Hello from Bloemfontein!

HOLD THE PHONE, STOP THE CLOCKS….

I SAW A WILD GIRAFFE!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 OF THEM!!!!!

I AM SO HAPPY!!!!
(they’re my favorite animal if you can’t tell)

Hello from Bloemfontein!!

Orientation is finally over!! Yay! It’s been a long ten days of hanging out in Pietermaritzburg learning, listening, and chatting about South Africa and preparing us for our journeys this year. To jar us out of our comfort zones our country program coordinator Tessa took us to lunch at an English tea garden just before touring a prison that held hundreds of black political prisoners during Apartheid. The huge disparity in condition was a shock to see so blatantly side by side, not to mention hearing the history surrounding the place where Nelson Mandela and even Gandhi (ya, you read that right. He started out as a lawyer in S.A.) were imprisoned for some time. What was perhaps more disturbing was that in the tea garden restaurant it was impossible to see the poor neighborhood just outside the door, makes me wonder how much we do that in the US in allowing ourselves to be blind in our own comfort bubbles.

Now we’ve all left for our own corners of the country to volunteer. In a wonderful and strange turn of events, I’m temporarily staying in Bloemfontein for the week with my friend Katie because….I’m going to Swaziland this weekend. Nbd, it’s not another country or anything. It’s the church’s national youth gathering for Southern Africa and my church supervisor decided to send me along. From what I’ve been told it will be a bunch of singing and dancing and worship music, with quite a bit of it in Zulu. I’m excited!

Life is still very much in transition but will hopefully be settling soon once I get to my volunteer site. Once there, hopefully I can get more blog posts out and spend some more time with it.

Have a beautiful day! Thanks for tuning in!

Preview for next post: “Jen’s run-in as a Zulu marriage counselor”. True story.