airport in Lilongwe, we decided to start traveing north immediately and caught an overnight bus to Mzuzu, in northern Malawi. The ride left abour 7pm and arrive 530am, we got lucky and jumped on a minibus towards Karunga. The city was small and we still had a lot of traveling to do, so we grabbed a soda and hopped on a minibus toward the the [View Full Entry]

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Day 8 22/06 Today we did an incredible trip to Livingstone Island, with is a small island that is not only located in the Zembezi river in Victoria falls, but actually has a border that lies on the falls edge. It was an expensive trip booked through a very fancy hotel called the Royal Livingston but worth it in the end. We took a motor boat out the island, which is crazy enough. We walked onto the island and got to see the falls from very close- which is also crazy enough. Then we got raincoats and walked all the way [View Full Entry]

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Hello All! I'm writing now from Lilongwe, Malawi and I have been traveling for just about 2.5 weeks. To same time and money, I wrote out my post on paper and photographed it, I just tried to write clearly and photograph equally so. Enjoy, more to come! (maybe later today or tomorrow actually) Mark [View Full Entry]

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Time has come for me to say goodbye to Maritzburg for good (for now..) and get ready for my last big African hoorah (for now..). I finished my finals this week- they were pretty intense, they are taken as very important here- moreso than in the US. If you haven't kept your grades and attendance up to par, you aren't even allowed to take the final. And the finals count for a very high percentage of your final grade- up to 60% in some cases. They are mostly 3 hours long and essay oriented, and they are graded by internal and [View Full Entry]

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Hi all, I wanted to do a quick post on the recent violence in South Africa and include some pictures from a recent Zulu field trip (they don't exactly go together, but oh well)(on second thought, I'll let you make your own comparison between the peacefulness in traditional life and the violence occurring in the urban areas). Firstly, some of you may have heard in the news about the violence going on in South Africa. If you haven't, a quick catch up: starting a week or two ago, there have been numerous attacks on immigrants. Mobs of South Africans, angry over [View Full Entry]

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I've been back at school for a little over a week now, but I haven't had time to update from my trip to Lesotho, because this is cram time on campus- papers and exams flying right and left, computer lab full at all times of the day and night, and everyone (including me) is busy all the time. Luckily, before this madness started, I got to spend a week in lovely Lesotho, here is some background on the country: Lesotho (Le-SOO-too) is a small independent kingdom, geographically located in the mountains inside of South Africa. It is the highest country in [View Full Entry]

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Now back from my marathon fall break (easter break is fall break here), I’m going to try to give a rundown of all the fun things in sparknotes style because I wrote a full journal of the break for myself and it is very very long. So here goes: 18/03 Took kombis (mini-bus taxis) to Swaziland, with Kyla, Lauren, Stephanie (Lauren friend), Caitlin. Swaziland is an independent kingdom surrounded mostly by South Africa and shares a small border with Mozambique. It is made up mostly of people from the Swati tribe; it has a king (King Mswati III), who reigns will [View Full Entry]

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Happy St Patrick's Day to those at home, our version of celebrating St Pattys day took the form of a student protest that shut down the campus! It was a very large, lively, exciting and (most importantly) peaceful protest. The issue was the same as last time- the administration has still not helped students get their promised housing and this time the strike was successful at causing enough ruckus to bring the intended attention on themselves. I got some great shots from in front, behind, above, and within the crowd, the best of them are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mpruce/StudentSt [View Full Entry]

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Before I start on my weekend in Durban, I "quiet posted" a write up on my last few weekends (quiet means no emails went out- because I don't want to send out too many emails from the blog). It will be filed before the Grey Area post. Onward- This past weekend I had a great excursion to Durban and here is the story: We headed out to Durban on Friday evening- right after my last class. The 'We' is Guthrie, Lyle, Julian, Kyla, Lauren, Caitlin and I- we caught a Kombi from town (R35, appr 4 USD, for a 45 minute [View Full Entry]

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I decided to make a whole post about daily life because its an important part of being here but its hard to slip things into the other stories- they sound better when you leave out the details. Here goes (I'll probably jump around a bit and, unfortunately, have no pictures to include): I called this post 'life in the grey area' because it seems that, racially, I (and some of the other americans) belong in a grey area of sorts. We are not black, so we get along fine in white social circles and people feel comfortable talking about whatever they [View Full Entry]

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