Trevor's Photo Journal

In the early afternoons all week my mom and I have been going to a school to help paint a world map on the wall.  World maps are a common Peace Corps project, but since my main post is at a teacher training center instead of a school I hadn't gotten around to doing one.  I figured it would give my mom something to do for the week she spent at my site.  My mom and I actually haven't painted more than 10 square centimeters, but it's actually more work trying to explain how to do it to the learners.  Here were putting up a string grid so that the country outlines can be drawn in.  We got most of the northern hemisphere outlined today - through things would have gone much faster if the EU was one large country, all those countries in Europe are just horrible to outline.

My mom and the Baba (grandpa) from my first host families house outside of Pick'n Pay. He doesn't actually stay in the house I lived in but comes over each morning and evening for a cup of tea. My mom and I had stopped by my old host families house a few times but he was never there. It was quite fortunate we randomly bumped into each other at the entrance to a grocery store.

50kg (110lbs) bags of maize meal (finely ground corn) sitting outside a schools office. If each day you need to feed over 500 learners its important to 1) buy in bulk and 2) buy easy to cook food. Most of the mealy in South Africa is fortified with extra vitamins just like municipalities will put fluoride in the water back home - mealy is literally as important to the South African diet as water.

This mother hen and her chicks have been visiting my yard every morning for the last few days. This is a great picture of them in formation. They travel as one flowing unit with the chicks constantly circling the mother. It's like watching a fleet of semi-autonomous networked robots in action around a central mother ship. They cover each square centimeter of the years quite throughly and then move on with each chick fending for it's self but moving with the group.

We went kloofing outside Sabie today and my mom's a trooper! Kloof means canyon in Afrikaans, but scrambling over boulders and down waterfalls needs an action word so they verbafied it. We spent about 3 hours kloofing through the canyons and ended up here at Mac Mac Falls. It was a wonderful afternoon and something I'd been meaning to do for a long time.

Yes you can jump in flip flops, thought the landing is a bit hard. This is outside the Paul Krugar Gate into Krugar National Park. We spent about 6 hours in the park today and managed to see almost everything except a rino. Just 2min past the park gate we saw a leapord relaxing in a tree.

One of the nice things about not having to relay on public transport is that you can go anywhere you want and stop anywhere you want.  I've passed the spaceship looking Bergendal War Memorial every time I've gone from Nelpruit to Pretoria on the N4, and even though its right on the road I've always zoomed right by packed in the back of a public taxi; so even though it was drizzling my mom and I stopped to look around.  Basically looks like the Wikipedia picture, but at least now I've stopped there.

My mom arrived today! By now I know how to get to the Jo'burg airport on public taxi so picking her up was easy; though waiting at the gate was one of the longest hour I've had in the last 29 months.

The many methods of going from Pretoria to OR Tambo airport in Jo'burg illistrate how there are still many economies operating in South Africa. Airport shuttle services that take you from the guest houses, hotels, and hostels in Pretoria to the airport run at R350 (~$50). While I walked three blocks from the backpackers and took a R9, a R15, and a R6 public taxi to get dropped off right outside the arrivals gate. The public taxis aren't a system that many people outside of black South Africa take, but by now I'm so comfortable taking them that not only does the R320 savings seems completely ridiculous but I enjoyed the ride much more since I had some amazing conversations with three different people going from Pretoria to Jo'burg for different reasons - people I'll never meet again, but interesting amazing people none the less.

My mom's plan was delayed about 30 min so I had ample time to wait outside the gate for international arrivals - it has to be one of the happiest places in the world. Not a single person doesn't smile as they regonize a loved one walking through the doors or someone waiting for them on the other side.

Remember the post about the free wood blocks Sappi drops off in the township? Well, here's a school putting them to good use cooking vegetables and porridge for over 500 learners.  For the most part township and rural South African cuisine is cooked on a stove top because 30 years ago an open fire would have been used.  South African cooking remarkably scalable: cooking for one, use a few small pots; cooking for hundreds use several very very big pots. This is quite convinent not only for schools where three women can prepare a meal for so many learners but large social gatherings such as weddings or funerals where hundreds of people will show up and all leave well feed - a very large American Thanksgiving dinner happens every week in my township.

A small out of cycle video interlude. We took a break from work on Sunday and shot this short series of videos. It was fun to make and put together. Hope you enjoy.