The African Experience

Me at the ocean for the first time!!!!

 I have officially survived a week in Africa! It has been one of the most exciting weeks of my life. We have been around the city, to our workplaces and even went to a wedding this past weekend!

To start, our hosts's son Mongezi picked the three of us up at the airport and took us straight back to East London to meet his Mom, and our host Ghana. Driving through the city was remarkable. Ryan and Amelia kept comparing it to Canada, but I thought it was quite different! The city has lots of valleys and hills in it and palm trees everywhere. We headed to Ghana's church to say hello and make plans for dinner. Mongezi then took us to a grocery store so we could get a few snacks for the next few days. I ended up getting quite a few things in case there wasn't any vegan options at restaurants or breakfast.

We napped and settled in to our amazing bed and breakfast. You can see in another post the view from our rooftop, I posted a video. Here are a few other photos of our time there. For anyone wondering Mom and Dad you can always click on the pictures to make it bigger.

Clockwise from the top: my bed, the bathroom, the bathroom again, two views from our window, Amelia's bed and the hallway leading to our room.

Ghana and Mongezi picked us up at 7:30 pm to go out for dinner. I was starving! And so excited to eat. We ended up going to a seafood restaurant, but I found side orders or stir-fried vegetables and rice which was amazing. We chatted and got to know each other, it was an amazing first night in town.

Ryan, Amelia, Ghana and Myself at dinner the first night

The next few days was spent doing administrative things. We looked into getting cellphones, internet and accommodation. We actually had some trouble with all these things! Internet here is not nearly as easy to find as in Canada. There are the modem sticks which you can purchase, but everywhere proved to be out of stock. Cellphones were also a bit confusing, but I will finally be getting my phone tonight. Luckily there seems to be a plan here where you can have wi-fi unlimited on your phone for 60R a month (about $7.50 Canadian). I will be checking that out, hoping it is not too good to be true! We also checked out of our bed and breakfast into a new place we will be staying until we can find something more permanent. 

Me on the steps of our B&B on our last morning

We also were able to see some sites during the week. Mongezi took us to the beach and showed us around town. We are now quite familiar with grocery stores, the mall and local restaurants. Ghana took us to our work places to introduce us around and show us how to take these special taxis to work. Here, they have large vans which go specific routes that you can take places. Amelia and I both work down town, so we will be taking these taxis to and from work each day. I was very confused about them when I first heard them, but everyone is friendly and they are quite easy to ride in. I actually have taken one by myself now and loved the independence.

The view of the ocean from a place Mongezi took us to

The real highlight of my week was on Thursday. Amelia, Ryan and I were given the chance to attend a conference on the Millennium Development Goals. If you follow Ryan or Amelia's blogs you will already know a bit about these. The conference was designed to talk about issues that the South African government was looking to solve in 8 different areas. This meeting revolved around discussing measurement for the attainment in the goals. After an introduction to the program and a discussion of the timeline of meeting these goals we were broken into groups. 

Amelia and I joined the group talking about gender and education. We sat and listened to what everyone in the group had to offer and learned a lot about issues that were facing women in the Eastern Cape. We discussed transportation, as the girls in rural communities have extremely difficult times getting to and from school. We also learned about the difficulties young girls who become pregnant face in South Africa currently. It is extremely difficult to balance education and pregnancy, and we were told that some girls are simply forced to drop out of school.

On the patio of the hotel at the conference
Beautiful view!

I felt so lucky to be included in such an important conference. I feel that I learned quite a bit about current issues that are facing the country I am living in. It also gave me a much great understanding of the background of many issues that I am sure I will be discussing at work. 

A picture from the beach near the hotel, we looked around after the conference.  

For our first weekend we went to a wedding for Ghana's niece. The wedding was in Port Elizabeth, a town about 3 hours away. We rented a car and has the worst luck! We got TWO flat tires on the way there. 

The first flat tire

As I am useless with tire changing.... Amelia and I took photos
Canada for gold!!!!

By the time we got to the wedding the ceremony had just finished. We quickly changed and then joined everyone for cocktail hour and the reception. There was music and tons of dancing! We all had a great time. The food was delicious and the company was even better. My favourite part was definitely the bride's sister's speech. After a long night we headed back to where we were staying and hit the hay.

The wedding guests dancing!

The next day we explored Port Elizabeth's beach front and had an amazing time. It was such a fun city! I made a small collage of some of my favourite pictures from the day.

That is all for now! I will be posting more again this week.