First Few Days...

Hello Everyone!

I have made it to South Africa safe and sound after about 30 hours of travelling and not much sleeping. I had no real problems travelling, just a lot of sitting and waiting, and more sitting and more waiting.

I arrived on April 30th and got to Nkosi’s Haven at about 7am so I’ve been here for almost three days now. Since it’s been such a short time that everything is new and exciting but I’m going to try and give the highlights. As well, I don’t start work tomorrow (Tuesday) since today was a public holiday (Labour Day or Worker’s Day).

I think one of my favourite things so far is the kids, there are kids running around almost all the time and they are always happy to see you and give you a hug or a wave. There are I think about 100 kids ranging from infants to teens, 30 mothers/caregivers, and 4 volunteers living in Nkosi’s Haven currently (don’t quote me on the numbers) so someone is almost always around. There also several staff members that live off-site. Everyone has been very friendly and welcoming to me so far.

Yesterday I ventured to the mall with one of the other volunteers (who has been here for around a month) to buy some groceries and a cellphone. However, I couldn’t buy a cellphone because I needed ID and I hadn’t brought any. Walking around here on the roads is interesting, first of all because the cars drive on the left so it can be hard to remember which way to look, there is a lack of cross walks and drivers (or pedestrians) don’t necessarily pay attention to the rules of the road. Regardless, we got to the mall and back and only almost got hit once.

Today I went back to the mall with another volunteer who also needed a cell phone since his had broke. This time I did manage to get one but only after a lot of hassle. Cellphone stores in South Africa seem to require ID and proof of residency in the country to register a SIM card. This time we were armed with passports for ID but we were not aware of the proof of residency requirement.

After trying several stores with no luck, one clerk mentioned that we just needed a letter stating where we lived, at which point it was suggested that if we just went to the internet cafe and typed one ourselves that could be fine. At this point I remembered I had a letter with the address of Nkosi’s Haven in my email account in case I needed it for immigration.

After printing this letter we went to the store sure we had all we needed this time. Then the clerk was unable to make her computer accept my Canadian address and phone number or the South African address or phone number I gave. Many, many errors and retrys later we gave up and were discussing what else we could do when the lady who had been helping us said she would register the SIM card under her name and address for me!!! Shortly after we were on our way with a phone, which by the way cost me about $10. (The cheapest model but still, we are getting ripped off in Canada). I was so surprised and pleased that she offered to do that for me, thinking that would not happen in Canada, I will definitely be looking for a way to pay it forward.

After finally getting a phone (and several hours later than expected) we headed back by mini bus taxi. This was a small adventure all on its own. Joburg is lacking in a functional public transit system, taxis are relatively expensive and if you don’t want to walk, there is the mini bus taxi. I’ll try to post a picture later but they are basically 10-12 seat vans (though much skinnier than a van that would fit that many people in Canada) and at the mall they all sit in a huge part of the parking lot. To find out which one to take you go and ask one of the “managers” - guys standing in a bunch that know what’s going on - which one to take. Then once you get in the mini bus you pay the driver the fare which seems to be arbitrary and somewhat based on how far you are going.

The whole system is very ad hoc but I think the most amusing part is that the person who sits up beside the driver is supposed to figure out how many people are in the taxi and take the correct amount of fares based on that. Of course, we ended up in the front but we insisted that we did not want to make change so I just took the fares and handed them to the driver and he made change and then I handed back the change. Luckily we weren’t going far and I didn’t have this job for too long.

That’s been the main highlights so far, I hope you enjoy reading my blog and please feel free to comment, I’d love to get feedback!! Pictures to come!