One more incredibly
long Lufthansa flight took us from Frankfurt over just about the entirety of
the African Continent to Johannesburg Int’l Airport. Touching down was a welcome feeling indeed.
Stepping off the 2 story 747-400 was an even more welcome feeling. It still
amazes me that humanities knowledge can put something that big that carries
hundreds of people thousands of feet in the air reliably every day. We were
then greeted at the airport by Dana, a former Boston student who had graduated
and moved to South Africa. He has been living in South Africa for 12 years and
in that time he found a wife and they are raising two children. He was
accompanied by eight volunteers from the Mamelodi Initiative who had graciously
taken time out of their day to come and deliver us to the Kilnerton Conference
Center in Pretoria where we will be staying for the duration of our trip
We then
went from Jo-berg (as it will now be referred to) to Pretoria. To contextualize
it for you, we went from the bustling city center where everyone works to a
city with far urbanized city that contains the nations capital building as well
as a far more urban environment than Jo-berg. So as we squeezed our 9 drivers
and hoard of volunteers into cars with the exact right number of seats and
seemingly the exact right amount of cubic inches of space to allow for all the
luggage we had. We left at around 11:00am SA time, which would be 5:00pm EST.
Now, I feel
a need here to stress, this drive was not done in safari jeeps on dirt roads
past mud huts, it was done in a fleet Volkswagen Chicos and Toyota Avanzas down
real highways that are just as good as any in America. South Africa is arguably
the most industrialized nation on the continent. So, as we went on our very
non-safari-esque journey to Kilnerton we drove on the left side of the road and
were cautioned to a halt at what they refer to in SA as “robots”, not
stoplights. This fun little variant of the English I am used to speaking will
no doubt not be the last one I encounter.
When we
arrived at Kilnerton I was pleasantly welcomed with a great feel to the air,
lovely trees in the courtyard and the kind South African staff. I found that we
would be the only residents and this is surely going to be a nice place to have
all to ourselves. I then briefly got
acquainted with my roommates for the next month Akeem Allen and Sam Bailey
before we dropped off our bags and went straight out into Pretoria. When we
arrived to our destination, I saw that unlike our White House in Washington
D.C., the South African equivalent, called the Union building could be walked
right up to. No gates restrained us from walking right out onto the lawn at the
feet of the capitol, where there stands an enormous bronze statue of the
recently late Nelson Mandela, forever posed as if greeting the world.
Now I found
out that we would be driving to the Menlyn Mall to stock up on anything we
needed, a welcome sight seeing as I was going to need an adapter to charge my
computer and do this blog. To my great surprise, Bob handed me the keys and
told me I would get to drive our little Volks Chico, not just today but
whenever I could hop in the drivers seat for the rest of project! A fun little
car to drive, the Chico was seemingly as minimalist as a vehicle could get and
they sell new for 50,000 Rand or about 5,000 US dollars.
The mall gave me the opportunity to get a converter, which I
sadly forgot, but, it did give me the chance to buy some fresh biltong. Biltong
is basically meat jerky but its not always beef, in fact it is often springbok,
the national animal of SA. The main
difference that makes biltong so good is that its not totally dried and is
covered in spices. The moistness of it left grease stains on the sides of the
paper bag I had gotten filled with it. It was so good that I ate it all before
we even left the parking deck.
I’ll end the post for today here, there is nothing left on
the schedule and I am exhausted!
Please pray that,
God will keep us safe driving in a foreign traffic system.
For God to start revealing the story that he wants me to
tell through video about the Mamelodi Initiative.
God bless and all the best,
Dylan Rollins
No comments:
Post a Comment