Monday and Tuesday I was in a village called Impendle. I lived with an amazing host family! I lived with Gogo, 2 sisters, 1 brother, and 2 grandkids. The grandkids were two adorable little boys! The family spoke a little bit of English. My oldest sister spoke the most, so we communicated with her the majority of the time.
The house was nice! It was a lot nicer than I expected: it was a lot bigger than my house in Cato Manor. I was surprised to find that the house had electricity! They even had a TV. We watched 3 really cheesy movies. The first was a Nigerian film portraying a biblical story in Africa. I don't really know what happened in the movie. We also watched a movie about an American guy who had an Eastern European accent go to Thailand to train as a muay thai boxer the avenge his brother. The final movie we watched with the family was kind of like that Antonio Banderas movie where he teaches the hoodlums how to ballroom dance. Only this time, it was in Miami and the teacher was a green beret teaching the hoodlums capoeria, a style of Brazilian dance/fighting. Pretty epic.
The toilet situation was interesting: it was an outhouse. The door was a sheet. This is problematic up in the mountains where the wind is so strong. One time when I had to go to the bathroom the outhouse almost blew down! It was swaying back and forth in the wind. Luckily I made it out alive.
The food was really good but our family fed us SO MUCH! They would pile up our plates with as much food as possible! My sisi taught me how to make South African steam bread, so I'll have to make it for everyone at home when I get back! On Tuesday, our gogo slaughtered a chicken for us and our sisi cooked it. When I opened the pot to serve myself, I was shocked to discovered every part of the chicken had been cooked: including the head and the feet. I was more shocked than disgusted, I'm not used to seeing the head of my food with my food.
Our days in Impendle were packed! On Monday, we went to a school to attend Zulu lessons with kids at the school. We helped them with English while they helped us with Zulu. We then had a few lectures at the clinic. At the end of our day, we went to see a Sangoma, a traditional healers. We got to ask her questions about what it means to be a Sangoma and what she can do for the community. She even dressed up for us and consulted he ancestors. When asked if she could sense any diseases among us, she told us that we didn't have crabs. Good to know. On Tuesday, we visited a bead co-op. We got a chance to meet women that are part of a small beading company. We also visited another school. We learned about the international ecoschool program as well as health concerns in Impendle schools. The school children performed several songs for us. So cute! After meeting with the school children, we headed back to the clinic to talk to one of the nurses and get a tour of the facilities. Overall it was a great experience in a rural village!
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