Bunny Chow and Zen

Durban, South Africa is holiday paradise. I highly reccommend it.

Events:

1) Got lost in the city Center

If you ever want to see Durban in all it's glory, get way lost and have no idea where you are going. Ami's uncle lives North of Durban and she was staying with him for a short while. They said I should come out and see the beaches because they were up in the hills and were beautiful to look at. I managed to get a Zulu taxi down to the city center. Zulu taxis are kind of like bush taxis that have to fill up before they go anywhere. They are big VW vans that feel the express need to get everywhere as quickly as possible. So, once I was in the city center, I was officially lost. No idea where to go next. I had the name of the place, but I don't speak Zulu, and not one person understood where it was that I needed to go. I asked three different people where to go and got three different sets of directions. This is all minus the fact I wasn't entirely sure how to get back where I came from. The whole situation worked out when a small boy realized where I wanted to go, and basically held my hand to the proper taxi rank. Sweet, I was on my way to gorgeous beaches and beautiful hills. I got to Umushonga Rocks finally and enjoyed myself on the beach. I wanted to leave kind of early in the afternoon, so I wasn't clawing around 'South Afrcia's most dangerous City' after nightfall. I went back to the rank, dreading trying to find my way, when a city bus pulled up going straight to the main terminal for all the city's busses. From there, I knew exactly which bus took me back to the hostel I was staying in for the evening. I had a crude hand drawn copy of the sites of Durban in my pocket. Better yet, this bus had a stop that was walking distance from the hostel. Good fortune was smiling in my general direction. As it turns out, bus drivers in Durban don't call out the stops, and I had no idea which stop was mine. To make an already long story less long, I missed both the stop near the hostel, the one for the main termianl, and was in the city center right at nightfall. The EXACT thing that I was trying to avoid. I was already thinking what items I had on me and how I was going to replace them after I was violently robbed and hopefully not murdered. Anyways it was only like two blocks back to the main termianl, so i hustled and made one of the last departing buses for home, safe, sound and with all my possessions.

2) AMI almost gets sucked out to sea by a sneaky rip tide.

This was a scary moment for about 30 seconds. The Indian Ocean was incredibly rough when we there with all sorts of tides and currents buffetting the serene shore line. Fortunatley, Durban has a well funded and highly trained life guard force to keep swimmers safe and out of danger. Well, we were just swimming along not far from shore when a life guard on a sea kayak asked us if we were ok. We said that we were fine, just enjoying the very large waves. I decided that this was an omen, and decided to go closer to shore. I was just suggesting this to Ami, a colleague of mine, when she looks at me and says that she's in trouble, she can't get back in. By this time the life guard from the tower is in the water coming our way. She managed to get out of the ordeal, without the lifeguard's assistance. Everyone was fine, but the life guard was one angry dude. Note: swim between the flags in Durban.

3) Bunny Chow and other glorious food in Durban:

Bunny chow is the most wonderful food anywhere and can only be had in Durban. It's a large chunk of bread with the center cut out and the curry of choice is placed in the center. It goes back to the days of apartheid when Indians coudn't eat in restaurants, so they came up with this glorious solution. Why do they call it bunny chow?? Nobody knows. Answers to this perplexing question are welcome. We had other glorious Indian food as well as sushi. I even cooked one night a delectible ensemble of Pasta, Red Sauce and Greek Salad. Delicious.

4) The Buddhist Retreat

We had been in Durban going on eight days, had seeen some of the sights, swam in the very fine beaches and ate the glorious food. On the second to last day, an acquaintance that I had met in Durban asked if I wanted to go to a Buudhist Retreat Center that a friend had recomemneded to her. I was up for it. We hired a car and drove an hour and a half into the Southern Drakensberg Mountains. The drive was amazing and we ended up just 5 km from Ixopo, the city from the opening lines of "Cry, the beloved country", a novel examining the horrors of Apartheid and later made into a movie featuring James Earl Jones. Anyways, the grounds of the retreat were amazing, with birds and monkeys running around. It was incredibly serene and peaceful and amazingly quiet...too quiet. The woman that run the retreat showed us how to meditate and we ate stir fry and red lentil soup. It was relaxed to the extreme. We even had to maintain the noble silence during dinner, which was akward at first, but refreshing. I highly reccommend the experience.

These are some of the main highlights of holiday in Durban, South Africa. I now find myself whittling away the time in Windhoek, waiting for my medical exam which is next week. School starts the week after that. I am looking forward to getting back to the family with which I live as well as the learners at my school. In other news, the world challnge people have gotten back in touch with me and it looks like we might have a team from the UK come and live in our village for 10 days and help us with our netball court. They can evidently help with our murals as well and spruce up the grounds. Any help is always appreciated.