home sweet home

I'm back kids! Back to finding out I have no house if I don't find 2 roommates in the next 2 weeks. Back with no money and no nursing job. Americans are overwhelming. I need to flood my senses. NYC anyone? I can't pay for it though, so we'll have to walk and not eat and sleep on the street.

I am glad to be back though. Back to good friends. Back to a gym. Back to a way to make money. Back to lattes.

I miss South Africa already. I miss speaking Zulu. I'm trying to still use it here. Yebo=Yes. Saubona umgani= Hello. How are you? Those will be easy to use. I miss how warm and loving everyone was. I miss the warm weather too.

Call me to hang out!!!

Sidekick rings, What's up? Holler. Text the address. I'll see you later.

I got back from Mozambique yesterday. It was quite a hectic place. The poverty was massive. I can't even begin to describe it. The desperation was even crazier. Vendors were ferocious. They followed you for blocks trying to sell you whatever they had- necklaces, batiks, tissues, kazoos, mix cd's, anything. It was hard to be compassionate about their situation when they were following you like the paparazzi on Britney Spears. Kids directly asked for your leftovers. My heart broke constantly.

I feel overwhelmed just thinking about the experience. It was insane.

We got 2 flat tires, one 2 hours into our trip. I changed them both. I had explosive vomiting, even through my nose, in 3 different countries on our trip up. Every day, our plan A turned into plan F, because of lack of information until it was too late or because of a lack of any road signs. We didn't find a real beach the entire week. Mozambique is supposed to be a beach country. There was an incredibly creepy guy at our hostel who was caught watching me sleep. Every day, we planned on checking out a new area and staying at a hostel there. Every night, we ended up back at Fatima's Backpackers. It felt like we were coming crawling back after a breakup. Oh baby give me one more chance! Won't you please let me back in your heart. Oh darling I was blind to let you go.

Driving here is fun, because you can do whatever you want. If you're behind a car going slower than you want to go, you cross the double line and pass them. Everyone is used to this system, so cars pull into the shoulder if they need to. I'm going to have to make a conscious effort not to do this when I'm driving back in the states.

I promise that I'm still alive

I haven't updated in a while. Oops. My internet that I'd been stealing at my flat has been down.

I have very little time left on this internet I've paid for, so here is a very brief update.

I went surfing this week. Turns out I'm a natural and I got up on my feet 9 times out of 10 by my second lesson. My instructor said that's really rare. Sweet dude.

I'm going to Mozambique and Swaziland starting tomorrow.

I'm done with clinicals! Nursing school is over!!!! Here's to 6 years of college.

I've been learning some Zulu and that's been a lot of fun.

I can't believe I only have 2 weeks left here. It's not long enough. With the whole swine flu in the states, I think I'll just stay here. :)

I see your Range Rover and I'll raise you a Nissan Micra

Today, Ellen, Lauren, and I were asked to be models for an advertisement. Too bad the shoot is this weekend and we'll be away. I could've been an American South African model. haha

I officially didn't get the job at Sinai. They started out with 2 possible new grad positions, but it was reduced to 1 and that spot was filled. Back to square 1. I'll deal with it when I get home though. It'll all work out, I'm sure.

This past weekend Ellen, Lauren, me, and our Duke (Duke sucks) med student friend, Channa, went to a game reserve in Hluhluwe (pronounced shlushlooway). We saw lots of great animals! Giraffes and Zebra are my favorite. We conquered the park on our own in our little Nissan Micra without paying $85 for a tour. I was very proud of us. It was so wonderful to get out of the city and be where we could see the stars.Every giraffe's spots are different, like fingerprints.

Hippos are the number one killer in Africa. I thought they were cute and cuddly.

I've been nicknamed Elli-phant. I'm a fat kid at heart.

This is an inyala. It's really pretty.

I carry you in my heart

Ellen and I went to Cato Crest with the University of Kwazulu-Natal nursing students today. Cato Crest is an "informal settlement," basically a shanty town. The government designates squatter areas as informal settlements and then builds a few "starter homes." These homes are one roomed cement structures with no electricity, but they do have running water. Who knows how clean that water is though. The homes are called starter homes, because the people who are given them are supposed to be able to build onto them, but with the land eroding all around them, the extremely tight space, and no money to build, this certainly doesn't happen. These one room homes hold often 10 people. This is a set up for rampant disease.
The people who did not qualify for a government starter home build shacks out of anything they can. They often use tin walls and roofs or ply wood scraps. Some roofs were patched with sheets of cloth held down by stones. These home were about 8x8 feet.
To qualify for a government house, the family had to have lived there before '94. Within that group, those with disabilities or those with children were given higher priority.
In order to get electricity, people here run the power lines into their homes illegally. This starts a lot of fires, but it may be their only option.
Children here just roamed. No one was watching after them. As soon as they could walk, they were on their own. This contributes to the problem with child raping. There's a myth that having sex with a virgin will cure HIV/AIDS, so young children are raped. The age of virgins is getting younger and younger, so younger children are being raped, some as young as 9 months old. Sickening.
The people here were so beautiful though. Inside and out. Seriously striking. The smiles of the children were so genuine. I fell in love with these people instantly. I wish I could have worked in one of the clinics that serves the different informal settlements. This is the Africa my heart longs to serve.

shame shame

Why do white people throughout history think they're better than other people??? I'm often so ashamed to be in this skin. It breaks my heart the things that have been done to these other cultures that I happen to love.

An Indian woman from the hospital has taken the girls and I under her wing. She took us to dinner last night and on a tour around her town. She told us about her days as an activist for the end of apartheid. She had to leave the country because of the ways the government was hurting her family. She showed us these terrible places where the government moved all the Indians so that they wouldn't be living in the same areas as the whites. The Indians weren't even allowed to drive through the white towns or they would be shot. There were large walls to keep the white towns from even seeing the others driving on the highways. At first, the Indians had been allowed to sell beer in the white areas and the blacks weren't allowed to. An influential man in the black community said the Indians were making all this money from it and instigated violence on the Indian communities.

This was all so recent and the feelings are still very strong here. We're told on a regular basis not to go to places because it's where the black people are. It's not that it's a high crime area, just that the black people are there. I'm so ashamed.

we swam in the Indian Ocean

and I didn't get sunburned.