Saturday, August 10

I woke up this morning  slightly refreshed.  I did not sleep the best since I slept on the inside of the mattress which was against the wall.  For some reason, this part of the mattress was at a down-wards angle and so I always felt like I was rolling into the wall. 

The bedroom we slept in

The lighting - don't think it would past safety standards in Canada!

The living room

The kitchen.  Notice the 'stove' on the right - it is just a falling apart cupboard with a 2-burner stove on top of it.  

  We were served breakfast (I don’t think the boys or the mother had any) and were picked up 15 minutes earlier than stated – a rare thing to happen here.  

We said good-bye to our host family and headed out to a town about an hour away.  As we drove to this town, we had to wind our way through some mountains.  It made me feel like I was driving to BC, although the mountains looked quite different.  In this town, our goal was to deliver invitations to a conference that Oupa is hosting next week.   

I think I should say a few things about Oupa before I go on.  You say his name “Opa” and so when I first heard of him, I was thinking that he would older, have grey hair, etc.  However, Oupa is his given name and is no way connected to “Opa” and when I saw him, he was the exact opposite of what I expected.   He is younger, has two young boys and has lots of energy.  He started his third church plant last week and so he currently preaches three times a day to three different churches.  He was very excited for us to come and wanted us to have a true African experience.  He offered us more insight into the culture and loved answering our questions. 

Oupa's House

                I am not sure of the name of the town where we delivered our invitations, but before we could deliver them, we had to find a safe place to park our cars.  Oupa knew someone from there and she had a safe place, but it took us  a bit to find it.  This is another poor area and the government built probably a couple hundred identical brick houses and so we got lost, but we eventually found the place.  Once we found the place, we squeezed the cars through the narrow gate, said ‘hello’ to the lady and started walking.  We handed out about 20 invitations.  Saturday was wash day and so a lot of people were outside washing their laundery in tubs, wringing it out and then hanging it on the line to dry.  We would walk into their yards and invite them to the conference and give them the invitation and move on.  It was interesting seeing the situations that the people lived in.  I don’t think none of us could survive it!

                Once we were done handing out the invititations, we headed back to Hammanskraal for a traditional African burger.  On our way, we heard loud music and saw people dancing.  Oupa told us to stop and I thought we would see what was happening while sitting in the car.  Nope –the opposite happened.  A traditional African wedding was taking place and there was a lot of celebration happening.  With the four of us, Oupa marched into the yard of the couple that were getting married and we stood on the front porch of the house watching.  A lot of people were taking pictures of us as this was unusual.  After standing for a few minutes, chairs were brought out for us and we had front row seats.  We were there just in time, as we were able to see the wedding party dance into the yard.  The music was incredibly loud – you could feel it in your stomach and the traditional clothing was bright and colourful.   Once the MC started talking, we left and continued on to getting our African burger.

The wedding was a combination of several different tribes.  This lady was Zulu. 

Chairs were brought out for us to sit on.  

The bride and groom.  

Some of the bridal party

                By this time, it was about 2:00 and all of us were hungry.  We were looking forward to food, but we had no idea what to expect.  When we arrived, we saw an outdoor set-up that would be shut down by Health Canada immediately.  We ordered the burger and were served two slices of white bread, a patty, a sausage, a hotdog, fries and some sort of red sauce.  The goal was to put the burger, fries, red sauce and lettuce and tomatoes on the bread.  It made for a huge burger.  In the end it was alright – very greasy, but otherwise not bad and it cost R18.50, so $1.85.  A huge meal which I couldn’t finish under two dollars – you can’t find that in Canada.  And none of us got sick from it!!

The stand

Waiting for food

                After we were done eating, we headed back to the church where we had the conference.  The church needed to be cleaned for Sunday.  So we spent some time sweeping floors, mopping floors and doing dishes.  It was then time to meet our next host family. 

The church

The washroom.

                Our new host family lived in the same area as last night’s family and so after travelling over some rough, bumpy red dirt roads (poor car), we arrived there.  There we were introduced to Portia, the 22-year old daughter who was already making supper for her family and us.  We sat down and talked with her for a bit and then she wanted to introduce us to her friends.  It was about 6:00, so not quite dark yet, but getting there.  Elisa and I were a bit nervous about this, but were up for the adventure. 

                We headed out and soon met up with three of Portia’s friends.  From there we continued walking around the area.  Soon we came to a party with loud music and lots of drinking.   The girls from the town wanted to show us traditional African dancing, but we declined.  While standing around there, we had several clearly drunk guys come up to us and shake hands over and over and over again.  Finally we got out of there and continued walking.  We then headed back to Portia’s house.

                At Portia’s house, we had several people stop by to meet the white people from America.  They all had to tell us their story and ask us why we are in South Africa.  Then some of her friends came over and we had some snacks and talked for an hour or so.  It was really neat to talk with young people about the struggles that they face.  There were five girls altogether and for sure three of them did not have any children.  This is very unusual for this area.  

We then retired to bed, making sure to go to the washroom before falling asleep!