“If you lose those, I will lose you.” Mandalow
All right so my coolness just moved right down the drain. I hate admitting when I am not perfect, but my honesty sometimes gets the best of me. I got into my first EVER fender bender. Ugh, so embarrassing, pinche South Africa. Luckily it was not bad at all, no damage to the other car and minimal scratches to our car, it was just a horrible feeling. In South Africa if you are making a right hand turn across traffic (other side of the road) there is not a lane, so essentially you just stop in the middle of the road (the fast lane) to wait to cross. I let my guard down for a half a second, looked away from the road at a sign and when I looked back I saw cars stopped so I slammed on the brakes. Unfortunately instead of stopping, the brakes locked and I skidded right into the back of this lady’s car. I wasn’t going any faster than 20 km/h and it was fine because of the lack of damage and injury, but I still felt awful. I had such a good record and now that I am totally out of my element driving over here (I have been doing pretty well) I messed it up. So me and the Tazz, not the best running relationship. Don’t they all say, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Let’s hope it made both me and the Tazz just a little bit stronger.
On a random office update side note, we have a white board in the office and on that white board we have started a tree of the hierarchy in the office (Note: there are five of us.) We are trying to come up with special names too, but we only have Mandla and Thembi so far, we are still working on Albert and I and Thuso. For Mandla, we sometimes refer to him as Mandalow because on occasion that is how he answers the phone. Yesterday during our brief meeting he kept referring to himself as the “beloved site coordinator.” So if I reference Mandalow or the beloved site coordinator that is who I am referring to. Thembi is Masta Thembizi because she is the Master Coach for our site; in other words she is in charge of all of the coaches. Mandla also calls her “my vision, my future” sometimes so the board references that as well. From there we are at a loss of what to put for Thuso or us, but I am sure it will come to us; we do have a year. Also the quote above is a quote that Mandla said to me yesterday when we went to pick up the refrigerator for the office and he gave me the receipts. I am not sure why I thought it was so funny, but I just love his lines and the terms he uses sometimes, so you may periodically see random quotes or words he used. He is also nervous about how often Albert and I tell him that we are putting things about him on the blog. So if any of you ever get the chance to meet him, I will fully expect that you tell him how much you have heard about him. We also got a receipt from the taxi that brought the KIM coaches to the BLOEM VCT and they wrote it to a “Garage Hood Soccer” in place of “Grassroot Soccer.” Very similar.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
We Just Want to Work
The last two days of work we have been trying, fighting, driving, yelling, kicking, and screaming to work. We decided to run a SKILLZ Holiday this week to try to make up our numbers and just get something, anything going. I have spent the last two days out at a site called Soul City and Albert has been out at Platfontein. Platfontein managed to conseguir (get) 58 kids for their intervention on Monday and still had 35 show up today. Of course when I say show up, I really meant the coaches ran around the township and dragged kids over to the Isibindi Safe Park so they could teach them. At Soul City we maybe got 30 kids to come out yesterday and 4-5 show up today. So sad, the coaches were mad, Thuso was mad, I was frustrated, I am sure Mandla was frustrated because we are all just so tired of this strike and we want to get the programs back up and running. Right now I spend all of my time shuttling people around in cars and picking up last minute supplies that we forgot we were going to need for the intervention as well as trying to get my paperwork done and partake in the activities themselves.
Yesterday was special in that I got to actually be a part of the intervention. I got to see the coaches at work and I got to play during the activity. We played a game called Numbers, which for those of you that worked at camp, it is exactly the same numbers game we play there. First you are supposed to just run around in the circle and then the coach calls out a number and you have to get in a group equaling that number as quickly as you can. If you don’t get into a group or you are too slow, then you have to do squats (or in camp version, you are out). So I would run amongst the kids and when Coach K yelled out a number 15 kids would attack me and I would have to pick them off one-by-one to get us to the right number. It was really sweet and fun to actually be able to participate with them. Also yesterday when I was driving some people around Galeshewe (pronounced “Hal-i-she-way”), the township, we drove by this group of guys and most of the time I just assume we are attracting attention because of the strange white-black mix, but then all of a sudden we heard one of them call a “kilo!” It was AWESOME! It is so cool to be recognized by our yellow shirts for what we are doing. At least we are being remembered, which is a start. Ideally we hope they remember the key messages as well. Again today I heard someone when we drove by yell out SKILLZ! Oh, cool side note, I got a sick Nike jacket in black that says in big block letters “SKILLZ.” Love it!
Yesterday was special in that I got to actually be a part of the intervention. I got to see the coaches at work and I got to play during the activity. We played a game called Numbers, which for those of you that worked at camp, it is exactly the same numbers game we play there. First you are supposed to just run around in the circle and then the coach calls out a number and you have to get in a group equaling that number as quickly as you can. If you don’t get into a group or you are too slow, then you have to do squats (or in camp version, you are out). So I would run amongst the kids and when Coach K yelled out a number 15 kids would attack me and I would have to pick them off one-by-one to get us to the right number. It was really sweet and fun to actually be able to participate with them. Also yesterday when I was driving some people around Galeshewe (pronounced “Hal-i-she-way”), the township, we drove by this group of guys and most of the time I just assume we are attracting attention because of the strange white-black mix, but then all of a sudden we heard one of them call a “kilo!” It was AWESOME! It is so cool to be recognized by our yellow shirts for what we are doing. At least we are being remembered, which is a start. Ideally we hope they remember the key messages as well. Again today I heard someone when we drove by yell out SKILLZ! Oh, cool side note, I got a sick Nike jacket in black that says in big block letters “SKILLZ.” Love it!
Gotta Love the African Adventures
I know you all wish you were as cool as me. I just can’t help it. Signing up for these crazy excursions, it’s just my specialty. I saw a real giraffe. Actually two; a señorita and a señor. We think she was pregnant (or as they say here, she had a bun in the oven), but he was not the father. This weekend Albert and I went on an African adventure to the Mokala National Park, our very first game drive. It was an African adventure for sure, not because of the actual game drive or the animals, but because of the process of getting there and leaving. Side note: Mokala National Park is one of the easiest national parks to access. Based on our experience, I would say that I will not be attending any other parks unless I can get my small plane over here.
We bumped and hopped along 16 km of a questionable dirt road, just praying that our car wouldn’t fall apart around us. When we got all the way down the road we came to a sign that read Mokala National Park at Lilydale. We found out 6 km beyond that sign that Lilydale is more of the relaxing retreat for couples than the actual national park where you can see the animals. So we proceeded to drive another 16 km back down the road followed by 20 on the highway and 21 more on another horrible dirt road where we strategically dodged bumps and potholes at 30 km/h. We thought it was all well worth it when we were relaxing in the huge Land Rover on the game drive looking at awesome animals, but the return trip made us slightly unsure of it’s worth. Bronson, our lovely guide, told us that it would be better if we drove on the dirt roads at 60-80 km/h and we thought about it and decided we would give it a try, well-knowing it was probably not the best of our ideas. Halfway down the road, we were cruising and thinking that this was working out quite nicely when I felt like something was wrong, either we caught something and we were dragging it or the bottom of the car fell off. Luckily or unluckily, it was neither, we had a flat tire. Stupid rocks! With even more luck, we found a spare and a jack in our trunk and we were able to change it. No worries, I have pictures to document this process. This was my second flat tire ever and the first time that I had to deal with it myself instead of calling AAA or Braman Assistance. Oh, South Africa, oh, spoiled Kristin in the United States. From there on we resumed a 20 km/h speed and I kept an eye out for all the rocks in the road and instructed Albert in dodging them (Side note: the whole road was rocks).
On a positive note, the game drive was pretty spectacular. Unaware of the fact that we should have arrived their early in the morning, we were told we could go out, but our chances of seeing anything in the middle of the day were slim to none. However, as you should have gathered above, we got a chance to see some pretty cool animals. For the equivalent of $10, Albert and I had our own private game drive tour with our guide Bronson. First we saw a small Steenbok, which is the smallest of the antelope family and also interestingly a monogamist, which means (in case you were unaware) that it mates with one partner for its entire life! We saw some African buffalo and they were just old cranky men (that’s how Bronson described them). We also saw some wildebeest, which are apparently dumb and some warthogs. When we saw the warthogs, Bronson pointed and said, “Pumba!” and they really were the real live version of Pumba. We saw a ton of different antelope: the kudu (which I ate once in Cape Town), Impala, Mountain Reedbuck, Oryx, Springbok, and Red hartebeest. We also saw a zebra from super far away, so far I’m not sure we can count it and some white rhino poop. We never got to see the rhino, just big piles of poo. The highlight of the entire drive was when the Land Rover basically climbed right up the side of the mountain. We had no idea it was even part of the road and we just climbed right up it like it was nothing.
Albert and I would really like to add some color and excitement to our apartment, so we are hoping that you all would be so kind as to send us a postcard! I think we need about 40 to fill the tiles in the kitchen, so get on it!
We bumped and hopped along 16 km of a questionable dirt road, just praying that our car wouldn’t fall apart around us. When we got all the way down the road we came to a sign that read Mokala National Park at Lilydale. We found out 6 km beyond that sign that Lilydale is more of the relaxing retreat for couples than the actual national park where you can see the animals. So we proceeded to drive another 16 km back down the road followed by 20 on the highway and 21 more on another horrible dirt road where we strategically dodged bumps and potholes at 30 km/h. We thought it was all well worth it when we were relaxing in the huge Land Rover on the game drive looking at awesome animals, but the return trip made us slightly unsure of it’s worth. Bronson, our lovely guide, told us that it would be better if we drove on the dirt roads at 60-80 km/h and we thought about it and decided we would give it a try, well-knowing it was probably not the best of our ideas. Halfway down the road, we were cruising and thinking that this was working out quite nicely when I felt like something was wrong, either we caught something and we were dragging it or the bottom of the car fell off. Luckily or unluckily, it was neither, we had a flat tire. Stupid rocks! With even more luck, we found a spare and a jack in our trunk and we were able to change it. No worries, I have pictures to document this process. This was my second flat tire ever and the first time that I had to deal with it myself instead of calling AAA or Braman Assistance. Oh, South Africa, oh, spoiled Kristin in the United States. From there on we resumed a 20 km/h speed and I kept an eye out for all the rocks in the road and instructed Albert in dodging them (Side note: the whole road was rocks).
On a positive note, the game drive was pretty spectacular. Unaware of the fact that we should have arrived their early in the morning, we were told we could go out, but our chances of seeing anything in the middle of the day were slim to none. However, as you should have gathered above, we got a chance to see some pretty cool animals. For the equivalent of $10, Albert and I had our own private game drive tour with our guide Bronson. First we saw a small Steenbok, which is the smallest of the antelope family and also interestingly a monogamist, which means (in case you were unaware) that it mates with one partner for its entire life! We saw some African buffalo and they were just old cranky men (that’s how Bronson described them). We also saw some wildebeest, which are apparently dumb and some warthogs. When we saw the warthogs, Bronson pointed and said, “Pumba!” and they really were the real live version of Pumba. We saw a ton of different antelope: the kudu (which I ate once in Cape Town), Impala, Mountain Reedbuck, Oryx, Springbok, and Red hartebeest. We also saw a zebra from super far away, so far I’m not sure we can count it and some white rhino poop. We never got to see the rhino, just big piles of poo. The highlight of the entire drive was when the Land Rover basically climbed right up the side of the mountain. We had no idea it was even part of the road and we just climbed right up it like it was nothing.
Albert and I would really like to add some color and excitement to our apartment, so we are hoping that you all would be so kind as to send us a postcard! I think we need about 40 to fill the tiles in the kitchen, so get on it!
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Just Another Day at the Office
Hmm, office life. I clean off our desks every day and somehow there are 15 more papers on the desk five minutes later. The culprit: Mandla or Thuso. They won’t admit it, but they come out into our area and leave their papers everywhere and then I have to return them to their desks. Mandla just made of point of grabbing my attention, crumpling up paper and throwing it into the trash. He missed the first time, second time success. I yell at him everyday for the papers after he yells are me for the desk being messy looking. It is the never-ending cycle. I am in charge of organization in the office, surprise surprise, especially of the equipment room, where we keep balls, nike gear, pennies, vuvuzelas, small South African flags, goals, and signage. Like the magically appearing papers, the Nike shoes magically disappear on occasion and I have to keep changing the inventory list I made. Then I have to call Mandla and scold him for taking the shoes without marking which ones. Thank goodness I set up Thuso’s office in the back yesterday while he was out because now his personal items don’t show up on our desks…unwanted. Haha, we shut him off in the back of the office by himself, I wonder if he gets lonely. Just kidding, he is all of 5 feet from Albert’s desk back by the kitchen, where you know I spend most of my time. I wish we could put Mandla back there because he is always walking around talking loudly on the phone. Yesterday he took a solicitation call and put it on speaker and actually talked to the guy. Who does that! These guys are crazy. Mandla also sings to Thuso all the time because Thuso’s surname (last name) is Jones, so when he wants Thuso he sings the Mr. Jones song, but replaces Mr. with Thuso.
Albert and I are experiencing a lot of free time (i.e. the blogs are being written) because of this strike and slow-moving additional initiatives. We will probably be bombarded tomorrow when they decide we are going to run a SKILLZ holiday next week. Awesome. That’s how it works; they give us as minimal amount of time to get a task done as possible. Gotta love it. So we are currently writing blogs, letters, and postcards, while trying to figure out how we are going to get to the music festivals in Cape Town and Malawi in October. Mandla just asked us what we are doing this weekend and tonight and we told him we are thinking of going to the Mokala National Park outside of Kim and we invited him again for “teambuilding,” but he declined even though he has never been there. Mandla thinks he is too important for us, we keep inviting him on our weekend excursions, but he seems to always be out of town. Questionable. Everything we do together I refer to as “teambuilding” and Mandla and Thuso just laugh at me when I am like we should all go to the gym together for teambuilding, we should all go to the “Big Hole” for teambuilding. I also think we should steal the unwanted office supplies from the DeBeer’s office and call it teambuilding. What, Albert and I really need a table for our house. Mandla is a little nervous about what the headline in the DFA (the local newspaper) would be. “Grassroot Soccer Interns Making Their Presence Known in Kim” or “American Interns Stealing Desks from the Diamond Company.” Alright, alright, I know those are so not creative headlines, that is why I do not work for a newspaper.
My favorite part of this office is that we all have rolly chairs, and so when I have to go from office to office, or to the equipment room, I don’t even have to stand up! I just rolled into Mandla’s office for a meeting then back out again. Then I did get up to go to kitchen. Lunchtime around here consists of Albert and I eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at our desks. Sometimes we walk down the street to The Sandwich Shop (creative name) when we are tired of the same old same old. We also have a drawer full of snack food right next to my desk for our constant snacking throughout the day. Good thing we go to the gym every afternoon. We could just go on Mandla’s diet; I don’t think I have ever seen him eat, he just works all the time. He is the definition workaholic. He is here at 8 a.m. everyday and stays until at least 7 p.m. sometimes later. Thuso is on the cigarette and coffee diet, but again I haven’t seen him eat anything of substance outside his bowl of cereal in the morning and sometimes a meat pie. Today Albert made cookies for the coaches’ meeting and when we got here we found out the meeting was moved to tomorrow. What to do with the cookies…they are already gone. Whoops. Good news, I just set up a teambuilding lunch at the bar-ba-que place tomorrow, so maybe I will actually see Mandla eat.
On a different note, I just created work for myself, so I should probably go work on that for a while. I decided it would be a good idea to create a timeline and task list for the upcoming HCT in Kim. It will either be on the 11 September 2010 (if we partner with the Department of Health) or 18 September 2010. Oh, and look out for my intern profile on the GRS website, I have submitted it to CT (Cape Town) so hopefully they will have those up soon.
Albert and I are experiencing a lot of free time (i.e. the blogs are being written) because of this strike and slow-moving additional initiatives. We will probably be bombarded tomorrow when they decide we are going to run a SKILLZ holiday next week. Awesome. That’s how it works; they give us as minimal amount of time to get a task done as possible. Gotta love it. So we are currently writing blogs, letters, and postcards, while trying to figure out how we are going to get to the music festivals in Cape Town and Malawi in October. Mandla just asked us what we are doing this weekend and tonight and we told him we are thinking of going to the Mokala National Park outside of Kim and we invited him again for “teambuilding,” but he declined even though he has never been there. Mandla thinks he is too important for us, we keep inviting him on our weekend excursions, but he seems to always be out of town. Questionable. Everything we do together I refer to as “teambuilding” and Mandla and Thuso just laugh at me when I am like we should all go to the gym together for teambuilding, we should all go to the “Big Hole” for teambuilding. I also think we should steal the unwanted office supplies from the DeBeer’s office and call it teambuilding. What, Albert and I really need a table for our house. Mandla is a little nervous about what the headline in the DFA (the local newspaper) would be. “Grassroot Soccer Interns Making Their Presence Known in Kim” or “American Interns Stealing Desks from the Diamond Company.” Alright, alright, I know those are so not creative headlines, that is why I do not work for a newspaper.
My favorite part of this office is that we all have rolly chairs, and so when I have to go from office to office, or to the equipment room, I don’t even have to stand up! I just rolled into Mandla’s office for a meeting then back out again. Then I did get up to go to kitchen. Lunchtime around here consists of Albert and I eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at our desks. Sometimes we walk down the street to The Sandwich Shop (creative name) when we are tired of the same old same old. We also have a drawer full of snack food right next to my desk for our constant snacking throughout the day. Good thing we go to the gym every afternoon. We could just go on Mandla’s diet; I don’t think I have ever seen him eat, he just works all the time. He is the definition workaholic. He is here at 8 a.m. everyday and stays until at least 7 p.m. sometimes later. Thuso is on the cigarette and coffee diet, but again I haven’t seen him eat anything of substance outside his bowl of cereal in the morning and sometimes a meat pie. Today Albert made cookies for the coaches’ meeting and when we got here we found out the meeting was moved to tomorrow. What to do with the cookies…they are already gone. Whoops. Good news, I just set up a teambuilding lunch at the bar-ba-que place tomorrow, so maybe I will actually see Mandla eat.
On a different note, I just created work for myself, so I should probably go work on that for a while. I decided it would be a good idea to create a timeline and task list for the upcoming HCT in Kim. It will either be on the 11 September 2010 (if we partner with the Department of Health) or 18 September 2010. Oh, and look out for my intern profile on the GRS website, I have submitted it to CT (Cape Town) so hopefully they will have those up soon.
Adjustment Complete
Woohoo, I have finally adjusted to life over here. It is crazy how it just takes some time to let go of what I was doing and begin to settle into a much calmer lifestyle here in Kimberley. I have joined the gym, become a regular at the movie rental store, and gotten to know the city. Monday night is Movie Mania Monday and at one of the movie theaters in town you can go to any showing at any time for FREE! We are guessing that Monday is a slower day at the theater and they are still showing the movies, so they have a special promotion. I am going to be watching a lot of movies, hopefully reading a lot of books and maybe even writing some. Shoot, I still need to find an Internet café so we can upload pictures and download music and a place to do my laundry. Oh, the biggest news of the day is that I CAN DRIVE. I drove last night and this morning without stalling on my trips or without turning onto the wrong side of the road.
More fun from Kim. I was on the radio. Yep, the radio. Thuso set up an appointment for us to go meet this radio DJ named Malik. Crazy dude. We walked in and chatted for a while during a song, then next thing we knew we were being interviewed on AIR. He basically introduced us as this year’s GRS interns and asked us about 15 minutes of questions on air about how our time is going, what we are here to do, and some comparison questions about here and the U.S. After the show we spent about another hour and a half just getting to know him and forming our relationship with him. This way we can call him whenever we have an event coming up and be on the show to talk about it. We also might collaborate and just do AIDS informational session with kids and coaches. Malik spent about 5 years in New York studying some music and theater. He sleeps for about three hours a night because he has 3 jobs, one of which starts at 5:30 a.m. and the other that ends around 12 midnight and more energy than most people I have ever come across. He is super smart and has a bundle of random information tucked away in that brain; I cannot even explain to you the plethora of topics of conversation we hit in a couple of hours with him. He is super passionate about music, makes his own house mixes, and had an 650 gigabyte external hard drive that is full…just with music. I have never seen such a big music library in my life. Albert and I are hoping to get our hands on some of that music sometime soon. He is also very creative so we are really looking forward to working with him in the future. We will hopefully be able to help him on some of his ventures and maybe he will help us out with World AIDS Day coming up 1 December 2010! I’ve already got some ideas flowing for it, so we will see what Mandla and Thuso and the rest of GRS have got up their sleeves.
Something I realized today is that in South Africa people are all about the face-to-face contact and forming relationships, as opposed to the American way of just getting it done. For example meeting with Malik, after our meeting was over, we just hung out until we exhausted our conversational topics and it was time to move on. You just got to go with it. Today we went and met with Lucky, who works with Isibindi, which is an organization that provides a refuge for homeless people and abused people, especially children. I believe there are five sites around Kim and each one has a “safe park” which is a playground for children to go and hang out and seek the help that they need. Really a very cool idea. They are actually located in the townships too for easy access. So because of the strike we decided that we might try to put on a SKILLZ Holiday camp next week partnering with them, since kids are not in school or doing anything. We would run a two-hour program everyday and therefore would be able to complete an entire intervention is just a week. We really need this because our numbers are so low right now with the strike and FY 10 is approaching fast, 1 October 2010. So instead of calling them to set this up, we drove out to their headquarters for a 15 minute meeting to go over what we wanted to do, only for Lucky to tell us that he will have to talk to the head and see what she says. Though it ended positive in that they liked the idea, we are just trying to wait to see what’s going on with the strike. The whole meeting was just interesting because I know if we were in the States we would have just called, so I guess it makes working around here unique. It is actually sort of refreshing.
More fun from Kim. I was on the radio. Yep, the radio. Thuso set up an appointment for us to go meet this radio DJ named Malik. Crazy dude. We walked in and chatted for a while during a song, then next thing we knew we were being interviewed on AIR. He basically introduced us as this year’s GRS interns and asked us about 15 minutes of questions on air about how our time is going, what we are here to do, and some comparison questions about here and the U.S. After the show we spent about another hour and a half just getting to know him and forming our relationship with him. This way we can call him whenever we have an event coming up and be on the show to talk about it. We also might collaborate and just do AIDS informational session with kids and coaches. Malik spent about 5 years in New York studying some music and theater. He sleeps for about three hours a night because he has 3 jobs, one of which starts at 5:30 a.m. and the other that ends around 12 midnight and more energy than most people I have ever come across. He is super smart and has a bundle of random information tucked away in that brain; I cannot even explain to you the plethora of topics of conversation we hit in a couple of hours with him. He is super passionate about music, makes his own house mixes, and had an 650 gigabyte external hard drive that is full…just with music. I have never seen such a big music library in my life. Albert and I are hoping to get our hands on some of that music sometime soon. He is also very creative so we are really looking forward to working with him in the future. We will hopefully be able to help him on some of his ventures and maybe he will help us out with World AIDS Day coming up 1 December 2010! I’ve already got some ideas flowing for it, so we will see what Mandla and Thuso and the rest of GRS have got up their sleeves.
Something I realized today is that in South Africa people are all about the face-to-face contact and forming relationships, as opposed to the American way of just getting it done. For example meeting with Malik, after our meeting was over, we just hung out until we exhausted our conversational topics and it was time to move on. You just got to go with it. Today we went and met with Lucky, who works with Isibindi, which is an organization that provides a refuge for homeless people and abused people, especially children. I believe there are five sites around Kim and each one has a “safe park” which is a playground for children to go and hang out and seek the help that they need. Really a very cool idea. They are actually located in the townships too for easy access. So because of the strike we decided that we might try to put on a SKILLZ Holiday camp next week partnering with them, since kids are not in school or doing anything. We would run a two-hour program everyday and therefore would be able to complete an entire intervention is just a week. We really need this because our numbers are so low right now with the strike and FY 10 is approaching fast, 1 October 2010. So instead of calling them to set this up, we drove out to their headquarters for a 15 minute meeting to go over what we wanted to do, only for Lucky to tell us that he will have to talk to the head and see what she says. Though it ended positive in that they liked the idea, we are just trying to wait to see what’s going on with the strike. The whole meeting was just interesting because I know if we were in the States we would have just called, so I guess it makes working around here unique. It is actually sort of refreshing.
You Knew I Would
All right, now it is time for you to start getting jealous. This Sunday, wait for it…I played with lion and cheetah cubs! It was leGEn…wait for it…DaRY! Mom, I know you sent me an email saying that I couldn’t do it, so I made sure it was the first thing I did. At least I didn’t adopt any, or did I? Albert and I went to the Cheetah Experience in Bloemfontein to get up close and personal with some crazy wild cats. It is a non-profit organization primarily concerned with education. It was started by Riana, who bought her first cheetah in 2006 and lived with it in a townhouse for a few years before she started at the current site. She started the organization to ensure the long-term survival of the cheetah and its ecosystem and it grew from there. We met Riana when we were in the cage with the white lion cub. Did you know that cheetahs are predicted to be extinct in the wild in the next 10 years? I didn’t realize it was so soon for such an interesting animal.
We had a private tour of the grounds with Adeline, a volunteer from Singapore that is moving to Providence, RI in two weeks. Small world and everyday getting smaller. First we looked at the bigger cats from a distance, i.e. in cages because they could probably kill us in one pounce. We saw some Bengal tiger cubs (3 months old) and while they were the same size as the lion cubs, they were already too strong for us to get in the cage and play with. The Bengal tigers will be 800 pounds when they are fully grown! CRAZY, but they were very interested in us and very cute…We also looked at some Jaguars, which are sooooooo cooooool. Super intense though, again I was all right just looking at them from outside the cage. I had really wanted to see one when I was backpacking Chiapas in Mexico, but after seeing these ones in the cage, I am sosososo glad I never came face-to-face with one in the wild. We also looked at some almost fully grown lions before moving over too see all the baby versions.
We spent sometime out in the field with cheetahs and while we could go up to the cheetahs, we also had to keep an eye out to make sure none of them snuck up us when we weren’t paying attention. The two younger cheetahs just really liked to play and they would do like Lenny or other house cats and grab on to your ankle and start trying to bite your feet. While they definitely got me around the ankles, I made it out unscathed. Not exactly the same experience as when Lenny bites me. The older ones were like older cats in that they just sleep all the time and do not want to be bothered. Also while we were there we played with 2 brown lion cubs that were only 2 months old and adorable. See my Facebook profile picture. It was strange because when they are babies they don’t growl, they make weird alien calls; it is the weirdest sound when you expect them to make these deep scary growl noises. Additionally we met and played with some caracals or big house cats with grande ears.
After our first African adventure in the wild, we embarked on African adventure numero dos: Urban style. You wouldn’t believe what a project it has been to try to get our Internet up and running. Good news, its up and running on Albert’s computer at this point, which is enough to keep us somewhat connected. We learned this Sunday that everything, I mean everything closes at 2 p.m. Why so early? I have yet to find out, why would you be closed when people are free to run errands and have time away from work? I guess it is family time or something, who knows! So we ran around Bloem from internet place to Vodacom place, from mall to mall trying to find someone to help us set our internet up and after 3 hours of running around and bothering a man in a Vodacom store that was closed, we left Bloem with a phone number. So not a complete failure because we came away with someone’s names and number, but a failure in that we still didn’t have Internet. Oh gotta love Africa. Mark, our own personal IT technician, has now become our best friend here in Kim because we see him everyday as he troubleshoots his way through this Internet situation. Mine is still yet to be set up, iBurst and iMacs are not becoming friends. Long application process maybe. Hopefully soon.
We had a private tour of the grounds with Adeline, a volunteer from Singapore that is moving to Providence, RI in two weeks. Small world and everyday getting smaller. First we looked at the bigger cats from a distance, i.e. in cages because they could probably kill us in one pounce. We saw some Bengal tiger cubs (3 months old) and while they were the same size as the lion cubs, they were already too strong for us to get in the cage and play with. The Bengal tigers will be 800 pounds when they are fully grown! CRAZY, but they were very interested in us and very cute…We also looked at some Jaguars, which are sooooooo cooooool. Super intense though, again I was all right just looking at them from outside the cage. I had really wanted to see one when I was backpacking Chiapas in Mexico, but after seeing these ones in the cage, I am sosososo glad I never came face-to-face with one in the wild. We also looked at some almost fully grown lions before moving over too see all the baby versions.
We spent sometime out in the field with cheetahs and while we could go up to the cheetahs, we also had to keep an eye out to make sure none of them snuck up us when we weren’t paying attention. The two younger cheetahs just really liked to play and they would do like Lenny or other house cats and grab on to your ankle and start trying to bite your feet. While they definitely got me around the ankles, I made it out unscathed. Not exactly the same experience as when Lenny bites me. The older ones were like older cats in that they just sleep all the time and do not want to be bothered. Also while we were there we played with 2 brown lion cubs that were only 2 months old and adorable. See my Facebook profile picture. It was strange because when they are babies they don’t growl, they make weird alien calls; it is the weirdest sound when you expect them to make these deep scary growl noises. Additionally we met and played with some caracals or big house cats with grande ears.
After our first African adventure in the wild, we embarked on African adventure numero dos: Urban style. You wouldn’t believe what a project it has been to try to get our Internet up and running. Good news, its up and running on Albert’s computer at this point, which is enough to keep us somewhat connected. We learned this Sunday that everything, I mean everything closes at 2 p.m. Why so early? I have yet to find out, why would you be closed when people are free to run errands and have time away from work? I guess it is family time or something, who knows! So we ran around Bloem from internet place to Vodacom place, from mall to mall trying to find someone to help us set our internet up and after 3 hours of running around and bothering a man in a Vodacom store that was closed, we left Bloem with a phone number. So not a complete failure because we came away with someone’s names and number, but a failure in that we still didn’t have Internet. Oh gotta love Africa. Mark, our own personal IT technician, has now become our best friend here in Kim because we see him everyday as he troubleshoots his way through this Internet situation. Mine is still yet to be set up, iBurst and iMacs are not becoming friends. Long application process maybe. Hopefully soon.
I Wish I Could Dance
I wish I could dance like all these crazy people over here. I am so super jealous of the African’s natural ability to just move. Any movement can become a dance to any song, beat, or even conversation. Dance is more of a way of life here. People sing and dance for every occasion: to exclaim joy, to deal with pain and sorrow, and just get through everyday chores. It seems like such a healthy way to live life; I have read before that dancing is one of those things that can add years on to your life and I also know that I am happiest when I am dancing. So, I would suggest putting on those dancing shoes and getting a move on.
At the HCT we had a sound system and Glad was working as the DJ for the day, so there was just constant music, which means constant dancing. Even the 2-3 year olds has some seriously sick moves of which I found myself extremely jealous. I guess kids are born and breed to be amazing dancers in this country. I would love to see So You Think You Can Dance South Africa; now that would be a crazy competition. Azania, Thembi, and Jippli (Kim coach) spent a lot of the day teaching us some dancing moves and then laughing at us. We have to just go with it and deal with them making fun of us if we are going to learn anything and become better dancers. We definitely got some great dance circles going that we ended up having to stop because it was taking the attention away from the soccer. Overall I have a lot to learn on the African dancing front. Ah, so much to do, so much to learn, and so little time.
At the HCT we had a sound system and Glad was working as the DJ for the day, so there was just constant music, which means constant dancing. Even the 2-3 year olds has some seriously sick moves of which I found myself extremely jealous. I guess kids are born and breed to be amazing dancers in this country. I would love to see So You Think You Can Dance South Africa; now that would be a crazy competition. Azania, Thembi, and Jippli (Kim coach) spent a lot of the day teaching us some dancing moves and then laughing at us. We have to just go with it and deal with them making fun of us if we are going to learn anything and become better dancers. We definitely got some great dance circles going that we ended up having to stop because it was taking the attention away from the soccer. Overall I have a lot to learn on the African dancing front. Ah, so much to do, so much to learn, and so little time.
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