My friend from home came to South Africa for only a couple of weeks but we managed to have an eventful trip and I enjoyed myself thoroughly and I am pretty sure he did as well. We traveled far and spent a couple of days on the road but I think it was worth it for my friend to see such different and beautiful parts of South Africa. And although I had seen almost every area we had traveled to, there were activities I had not done for my two years so I managed to have a fresh experience.

Here is the basic itinerary of our trip: Joburg => Sabie => Through Kruger into Mbabane in Swaziland (long day) => Back into South Africa to Coffee Bay (really long day) => Plettenberg Bay => Hermanus => Cape Town. When all was said and done we had put 4000 km on the rental car, ate like kings, and jumped off of many ledges of varying height.

I only uploaded the pictures from the first half of the trip but I will (eventually) get to the second half.

Kloofing

I have missed a couple off opportunities to kloof and would have been remiss if I didn't try my best to do it before I left. Thankfully, my friend was up for a bit of adventuring so we got in there despite the cold water. A "kloof" is a canyon in Afrikaans and basically you hike, climb, jump and swim along the river. It was incredibly fun.

A fellow from the backpacker guided us through and roughly split the kloofing into 4 different sections of which I can only remember 3 and the last part was the hike up the kloof back to the car. The first part was made up mostly of the smaller rocks and the gentle flow of water seen above. The second part which I did not include a representative picture of was characterized by much larger boulders that required some difficult maneuvering. There were frequent slips resulting in small cuts and bashed fingers, shins and tail bones. Minor injuries really make you feel alive, don't they?

The next time I go through High School this is going to be my senior picture and my quote will be "Don't go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to. I know that you're gonna have it your way or nothing at all but I think you're moving too fast."

While beautiful in its own right, this crevasse leads to a stunning water fall called Pixie Falls. I couldn't bring my camera because there was no way it would not have gotten water logged so just imagine water falling from top of the rocks to the water below.

We ended at Mac Mac falls which was a rewarding finish. We attempted to swim to where the falls was but there were too much resistance and our stamina was all but depleted. Later on at the beach, my friend and I agreed we would not go down the falls in a barrel.

Panorama Route

I should mention that many of these pictures if not most are not mine but my friend's. He bought a swanky new camera for the trip and it had a nice panorama function which came in especially handy for the Panorama route. This drive is along the Blyde River Canyon which I had not seen on my 2 previous visits to the area. After kloofing we headed out to see as much of it as we could before it started to rain. Our first stop was the Three Rondavals which are the three cone shaped peaks in the center of the picture. Well alright it is more like one cone (rondaval) and two domes but it's pretty close.

Next stop was the Bourke's Luck Potholes. The water has done funny things to these rocks which in turn makes the water split off into different streams, then gather into pools and then converge again at the bottom. It was fascinating to watch but we had a quick once over so we could see one more part of the route before the rain came.

Our last stop was at Lisbon Falls which was nice and large but it didn't move us as much as it might have if we hadn't been directly under Mac Mac falls earlier in the day. After this we raced out to see God's Window but the clouds and the rain rolled in so we didn't get much of a view.

Kruger

After two years I managed to go to just about every game park in South Africa except for Kruger. I had heard all the rationalizations for not going- it is too big to see anything, too expensive, too busy with people- but I figured I would give it a shot for my last adventure. We focused on the very southern part of the park since we were only driving through it for the day but it was probably the best game park experience I had in South Africa.

We spent all day in the park and saw many interesting animals but the day instantly was noteworthy after we saw this wild dog. We actually saw two wild dogs that appeared to have just been fighting each other and this one had a damaged leg. Too bad for the dog but it was nice and slow when it skittered off so we got a nice view.

I have seen elephants in many game parks and while I have become somewhat jaded, I really never tire of seeing them. It was a nice change of pace to be with someone seeing them for the first time because the joy is contagious. Anyhow we were in the right place and time for a large herd of elephants to cross the road. There were a couple elephants that bucked at the car to let us know that they didn't really like us being so close to them and it made me think what I was going to do when the elephants charged the car. I didn't come up with much more than to curl up into a ball and cry hard enough to make the elephants pity me.

All the rare and most interesting animal sighting were near the end of the day. We had to get out of the park but it is hard to pull yourself away from staring at rhinos in the middle of the road. Also the rhinos were quite expertly blocking our path and there was no way I was going to just drive past like they couldn't destroy the car without hesitation. We called the insurance company later to find out if we were covered in the event of rhino collision. We were covered if you are curious.

We saw a leopard! It was just walking in the middle of the road. It did not even seem to care that we were right in front of it and then following it as far as we could. It was probably groggy from waking up from a CAT NAP but a sleepy leopard sighting is still a leopard sighting. The giddiness in the car afterwards was at the level of school girl giddiness.

Swaziland

After Kruger we drove into Swaziland and stayed for the night. The next day we continued down towards the coast. I am sure there are things to do and see in Swaziland but we were really driving through because it was the most direct route to where we wanted to go. It also brought up my tally of Southern African countries I have been to.

It was a lovely drive. We managed to get lost because we were busy looking at the scenery and conversing but the people we asked for directions were kind and helpful so it all worked out.

Swazi merchant shack. It is pretty similar to a South African merchant shack but a trained eye can tell the difference.

Bungie

The Bloukrans bridge. The jump is 261 m. There are jagged rocks at the bottom to dash your brains out and demolish your bones if the rope happens to snap.

They somehow managed to get a pretty decent picture of my jump. This is deceiving because it looks like I am going to push out with my knees at this point and do a nice dive but in actuality I got the Fear at this point and my legs locked up and I just kind of dropped in that position.

My friend had a much more graceful dive off the bridge. They should use this picture for advertisement. I will accept payments on his behalf.

Again, they did an excellent job at taking the photos at the right time. They got me just at the point were my weighty head started to tip towards the ground so it looks like I managed to dive off.

All the adrenaline was dumped into our bloodstream and then our blood violently sloshed into our heads, how could we not be thrilled?

I didn't finish everything about Peace Corps, I didn't even come close. Luckily, Peace Corps taught me how to cope with failure and broken promises so I will be able to move on. Next time I am in the same location for a long period of time and with internet I will try again.

Tom is here now and we have started our trip. We stopped over in Sabie first and did a trio of activities. Our first one was tubing down the Sabie river. Unfortunately I have no pictures of the actual event because the guides warned that the camera would get destroyed and they were correct in saying so. We went down the largest rapids I have been in and it was a great deal of fun. I am in a bit of a rush because we have a long trip ahead of us now, hopefully I can get to the rest of it later!

Post tubing. The adrenaline and endorphins are allowing us to smile for the photo.

I found this watch near the beginning of Peace Corps in the ocean. The tubing killed it. Poseidon giveth and he taketh away.

This country has been good to me as far as vacations go. Being low on funds and a dirty backpacker didn't prevent me from seeing much of South Africa and many parts of the rest of Southern Africa too. I cannot say whether other Peace Corps volunteers in other countries have such rich opportunities to explore on a volunteer stipend but I am thankful that I was able to travel as much as I did. Having seen and done so much here has made me ashamed of how little I have traveled in my own country which I will have to start remedying when I get back. Highlights and ahem official trips:

Wild Coast (Coffee Bay)

Cape Town and more and more and more and more/ WHS: Robben Island / WHS: Cape Floral Kingdom

Blyde River Canyon / Fanie Botha Hike

World Cup

I never posted anything decent during World Cup. Here is a short one to make up for it.

That's my hooligan face. The face painting on the left cheek is of an American Bald Eagle flying with an English Palace Guard in its talons. If I were British I would describe it as cheeky. Incidentally, I got a chance to be an actual soccer hooligan, not my finest moment but I stand by my actions.

Top Five World Cup Moments

1. Winning in the final moments to beat Algeria. It was my Vuvuzela-ing that inspired Landon Donovan to score that goal. He told me so. Afterwards there were Americans and Algerians celebrating in the same areas without a skuffle. The Algerians I talked to were in good humor about everything and nice guys.

2. Traveling on a packed Khumbi to a watch a game in a fan park. Fervent nationalism is ok when it is put towards something innocuous like world sporting events. It was a lot of fun trying to sing songs we all knew (Most everyone was 3 sheets to the wind) which eventually got around to Bingo was his Name-o and other classics. I think all of the other soccer fans thought we had lost our minds.

3. Being in a taxi in downtown Pretoria during their win against France. Every radio and t.v. was tuned to the game and after each goal everything pretty much shut down for a 3 minute period to dance/blow vuvuzela/cheer. It was amazing.

4. Wallet returned to volunteer with everything from Taxi Rank. You could tell that most people were going out of their way to make sure everyone had a good time without problems. One of the more impressive stories was of a volunteer who left behind his wallet on a taxi which is usually a situation where you can kiss that wallet goodbye. But in this instance it was returned to the volunteer intact. The driver took the wallet out in an empty taxi to meet him 15 minutes away. Maybe that last part doesn't sound like much but it is quite remarkable based on normal taxi behavior.

5. Returning to my site and talking with people in the neighboring village. With wide grins, they welcomed me and asked if I was visiting for World Cup. For context it is important to remember that I lived in a village hundreds of kilometers form the nearest stadium and this was after I had already been at site for a year. These guys were a few beers deep but it was a nice change for people's default reaction to strangers to be hospitable and welcoming. World Cup often brought out the best in people.

This is a pretty accurate picture of what it was like being there: blurry!

Parent's Trip

This is another one that I failed to document at all. Here are some highlights featuring moments from: Kimberely / Mountain Zebra and Addo Elephant Parks / The Garden Route / West Coast

The Kimberly mine is the largest hand dug hole in the world. It is a bittersweet accomplishment because of course it was all for shiny gems and was essentially done with slave labor but it is still an amazing feat.

This was at at the Mountain Zebra National Park. I want to say this a Hartebeast so I will. It didn't have much of the Big 5 but the scenery was amazing and we saw many ungulates.

This is an impala which is a common sighting in game parks. Tour guides often say they are the McDonald's of the wild because they are "fast food". They also happen to have a white "M" on their butts. This is undeniable proof of Intelligent Design.

Addo Elephant Park. There was a hide you could sit in and watch elephant at this watering hole. It has be reaffirmed that they don't snort the water up their trunks for a drink. Well, they do but then they squirt it in to their mouths. This is directed at anybody learned in the ways of elephant ear, nose and throat passages, can they just snort it all they way through the trunk if they had to? This is important.

We spotted this elephant walking in the trees and followed it as it came out to the street. It then proceeded to walk right down the car path and walk straight at the tiny car behind us and just about crushed it. The lesson to be learned there is that elephants always have the right of way.

My parents and I went to the most Southern Point of Africa in Cape Agulhas. At that point is the official line separating the Indian and Pacific oceans. I bet it was really hard finding that line.

PENGUINS! They smell terrible but watching them waddle around is amusing.

This is actually from when my sister came to visit and we saw penguins but now is the time to talk about penguins so you must excuse the trip mixing. I have never been closer to stealing a penguin egg than at this moment. College did not prepare me for the decision. Ultimately I decided I wouldn't be able to properly raise a penguin in the desert so I left it be. I know, I made the wrong decision.

The greatest man I know. I will give you one guess what his name is and what his relation to me is.

Southern Right Wales playing. I was able to see a whale breech only once but it was incredible.

Post Office Tree in Mossel Bay. The Portuguese used it to post messages back and forth to each other on voyages. Who says post office history can't be fascinating?

The hike out to see these cave paintings (Pictographs) in Clanwilliam just about killed my parents. For our effort, I discovered that I draw slightly worse than these early human ancestors or relatives. Who says prehistoric human art can't be fascinating?

Augrabies Waterfall during the low season. There were pictures of the falls during floods and it is much more intense. They don't let people in during those times because they would probably die. Who says waterfalls in the Northwest Province of South Africa can't be fascinating? I'll stop that now.

There were hundreds of these brightly colored lizards at the falls. This one would have made a great companion for my pet penguin.

Namibia : Fish River Canyon (WHS: Richterveld- Ais Ai Transfronteir Park- I am just slipping this in here because technically I only went to Namibia side but I am counting that as my visit to the park because it was hard to get out there.) / Sossusvlei

And the Rest of Nambia in:

Lost Blogs Post Volume III: Nambia Part II - Episode 2 Dune King

That big white part in the middle of the picture puts the vlei in Sossusvlei. I am sure its creation is complicated but it was explained to me that the geography and wind make it so the it is a hot windless dead zone. In my experience this was true.

We raced out of the camp as early as we could to sit on the dunes and watch the sunrise. It was a moment to realize how lucky I was to be able to do what I was doing.

My name is Noah. I climbed a dune and I own a puffy blue coat.

We sort of leached onto another tour group and the guide was telling us that the trees in the vlie (salt flat) are 900 years old. Apparently there was also a Playboy photo shoot next to these trees. Yes I also posed next to the trees. I am saving that picture for my collection of pictures where I am standing like a oddball next to trees, I already have quite a few.

WHS: St. Lucia / ImFolozi-Hluluwe

When I was in St. Lucia I met a couple of French people who were going to the nearby game parks and they let me come along. It was especially fun because all their exclamations were as French as T.V. and movies have led me to believe. "Oooh lalalala, Magnifique!"

Road snake. The rarest of all pathway snakes.

Just once I'd like to see a rhino do something violent with that horn. Is that too much to ask?

Cape Buffulo from a distance. Still, it can still be seen that they are massive. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

If you think this is a giraffe then you are correct.

Would a cowboy look silly or even cooler riding on a zebra? I bet Marlboro has already done extensive research on this very question.

This warthog was right at the gate with many humans milling about (including me) and no one was particularly worried. I feel he is just acclimatizing us all until he springs his trap.

The only lion, or large cat, I have seen in a game park. I slightly got out of the car to take a better picture and the lion stood up and looked straight at me with those yellow eyes (my god he had yellow eyes). I don't know if I have ever been that immediately terrified before.

Baboons are pretty much everyone in South Africa and this was on the way back to St. Lucia. This one makes the cut because it is carrying a bouncing baboon baby boy (I don't know if it is a boy but "girl" ruins the alliteration, it's not bouncing either).

WHS: Drakensurg / Lesotho

I did in fact complete my WHS Quest and the rest of the sites are coming soon: WHS: Cradle of Humankind / WHS: Vredefort Dome/ WHS: Mapungubwe

I am off to a pretty bad start with the Blogothon. I have earned being called a "liar" and a"lazy goon" but please don't hurl these insults at me but once a day. I had a series of important Skype calls that enervated my blog focus. Today is it though, you wait and see. If there are any burning questions about Peace Corps, I think now is a pretty good time to ask but other times are good too.

The final line of Candide advises that "we must cultivate our garden." Your brain is probably telling you this is a metaphor and the true meaning requires effort on your part. Furthermore, the deep analysis skills required to properly decipher it would require an English degree or Philosophy degree or both. To the contrary, the message is simple- we should all start and maintain gardens (I did not do well in English classes). This was one of the things I was eager to do in South Africa. I had only intended to have a very small plot with a few vegetables and herbs to see if I could successfully keep plants. My last attempt was with a very nice bonsai tree I received for a present and then promptly neglected until it whithered away. It was shameful. With my project here, any fruit and vegetable would be incidental to the practice of tending to a garden. It turned out to be a much larger undertaking than I had planned and will probably be the only sustainable, or at least continued project, from my stay in my village. I am a little troubled to be leaving it behind because a lot of work went into it and I want to continue to see how it grows. I know it is in good hands though and will fair just fine without me. I asked my host family if I could use a small patch of land. Our notions on what a small patch of land differed. The area that we ended up staking out was about 200 m^2. This was all for the best anyway because the smallest fencing I could buy was 50 m (I was not keen on using barbed wire or acacia branches ). This was the most labor intensive part of the garden setup. Duties included measuring out the plots, tilling the soil and getting rid of the incredibly embedded grass and weeds and planting the first seeds. Clearing out the grass was the worst because ripping out the leaves and most of the roots is not good enough, you have to really get down there and get the whole root system and then don't make the mistake of leaving it out because it will just start growing again. You must dry it out in a big pile and then burn it for certainty sake. Calling the stuff zombie grass is appropriate. Also, all the work was done with shoddy tools. None of them were large enough for an adult human being and they have all broken and been repaired a couple times. The ensuing blisters made it so that I could have shaken hands with an actual farmer and he/she wouldn't have thought I wear cotton gloves all day and lotion them twice daily. Fooled them because I do!

These are little cucumber and pumpkin plants. That hole on the right belongs to the ant colony living nearby, we drowned them and the hole sunk in. I eventually had to resort to a borax ant trap that worked incredible well. I saw my dark side run amok when the ant massacre began.

Pretty little mealie (corn) plants all in a row. There is something incredible satisfying about plants growing in ordered lines. We have corn pretty well under our (green)thumbs. Just don't tell the rest of the grasses that we need them more than they need us, they might stop being so cooperative and delicious.

I have previously posted many of the other vegetables/fruits that was grown like melons and pumpkin, so I won't waste your time. Here is the remainder of the best looking produce from the first crop of the garden (green beans, cucumbers and watermelons). It is an incredible feeling of accomplishment to nurture something and see it grow successfully. I imagine it is similar to the feeling parents have for their children when they can walk around and have their own thoughts. I suppose the biggest difference is that parents don't eat the children in the end.

I never knew I wanted to eat a sweet potato the size of my own head but now I know that this is what I was put on the Earth to do. Now that my life's mission is complete though I am aimless. Maybe I should just keep eating larger and larger sweet potatoes?

At the end of winter things are looking pretty good. The weeds and ants have been vanquished and the JoJo (green cylinder) at the far end ensures that water will be around for a few days when the water tap gets shut off. Looking onwards, seeds are easy to come by and if there is one thing my village has copious amounts of it is fertilizer (animal poop). The only problem lately has been that the cows try their best to get the water out of the tank and recently broke the tap and water gushed out everywhere. The tank is going to have to be better guarded or at least ask the cows nicely to cut it out.

The neighbors and my host family have taken over every aspect of the upkeep of the garden now. I asked the next volunteer at my site to take some photos occasionally to see how it grows. It seems to me it will be more of an orchard in time (mostly peach trees) but that's fine because it is now theirs and they can do whatever they want with it but I hope that they keep it going.

I have finished Peace Corps. I am now in Johannesburg waiting for my friend to arrive so we can go adventuring around South Africa. In the meantime I am trying to blog all the blogs I said I would bloggity blog. This is because I want to collect all my thoughts and write them down and be done with it for a while, Peace Corps thoughts that is. Leaving myself only two days won't get me too in depth about the things I want to say but then again I never got too deep anyway. Besides it will be just as in depth or more so than the one to two minute conversation I have with people about it now. Once I start traveling and time starts growing between being a volunteer I know the memories will change. So, it's best to get it out now in some form.

So here goes. I am in a nice environment with thinking and writing music. I have access to water and peanuts which won't make me go into a food nap. It is laundry day so I am wearing my bathing suit which will prevent me from taking extended trips out into public. Finally, I wrote this blog which forces me to write more blogs or else be a liar and look like a lazy goon. Let the blogs flow.

I tried my best never to sweat or get crud on myself or clothing for 2 years but it was impossible. Therefore, this green tub saw a lot of action.

Like most people, I used to take baths when I was young. Then it was determined that taking baths was exacerbating my skin problems (eczema (gross)). That's when I learned how to stop worrying and love the shower. Peace Corps gave me a chance to relive those old bathing days except this time around there was less water and I barely fit into the tub. Here are a few tips for those who would like to start taking bucket baths.

Wash your head first. This is pretty self explanatory. You know once you get in there the water loses some of it's cleaning power. Instead it starts to redistributes the dirt evenly across your body. Do what you will but I would prefer that the muck from the rest of my body doesn't settle on my face.

Buy soap meant for washing people. I know some of you are thinking "there is a super cheap soap that claims it can wash dishes, laundry and people", don't fall for it. Hiker and hippies are familiar with Dr. Bronner's which has a myriad of washing purposes and I feel it lives up to it's claims (except for brushing teeth, the stuff took off a layer of my mouth skin) and if you can get that stuff I think that this is acceptable. Furthermore, I agree that really all soap is based on the same mechanism but there are subtle differences that go along way to making a soap more suitable for bathing (or whatever the specific function). So I say splurge and buy separate soaps, variety is the spice of life.

Stop trying to not get water everywhere. I am not saying you should just splash willy-nilly but water is going to get all over your floor. You don't want your bath to be a stressful occasion so accept the spillage and consider it a bonus floor washing with each bath.Get a brush with an extended handle. Because washing the back is still important. When you think about it your back is like your second front.

Washing myself was not fun or effective but washing my clothes was far worse. This has made me come to a frightening realization, one that won't go away if we ignore it. Consider this: it is accepted among the world's leading scholars that we only have a few years left before the robot uprising. What will we do then? Well as I see it, the human race will be left with only 5 options concerning our garments because surely our washers and dryers will turn on us:

1) Go naked.

Pro: The fashion world loses its voice in political matters.

Con: It will get cold.

2) Put up with unwashed clothing.

Pro: There is a chance that a naturally sweet smelling human will evolve.

Con: We might all die from disease and lack of sexual attraction. Also robots will be able to detect our stink.

3) Get disposable clothing. Think of a giant pack of different colored jumpsuits.

Pro: Jumpsuits were originally created for fighting against robots.

Con: With the machines controlling all recycling plants, we will quickly run out of material to clothe billions of people with comfortable material. Soon we will be using leaves or animal hides (see number 2) and those things are course. The itchiness will be maddening!

4) Engineer a species of extromophile fish that can withstand soapy, hot/cold water environments so we just need to throw our clothes into the fish pond and take out after the allotted time.

Pro: The fish can handle delicates.

Con: The fish eat people.

5) Trade our freedom for the use of washing machines.

Pro: Robots are pretty cool.

Con: There are no cons.

I think we should submit to the robot overlords as long as they let us use their washer/dryer brothers and sisters because hand-washing our clothes is not one of the options. If you have seen the Matrix, you might have noticed how ragged their clothing was. That's from hand-washing. I can confirm this from my own experiences. Besides squeezing through fences, this is the cause of all the holes in my clothing. I have actually had to mend things here so I would not look quite so shabby. During a particularly difficult repair, I was frustrated that I couldn't push a needle through the fabric without painfully jabbing my thumb. I thought to myself "some sort of metal thumb cap would really make this easier" and that's how I re-invented the thimble. That's a good side story. Needless to say, I am looking forward to tomorrow when I will be hand-washing my clothes for the last time.

I wore through the soles of my nice shoes within the first year. It turns out duct tape is not a viable material for cobbling.

I walked a lot during service. One of the primary schools I worked in was about 4 km from my house, a 8 km round trip, and I would go there 3 times a week for the first year and every weekday for the remainder of service. Walking into the next village for transport to a larger town or for the post office was 14 km total. I could have bought a bike but I thought this would only be available for a short time before the sand pits and tire-shredding debris (see previous post) would get to the tenderer parts of the bike and then I would have an expensive goat scratching post. Aside from the rainy days when I couldn't negotiate a car ride from one of my principals or when the heat was too unbearable, walking was not a disadvantage, rather I enjoyed this part of my life here.

It was much more than a means than getting from here to there. First of all and most evident is that it provided copious amounts of exercise and even agility training when, with my headphones on, I would have to dodge donkey carts/cars coming around the bend . Anything I wanted or needed to do outside my house bumped me from sedentary to highly active. Second, it filled a social function by being a sort of South African promenade, it was an opportunity for me to see and be seen. Furthermore, this was also the time when I felt most competent in Setswana because I have mastered all the varieties of basic greetings. My integration level went from foreign doofus to village elder (except when I was caught talking or singing to myself, those times made me look insane). Finally and what came as the biggest help was the ease and clarity with which I could organize my thoughts and reflect when I walked. I recently read an article about walking that I quite liked and it quoted an author (Solnit) who makes an observation that is true, in my case anyhow:

“I know these things have their uses, and use them—a truck, a computer, a modem—myself, but I fear their false urgency, their call to speed…I like walking because it is slow and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness.”I think having the time to myself and having the blood flowing greases the mechanisms of my brain and gets the little gray cells in order. Sometimes I'd take a stroll when I didn't even need to go anywhere in particular. It was just an aimless wander that boosted me from rigidly reptilian-brained to a theta-waved, frontal-lobed, thinking machine. This in turn would help me adjust my mood and I am sure the fresh air and sunlight never hurt.

I hope I will be able to walk wherever I go for the rest of my life but it was the peaceful and scenic walks that I took here that might be difficult to match.

Acacia Branch or Camel Thorn/Giraffe Thorn branch or as it was known during training "death bush"

This South Africa is the land of security fencing. This is true of the urban areas where just about every property is outlined with a wall covered in razors, barbed wire, spikes and high voltage wiring (for good measure) but barbed wire is also the go-to property demarcation for the rural areas as well. Beyond cattle, horses and donkeys, the barbed wire does not really keep anything out, everything else easily slips between the wires. It's more of an irritating obstacle that poses a slight nuisance rather than an impregnable barrier. It's an eyesore and fencing is available that would also keep out chickens, goats, sheep, dogs and people. I've seen enough barbed wire.

Nearly every family in my area also makes use of acacia tree branches as fencing because of the long sharp needles. It is not a good choice for larger scale operations because of the time and resource required but it can get the job done. My issue is that I can't seem to avoid stepping on them. Even when I am not walking around my host family's compound barefoot, I still track them into my house and then eventually my soles will find them. I used to have the soft, supple foot of a patrician infant but now you could grind diamonds with my feet. Bonuses to foot durability aside, acacia are interesting looking trees but I prefer the ones that aren't so hostile.

This was the 10th and best picture I had taken over two days and I couldn't allow myself to make my host family sit through another one. This was early in the morning before school started. You can tell because my younger host brother was trying his hardest to keep his eyes open.I was lucky to have been placed with an excellent host family. I have heard stories from other volunteers of just how unpleasant an experience it could have been and I am thankful for just how open and kind my family was. All of the most important points of what I was looking for and expecting were met. They included me and never made me feel like I wasn't supposed to be there, which I have gotten from other people even in my own village. My private space and time were respected just as much as I respected theirs. And above all, they are all good people.Sure, I was disturbed by the youngest kids sitting outside my door and counting to 5 in Setswana repeatedly or screaming goat (pudi!) non-stop even when there was no goat in sight but it was also nice to hear kids playing and laughing almost everyday. And I wasn't always open to hearing the pounding of Tswana medicinal concoctions and burning of strange smelling incense next door but I learned more about their culture this way. All of the things that upset me were only trivial and fleeting. There were also plenty of little things that would brighten my day like saving me a few magwina (fried bread) when they were made and knocking on my door on my darkest, most hermetical days to make sure I wasn't dead.The host family (in South Africa anyway) can really make or break a volunteer's service. A lot of the experience rides on it and I don't know if I would have stayed the entire way with another family. I wish mine all the best things in the world.

Just when I couldn't be any more peculiar, I go and make a line-up of my Morvite selection. There just wasn't enough light in my room for a picture and a picture was mandatory.

I have mixed feeling about the food situation, I am happy to eventually be going home to all the delicious meals I have been missing for the past two years but there are aspects of my current diet that I will miss. I eat very healthily and the times when I don't it is usually my own fault. Getting food was an inconvenience so when I would make trips, I loaded up with food that would last me as long as possible and be as cheap as possible. This was out of laziness and in an effort to avoid traveling but also as a way to save as much for vacation time. So my diet was restricted to fruit and vegetables, rice, beans, eggs, and Morvite for a majority of meals.

Out of the food I eat now I will miss Morvite the most. If you don't know what it is I must inform you. It is a sorghum based meal replacement with vitamins, minerals etc. added to it. It is basically a daily vitamin crushed up into a carb paste with added flavors to make it more palatable (Best - Banana, Strawberry; OK - Vanilla, Pineapple, Original; Hot Garbage - Honey). I wouldn't say it is delicious nor is it repulsive. It is merely fuel and a cheap fuel at that. I enjoy having the options to just add water to a bowl, stir and consume and have most of my nutritional needs met. I savor a good meal and my taste buds are not deformed. I simply appreciate the availability of options. Is it sad that a grown man will miss a nutrient glop? I'll let myself answer my own question with another question: Am I really a grown man? And to that I say yes, I think I am. I digress, maybe I don't have anything to worry about because I don't really know the state of quick and cheap meal replacements in the United States. Maybe there is something better than Morvite and everything will be ok. If it isn't on the other hand, I might just have to talk to the Morvite people about a wider distribution or go to the lab and create the perfect food for my own mad purposes.

Aside from Morvite, food isn't that much different in the United States, there are just less options, at least out where I am. As a bonus, things seem to be cheaper, I do not recall the prices of food in the United States because I never really had to hang on to my scrimpings the way I do here. Fruit and vegetables are cheap, especially when in season. I remember one particular shopping excursion where pineapples where on sale for 3R each. That's less that $0.50 per pineapple! I bought a lot of pineapples that day. When orange season comes around you can buy a large sack for 10R. Eggs are consistently fairly cheap, I buy them in carrying cases of 48 eggs which is usually ~1R per egg meaning about $0.15 per egg. If I was really trying to stretch my money I could go about 1 month on 200R (~$28) and still be pretty healthy and happy. I have done it for less and once because I didn't get my stipend and ran out of some of my better food. Those were some cranky and irritable times and I only had myself to blame. Take it from me, food is important to be able to function properly.

Additionally I am for all intents and purposes (intensive porpoises if you want to be exact) a vegetarian (ova-lacto-vegetarian). This is only because meat is expensive and I don't want to deal with meat juices where it is difficult to uphold more hygienic cooking practices, in other words I would have to wash all my things much more I think and I am anti-washing more things here. I would buy meat (KFC is truly finger licken' good, way better here) on the days I go shopping as a treat to myself since shopping days usually puts me into a dark place. Then I will go without it for long periods of time. I don't feel particularly healthier and if I am it could just as easily be attributed to eating more fruits and vegetables. I don't think I will continue being a vegetarian but I do like the idea of valuing meat as an occasional specialty item rather than something for every meal.

I somewhat fear my upcoming change because the routine I have become comfortable with will be turned on its head. I am afraid my willpower has been eroded to non existent. Any snack food or candy that was sent to me from friends and family from home was consumed that day (this includes 5 lbs bags of peanut m&ms), not because I wanted to but because I had to and I could not stop myself. I mean there is an entire aisle dedicated to delicious cereals in the United States, how am I supposed to not eat all of those all the time, how are you all able to resist it right now!? Think of your favorite meal. You can go out and get it if you wanted to, either by buying the ingredients and preparing it yourself or actually having it made for you. That's a remarkable thing and I am ready for it but I will need to rebuild my self-restraint. Moreover, for the most part I eat healthily because my circumstances force me into it. It is just the case that rice and beans and fruit and vegetables are cheap and plentiful. If candy and cheese were cheap and plentiful, I suppose I would have a perpetual blood cheese content (BCC) of 0.1 and have gotten diabetes by now. And because I have a limited and boring diet most of the time a new and tasty meal is all I need to have a good day. I think I will miss being pleased quite so easily. I suppose it is not impossible to have every meal be a good meal and be appreciative but I think one of the greatest human abilities is the capacity to get used to anything. This has its positive qualities as a lot of my Peace Corps experience has been an exercise in becoming accustomed to a different way of life (more difficult) but it can obviously have its drawbacks as well. So while I am looking forward to all the choices and easy, tasty food I am going to get when I am back home, I think that eventually I will become oblivious to how good I have it and stop being quite so healthy. Perhaps it won't be a futile mission but I will try.

The sun, or at least it's effects, is different here in both good and bad ways. There is at least one part of the day that is worth stopping for and usually it's the sunset. I will miss it.

Here are just a few of the reviews of this sunset from people that I made up:

"If I had to use thumbs to rate this sunset, I would rate this sunset with 1 billion thumbs up! "

"It was a tour-de-force, this baby would win all the Oscars, Emmies, Grammies, Tonies, MVPs, Congressional Medals of Honor, and Pulitzers if enough people would vote for it!"

"IT WAS SUN-SATIONAL!"

"It had me white-knuckled and on the edge of my seat. I had a heart attack because of the tension. Really, I almost died"

"It was full of all the things I like and had none of the things I don't like."

"I was just Staring at the Sun and now I am Walking on Sunshine. It's not a Waterloo Sunset but unlike Elton John, I do want the sun to go down on me if it means seeing another one of these!"

"This sunset was alright if you ask me."

"A treat for the whole family. Not the graphic parts though."

"It had the 3-S's: scintillating, spellbinding, and most importantly sinister."

"If there is one sunset you should see this summer it's this one. You would be an absolute fool to miss it. What is wrong with you, do you hate beautiful things? I get it. Fine, be jerk then!"

If it was not apparent from the post title or the picture, this is about outhouses. I like to make jokes so expect poop humor.

When I fist arrived at site I had been fairly accustomed to outhouses. I used them along the AT and was reacquainted during training. It was a relief when I found out the toilet I would be using for the next two years was fairly close to my house and in good condition. I didn't realize how good I had it because about halfway through my service, the toilet reached maximum capacity and everything turned to shit (HA!).

My new toilet was considerably farther away in the neighboring field. The added distance completely disrupted my timing of when I should start making the trip outside. I have since learned to minimize my commute time by heading in a straight line through the barbed wire fence rather than go around it. My fence crossing skills have now become sufficient but if you had told me that someday I would damage clothing, suffer cuts and scrapes, and tread across a minefield of cow pies to get to the toilet, I would have called you a madman or madwomen or madpeople. Additionally this new toilet was just not very good. It is not ergonomic which besides being a place to get rid of and in this case store human waste, is of supreme importance. My legs don't quite reach the floor and I am probably the tallest person in the whole village perhaps the whole district so I don't understand why it was made so far from the ground. More frustrating though is the lack of overlap between the hole in the concrete and the hole in the toilet seat. I won't go into detail exactly why this is uncomfortable and unsanitary but hopefully my saying it is uncomfortable and unsanitary will clue you in.

I visited a waste processing plant in college and while it was probably the most vile and overwhelmingly malodorous place I have ever been, I sincerely resepect and marvel at it's function and efficiency, especially now. There is very little I appreciate about the lack of flush toilets. I do not enjoy the smell of a high volume outhouse on a hot day. I do not enjoy the journey outside on a cold rainy night to take care of imminent bodily evacuation. On a good visit, there will be nothing more dangerous than a goat or lizard hiding behind walls, which still manages to startle me almost every time (not a good time to be startled), but on almost all occasions expect to be assaulted by flies or other insects which call the pits below home. Sure there are such things as composting toilets but I assure you that these are not composting toilets. I have thought about it and the only real positive of the experience here is that it is almost never occupied when I need to use it. It is only a toilet, not a sink/shower/bath which means people do their business and get out. There is no dillydallying. This is a pretty pathetic silver lining though and can be easily be matched by having more than one bathroom. Good riddance to the longdrop I say, bring on the water closets!

The electricity going out last night prompted me to step outside and appreciate the night sky. I am no where near knowledgeable enough about constellations and celestial bodies to notice a large difference between the Southern and Northern hemispheres but I have made a point to locate and analyze the Southern Cross (Crux). I did not see how that particular constellation makes finding South any easier. In fact I was only really able to find it by knowing which way South was first and then looking up and to the right. Perhaps it was brighter in the sky earlier in human history and made it obvious but I didn't quite grasp it's importance.

The bigger difference is the lack of any light pollution. The splendor of outer space can only properly be seen in total darkness, from the ground level anyway. This is something a rural village in the middle of nowhere can offer. At the same time, the utility of a full moon is really evident when you've tried to stumble your way to the outhouse during a new moon. It is easy to forget that we are living on a pale blue dot when our influence over our planet overpowers the light from the rest of the universe. I will certainly miss being able to go right outside my door and place things in perspective.

This was probably one of the last times this baby was carried around like this. Normally, babies are strapped in with their legs tucked in and not, as in this picture, completely vertical.

This is the preferred method for baby transportation for the majority of Tswana women. Additionally, I think it is a way of getting children accustomed to being in tight, hot spaces so that taxi rides later on in life are manageable. I am not sure of the mechanics of how they are able to fold that towel so it supports the weight of a baby. All I can say is that it works and to a high enough degree to entrusts a baby's safety to it.

I might be happy to be leaving this aspect of Tswana culture behind if I had to regularly carry around babies but I simply am not required nor have I had the desire to carry around any babies and if I did I might want to use some other device anyway. I might also be happy to say farewell to the practice if I were a baby because it looks damned uncomfortable despite the benefit of not having to walk anywhere. In the end, my opinion is swayed from indifferent to somewhat sad to not seeing this regularly because occasionally it provides a little chuckle.

This month is going to be dedicated to wrapping up my Peace Corps life. Sadly, I have underused this blog even though I found it useful in processing and voicing my experiences. With that in mind I will be blogging much more frequently as a way to keep me busy and to try to bring closure.

Ryan has been doing a couple of posts of things he will not be missing about South Africa here and here. I am inspired to do the same even though I suspect many of our opinions will be similar. I plan on also alternating the list with those parts of South Africa that I will miss so it doesn't seem like I hated ever aspect of life here. It should be a healthy exercise and a decent way to reflect on my past two years.

First up on the list of things I am glad to be leaving behind: the Internet. What I mean by that is the quality and quantity of the Internet I can get at my site. Initially I had planned to talk about something completely different but after failing to upload one picture for about 2 hours I figured I might as well rant about the sorry state of things while the irritation is still fresh. My preface is that having any sort of Internet access has been a great deal of help for bleasure (i.e. business and pleasure). Furthermore, I am only describing what it is like in my corner of South Africa, larger towns or cities will have better options I am sure. I am aware that things could have been worse for me but that doesn't mean I have to be entirely satisfied. I am almost completely sure that I don't have to be satisfied with anything ever because I am an American and that's what makes us great. And now onto the complaining!

Complaint number one is that it is expensive. Here is a quick price break down from Vodacom which is the best telecom company for my area:

Data (mb) Price (Rand) Price (USD)* mb/Rand mb/USD 8 9.25 1.37 0.86 5.85 30 28 4.14 1.07 7.25 110 88 13.00 1.25 8.46 175 119 17.58 1.47 9.95 300 139 20.54 2.16 14.61 600 189 27.93 3.17 21.48 1200 289 42.71 4.15 28.10 2300 389 57.48 5.91 40.01 3000 520 76.84 5.77 39.04 5000 989 146.15 5.06 34.21 10000 1989 293.92 5.03 34.02 20000 3899 576.16 5.13 34.71 I would like to point out that I made a table of information...in my free time...for a personal blog. Sometimes I really surprise myself but really this is a very efficient way to get across the point.

*Exchange Rate

For comparison I did some extremely light research into how much I would pay for the cheapest broadband service in my hometown. Using this website I searched for only Internet packages and from a quick glance it seems like a standard price is between 20$-30$ per month for 12mbps(d)/2mbps(u). It used to be the case that these prices were for an uncapped Internet connection which would have made the comparison between the Internet prices even more ludicrous. Now however, most Internet service providers have a data cap, meaning if you go over that amount of data you will pay more money. For Comcast, which offers their services for 20$-30$, the data cap is set at 250 gb per month. Using these figures (250 gb per month and 30$ per month), I would be getting 8333 mb/USD. This is two orders of magnitude larger than the most economical option provided by Vodacom (2300 mb for 57.48$) 40.01 mb/USD. I would also be getting two orders of magnitude more data in the US deal (250 gb vs. 2.3 gb).

The second complaint is that the service moves at a snail's pace. The way I get my Internet service is by tethering my phone to my computer and unfortunately the cell towers in rural South Africa have not gotten around to being upgraded to the fastest wireless broadband. The fastest I am able to get at my site is ~25 kbps (kb per second). Again for comparison, the cheap broadband service I mentioned above in the US offers 12 mbps. Assuming you are able to consistently get a quarter of that speed (3 mbps) that is still 2 orders of magnitude faster than what I can get here in my village.

Lastly, the expensive and slow service I get is unreliable. The speed and the ability to use the service at all varies from hour-to-hour, day-to-day. Which brings me to the reason why I started writing this in the first place. I tried to upload a 1 mb picture repeatedly but failed because the connection would drop out. This means that I ended up wasting couple of expensive mb's restarting the process and ultimately getting nothing out of it.

I think this is unfortunate not only because it affects me negatively but also because I know it's potential and want to see its use in the rural village I live in and others like mine. It is hard enough to get people to use a computer and describe to them the benefits of the Internet without also adding on these barriers. I really believe that bringing a fast, cheap and stable Internet service to a place like this would do incredible things. Some of the immediate benefits would be that people would be able to keep their anti-virus programs up to date and functioning properly. This alone would save many hours of work and frustration. Second, it would sidestep the problem of having a lack of certain resources in remote locations. Not only would reference material be available but also lessons on just about any topic you would ever want to know more about can be viewed at any time from some of the best teachers in the world for free! I really don't have to tell you why the Internet is a good thing though do I?

For all I know Vodacom and other telecoms are upgrading the local cell towers right now, although I doubt it. Without any hard proof, I believe that they would only gain more customers and more profits by offering a decent Internet service to more and more people. This next month will be my last of having to deal with it and I am happy about that but I wish that it comes to the people that will be living here for the foreseeable future and the sooner the better. Having more of a South African presence on Youtube can only add to both Youtube's and South Africa's excellence.

I finished the first half of digitizing a small portion of the Setswana-English Dictionary. It has been a while since I first started because it has been a small side project but it has gotten a lot more attention recently. I figured it would be nice for the incoming volunteers. I had thought that I would only need to do one half (Setswana-English) and through computer magic be able to have the other (English-Setswana) but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I have access to a scanner and a pretty good OCR program so about 80% of the English words came out correctly. Beyond that, I am only working with a pocket Dictionary, which by the way lives up to its claims, it indeed fits into my pocket. So this was not an unbelievably difficult task. The Setswana words, on the other hand, were much more garbled so I still had to double check each entry. Reading a dictionary turns out to be not as fun as you might think and a translation dictionary even less so. With that in mind, I started to make a list of the words that entertained me through the drudgery. It can also be viewed as the essential vocab list for Setswana; consider these the only words you'll ever need to know.

Hilarious double meanings

Surely a lot of hilarious situations in the history of Setswana speaking people arouse out of misunderstandings from these words. That might not be true at all but it is funny for me to imagine situations where they did.

dihuba (sehuba) (n), chests; thoraxes; phlegm; donations; breasts.

dinoka (noka) (n), hips; rivers.

dinoko (noko) (n), porcupines; syllables; knuckles; inches.

dipeo (peo) (n), seeds; coronations.

direthe (serethe) (n), butter; heels.

dithunya (sethunya) (n), rifles; flowers; blooms.

ditlhogo (setlhogo) (n), headings; cruelties./ditlhogo (tlhogo) (n), heads; principals.

ditsebe (tsebe) (n), pages; ears.

kgabo (dikgabo) (n), flame; monkey; ape.

lebaka (mabaka) (n), bakery; cause; reason; fact. (it bothers me that bakery gets top billing for this word. Don't get me wrong, I love baked goods but can't facts,reasons and causes have their own word?)

lebese (n), latex; milk.

lebete (mabete) (n), spleen; anthrax.

leboa (maboa) (n), north; mushroom.

lentswe (mantswe) (n), mountain; voice; rock; stone.

leso (maso) (n), death; spoon.

madimo (ledimo) (n), cannibals; gales; storms; hurricanes.

molao (melao) (n), act; decree; law; statute; commandment; rule; bed.

namane (dinamane) (n), calf; interest (finance).

serethe (direthe) (n), butter; heel.

toro (ditoro) (n), dream; pricklypear.

Why were these important enough to put into a small pocket dictionary?

This is a small dictionary. You would think that only the most essential words and phrases would make the cut. Somehow these words ended up passing muster.

bohibidu jo bo mokgona (n), scarlet.

bolwetse jwa borotamadi (n), red water.

difaelepotlana (faelepotlana) (n), dummy files.

dillopo (llopo) (n), barrels (of rifles). (I was imagining a barrel full of rifles and got really confused. I am thinking they are talking about rifle barrels which is still quite specific.

dinyatsi (nyatsi) (n), paramours.

dira boipiletso (v), lodge appeal.

ditsetsekwane: ka ditsetsekwane (adv), on tiptoes.

ipabalelotseleng (n), road safety.

kgeleswakeledi (dikgeleswakeledi) (n), lachrymal gland.

megokonyane (mogokonyane) (n), army worms.

puseletso ya ditshwanelo tsa lenyalo (n), restitution of conjugal rights.

tlhabano ya boitshemo (n), sham fight.

tsirimanya (ditsirimanya) (n), jingle

tsirimana (v), jingle

What is this?

Combing through the dictionary made me realize how many words I know in English. I think it is safe to say that I am mostly to almost entirely fluent but I suppose there are some large gaps in knowledge. I had to look up some of these words and for many I am still unclear. Anybody have any ideas?

dipheretlho (pheretlho) (n), affrays.

diphogo-tsa-morago (phogo-ya- morago) (n), occiputs.

diporaemasetofo (poraemasetofo) (n), primus stoves

dipowana (powana) (n), bullocks.

disepale (sepale) (n), sepals.

ditampana (tampana) (n), tampans.

dithupa (thupa) (n), floating ribs.

ega (v), harrow. ege (diege) (n), harrow.

feite (difeite) (n), whitlow.

karakule (dikarakule) (n), karakul.

kgothego (dikgothego) (n), denudation.

khiba (dikhiba) (n), pinafore.

khotolengwe (dikhotolengwe) (n), monocotyledon,

khotopedi (dikhotopedi) (n), dicotyledon.

lebelo (mabelo) (n), dewlap.

ledi sekasabele (n), gladiolus.

ledibogo (madibogo) (n), ford.

lengope (mangope) (n), donga.

lerumo (marumo) (n), assegai

Lesetedi (Masetedi) (n), Griqua.

mmamasiloanoka (bommamasiloanoka) (n), hamerkop.

mmorogo (meborogo) (n), morgen.

mmotu (mebotu) (n), bee-bread.

Miscellaneous

Badumedi (Modumedi) (n), Christians.

badumedi (modumedi) (n), believers. (dumelang)

It's interesting to me that one religion has carved out for themselves the entire classification of believers. Nice job Christians.

Dimo (n), cannibal (mythological figure).

The first time I heard about this was in the dictionary.

dinako (nako) (n), times; tides.

Time and tide wait for no man

ditwantshi (twantshi) (n). antibodies.

ditwatsi (twatsi) (n), germs

enta (v), vaccinate; inoculate; graft.

For many scientific words you would really just use a Setswana pronunciation of an English word but not in these cases. These words have a novel word and I wonder why that is.

fensetere (difensetere) (n), window.

I remember this word from early on because the word defenestration means to throw someone out a window.

kase (dikase) (n), cheese.

I think it is a good policy to know the word for "cheese" in as many languages as possible. It can only be helpful

kidikidi (dikidikidi) (n), vertebra.

Go ahead, say that word out loud. Wasn't that a blast!?

kitlano ya meno (n), tetanus.

Unfortunately I don't know what kitlano means exactly but the literaly translation suggests something is wrong with the teeth. Perhaps it is clenching or clamping the teeth since lockjaw is one of the symptoms of tetanus.

kurukurega (v), detribalize.

I would be intrigued who would be considered detribalized and whether that is a bad thing.

latswa ka leleme (v), flatter,

The literal Setswana is "to lick with the tongue". That is one way to put the concept.

lefela (mafela) (n), zero.

Having a concept for zero is a big deal.

magogoša (rel), hoarse.

The "g" in Setswana is pronounced as if you were hocking something up in the back of your throat. There is probably a better and more scholarly way to describe this but I am sticking with my approach. With that in mind consider how great is is to describe having a sore throat while you have a sore throat in Setswana.

šašanyega (v), fizz.

It hurts my brain when onomatopoeia words are not universal.

That was weird. For some reason Blogger deleted the posts I made a few days ago, along with many others I am sure, and only just recently have the drafts been available to republish. Unfortunately, the drafts Blogger had were a few revisions previous and not the final version I had become happy with. Sure Google has provided me with a slew of powerful, time-saving applications for free that have changed my life for the better and potentially the world but now they were going to make me do more work than I had intended to do for a couple of blog posts. I know what you are thinking, "that's grounds for a frivolous lawsuit" and I was close to going that route but then I realized there is a chance that the posts may be saved somewhere in someone's RSS feed reader. Surely enough, my sister had some copies saved in her Google Reader account. Just like how science is used to correct and update science, Google has come in to save the day for Google's terrible error. Nice one Google, you're all right!

After the half marathon in Sabie, a group of us headed out to KZN to hike the Drakensburg. This was a hike I had been wanting to do for some time and I was finally able to get out there and better yet I was going with a group whose company I would enjoy. It ended up being an amazing hike but there were a few sore spots sprinkled in along the way.

Before the pictures of Drakensburg and Lesotho it is worthwhile to detail how we managed to get to the trail head. There were 7 of us which is a kind of magic number for inconvenience. It is too few to buy out an entire taxi without spending twice the normal amount but too many to easily fit in a taxi with all of our gear. Choosing thriftiness over comfort, we made it about a third of the way to our ultimate destination by noon. Most of our driving was still ahead of us and we got stuck waiting for a taxi that was not filling up. We paid our fair, piled our gear, circled around and tried to psychically persuade every traveler to get into our taxi so we could get going (at least I did). Fearing we would not make it all the way on time, we started pursuing other options. A few of us started to seek out someone we could pay to take us all the way to where we wanted to go. It was a long shot but if it worked out, it would save us the trouble of a few more taxi ranks. After some searching, we found a willing driver and negotiated until we finally settled on an equitable price. There was still the matter of talking to the taxi rank.

You see, we already paid the fair to take us to the next taxi rank along the route. An honest and forthright business would be unhappy about refunding customers who decided not to partake in whatever service they were offering but would ultimately refund any money. Since we were dealing with a taxi rank, which takes most of its cues from the mafia, we anticipated problems in getting our money back. We decided to use deceit rather than honesty but I am convinced either way would have yielded similar results. A few tried telling the taxi rank office that some members of our party were feeling sick so we decided to stay in town and therefore no longer need a taxi. The taxi rank refused to give back any money. I suppose we had the option of just leaving our money and getting the hell out of there but like I said we are cheap and it would have justified the taxi's bullying techniques by giving them a cool 630R payday (we have principles to uphold). So we stood our ground and an actual argument ensued. I was not part of the team involved in this process and for good reason. I can be a stubborn and spiteful person and this was one of those situations where it was coming out. I was advocating calling the police, this would have taken hours and probably would have accomplished very little but if it had the slightest chance of interrupting and ruining their day, I was for it. I was willing to camp outside the rank and go into monumental debt by paying each customer twice as much as the fair of the taxi to stay home or walk. I was considering petitioning all of the gas stations in the area to go on a trade embargo with all taxis directly involved and kill their fuel supply. I wanted to start an uprising and squeeze the taxi rank out of existence! Thankfully, it was not up to me to handle this particular situation. It was left to more cheery and hopeful individuals who did not get us kicked out of the rank.

So the argument went back and forth. The taxi rank constitution was quoted to us which was also conveniently never offered for our own perusal. Thinly veiled racism was thrown at us which stung but didn't dissuade anybody. What really sunk us was that a man who had spotted us making a deal for our private taxi tattled. The man who we made a deal with was called to the rank and he had a short chat with the taxi rank officials where he probably had an offer made to him that he couldn't refuse. To no one's surprise, our private taxi was canceled and it was recommended we just work through the taxi rank. Now we were truly cornered and the taxi rank knew it. We had no choice but to go through the entire negotiation process again but this time for more money to go a shorter distance. Eventually after a large amount of grief we finally got on our way. We certainly could have handled the situation better. Maybe we brought it all upon ourselves by not going straight to the taxi rank in the first place but I am not sure we would have gotten a better deal. Perhaps we should have waited to pay the office until we were actually about to go but we only decided that we needed other plans until much later. The biggest lesson learned from the whole experience is that everyone should own cars.

After that whole debacle, the rest of the journey was a breeze. We hopped another taxi and then got a ride the final distance from the owners of the backpacker we were staying in. I slept well that night. The next morning we got our first glimpse of the mountains we would be hiking and everything was right with the world. Here are the photos from the hike.

It should be apparent now that I like signs. They are helpful to tourists such as myself. For my money, there is no better way to indicate certain information, like the name of an area.

The intrepid travelers set out into the wilderness. We got a bit of a late start after we bought our maps and figured out where we were on the maps and where we were going and what all those squiggly lines meant. We then had a few pre-hike beers. The clerks at the reception office did not look like they were placing a lot of confidence in our abilities. They were probably preparing their statements for when the news broke that 7 Americans died minutes after leaving the parking lot.

Up and up and up. The first day was hard, allow me to explain why. The elevation change for the first day was a little more than 1000m. This was the start of the hike meaning our packs were fully loaded. Also, two days prior most people ran a half marathon, one guy ran the entire ultra-marathon, and some walked and ate a lot of candy. So there was some fatigue and candy withdrawal.

That's a pretty cliff isn't it? How about a long story about the hike up to the point where we could see this cliff? There was a serious problem during our first day. As was mentioned, we started late and the hike was difficult. Naturally, people started to spread out according to hiking pace. The plan was to get to the top and camp there since the trail seemed easy enough to follow and it would make the next day easier. The problem started when those in front only made it to the top around dusk and those in the back were only beginning to make the ascent of the steepest part of the trail. The most fit of the group went down to check on the ones behind but they insisted on going ahead, they were fine but justed needed more time. Camp was setup at the top of the pass and dinner was prepared. Occasionally we would look down to see how far along they were by their headlamps. It was about 8 o'clock meaning it was fully dark, it had been rainy and windy for the past couple hours, the temperature dropped about 10 C, and a thick fog rolled in. The last time they were spotted it seemed they were about 30 minutes from the top. In hindsight, people should have gone down at this point to meet them and make sure they got up safely. Instead we waited and they still had not arrived and their headlamps could no longer be spotted. Emergency mode set in and everyone at the top started to panic and assume the worst (one or both injured/dead). Without cell phone reception to call, people went down and did a few sweeps to find our friends but we didn't hear or see them. A search party in the dark would only get someone else hurt so we decided to wait until morning to search again. At daybreak, one last sweep was made before we would have to get help from the park and luckily they were found coming out from behind the rock they slept behind. They had gotten disorientated and wisely decided to find a safe shelter for the night back down the mountain. I had thought for sure that this would be the end of the hike. Surprising, the two who spent the night exposed were undeterred and were actually quite chipper about finishing. In my opinion, this earns even more rugged survivalist points for the two than the night out in the elements does. This was the most dire hiking situation I have ever experienced and thankfully everyone was uninjured in the end.

After finding our comrades and deciding to finish the hike, it was agreed we would take a rest day or in hiker parlance a "zero day" (i.e. zero miles/kilometers hiked). During our zero day I did a little exploring. Our campsite is way down there in the middle. It was beautiful alright but the geography being what it was, we were in a wind tunnel all night. It is orders of magnitude less fun than it sounds.

Flowers gone wild! Notice how much I talk about flowers these days? All you flower lovers should be satisfied by now.

Lesotho has a pretty great natural defense that at one time might have been a huge strategic advantage. Lesotho is however, completely landlocked by South Africa. South Africa drinks Lesotho's milkshake, it drinks it right up! Is it still acceptable to say that?

I did not get any good pictures of the Basotho shepherds. These guys (only guys) were all over the place and were for the most part nice and kept to themselves but a few were incredibly irritating and rude which really put me off meeting any more shepherds. The sheep tended not to be a problem other than funking the valley up with their wet wool smell. I took this picture because this sheep looks like a total badass.

We did not follow a trail once we had made it into Lesotho. We followed the escarpment for large sections but at times it took some honest to goodness map reading. A couple of the fellas handled most of the orienteering and they did a bang up job. I would have gotten us to the end eventually but also would have gotten us lost about 15 times and with fewer people than we started with.

The swings in temperature during this hike were formidable. The evenings and mornings were quite chilly. That first dose of sunlight in the morning was wholeheartedly appreciated. I made the mistake of bringing my light summer sleeping bag which was not quite up to snuff. I used the double zipper feature where you can walk around while still wearing the sleeping bag. I looked the fool but I needed the warmth.

The hiking spread; walking speed, leg length and stamina, thins everyone out. Plus, everyone gets tired of looking at each others stupid faces all day.

It took us 5 days to finish, I might be wrong here because I don't actually remember, it's easy to lose track us such things when hiking. We entered at Giant's Castle and made it to Sani Pass to go back into South Africa. I snapped this in a hurry because I was ready to sit down indoors.

This caption contains nerd references, if you are not into that sort of thing, just move along. I got into big trouble in little Lesotho for taking this picture without asking the owners permission but he wasn't there and I needed to take a picture with this hat. He backed down after I blasted off some lightning bolts.

Being the highest pub in Africa and the only pub for probably a 20 km radius, the owners felt comfortable charging whatever the hell they wanted for everything. Ubuntu was not factored in when they decided on prices for their delicious warm rum drinks with little slices of lemon.

This was taken before the journey down Sani pass. We got into trouble again because we didn't go to the border control office as soon as we got there. The guy was just being a blow hard because he probably doesn't get too many chances to assert his authority. Fresh from our hike, we were not to be messed with, but in this instance it was better to just say we were very sorry and move on back to South Africa.

KLM was a success. The fund raiser made more money than it did in the previous year. As far as I know, this has been the trend since the program started. I think in part this has to do with the growing number of Peace Corps volunteers in the country but that's not important. What is important is that the ability for the organization to provide quality education grows. Thank you to all those who donated on my behalf or on anyone's behalf, you have done a good thing.

The race was much like it was last year. The picture I took of the beginning of the race is almost identical to the one I took the year before. The weather was uncooperative. It rained buckets for the ride up the mountain (and for those crazy enough to attempt the ultra marathon). It was then overcast and foggy for most of the day. Also like last year, I decided to walk. I really took my time this year and stopped at each station where water was given to the runners. These stations provide much more than water though. Most of the stuff is probably ignored by the actual runners because eating it would give cramps rather than stamina. I was not in any danger of running so I ate all that was available which included: gummy bears, candy bars, fingerling potatoes with delicious garlic mayo dip, biltong (South African beef jerky) and in one instance beer. Near the end, I wasn't even hungry or thirsty but I still grabbed handfuls of everything I could because it was offered. It was a very leisurely half marathon, so leisurely that the group I was with didn't complete the course in the allotted time and the finish line attendants refused to give us medals. I think one lady in particular really enjoyed withholding any form of congratulations, she seems to have been the wrong choice for that particular job. My feelings were not harmed in any way.

After the race there was a delicious meal along with awards for various fund raising goals. It was an excellent time and a great way to meet the volunteers that have come in after our group. The whole event was pulled off without a hitch and the Murphy's (main organizers) should be proud of their work. I am pretty sure it was the best Longtom event there ever was or ever will be so I am not too sad that this was my last one but in years to come I hope groups try to reach the level of Longtom 2011.

These are parts of Cape Town which I found interesting and I thought I'd throw them together into one post. It's really just a bunch of random pictures of the place. After this post I will be done talking about Cape Town for a while. I reserve the right to resume my praise at any point so don't think I'm done forever.

Cape fur seals sunning their blob-like selves. I don't think these seals have seen Planet Earth because a great white could have exploded out of the water and annihilated them at any point. They need to be much more vigilant, not one of them is on lookout.

The four peace prize Nobel laureates of South Africa (Albert Lutuli, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and Frederik de Klerk). Is the dignity of the statues undermined by the giant red coke man celebrating in the background or is the hilarity of the giant red coke man restricted by the serious guys in the foreground? This is probably one of those questions that humankind will never be able to answer.

One of the only clear pictures I snapped of Table Mountain. Also, a nice scene of the waterfront. Fortunately, there is a real table in the picture so the table-ness of the mountain can really be judged. In my opinion, they nailed it.

The back/side of table mountain from Camp's Bay beach. Really nice beach but the water was frigid so I only dipped half a big toe. I would bet the surfer's love it down there without any of the pesky swimmers to look out for.

The main drag of Simon's Town which is on the other side of the Cape Peninsula from Cape Town. If you consider the entire Cape Peninsula to be a miniature representation of the United States, then Cape Town is like a NorCal beach city and Simon's Town is like a quaint New England coastal town. That is what I see in my mind anyway because I have not been to either of those places in the United States.

People ask me all the time, "why don't you write more about flowers". I am kidding of course because no one has ever asked anyone that question. Nevertheless, this post is about exactly that subject. The next World Heritage Site on the list was the Cape Floristic Region. This was a tough one to visit because it is not really one small place but a very large area which features a giant classification of things (Cape Floral Kingdom). This means that there is not a sign to easily verify my witnessing the Cape Floral Region/Kingdom which I am sure most of you are pretty upset about. The following picture is the only thing I know for certain is a member of the Cape Floral Kingdom. That there is a King Protea which is pretty massive as far as flowers go. It is so very massive and intimidating that it is the name of the South African National Cricket team. But enough cricket, back to the botany!

I should tell you some pretty interesting facts to get you up to speed on why this is considered World Heritage material. Well, Wikipedia can give you interesting facts about just the fynbos which is a part of the entire Cape Floral Kingdom:Of the world's six floral kingdoms, this is the smallest and richest per area unit. Contrast it in size with the Holarctic kingdom, which incorporates the whole of the northern hemisphere apart from the tropical regions. The diversity of fynbos plants is extremely high, with over 9000 species of plants occurring in the area, around 6200 of which are endemic, i.e. they do not grow anywhere else in the world. This level of variety is comparable to tropical rainforests or large islands and is unique in a relatively dry continental area. Of the Ericas, 600 occur in the fynbos kingdom, while only 26 are found in the rest of the world. This is in an area of 46,000 km² - by comparison, the Netherlands, with an area of 33,000 km², has 1400 species, none of them endemic. Table Mountain in Cape Town supports 2200 species, more than the entire United Kingdom. Thus, although the Fynbos comprises only 6% of the area of southern Africa, it has half the species on the subcontinent – and in fact has almost 1 in 5 of all plant species in Africa. This picture is a good representation of the fynbos (Afrikans - fine bush). The point is that from afar, it is very underwhelming and it all seems like scrub brush. But in reality, when you get a closer look, a lot of it still is pretty unimpressive but sometimes there are some really cool looking things to look at so drink it in. I am sorry that I don't know what most of any of these plants are and cannot even say if these are unique to the Cape Floral Kingdom or not. My plant knowledge is pretty sparse and this post has made me realize that I quickly run out of things to say about them. That shouldn't stop any of you though, I encourage you all to go look at some interesting plants and then learn about them. Then if you want you can make a blog post about it and show me how you are supposed to talk about floral kingdoms.

I wouldn't say that the Cape Floral Kingdom is the most interesting part of South Africa but it makes the top 20 I'd say. In any case, it was a pleasure to stop and smell the fynbos for a while.

About halfway through the vacation, we rented a car which made it much easier for us to do some traveling outside of Cape Town. Our mission for the day was to go to the end of the Cape Peninsula and inspect. The area is a National Park and is well kept and even offers a 2-3 day trail that basically goes around the whole peninsula. There wasn't time for the hike but we managed to see many of the popular spots.

Authentic Cape Point sign. Note that this is not the southernmost point of Africa. That is located on Cape Agulhas but Cape Point has historical significance so it is still has bragging rights as far as Capes go.

The lighthouse at Cape Point. It has been continually failing the Flying Dutchman for centuries and in doing so dooming generations of sailors. I bet this is a cautionary tale in lighthouse keeper school but a shred of respect needs to be given for its consistency.

The Dias Cross. I lifted this straight from Wikipedia:

The Portuguese government erected two navigational beacons, Dias Cross and Da Gama Cross, to commemorate Vasco da Gama and Bartolomeu Dias as explorers who as mentioned were the first explorers to reach the cape. When lined up, the crosses point to Whittle Rock (34°14.8′S 18°33.6′E / 34.2467°S 18.56°E / -34.2467; 18.56), a large, permanently submerged shipping hazard in False Bay. Two other beacons in Simonstown provide the intersection. My buried treasure sense is tingling furiously so there is almost certainly buried treasure at Whittle Rock. I am going to go back and find it Goonies style.

Sister heading back to NYC. It's funny because she can't actually walk back because there is an ocean separating Africa from North America. I think there are also other reasons why she can't walk back but it's mostly because of the ocean.

There is a lighthouse keep far off on that little sliver of land. The path out there was closed for some reason but from this distance it looks like a lonely, miserable and treacherous place to live but who knows, there might be a pinball machine inside.

The ostriches were not alarmed by the car sneaking up on them. That whole head in the sand thing is grade-A baloney. It's true that they are silly looking animals though. I think we all need to agree on shifting some of the mockery off the platypus and put it on the ostrich.

Cape of Good Hope which is very close to Cape Point. As the sign says, the area has the distinction of being the "most south-westerly part of the African continent". I think things are starting to get out of control handing out awards like that. Reel it in, direction awards.We played the game where we were being Portuguese explorers who just landed ashore. I think in general the best way to do that is to have a stern look on your face because exploring is important business and scurvy hurts.

We went hiking to the beach. It was an overcast and blustery day which for some reason seemed appropriate to explore the area. I think the place originally being called the "Cape of Storms" has something to do with this. Sidenote: The name was changed to "Cape of Good Hope" because the other name was too depressing and scary-- now that is some clever re-branding.

*Bonus Turtle Picture* Almost flattened him driving out but was able to stop in time. It was also important that I inspect it as well and take several pictures because I like turtles.

An hour subway ride away from Cape Town is Stellenbosch, one of the most famous regions for wine in South Africa. We did a bike tour through the area appropriately called "Bikes n' Wine". It was a nice little excursion that included just the right amount of riding (~10Km) and drinking (2 wineries and 1 brandy distillery). The day was a total success; there was plenty of delicious wine, the guide was knowledgeable and friendly, and the weather was perfectly comfortable.

The area was not spectacular but offered a pleasant atmosphere. We decided on the easiest tour which turned out to be an excellent idea because we had been pretty active up to this point (see Lion's Head and Table Mountain Hikes). It was much nicer to focus on the wining than the biking anyhow.

It was imperative that I took a serious picture on this little wooden suspension bridge. I think you all understand why. Also the guide recommended we take pictures of us biking so it didn't seem like we were getting sweaty from drinking wine. I'm not biking but that is definitely a bicycle helmet in my hand there so that counts.

I have now forgotten almost every thing about this mountain chain. I do remember that the outline of the ridge sort of looks like a man (Simon van der Stel?) lying down on his back. To the left is his head and then he's got a pot belly and then feet...it was a lot clearer when I was there.

My favorite part of the ride took us right next to a vineyard. I was a little surprised because this was South Africa, the land of security fences, and there was nothing stopping me from hording all the grapes I could manage. Grape thieving must not be a very lucrative criminal enterprise.

So much fuss over these little guys. The grapes were very sweet which means they were close to harvest time. Soon enough those sugars will be transformed into alcohol by fermentation. I could be a winemaker!

The first and best tasting at Spier. The winery was enormous and offered around 12 varietals. I don't remember what this wine was but my favorite was the Pinotage which is a South African specialty.

One of the wineries had a cheetah sanctuary which was a pleasant surprise. The urge to rub the cheetah's tummy was pretty strong at this point. I resisted because I know that's how cheetahs' draw in most of their prey.

We couldn't help but let our blue blood ancestry come out while brandy tasting. It was a sumptuous way to end the tour.

Right, so as I was saying about Cape Town, I really enjoy that place. Looking at the pictures reminded me I never finished talking too much about it. The Lion's Head hike was really just a warm up for the larger and far more daunting Table Mountain hike. Here we go.

Even though I felt the pictures of Table Mountain made it pretty clear I was at Table Mountain, this sign should allay all doubt. It is a small part on this particular sign but fires are particularly troublesome in the area because of the intense winds. On the bus home, I saw a controlled fire on a mountain as I was coming out of Cape Town and in that short time I could see how quickly it was spreading.

After the first climb we traveled along the side of the mountain to get to the pass. We choose to do this part at noon since we didn't think it would be hard enough unless the sun was also trying to kill us. Devil's Peak is on the left there and that one is for the next visit to Cape Town.

That little gap was our route to the top. It was at this point that things started to get especially hard. The switchbacks helped chop the climb up into manageable chunks but frequent breaks were still necessary. Everyone that passed us was very supportive.

It is difficult to tell but there is a critter (klipspringer I think) in the middle of the picture. This would have to be the steepest and most dangerous place I have seen a four-legged animal casually grazing. The grass there must be particularly delicious or that animal is just a show-off or both.

The top was a beautiful thing visually and because it meant we were done climbing. Among the first views was this one towards Cape Point. Those that take the cable car up enjoy the same view but they don't get to be all exhausted and covered in sweat once they get there. Suckers.

Some might think that the eatery and gift shop at the top of Table Mountain to be a gross display of commercialism defacing natural beauty. I can understand that argument but I see the appeal of hot pizza and cold beer at the top of the mountain too. Ultimately, I fall into the "likes to stuff his face after a long hike" camp so I say it's a good thing especially since it's not that big of an eatery/gift shop. That was my consideration after we ate lunch and saw this view.

The crowd that gathered to watch this guy bike off the side of the mountain was disappointed when they found out he was only posing like he was about to bike off the side of the mountain. It was a pretty big letdown. If he was posing to look like a madman then why even bother with the helmet and why not use a motorcycle and have a flaming chainsaw too? That would be crazy!

Lion's Head looks like child's play from the top of Table Mountain. I never saw how Lion's Head is supposed to look like an actual lion's head. It just looks like a pointy mountain right? "Lion's Head" is a better name than "Pointy Mountain" though.

This was taken some time after the hike but it shows the "12 Apostles" section of the mountain which offers other ways to get up to the top. Yet another confusingly named mountain because there are more then 12 little peaks (not all in picture). Clearly the people in charge of naming landforms in Cape Town weren't too concerned with accuracy.

We managed to fit quite a lot into our few days in Cape Town when my sister came for a visit. I also feel compelled to share most of the activities we did because it was so amazing. You are most likely to be sick of reading/looking at pictures of Cape Town. This is all just too bad because I cannot be dissuaded in documenting almost every part of the trip.After our morning trip to Robben Island, my sister and I decided to climb Lion's Head on a whim. This is part of the reason I fell in love with Cape Town and could easily live there, you can just up and decide to climb a pretty big mountain and walk to it from within the city and then have choices as to which mountain to climb! Anyway it was a pretty difficult hike/climb, way more so than we had anticipated. Still a really rewarding adventure.

View of the Cape Town city bowl. Table Mountain is off on the right there and the pointy shadow is of Lion's Head itself. You would think that the Grinch lived up on top of that peak. Sadly, he does not.

This is not a great shot of Table Mountain but it is a great shot of the frequent clouds that come rolling off the mountain. The locals call it a "table cloth" which is both adorable and clever like a talking kitten.

View of Camp's Bay. This is the nice beach area of the city and the posh and glamorous area as well.

The last part of the ascent was a pretty exhausting scramble up the rocks. There was quite a bit of traffic on the trail going both up and down. Not so many people that it was bothersome but rather impressive that so many take advantage of such a cool natural feature of their city.

Besides the final climb to the summit this was the most difficult part. If you decide this path, you are actually doing some climbing. It is made significantly easier with bars and chains installed in the rock. Still for a "hike" it was somewhat challenging.

There were plenty of people at the top enjoying snacks and picnics and even beers. Climbing up that sucker certainly earns one a beer and I am certain most people would agree. If I ever hit rock bottom, I am going to move to Cape Town and climb up there daily with a few cases and sell beers to thirsty climbers.

Sunset over the Atlantic. Our timing for the hike was absolutely perfect. We also didn't have a car at this point so we hiked even more than most, almost from sea level and up a hill I don't think we were supposed to hike up. Not too shabby.Day

Night

Next up: More Cape Town!

The quest continues to see all of the World Heritage Sites in South Africa. Most recently I was able to see the two sites closest to Cape Town during my sister's visit. The first up was Robben Island.

This post does not come close to giving a full history of the island and all that it means to this country, nor is that my goal. I merely aim to give some of the larger points and relate my impression of the place. If you are interested in knowing more there are of course many resources to do this that will be more thorough.

Briefly, the island has been in use ever since the European explorers started to arrive. At first it was simple a waystation and supply depot but it didn't take long for it to become a prison. Flash forward several hundred years and it becomes notorious for holding many of the leading figures in the fight against apartheid. Among the many political prisoners who were held there was Nelson Mandela who went on to become the first truly democratically elected president of South Africa. The island has also been used at times as a leper colony and as a defensive position during WWII (in typical "African time" style, the larger guns were not completed until 2 years after the war ended). Now, it is used mainly as a memorial and a museum to educate people about South Africa's past.

The best sign I could find was not a sign at all but some decals on a bus. I didn't realize it until I looked at it just now but the symbol for the Robben Island museum is a transformation of prison bars into a freed person.

By complete luck, my sister and I were lucky enough to get this man as our tour guide for the ride to the prison. His name is Mohammad Yasen and he is perhaps the best tour guide I have ever experienced. Maybe not the finest achievement in the world but I was extremely impressed with his breadth of knowledge. His trick was to involve all of the nationalities of the visitors on the bus in the storytelling for all of the stops we made along the way which included Dutch, American, British, Irish, Scottish, Australian, New Zealandese(?), and most impressively Brazilian. If you ever get the opportunity to go, try and seek this man out for the tour.

I don't want to rip off his tour because it is his but one of the jokes he told that I don't mind repeating was during one of the stops at a church along the way: "If you set South Africans in a new area, quickly you'll have 10 different churches, 20 different political parties, and 30 different liquor stores." This man knows South Africa.

This is the limestone quarry where many of the prisoners spent their days mining and breaking apart rocks. The prolonged exposure to the dust from the limestone permanently damaged many of the prisoners' eyes. Even today, flash photography is prohibited around Nelson Mandela.

This was our tour guide through the actual prison. His name is Sepo Nkosi and he was a former prisoner. It is remarkable that he is able to revisit such a place again and again. I have nothing but respect for him being able to lead clueless people around such a painful experience.

This is the prison yard for the political prisoners. The tree in the far corner is where A Long Walk to Freedom was hidden and smuggled out of the jail.

This is the cell where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years imprisoned. As you can see, it is extremely small and the items inside are about all that was all permitted. Instead of a bed and a toilet the prisoners were given blankets and a bucket.

The feeding schemes for prisoners based on the Apartheid laws. The scheme demands different foods and portion sizes for the racial classifications. There isn't a column for "A- Whites" because white people were not imprisoned on Robben Island. The least amount of food was given to "Class C - Bundus" which were the black prisoners.This is a view from the island to the mainland. You can faintly see the outline of Table Mountain in the distance. I was told that this sight provided hope to prisoners but it probably wasn't as simple as all of that. Perhaps it did to some people some of the time. I can see it being just as torturous. Fortunately, no one has to find out for themselves now.

Greetings, I have returned from my trip to Cape Town for which you all shall soon here all about in extensive detail. First, however, I have some other business to take care of. If I am not incorrect, this is my 100th post or somewhere around there (margin of error +/- 50). When you think about it is not that important since I am the one in control of how many posts I make and I can just as easily post 100 blank pages. With that being said, you should all be very impressed that I managed to not post 100 blank pages. Where I come from, it is a tradition that on a person's 100th blog post, everyone has to do whatever said blogger demands. It is an old and sacred tradition that in no way was made up just now. This leads me to my second order of business:

The donations have stagnated. $300 is quite a lot already, I know, and combined with what was raised last year it is more money than I have ever raised for anything ever...combined. Nonetheless, I am asking one last time for anything at all anyone can donate. The money helps send deserving kids to a school where they have the opportunity to get an excellent education. Do what you can before the deadline which is this Friday (25th).

Donation Instructions

Method 1: Online 1. Go to the KLM foundation website http://www.klm-foundation.org 2. Click on the Donate photo in the upper left corner. 3. This opens up a secure https connection for people to donate. 4. Put my name (Noah Prescott) in the Longtom Marathon field so they know the donation is in my name.

Method 2: Check 1. Make out a check to: Kgwale Le Mollo (US) 2. Add a post it declaring which PCV the donor is sponsoring (Noah Prescott)

3. Mail it to: KLM Foundation (US)

c/o Bowen Hsu

461 So. Bonita Avenue

Pasadena, CA 91107

Two years ago I started the Appalachian Trail. It was certainly one of the best experiences of my life thus far, even though it was cut short for my move to South Africa. In turn this has also proven to be one of the best experiences of my life but the rest of my blog is about that part, so that should be evident. There were many parts of the trail that I loved like the physical and mental challenges, the simple way of life, the ample time for reflection, the camaraderie among hikers (hello AT family!), and the ability to be immersed in nature every day. I also liked the fact that not only are beards acceptable, they are encouraged! At last it was time for one of my only true talents to be put to good use.

Last year I had meant to post some of the pictures from my hike but my computer was zapped by the sky. So here are some of the highlights that make me look cool (if that's possible). If you pay attention closely, you can see my metamorphosis from clean-shaven citizen Noah Prescott into beardy-weirdy hiker "Presco".Atop Springer Mountain. You have quite the trek ahead of you, young man.

Out of Georgia and into whatever state N.C. is supposed to be. That first border crossing is a special feeling. Fun fact: Georgia is where the fictional events of Deliverance took place, not West Virginia.

This sign was at a very busy tourist spot in the Smokies. I felt like a big shot hiker strolling through there. Once everyone got a sniff of my 4 day hiking musk, they knew I was backpacking for keeps.

I had tendinitis around my knee and it was excruciatingly painful to walk down this mountain. There was nothing for me to do but make unhappy faces to the camera to remind myself later on that at one point I had tendinitis around my knee and I was in pain.

Absolutely pathetic. Get yourself together VA/TN border-crossing sign. All the other states make fun of you behind your back.It snowed about 7 inches in Southern Virginia at the start of April. Very tough hiking but very beautiful. How do you like dem apples, global warming-advocating freedom-haters!? Saying that made me sad.

Famous AT hiker photo location. I am not going to tell you where it is, you have to find it for yourself. The mother of all blow outs. My attempts to keep the sole attached only made things worse it seems. Shenendoah's were not fun having to drag that stupid thing around.

Virginia has the longest stretch of the trail, so I was exhilarated after hiking the whole blasted thing. I also think I just had some peanut M&M's.

Halfway (Sort of) Hurray! A couple days after this, I found out that I got accepted to go into the Peace Corps and that I should start preparing to leave for South Africa.

*Note the American form "3/4". While in South Africa the law mandates that I write it 4/3, the joke nor the catchy-ness of the date for hiking (March Fortt) make sense so I had to go with what's right rather than what's legal. Don't tell the South African Date Formalism Police.

I talked about this a while back in the posts I did about the sangoma celebration. That same sangoma for whom the hootenanny was thrown a few months ago is still staying with us now. I don't benefit from any of her treatments of divinations, nor do I care to but it does add some interest to my days. This is her mortar and pestle. I have awoken to her pounding some concoction to a fine powder many times.

During one of her first few days being back home, I tried to fish for a little information on what she claims to be able to do. I did not get very far because she was bashful throughout the entire conversation. I tried not to be judgmental in any way but she could probably pick up quite easily that I was not a believer in her type of medicine. She went as far as too show me a few of the items she uses as healing tinctures, balms and salves. One that she was particularly proud of was a little jar with a yellowish globule contained within. She told me it was lion's fat used for strength or courage or confidence and I am sure 100 different uses. I don't know where she got lion's fat but I am skeptical that it was lion's fat. If it was lion's fat, I don't feel like it was obtained in a legal manner. If it was lion's fat that was obtained legally, I doubt that it could give any strength beyond what is normally gained by eating a portion of fat. Nevertheless, I asked her if I could have some for strength but she said no.Some bark that was called muti. Muti is just a word for traditional medicine in general so I have no idea what this is in particular. The link gives some more info and tells about Muti Killings which is traditional healing at its worst.

There is no doubt that some of what she makes and prescribes actually treats the things she is trying to cure. At one time traditional healing was the most modern form of science where parts of plants and animals were isolated or treated or mixed and then taken and the affects recorded or remembered in some way. This form of medicine has been vastly upgraded beyond blind trial and error and put into the hands of doctors, pharmacists and biochemists. In some cases, the parts of plants and animals that treat certain ailments have been investigated to where the active ingredient is identified, isolated down to the molecule and prescribed in precise doses. Sure chewing on willow bark will help you get rid of a headache but so will eating aspirin. But modern science can also tell you why and how aspirin treats pain as well as its side effects. Besides, can you imagine the logistics of having to dole out huge bottles filled with tree bark? I know my preference but I suppose it's a personal choice.

A dead varmint. There was something in this vole-like creature that she wanted. Apparently the vole needed it too...for living.

She then went on to show me her method of divination. She had a bag full of an assortment of trinkets like dice of various sizes, monkey bones (small bones anyway), little toys, rocks, etc. Then she would throw it on the ground and read from it. I didn't see the whole process nor did I get a reading because she said I had to pay, which is quite fair, but I would rather spend my money on something else.

I see much less value in the divination aspect of her position. Although, it could be said that she could do much more damage giving people things for treatments to things she cannot actually treat and may even do more harm, I believe most things she gives are innocuous or slightly helpful. Her practices would not have come this far if she were killing all her customers. The divination on the other hand just seems to be a form of cold reading blended with some aspects of talk therapy. The element of the supernatural is completely superfluous and dangerous. To me it poisons a person's confidence in their abilities to plan out and reason things for themselves and others by having to rely on spiritual guidance. If you have a good idea or were given a good solution to a problem, be happy that it has human origins and that someone was helped. Likewise, if you gave awful advice take the consequences for that as well, hiding behind a veil of the unknown is disingenuous. She might as well just be a counselor but whether she counsels well is another issue.

The most recent project which happens to be a large flayed snake. She had also found an enormous lizard recently and likewise killed and dissected it but I didn't get a picture. Wish I saw these creatures while they were alive.

The household sangoma is always open and even a little proud to show me what it is she is working on and I appreciate and am interested in what she finds but that's usually as far as it goes. The whole relationship is almost like a bizarre, poorly written sitcom. It stars an American chemistry major Peace Corps volunteer and his South African traditional healer neighbor. To all T.V. executives reading this, I am more than willing to make this sitcom. I will sell out IMMEDIATELY!

I am pleased to experience the culture but I can't help but have the knee jerk reaction of being uncomfortable around bogus claims and practices. Although I don't want her to suffer financially, at the same time I would be displeased if she were getting more visitors than the clinic. Ideally, I would be happiest if neither were required but the clinic be used for the medicine and the sangoma for the tradition and maybe some life guidance if it were agreed that all advice is drawn straight from her own experience and reasoning and not from the divine.

As you can see there has been a huge jump in the donation gauge. While the arrow indicates the boundary of a "Donation Overload", the gauge is still holding up pretty well and donations are still being accepted. I am pleased and I thank those who have donated, you know who you are I should think.

I have gotten a lot of e-mails regarding the same sort of questions so I will just put up a quick F.A.Q.s to nip this in the bud.

I really like everything about KLM and your blog. I want to donate a lot of money, is this allowed?

Thanks, that is very kind of you to say. Yes, donating a lot money is acceptable and encouraged.

I want to donate more than $100 but I am afraid there is not enough room on the donation meter. Will this break the meter?

This will NOT break the meter. If things get beyond the $400 point, I will in fact make another gauge.

I want to tell everyone I know about your blog and how to donate to KLM on your behalf. How should I tell them how to donate?

Thanks again.

Donation Instructions

Method 1: Online 1. Go to the KLM foundation website http://www.klm-foundation.org 2. Click on the Donate photo in the upper left corner. 3. This opens up a secure https connection for people to donate. 4. Put my name (Noah Prescott) in the Longtom Marathon field so they know the donation is in my name.

Method 2: Check 1. Make out a check to: Kgwale Le Mollo (US) 2. Add a post it declaring which PCV the donor is sponsoring (Noah Prescott)

3. Mail it to: KLM Foundation (US)

c/o Bowen Hsu

461 So. Bonita Avenue

Pasadena, CA 91107

I figured this sign pretty much proves I was there. Understated and to the point, this sign gets a A+ for accuracy.

My entire vacation over this past break was really two vacations bundled into one. There was the time in St. Lucia where I got the outdoors craving fulfilled and then there was the time in Durban where I saw many other Peace Corps volunteers and spent far too much money and stayed too long doing expensive things. This post is about the former.

This is what St. Lucia is all about: tiny little hippos balancing on-top of drumsticks on top of crocs. Seriously though, I'm glad they had a sign that warned everybody that hippos and crocs are constantly bickering back and forth all day long.

The idea is that I go to all of the World Heritage sites in South Africa. The more I think about it, there are going to be a couple of really challenging ones to get to but I think I can do it. The first on the list was the iSimangaliso Wetland Park. More specifically, I went to St. Lucia which is only a small section of the entire wetland. Nevertheless, I got a good bit of exploring done and manged to see a few of the different environments of the park. Getting up to the wetland was pretty straightforward. As straightforward as jumping several taxis can be I suppose. The basic recipe: go to one town, ask for the taxi to St. Lucia, be led to the taxi, wait and sweat and be sweated on while traveling, repeat until you arrive in St. Lucia. I traveled there alone which may be a big no-no but I manged just fine. Going to a new place is an adventure, the normal frustrations and tedium of taxi drives is at least partially mollified.

St. Lucia is in Zululand so it was a treat to hear and see that culture, the little that I did. These boys were very smartly set-up right at the ferry dock and seemed to make a good amount from the people coming off the boats. "What is Zulu male dancing like" you ask? Zulu male dancing focuses on the showy high kicks.

An African Eagle. Majestic, graceful, and a terrible fisher-eagle, which is why I was able to get this picture. It tried several times to grab at something unsuccessfully, it failed in style though.

While the area was absolutely gorgeous, the town of St. Lucia which is the launching off point for just about every part of the wetland, is a bit touristy. I did not have any qualms with this though. I could see how it could wear on you but I enjoyed the conveniences while I was there. It also happens to be a very popular Afrikaner family vacationing spot, so I was a bit out of place. This being the case, most of the tours and packages were geared towards families and people who make money so again I was a out of luck. I still managed to find plenty to do for the time I was there.

St. Lucia in a photo. That's a baby croc on top of a hippo giving a nice yawn. The ferry boat guide said he had never seen it before but I am sure he says that too all the ferry cruise patrons. I was a little disappointed that there weren't any crocs and hippos dancing ballet to the Dance of the Hours. Fantasia really warped my expectations out there.

One of the larger pods of hippos. There were so many there that by the end of the trip, I was no longer astounded by seeing enormous hippos out in the wild. What you see them doing there is what they do most of the day. Watch out cats and sloths, you have a rival for "laziest creature in the world".So what do people do in St. Lucia? The short answer is "lots". Close-by and most famously, is the estuary which is home to an impressive number of hippos and crocodiles. There were a couple of ferries that did short jaunts a couple of times a day. A very entertaining and worthwhile experience for sure. While the crocodiles were more elusive (I didn't get a nice picture of any), the hippos are very easily seen. In fact, I would think it is impossible to go there and not see any hippos. There were guided tours to the close by game parks iMfolozi and Hluhluwe which I did go to but will talk about in another post. There were trips to snorkel, to see leather back turtles, to deep sea fish, to kayak, to go to other popular spots in the park like Sodwana Bay and Cape Vidal, and night drives. I didn't do any of these things, I am sure they are quite fun but they were simply not in the budget.

The fruit stalls. Definitely one of my favorite parts of the town- beautiful to look at, pleasing to smell, delicious to eat. I survived off of liche and mango for a few days. I now know that there are creatures that lay their eggs in mangoes. Those white things on the right are maggots. Hey guys, if the mango is a little mushy, just throw that one away. I took it easy on the mangoes after this one.

Besides the ferry cruise, I went to the beach and went hiking everyday. It was everything I could want out of the vacation. There were enough trails that I hiked for hours every day without going on the same trail. And although it was very crowded, there was hardly a soul on the trails which was fine by me. The beach was not the finest in the world. It had the bare minimum requirements to make it a beach, these things being the ocean and sand but it's proximity to the estuary made the water brackish and absolutely clogged with hippo poop. Also, I fell asleep on the beach for a little too long the first day I was there and the South African sun let me know that I am not completely resistant to sunburns. Turns out my gin and tonics proved useful for another reason other than preventing malaria: numbing the senses!

This sign gave me pause. Although I new it would be extremely unlikely that I would run into any of the animals the sign was warning me about, I still had to take a few focusing breaths before I crossed the threshold. Best case scenario: I see a leopard or something from a distance and escape with all my limbs attached. Worst case scenario: I get mauled immediately. Ultimate Awesomeness Case Scenario: I encounter a buffalo, rhino, hippo, elephant, leopard and crocodile that have all teamed up and I fight them off gaining their respect and earn the King of St. Lucia title.

Hippos tracks. I could tell from my years as a hippo tracker. Also there were hippos across the river so I kind of assumed.

One of my favorite moments of hiking. Came through a copse of trees to see this. Nice spot for lunch.I enjoyed the place quite a bit. I certainly was ready to leave when I did because I did just about everything there was to do without spending money in the place. I am ready for the next WHS site. With my sister coming next week I am hoping to knock out the two located close to Cape Town.

Friends and family: I am still in South Africa. I have not been arrested in Spain for possession of a gun and cocaine. If someone calls you and asks you to give bail money so that I don't go to jail, don't believe it. Scammers targeted my grandmother earlier today but she is too smart for any of that garbage.

I suppose that if I do happen to get arrested in Spain with a gun and cocaine now, I am not going to be able to call any of you for help. Spanish prison can't be that bad though.

Peace Corps volunteers in SA, Peace Corps volunteers worldwide, Bloggers , people with stuff on the internet (everyone I guess): Beware! Might be a good idea to remind your families to be vigilant and not give out money on your behalf without proof of identity/authority and evidence in general.

Scumbag(s): Not cool. You're the reason why we can't trust each other by default. How would you like it if I tried to scam your grandmother?!

That was quite a hiatus but I enjoyed all of it so I am not ashamed. A lot has happened since I last blogged about what is happening at site. I won't promise that I will get to all of it because my track record on making up blog posts is not so good so just trust me that it is all good stuff.

The first thing I have to get around to is raising more funds, which means asking for donations from you people. Thankfully, some excellent people have already contributed so that I won't be made fun of for not reaching the minimum donation. Now that I will no longer be shamed, I want to be able to crush all the rest of the other Peace Corps volunteers so I can make fun of their donations. When you think about it, that's what this is all about anyway. Search your hearts you know it to be true. Help me humiliate some Peace Corps volunteers. Also the money goes to a really good charity which is a great bonus.

Donation Instructions

Method 1: Online 1. Go to the KLM foundation website http://www.klm-foundation.org 2. Click on the Donate photo in the upper left corner. 3. This opens up a secure https connection for people to donate. 4. Put my name (Noah Prescott) in the Longtom Marathon field so they know the donation is in my name.

Method 2: Check 1. Make out a check to: Kgwale Le Mollo (US) 2. Add a post it declaring which PCV the donor is sponsoring (Noah Prescott)

3. Mail it to: KLM Foundation (US)

c/o Bowen Hsu

461 So. Bonita Avenue

Pasadena, CA 91107

I would not have gotten into the Peace Corps and would not have been able to make it this far without you. I love you very much. Have you and Dad started your Peace Corps applications yet?

This is just a note to inform you all that I am taking a break from writing here for a while. I will be back in 2011 for sure. I hope you all have a nice holiday and a happy new year. Here is a picture of a monkey to hold you over.

Monkeys are great.

Never get into a staring contest with a chameleon. You will lose.

This chameleon is probably the most exciting animal find that has happened in the village. This was several months back when I was without computer. My host brother was just sitting on the porch, staring off into the distance and then he calmly scoped out this fella in the middle of a bush. Needless to say, I was impressed. Sure it is a a pretty big chameleon but they are the animal used to characterize something difficult to spot. And it's not like he was right next to it either, the bush was about 8 meters away. It was a fascinating discovery that gave at least 20 minutes of entertainment. I strongly considered having a pet chameleon but decided that it would probably not be a very good idea. It vanished later that day or at least found a better hiding spot.

I have no idea what it was doing here, this seems like a peculiar place for a chameleon. I spent a good amount of time going around it to see it wonky eyes move about.

If you recall last post, I mentioned catching up on some promised posts. Well I am putting that off yet again to take care of some other assorted topics. Since this is my blog I can do that and there's nothing you can do about it!

Weather

That's right, I am going to talk about the weather. You can choose not to read this part but it's your loss. It has been extremely pleasant the past couple of days. The temperature is mild with a gentle breeze for most of the day and then in late afternoon there is a storm that comes in and it rains for most of the night. It is a gentle rain too which makes for a phenomenal sleeping atmosphere. It seems that the sweet spot for enjoyable rainstorms is a lot narrower if you live in a house with a metal roof which is my current situation. If it gets too intense then it is just insanely loud and a little unsettling. As I said, this has not been a worry recently but since things will change soon enough, I have been mindful to savor it.

Food

I am thrifty with my stipend so that I might enjoy my vacations a little more. In particular, I try to draw out my food to last me as long as I can while at the same time only buying the bare minimum required for daily nourishment. It has almost become a personal challenge to see how frugal I can be with my food (a post for another day). I get extra bonus points this time of the year because of the garden (another post for another day). Just when I am down to the last few servings of rice and beans and have to go into town to buy more food which I do not enjoy, the garden supplies me with a little treat.

Possible the most delicious sweet potato anyone has every eaten in the history of eating sweet potatoes.

Last week I had a few sweet potatoes prepared by my host mother which were incredibly delicious. Today, a few of the pumpkins were ready which means I will be eating a lot of pumpkin in the next couple of days. I have never cooked pumpkin before but on the culinary advice of my host mother, it turned out better than expected. I have no worries about eating the rest. Normally, I wouldn't say I am particularly keen on sweet potatoes or pumpkins but any change from rice and beans is amazing. This is in addition to the fact that the food was grown about 30 meters from where I live, so there is triumph and pride mixed in as well. I am eager for the actual harvest time, there is going to be some serious eating with little spending going on.

Their "pumpkins" are green, what a country!

Meteors

Ryan reminded me of the Geminids meteor show tonight which I have to say I am pretty excited about. I have missed the previous couple for various reasons: some I just flat out forgot, some were too cloudy, and one time I was mistaken about the correct date and was standing in the dark like a fool the day after it ended. I feel like this would be a great opportunity to have a solid explanation about an astronomical events and be able to point it out to my host family, unlike the last time I was tested. I just checked outside and it is cloudy but I am hopeful that it will clear up before midnight. If it doesn't then meteors are stupid and I didn't want to see them anyway.

Christmas

I realized today that Christmas is less than two weeks away. Sadly, it does not feel like Christmas in any way. This was more of a shock to me last year but no less upsetting to experience again this year. All of the cues that it is the holiday season are absent; the weather is warm to hot, I don't watch t.v. so I don't get holiday commercials, and I haven't been to town recently to see any sort of decorations.

The only chance at Christmas spirit I have control over is the Christmas music and to a lesser extent the Christmas movies I can watch. It feels a little forced but after putting on some Christmas tunes this afternoon I definitely felt a little more Christmas-y. My demeanor is decidedly more Christmas-like. A quick aside, I really enjoy Christmas music. I have learned to keep a lid on it these days but I used to like it to the point where some would consider it odd. I would listen to it a couple months after Christmas was over to the frustration to at least one of my sisters. In my defense, I was pretty young and this was when I had maybe 8 cds and Christmas music was one of my only options. Additionally, music is usually less about lyrics and more about melody and rhythm to me and Christmas music has that stuff in spades. I challenge you to listen to some Johnny Mathis or Vince Guaraldi when it is not actually Christmas-time and see if you enjoy it.

Vacation

The polling stations are closed and the votes have been counted. The people have spoken with a loud and booming voice. The St. Lucia Wetland won by a landslide unanimous vote. This is for the best, now I don't have to use my special voting powers. What I didn't tell you is that my vote counts for a billion votes and I wanted to go to St. Lucia. Everybody wins this time.

There is not much new to tell for today. School finished on Friday and I celebrated by doing nothing for the remainder of the day. The rest of the weekend was devoted to a deep cleaning of my room. It had gotten to the point of being cluttered and with the year winding down I thought it would be a good time to get rid of the old to make room for the new.

In addition to this, it had just become a little grimy. It is a daily struggle to keep the kalahari sand where it belongs, outside with the rest of the sand. Beyond that, unfortunately, even with care taken to be clean and orderly, dust and detritus accumulates. I figured this weekend was a good time to do more than just sweep but also introduce soap and water into the mix. I went so far as to be proactive about potential termite and ant entrances by filling them in with candle wax. With a vacation coming up, this was wise since last time I was hit pretty hard.

Finally, I managed to find the cricket that has been torturing me for the past couple of days. It was not responding to my verbal threats or pleas and my half-conscious, 2 AM searches were futile. Today it was captured and the moment was immensely satisfying. Simple pleasures.

Hopefully, the rest of this week I can deliver on some of the posts I have been promising and putting of for another day. It has been a digital cleaning weekend as well and I have a couple of half written ideas I should just finish and send out. We shall see.

For some reason I thought this week was going to be uneventful and trouble free. It turns out that I was horribly mistaken. It is the last week of school and grades are due and it seems many administrative tasks were put off until the last moment. I have been working pretty late the past few days helping on getting the reports done and printed correctly. Tomorrow is the final day and it seems like everything should be done on time which will be a relief.

In the midst of all those grades and reports, the other school I work in had its farewell/graduation/circle-of-learners party yesterday. I feel like the last week of a school is a much better time to have this party than before the exams (like the other school did). Although I felt a little frustrated that the school was putting off all the things that needed to be done for yet another day, the party was a good time. As you might imagine, it was very similar to the other farewell in most respects: many speeches, songs, and dancing.

I told you that you would see the female traditional dancing soon enough!

The biggest difference was the graduation of the grade R learners entering into grade 1. I would say more time was devoted to the grade R than the grade 6 graduation. A fellow peace corps volunteer saw this same event recently. There was at least an hour devoted to them coming out and marching around in their finery and then another hour for them to pose in their cap and gowns. It was a little bizarre for me. The kids seemed to have very little idea as to what was happening. They were just walking around as orders were barked at them. It was cute enough but I felt like I had enough of it pretty early on. Perhaps I am a little biased towards the grade 6 and feel like they were an afterthought to the whole party. "Yeah, yeah good job grade 6, you spent 6 years here and now you are going to middle school. Let's see more of the small children in adult clothing!"

Those ties are pretty great. Should look into getting one of those.

I mean how hard is it to graduate from grade R anyway? You learn numbers and letters for a couple hours then play and eat and go home early. Although the grade 6 learners here are not exactly working themselves to the bone, their days are not as easy as all that. I'm not saying get rid of the whole grade R affair-- I know I did something similar when I was that young and that parents enjoy this sort of thing-- I just wish there was a little more for the grade 6 is all. I call for graduation parity, I demand cap and gown equality! Am I coming off as a curmudgeon on this one? This is probably one of those times where I am the only person with a gripe about the situation and my opinion really doesn't matter at all. If any of the grade 6 learners felt the same way, they didn't show it. I think they were happy enough just to be moving on.

I was trying to get a picture of the kid in the way back because he had a sweet mohawk but as you can see the photo was stormed and he barely made it into the frame.

Beetle massacre?

A few kilometers makes a big difference. On my side of the village the beetles are certainly around but not in any alarming numbers, not that I can notice anyway. When I head to the primary school on the other side of the village things change quite a bit. It is hard not to run across one every couple of steps. The school itself seems to have a beetle infestation. There are heaps of dead beetles of various sizes in all the gutters and plenty more living in all the nooks and crannies of the structure. I don't know what attracts them to this particular spot or what causes them to die soon after arriving but it seems to be an annual event. The same sequence happened this time last year, the beetles come and then they go to the beetle graveyard of K-village to die.

This beetle was squirming helplessly on its back until I decided to take pity. Not so much as one thank you. That is one ungrateful beetle.

As I was stepping over a particularly large pile of dead beetles today, I made a mental note to do a little beetle research. Wikipedia was my first stop but to drill down more on South African beetles I went to this site. I am positive there are better ways of identifying beetles but as a layman I liked the format presented here. It starts of identifying certain beetles by what they eat such as cicadas or leaves. Then it moves on to identifying beetles by where they live and then it gets to some really interesting beetles. Categories include: "Beetles with explosives and poisonous chemicals", "Beetles that use 'aqua lungs' " and "Beetles that are erroneously reputed to be good for sex".

I'll only repeat one of the many interesting facts if you were not inclined to click on any of the links because I am sure your attention span fades every time you read the word "beetles". Ready for it? Ok here it is, beetles comprise the largest group of currently identified species. As of now, a quarter of all identified life forms are beetles which means there are a lot of types of beetles. I'll leave it at that for you to ponder on and to put in your mental vault for the next time you play trivial pursuit or even "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". If you win money from that little tidbit on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" I fully expect a cut from it, for beetle research of course.

There are a few days left of school. Eventually I will put up some thoughts about my year of teaching but that is not for today. The power is out so I don't have much time to write and it will and should take some time.

With the end of school also comes vacation time. It is really going to be a slapdash one at that. I will be going wherever the wind takes me all the while squeezing as much relaxation and enjoyment out of my meager savings as I can. My only guide will be trying to visit as many World Heritage Sites as possible. I am hoping that by the end of my service I will have visited all of them but would like to see at least one during this break. But even if I don't there is always 2011.

As an experiment I put up a poll on the side of the page for suggestions as to which Heritage Site I go to first. Think of it as a way to control me through cyber-democracy. It will be a bit of a distorted democracy because I think you can vote more than once but I am comfortable with the dedicated getting what they want out of my World Heritage Site quest. Any sort of response will surely get me to try my hardest to see that place first and then write about it.

For your consideration:

iSimangaliso Wetland Park

Cradle of Humankind

Cape Floristic Region

Kingdom of Mapungubwe

Richtersveld

Robben Island

Drakensberg

Vredefort crater

UNESCO - South Africa

Recently, a fellow volunteer painted his roof white to reduce the heat absorbed by the metal sheets. He then generously offered to donate paint and a helping hand for me to do the same. It turned out to be exceedingly simple. Most of the difficulty and frustration came in securing (paint was hijacked) and transferring (khombis ran out gas) the paint from his site to mine. The actual painting took an hour at most. There were two of us working on a pretty small surface and I was not particularly concerned with how it looked. It has only been a few days now since the project was completed but I can already tell there is a difference. I would say it knocked a few degrees off the temperature which is most appreciated in the afternoon. This is the sort of thing that is extraordinarily satisfying to me; it was a simple and easy procedure that has a fairly substantial payoff. For posterity sake here are the steps:

1. Wake up early so that the sun has not had time to turn the roof into a baking tray. Get out the ricketiest most unnerving ladder you can find and scramble up onto that roof.

2. Once your up on top, the metal is probably sturdy but it helps to walk on the support beams-- I could only picture in my mind were exactly I would be falling through into my room if things went terribly wrong ("right about here I would snag the electrical supply to my room and then hit my head on my desk"). Clear away any objects that might make painting difficult, this includes things like shards of animal bones, wheel rims, bike chains, and all manner of scrap metal.

3. It would also be good to give your roof a once over with a broom just to get all the finer sand and dust particles. This is especially true if you live in the desert. Mark out your intended area of roof coolification.

4. Paint the roof white. Using white paint might be the most important step of all; any color would not be as effective and probably worse, much worse if you choose black. I feel sad for you if you don't believe me on this point but test it out for yourself.

5. Enjoy the benefits of a more comfortable living space.

Another video so soon? You betcha. I am flush with data at the moment but even if I were not, after a little computer magic these short movies are about the same amount of data as the pictures I post.

This video is of a few learners showing off their traditional dance skills. You will notice that one of the boys was doing particularly well because one of the gogos (older ladies) jumps out and dance-assaults him. He kept his composure were I would have been ruffled. That's the mark of an artist, the show must go on!

Don't worry, the girls get to dance too. Somewhere along the way, I'm sure you'll get to see it.

I am planning on participating in the Longtom Marathon again this year. Don't be impressed just yet, I am only going to do the half marathon. Still impressed, well you shouldn't be because I am probably going to walk it again. Although I might change my mind if the circumstances are right.

More important than the marathon is the KLM foundation which is attached to it. The foundation which was setup by former Peace Corps Volunteers in South Africa has been running for several years now. Its goal is to send students from rural areas to Uplands College in Mpumalanga. I have it on good authority that this school offers a world class education which makes it head and shoulders and then another head and shoulders above a typical rural high school. It also has a swimming pool.

I am asking for donations for the cause. Help make opportunities accessible to some deserving kids. Make it so they can enjoy a swimming pool when it is unbearable hot. How to donate:

Method 1: Online 1. Go to the KLM foundation website http://www.klm-foundation.org 2. Click on the Donate photo in the upper left corner. 3. This opens up a secure https connection for people to donate. 4. Put my name (Noah Prescott) in the Longtom Marathon field so they know the donation is in my name.

Method 2: Check 1. Make out a check to: Kgwale Le Mollo (US) 2. Add a post it declaring which PCV the donor is sponsoring (Noah Prescott)

3. Mail it to: KLM Foundation (US)

c/o Bowen Hsu

461 So. Bonita Avenue

Pasadena, CA 91107

I tried to figure out how to do a nifty donation meter like Wikipedia has but soon realized that I do not have the skills to do this. My next idea was to just make a picture and update it as donations came in because I do have the skills to make simple pictures. Now I was faced with a tough choice, there are lots of different motivational tools to choose from. There's the thermometer-type fundraising graphic, but I felt uncomfortable encouraging you all to raise the temperature. Even if it is the fictitious donation temperature. Then I briefly considered the tool used in the greatest movie about the Cleveland Indians ever made, Major League. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I highly recommend you watch the movie. This idea was passed over though because I realized it would only make you want to win the AL Penant so your team wouldn't move to Miami which is not really my goal. After much deliberation, I ended up choosing the gauge style and am unashamedly proud of the result. I am pretty sure this is going to compel otherwise miserly people to give as much as they can. Let the donation begin!

As you can see from the donation gauge, we are at a dangerously low lever. I mean we are below the "Pathetic Region".

Here's a treat since you all have been so good. The first video of the blog! I spent a huge chunk of the day trying to figure out the best way to do this and have found a pretty nice solution. Perhaps more videos will appear in the future as well.

I am not going to write much because I have spent too much time on this already. This was from the vacation to Namibia I went on quite a while ago. The descriptions and pictures will happen in Episode 2. All you really need to know is that the best way to get down the huge dunes in the Namib desert is to run down them. Warning: Very shaky at times and I apologize for my cackling and heavy panting but what do you expect, I was running down an enormous sand dune!

You'll notice I came really close to face-planting a few times. Holding the camera did not help out at all.

The households in my village keep their property free of any grass. I consider it a negative lawn. Although you may think that this option would be carefree, it actually takes quite a bit of work. Cutting the grass and watering is replaced with plant removal and grading, especially after the rain makes mini ruts and gullies. Unexpectedly, raking is even a daily routine with the dirt lawn. It turns out that this landscaping choice has a practical aspect in addition to any aesthetic value that has been attached to it. The function is to remove any hiding spots for snakes or any other unwanted critters or at least make it easy to spot them. Up until now, I was not too convinced this technique was actually needed any more since I had not seen any snakes or anything remotely threatening (ants excluded). Then again maybe the lawn was doing it's duty extra well. The latter idea was given more credence the other day when I spotted my first snake. It was just a juvenile and there was something clearly wrong with it because it wandered into the yard amidst all the bustle of the morning chores and animals and it was moving slow enough to be covered with ants. The host family seemed extra frightened of it but this is understandable because there are some notoriously venomous snakes in this country. And although I would love to say it was a black mamba to give me some herpetologist street-cred, I am fairly certain it was a non-venomous snake.

Anyone good at identifying snakes? It is hard to tell but it has a round head and had orange coloring on the side of its head. So far I have narrowed it down to not python and not black mamba

Surprisingly, the snake was not killed but was shuffled into a nearby cow pasture and soon forgotten. Later that day, as I was dumping water into the very same pasture, I noticed the snake was still there albeit much more desiccated. My immediate reaction was to go poke it. Upon investigation, I found it to be extremely dead and was pleased with my find. I now have it is a souvenir in my room despite the possibility that something toxic caused this snake an early termination. It has already proven itself to be full of entertainment because I scared the bejesus out of my host sister the very same day it was discovered. You know the set-up. You pretend like you found something interesting but you keep it concealed until your victim gets close. Then you scream and pretend like the snake is lunging at the person's jugular to inject lethal poison. Classic!The sun really did a number on this snake. It was probably 8 feet long before it dried out. I am lying.

The price of this ruse is that I have firmly pushed myself even more into the utterly bizarre with my host family. Moreover, when they asked why I was keeping the snake, I felt they didn't quite accept my answer of “I think it is interesting”. I hope they don't think I am trying to undercut the family sangoma that has put up a her shingle next door with my own form of medicine. I'm confident they'll see I have no interest in this but I have to make sure I don't flaunt my Namibian baboon skull for a couple of days.The best and only paperweight I own. So if you were planning on buying me one...don't.

We burn our trash out here. There is very little positive about this situation. Maybe a large scale incinerating operation with air scrubbers and metal removal capabilities could provide a somewhat reasonable garbage solution but that is not an option yet out here. Garbage is taken care of on a household basis. It is chucked into a decently large hole somewhere on the property and after enough has accumulated, a fire is lit. This is in an effort to make the hole last longer by reducing the size of the garbage and to help along any reincorporation into the soil. For the most part, the outcome is a low-temperature, plastic-fueled bonfire. Who knows what sort of sinister and noxious things are forged in those bonfires but there is little doubt they are mostly unhealthy for the surrounding population and even the global environment.My garbage burning addiction will catch up to me eventually. Most likely in the form of multiple cancers and heavy metal poisoning The personal upside to this waste solution is that fire is amazing. This is one of those cases where one man's trash is another man's treasure. This is because sometimes I get to turn the trash into a glorious inferno. Simultaneously, my environmentally-conscience side sees a rubbish pit as half empty and my pyromaniac side sees it as half full. Wait, strike that and reverse it. Actually, I suppose it would all depend on if I was being pessimistic or optimistic. As you can see, it is a very conflicted state of being! My love of fire is one of my most atavistic features. I enjoy making fires, tending fires, watching fires, cooking over fires, crouching and grunting beside fires. I find them to be calming and stabilizing. In fact, I bet I could start a successful New Age therapy where every so often, one would build a small camp-fire and stare at it for an hour and let the healing begin. It is still in the developmental phase but I can tell that this is a billion dollar idea. Garbage fires don't rank very highly on my favorite activities, it is more of a silver lining issue. Still, how bad should I feel about this and more importantly, are garbage fires a huge problem for my village? Without any solid evidence to guide me, I think not. The people here have very little waste and I would bet the carbon footprint of the entire village is significantly smaller than the same population selected from the U.S. At my host families house, these garbage fires happen once, maybe twice a month. I can't see it happening more frequently at other homes. One, people here are relatively poor so they don't buy many things or they usually buy in bulk with less packaging and two, the village is remote enough that all the things that tend to be garbage pit bound are hard to come by (soda cans, wrappers, all manner of plastic packaging etc.). The garbage fires might actually be a good thing when thought about in a different way. It is at least taking some sort of action with regards to the waste. Again for the reasons mentioned above, there is little waste in my village but that does not mean that people do not litter. If someone has any bit of trash and isn't within maybe 10 meters of a garbage pit they'll just toss it anywhere. A terrible thing indeed but it doesn't lead to an eyesore in the village, not yet at least. In a larger setting though, even in the next village over, the litter is considerable worse. There are ever growing piles of garbage everywhere. Invariably, the worst offenders are taxis ranks where the ground is actually made of crushed soda cans and ice-juice wrappers. The first step to correcting and preventing this would be getting people to throw things in a bin. This is hard enough in itself because you first have to convince people that littering is not a good thing because it is apparent that the sights and smells from it are not dissuading anyone. Although, and this may be why no one bothers, the next step is altogether missing. No one is going to come around to collect the bins nor would anyone take it upon themselves to make a landfill or village sized garbage fire. Large scale waste management in a rural context is a difficult thing and unfortunately, I don't really see anybody stepping up to that problem in the near future.

My host mother has 5 grown children. Of those grown children (3 daughters, 2 sons), the daughters all have children that stay with their grandmother, my host mother. The sangoma celebration was the first time since I have been at site that all of my host mother's children and grandchildren were all together. My self-appointed duty was to get all of the grown children together for a picture. This turned out to be a difficult task. In my experience, there is no middle ground for photos among the Tswana people. Either someone loves getting their picture taken and will go out of his or her way to get their picture or someone hates getting their picture taken and he or she will make sure you know it when you take the picture, if you manage to that is. I think it is fair to say it is largely age related. Although, I might be misunderstanding a different philosophy on how pictures are to be taken but more on that later. Regarding the family picture, I failed because I waited until the next morning and one of the daughters left under the cover of darkness. This is a fine example of how far someone will go not to have there picture taken. I did manage to get the other four children and my host mother in one shot. Smiling faces and the evil eye from the older woman sitting down

Now that is a nice picture I think. It took a long time to wrestle up all the children and along the way some other people joined in because they thought I wanted to get their picture too and I didn't have the heart to tell them to scram. As you can see, most everyone is smiling and/or mid laugh. There are a few exceptions and this is the point I mentioned earlier, some people just don't smile. There are two women in the picture who are giving the same look and did so in every other picture too. It looks more like the pose they would give if they were having someone draw their portrait. Smiling is just not their style. Likewise, the man in the middle is not looking at the camera. I took several pictures of him and he purposefully never looks at the camera. I think his goal is a sort of faux candidness. Again that is just how he takes pictures. This is similar to how some people cannot take a picture without giving the sideways peace sign/thumbs up, acting the fool, pouting his/her lips etc. It's not something that deserves any guff because that is how that person wants to be remembered-- so be it I say! Well I want you to see the next picture as a foil to this first one.That's right little one, learn the ways of the smile. It is strong in you.

As you can see, a major difference is that I am in this one. Do you notice anything else? I am sure you have noticed that there are a lot of hard looks and not many smiling faces. This picture is saying 1000 words but those words probably distill down to “I do not want to take a picture with this goober”. Ok, I don't think they all hate me. I am leaving out some important context. The cause for the big difference between the pictures is that in the first one I said an absolutely hilarious joke and it killed. The joke was me saying “smile” in Setswana. This was in contrast to when the other man took the second picture. His button pressing was haphazard and he did not make it clear that everyone should be ready. Moreover, there was concern that he didn't know what he was doing. Nevertheless, the picture was taken and I wouldn't want it any other way, it's much better this way.