Friday: On Friday night I cooked dinner for my family. My host sister was a little wary of the dinner I was making. She hates vegetables, or so she said. She helped me cook some pasta as well as sauteed veggies and some tomato sauce. The meal was a hit, she loved all the food, even the veggies! Mama liked it too! We then watched Generations and went to bed.
Saturday: We drove 4 hours to the traditional Zulu reed dance at the Zulu King's Enyokeni Traditional Residence . It was amazing! First, let me give you a little bit of history about the Reed Dance. The Reed Dance is a Zulu tradition where young virgins present themselves to the king. In the old times, the king would choose a wife. Only virgins can participate in the festivities, so virginity testing occurs before the girls can present their reeds to the king. At first, I was a little hesitant of the fact all the girls would be topless and celebrating polygamy. I was also a little iffy about the ethics of the virginity testing. However when I got there, I discovered how empowering the experience is for young women. In a country where HIV/AIDS rates have skyrocketed and teenage pregnancy is a common occurrence, it is an honor to be able to be respected for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It felt a lot like a debutante ball, the girls are presented to society as capable of becoming a queen. All the girls wore colorful beads and skirts. The toplessness factor didn't seem that big of a deal once we got there.
The procession of girls to the King's gates took over 2 hours, we didn't even get a chance to see the end of the procession! The entire time they were dancing and singing. I got a chance to talk to some of the girls and look around the different stalls at the festival. Strangely, people wanted pictures with me! Probably cause I'm an American and there weren't a ton of tourists at this event. There were a lot of stands with HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness groups. I talked to a few of the groups to pick up some pamphlets for my ISP research. I also bought a sweet beaded bracelet to always remind me of this awesome event. We missed the actual dance part because we had to leave before it got dark. We then got back in the bus. On the way to St. Lucia we drove through a game reserve. After passing the signs about the rules of the park, an elephant appeared over the hillside! We stopped for 5 minutes to take pictures of the elephant. It then crossed the road in front of our car. We were continuously stopping to see all the animals. We saw zebras, water buffalo, impalas, springboks, warthogs, and even 2 rhinos! Some of the zebras got really close to our cars. After driving through the park, we arrived in St. Lucia. For dinner we ate traditional Zulu stew at a restaurant in town and headed over to our hotel for the night.
Sunday:
We walked around St. Lucia, enjoying the awesome weather. St. Lucia is a really cute touristy town. There are a ton of places to go on safari around St. Lucia so we'll be going there at the end of the semester to see all the animals. Before we left to go home, we went to the estuaries near the ocean to see some hippos and crocs. We didn't see any crocodiles, but we saw a bunch of hippos near the beach. It was pretty cool to see them in the wild even though they didn't really do anything...
Monday was a typical day. We had classes on reproductive health as well as the education system in South Africa.
Today, we went on our hospital excursions. I went to King Edwards Hospital in Durban. It was a little chaotic because the PR director thought we were medical students. When she found out we were pre-med/pre-law (I'm the only pre-law) she was a little confused as to where to take us. I visited the maternity ward. We stood around a lot but got to learn about some of the major issues associated with pregnancy in South Africa. Also got to learn about some of the ethical issues involved with sterilization. So interesting.
Tomorrow we're visiting NGOs, Thursday we're visiting schools, Friday we're learning about the Indian population and we have our Zulu final exam! This weekend is in Cato then we're off to Impendle or Amatikulu for our rural homestays! Should be epic.
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