Blogs from Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Africa - page 21

We have been in Durban for the last 3 days. First night we arrived we went and got our BMW again. Such a nice car to drive. I think Anton is going to upgrade when we get home!! YAY We went to Anton's local in Westville called Waxy's. A local Irish pub. About 20 people turned up. All great friends of Antons. I even meet Anton's ex Wesley which was pretty interesting. The drinks flowed and flowed, along with my camera shots. I have some great shots - they'll be posted shortly. Pictures : Waxys Going to Durban beach was scary. Many coloured people that made us whitey stand out very much. To the point where we all felt uncomfortable and unsafe. We didn't stay long. We stayed with Greg's family. His mum, Maragret, was loverly ... read more

Scott Writes: After returning from the Kruger to Nelspruit we gave back our rent-a-car and opted for a 7 day hop-on hop-off pass on the tourist Baz Bus which would eventually drop us off in Port Elizabeth (PE) in around 7 days funnily enough. Now whoever came up with the Baz Bus is now making a fortune out of 'tourists' and smelly backpackers who do not want to take the local buses. It is twice as expensive and it takes twice as long as the local buses plus its not even that comfortable. Still though, it is packed everyday with people moving up and down the coast, go figure that. Well, 7 days in this transit van of a bus was quite enough. It would of driven us crazy if we had to do any more ... read more

When the structures of society seek to steal away our common experience, we must intentionally create new structures that defy those separations. After these months of continual conflict with myself, of daily frustrated attempts at seeing the truth of this place which is South Africa, I decided to drastically alter the structure of my life. I arranged to work at a children’s home at the village of Umzinyathi in the Kwa-Zulu Natal province. Why not dive head-first into this thing called reality? Umzinyathi is about an hour’s drive outside the city of Durban. This small Zulu village consists of rolling hills of green traced with dirt roads and dotted with concrete houses. All day long taxis zip up and down the main stretch honking and signaling the code for their destination. One finger for Durban, two ... read more

Today our adventures included leaving our clothes in the closet of the hotel in Port Shepstone, where we were last night, and having to go back 120 km each way to fetch them - through a gridlocked portion of the N2 that had been diverted due to an accident and was allowed to start up again right after we had to get off . Fortunately, our things were still hanging in the closet! Thank goodness we haven’t been that forgetful very often on this trip. And we stopped at a store, got a few supplies including phone airtime, and came back to have cheese and crackers for dinner. The landscapes have been amazing, beyond description. We decided to get a small but good digital camera, because ours has been broken since we left Bloemfontein. Which means ... read more

Hey y'all - So I've entered two new worlds in one week. I'm not sure which is more foreign - blogging or MBizana, South Africa. They don't even have a drop down box for Mbizana on this freaking travel blog web site. A little background on the project and then some extremely intellectual observations about my experiences so far. I'm here six months on a UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) project. The UNDP's goal is to support infrastructure development (e.g. running water, power, sanitation) to help alleviate poverty. UNDP is focusing on two municipalities in South Africa because these areas are in very, very bad shape. The numbers (which we have been reviewing closely the last week or so) are pretty ridiculous - unemployment 75%, HIV/AIDS unknown, but at least 30%, illiteracy 50% and bucket sanitation ... read more