Drakensburg Mountains: a mountain range stretching over part
of South Africa and Lesotho, home to the second tallest waterfall in the world,
the setting that J.R.R Toklen based the Lord of the Ring novels on, and the
most breath taking and mysterious place in the world. This is where I spent my weekend.
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| The clouds were so cool! |
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| The Drakensburg Mountains |
We left Gabs and traveled
by our favorite form of public transportation, bus, to Johannesburg where we
rented a mini bus that we decided to call Greg. Greg was sort of the coolest car around.
So we packed up all our stuff and
headed to a small village just outside of Winterton. There we met a Peace Corp volunteer
named Kristen that we ended up staying with for 2 nights to get the Peace Corp
experience since quite a few of the exchange students in Africa are interested
in Peace Corp (including me). Her
site is at the base of the mountains in a small community. She lives with a host family, has her
own room, showers in a bucket, has no fridge, uses candles for lighting at
night, and her bathroom is a pit latrine about 30 feet from her room.
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| this is Kristens room |
She has adopted a cat, its three
kittens and a dog that is owned by her host family but have learned that the
American is nicer to animals then the locals, so they hang with her. Anyways we got to her site pretty late
that night so we just crashed on her floor. In the morning, we got to tag along with her to see her
site, sort of “a day in the life of a peace corp volunteer.” We started by taking about 100 knit
teddy bears to the elementary school and giving them out to all the pre-school
and kindergarten kids. They were
so cute; they sang songs for us, started naming their bears and were very
excited to see us.
Then we went to the site of the rehab clinic, when I say
this day was almost perfectly planned just for me, I am not kidding. It is a physical therapy clinic where
people from all over can come and get exercises and different stretches to help
improve their quality of life.
They let me sit in and watch; I saw people that were HIV positive and as
a result had ended up with TB or a stroke or things like that. There was a 26 year old man, HIV
positive that had a stoke as a result and had very little muscle control, there
was a 10 year old boy that had Cerebral Palsy and couldn’t walk (his mother
carried him everywhere and he wasn’t exactly small), there were multiple women
that were stuck in wheelchairs because of their TB, they had lost control of
their legs (wheelchairs are not easy to maneuver though because the ground is
dirt and rocks so they are mostly bed ridden except on clinic days) and there
were even some deaf people that came in to set up appointments with the
Audiologist. If this wasn’t enough
of a moving experience, I got to have a long talk with a 26-year-old girl whose
mom was one of the TB patience and hear her story. She works so hard for her mom. Then I got to tag along on a home visit where me and two of
the clinic ladies went to the home of a bed-ridden women who had been in and
out of the hospital, had lost all control of her body from the chest down, had
some sort of bladder infection, was in massive amounts of pain and was laying
on the floor with nothing but a blanket to cover her. It was heart wrenching because all I could do was
watch. I couldn’t help her, I
couldn’t fix her, I couldn’t even speak her language, all I could do was be
someone that cared- just a smile and human touch.
After leaving that site almost in tears, we went back to the
high school where we got to hang out with an 8th grade class. Kristen has a program called grass-root
soccer where she focuses on HIV/AIDS awareness through games and
activities. That day we had them
pass a ball behind their backs and when we said stop, they had to guess who had
the ball- and it generally took them a while because you can’t tell, then we
related that to how you can’t tell who has AIDS by just looking at them. We spent an hour doing that and then
went to a girls club that she started where a safe space had been created for
girls to talk about everything from sex to peer pressure to hygiene.
Everything. We talked about peer pressure and made friendship bracelets. The girls there were so intrigued by us
whities though it was crazy, they kept asking me questions and touching my
hair- they really couldn’t figure out why I was waiting until I got married to
have sex. Anyways that was our day
on site and it really couldn’t have been much better.
The next morning we woke up to find Greg the Bus with a flat
tire stuck in mud because of the crazy thunderstorm that had hit the night
before. So we spent the morning
trying to find/change the tire, push the car out of the mud and down the hill
to the gravel road which took a few hours and a lot of mud got caked all over
everyone.
But finally with the help
of some nice locals and the sense of humor our travel group had, we got on our
way to the Amphitheater Backpackers Hostel in the mountains. Too bad for me I got hit with the flu
hard core. I spent most of my day
in the bathroom, completely cleared out my system to say the least. Everyone went on a small day hike and I
stayed in our dorm room trying just about everything to make my stomach not
feel like exploding. Not a win,
but luckily I was feeling good enough the next day to go on the day hike called
Sentential Peak. It is about 15km
(took about 7 hours) we got to go to the top of the Amphitheater Mountains,
hike into Lesotho, see the 2nd highest waterfall in the world (and
put our feet in it) and climb down the side of the mountains with ladders and
ropes. It was the most
beautiful thing in the entire world.
Our guide was this crazy mountaineer who was in the South African Army
during the Apartheid and faked schizophrenia to get out of it because he didn’t
agree with the system. Anyways we
literally scaled our way to the top of this peak and it was cloudy so when we
stood on the edge, we looked out and saw nothing. It was the most mysterious
and intriguing thing in the entire world to look out, know that it is a huge
cliff but not be able to see anything.
We waded in the water at the edge of the second highest waterfall in the
world and got back down the mountain using these super sketchy metal ladders
that were attached to the side of the rocks. This hike was like being in
paradise. The air was so clean, the landscape was breathtaking and the
mountains are said to be the oldest in the world, and home to the San people,
which were the first people on the earth. Then it stared to rain and guess
what? We go soaked but it was well worth it. We spent the evening making quesadillas, attempting to play
ping-pong, failing and just sitting around talking.
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| one of the ladders we scaled |
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| hiking crew |
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| on our way up- got all the way to the top of the mountain in front of us. |
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| seconds highest waterfall in the world |
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| just another day in paradise |
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| just stickin our feet in the 2nd highest falls |
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| indigenous lesotho cattle farmers |
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| the way back down was the best |
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| the travel group and peace corp volunteer |
The next morning I totally relapsed and got sick again but
it was okay because it was our travel day, back to Gaborone. We went to get in our car, only to find
that Greg had pooped out and died on us.
We had to find someone with jumper cables and jump the car, which
luckily was successful and we were on our way! It seriously was just an amazing
weekend with amazing people. Our
group: Anna, Nicole, Katie, Hunter, Sara, Brandie and me. Moral of this
weekend: I will be applying to be
a Peace Corp volunteer in about 2 years, I don’t like being sick, and I really
loving hiking (which is new because I used to hate it).
