Road Trip & Pietermaritzburg

Sanibona! Igama lami nguNicole. Ngiphuma eMelika no ngihlala eMgungundlovu. Ngisaphila.

That means, “Hello! My name is Nicole. I come from America and am staying in Pietermaritzburg. I am well.” How do you like my Zulu skills? Haha, ok so that’s really all I can say (plus a few other greeting phrases), but I’ve only had one class so give me a little grace! As you can see, I have arrived in Pietermaritzburg (PMB) and am already trying to assimilate into a new culture. Like I said in my previous blog, I left Cape Town on Wednesday, 9/24. Leaving Cornerstone was a lot harder than I thought it would be because we had to say goodbye to all of the mentors, students, and staff. In a matter of weeks, we had become incredibly close to these people (especially the mentors...I included a picture of my mentor Emma and I) and then had to completely abandon and possibly never see them again. Everyone, including myself, was crying and didn’t want to say goodbye. Somehow Kelli, our student life coordinator and substitute mom on this trip, managed to pry us from their arms and get us on the bus. And thus began our four day road trip. We did a LOT and a lot of driving over the next few days, so I’m just going to tell you about the highlights.

Thursday, 9/25, was definitely the best day of the trip. We arrived in George the night before and stayed at this Christian conference and holiday center called Carmel by the Sea. It was an absolutely gorgeous retreat; I wouldn’t have minded staying there for the rest of the semester. Anyway, we left Carmel early in the morning for a day of adventure, starting off with the Cango Caves. There was an option of participating in the “normal cave tour”, where you simply do a guided tour through the caves, or the “adventure cave tour”, where you crawl into really small spaces to get around the caves. Now normally I’m a pretty adventurous person; however, going into small dark places where I could get stuck is one thing I won’t do. Although the tour itself was slightly boring, the caves themselves were absolutely beautiful. The splendor of God’s creation never ceases to amaze me in South Africa.

Guess what came next? Ostrich farms! The tour started off with an intro to ostriches, which was pretty interesting. A funny thing I learned was that their brain is smaller than one of their eyes, so they’re pretty stupid animals. We were then introduced to a 2 day old ostrich that could barely walk straight. I even got to hold the cute little guy! He was a little bit smaller than the 6-7 ft tall adults we met next. The guide gave 3 girls some ostrich pellets to put in their mouths, and one of the “tame” ostriches pecked them out. This was called ostrich kissing. Then he picked some people to get an ostrich massage and I was one of them. He held a handful of food behind by back and the ostrich reached over my shoulder and pecked away. To be honest, it didn’t feel like a massage at all; it was just really funny feeling to have this huge feathered thing around my neck. As we continued the tour, we approached an area where all of the ostriches had blankets on their backs. You know what that means…ostrich riding time! After some other people rode, I volunteered to go. They had 2 “professional” ostrich wranglers who grabbed the ostriches, put bags over their heads (they’re so stupid that when they can’t see you, they don’t think you’re there), and brought them up to the mounting station. They lifted up the wings (which are HUGE), helped me slide onto the bird, put the wings over my legs, told me to hold on for dear life, took the bag off its head, and set it free. That crazy thing ran as fast as it could around the arena until I fell off and the wranglers caught me. Apparently ostriches are the fastest birds in the world and can run 120 km/hr for 5 miles straight. It was so much fun! Finally, we got to stand on some real ostrich eggs. They’re super strong and can withstand 300 kg of weight (over 600 lbs), so they barely held me up (just kidding).

After that, we were off to our final destination: the Cango Wildlife Ranch! We arrived 45 minutes before the park closed, so we had to rush through the entire park with a guide. We saw so many cool animals like beautiful pink flamingos, hippos, crocodiles, otters, white lions, cheetahs, African lions, white tigers, yellow tigers, and many others. All of the big cats had just eaten, so they were pretty sleepy (which was great for taking pictures). Then came the best part of the park – cheetah petting! We had to pay $20 extra to do it, but it was so worth it. The four girls that went in before me for some pretty good pictures; however, when one of the girls (Jess) tried to pet a cheetah’s head, it bit her leg! The trainers hit it really hard on the face and got the girls out of the cage. Jess was totally fine and only had a small rip on her jeans, but she was still freaking out. I have to admit I was a bit scared myself to go in next, especially when the trainers asked the next “victims” to come in. Fortunately, the cheetah that bit Jess calmed down, laid down, and let us pet it. In fact, it loved being pet so much that it purred to the point of its entire body vibrating. I absolutely loved the entire experience; it was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever done (like a lot of other things here in SA)!

On Saturday, 9/27, we finally arrived at the beautiful African Enterprise (AE) Center in PMB. AE is where we will be living for the remainder of our semester. To get to AE, you drive through this bumpy, one lane dirt road that is surrounded by a bamboo forest and hundreds of other trees (with monkeys in them). It’s absolutely beautiful and feels like some kind of resort. There are waterfalls, freshly moved green grass, plants, and hundreds of colorful flowers. I was assigned to live on the bottom floor of John Wilson, which is a two story building that looks like a house. Our chalet has 4 rooms, 2 toilets, 1 shower (yes I said ONE shower for 7 girls), a kitchen, and a common room in the center with 2 desks. Of course, the boys’ chalet has 4 showers and toilets between the 9 of them. Isn’t that the way it always works? Oh and my room has two twin beds, two desks, one nightstand, and one closet. I was assigned to live with a girl named Angel, who is a 19 year-old sophomore trying to get into the nursing program at APU. She is super tiny, vegan, and a total morning person. Basically, everything that I’m not! Anyway, she seems really sweet and I can’t wait to get to know her better. Please pray that God will give me patience and we will become good friends through this shared living experience!

So I'm running out of time and have to get to the homework that I've been avoiding all weekend, but I will update you on my first week in PMB sometime next week. I love you, miss you, and appreciate all of your prayers. I can't wait to share how God is working in my life and SA next post :)