First Few Weeks - The Lowdown

AXL on the estuary
Originally uploaded by axlinafrica.

What you've all been waiting for ... almost.

First off, yes, we've arrived safe and sound. Second, yes, we have quickly become the worst blog keepers ever. In our defence, the internet access in this neck of the woods has been pretty much dump, and today is the first day we've been permitted to use the comp labs at the UKZN for any length of time, not that school has actually begun or anything (we'll explain below). So hopefully the following will make up for our neglect! Where oh where to begin?!? Well ....

When we arrived to Durbz we checked into a great hostel called the Hippo Hide near to central Durban. We were pleasantly surprised, got a great room with a queen and single bed. We've been very comfortable despite the long stay - we're onto day 11 in this place. On our first day we got a cell phone, and started looking into renting a flat. We scored the top floor of a great house near the school, in an upscale (read: safe) 'burb on a road serviced by kombis heading to the downtown markets and our nearby grocery stores. The plan is to move in on Monday, by which time we'll have been living in hostels for over three weeks. Ugh, we hate living out of our packs. We also "scored" a 1987 Toyota Conquest, and she has been christened "Roxie," "Foxie Roxie" on the weekends. Those first couple of weeks involved trips to the beach, a couple nights out, a multitude of shopping (downtown in the 'hood and of course in the malls - they love their malls here, and so do we ... thanks to the AC and Laura's addiction to freezaccinos).

As for school, registration was a, well, smallish nightmare. There's currently a couple of strikes going on on campus - staff and students separately. Wow, their strikes are nothing like ours - the strikers are in the buildings, out on the lawns, blaring music, singing, dancing, whistling, cheering as they are worked into a frenzie by whoever's got the mic. Anyways, last week we had our Registration Day, and we were told that our registration in particular couldn't be done because of some sort of "hold" on our fees - the same fees ($800US) that we each wired a month and a half ago, that the Student Fees Division proceeded to "lose," that we were told we wouldn't be able to register for classes without, and then that we found by combing through a binder of money transfers to the Uni. Geesh. I don't think they've even technically found Christina's yet. So, needless to say, last week involved a lot of being passed around from person to person, with most peeps in the UKZN general admin and ISO claiming they are not responsible for this or that. We've quickly realized that the key is to tell each person in admin that we will no longer tolerate being passed back and forth; so far, it's worked, with each person soon admitting they CAN do what we've asked them to. It's been a little embarrassing behaving as such harda$$es, but necessary all the same. Thank goodness for the folks in the law faculty - they've been very helpful and recognize how frustrating dealing with some of these people can be. But enough griping. The process is at last done (at least we THINK so), and school is set to begin as soon as the strikes get settled. I guess it'll be more beaching and shopping for us this week, to fill the time. Oh shucks, more $10 skirts and kicka$$ jewellry for us.


So anyways, with school not slated to begin until this week, we thought we'd take advantage of the down time and head out on the road to St. Lucia, a World Heritage Site three hours north of Durban on the Indian Ocean and a quaint resort town. Our hostel was dodgey, to say the least, just ask the dead cockroach there to greet us on our arrival to our room. Thank god for the AC! We got the eff out of there after a couple of days and checked into a sweet holiday pad with the full meal deal (kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, patio), for pretty much the same price. The one thing our crappy hostel WAS good for was hearing about good things to do in the area, including snorkelling areas and providing the equipment. So, off we headed to Cape Vidal. Along the way we spotted wild zebras, wart hogs, a million deer-like things, and so on. You know, African stuff. The reef offered somewhat murky waters, but very cool fish, all translucent like and, you know, African stuff. So, we had a great day at the beach and had the sunburns to prove it, including a nothing-but-glorious a$$ burn on Laura (we've got pics - don't let her tell you otherwise). I myself am proud to say I have the beginnings of what looks like a tan (okay, that may be generous). We spent my 26th birthday drinking (too much) sangria, and picking on our crappy waiter, Gerrfaaaaard (who cares how you spell it, right?), and looking VERY, VERY hard for some type of scene in that town. Yep, none, but a good time nonetheless. Oh yeah, the wine in this country is dang cheap at restaurants and bars, about $2 glass at even nice places. I LOVE that, being a poor student and all. I'm trying to convince Laura and Christina to jump on the wine wagon with me.

Also in St. Lucia, which contains 5 different ecosystems (marshland, sand dunes, estuary, coast, and savanna), we saw our first live and wild HIPPOS, people! These things were massive, pigs of the marsh with their oinking, yawning, and cuddling. Particulalry adorable was a calf, who'd once in a while pop its head up out of the water, give a snort, and disappear again. The two-hour boat ride was well worth the R120. Our tour guide knew absolutely everything and had the eyes of an eagle.

Hmmm, another interesting experience we had cruising down the highway on the way back to Durbz was running into what appeared to be a rather tense crowd of IFP'ers vs. ANC'ers that had flooded across the highway. Quite simply, we couldn't read the situation: the cars ahead of us appeared hesitant, one dude started approaching our car with his fist flailing in the air, it was a totally rural area, and we had all of our stuff with us. Christina made an executive decision and quickly turned the car around, and off we went in the opposite direction. The next day I was watching the news and heard about IFP and ANC supporters in Cape Town throwing bricks at one another, so I think we did the right thing. There's municipal elections happening across the country supposedly tomorrow, and we've seen a lot of campaigning - sometimes, it seems, in the middle of nowhere, as in the case of driving down the 102.

Anways, so our travels in the past couple of days took us to this hostel in the countryside, Inyezane, amongst field upon field of sugar cane and right on top of an old battle field between the Brits and Zulus (guess who won ... there's plenty of red-coat, gold-button clad remains to be found there, Bradley the hostel keeper told us). Breathtaking setting, ghosts or not. There, Laura and Christina enjoyed a mud bath (oh yeah, they stripped down to their skivvies and got dirty, all right). While they frolicked in the mud, I made some candied ginger, which Bradley, practically a witch doctor, told me would help with my bad reaction to our anti-malarials (I've had no appetite, haven't been able to keep food down, coming down with a slight case of anemia it appears). He also had me drink a mixture the night before of guava and absynnia(?) leaves, which was a lot less tasty than the ginger, but seemed to do the trick brilliantly. I'm thinking the no-antimalarial route may be the course I take in our future journies, but of course I will consult with a doc first. Christina and Laura have done fine on the Malarone, and have been enjoying many scrumptous-looking meals without me. Anyways, enough of my gastrointestinal dramas, and back to this crazy Brad dude. His stories about growing up in this country were enlightening, only half-believable they were so shocking and foreign to us. Everything from being a soldier in Angola to half-shrugging on hearing that a buddy of his just killed himself. Yeah, a really strange, but understandable attitude toward death, this guy. Currently he's involved in small-town hell x a trillion, embroiled in a crazy dispute between himself and his neighbours of a decade, who until only a month ago worked for him (and whose kids are at his house everyday). We're talking new employees getting beat up by the old ones, and shite like that. Anyways, a place worth returning to just to hang with that dude and breathe the fresh country air ....

Okay, so that was a lot to bombard you all with. It's been pretty daunting trying to cover an action-packed three weeks. As soon as we can download our photos to fill in the gaps for you, we will. It's been an adventure, and we're happy to share it with you all.

Lots of love,

Allison, Christina & Laura