Durban

Hey everyone!!
Thanks for all the messages guys there really sweet and make being here a lot easy when I feel homesick. Also Happy Fathers day Dad!
Right now were staying in a little surf town called Bluff just outside of Durban. It’s beautiful and really nice and relaxing. It’s a long weekend here so we’ve had a nice little break. Yesterday we went into the city to watch the Agape children perform in a concert. They practiced for weeks and were all really excited about it and thought they were performing 6 songs a 3 dances and then they were only able to perform one song and some of the kids had to be left behind at Agape because they didn’t have enough tickets. They were really disappointed since they had worked so hard for it. The whole night really showcased how disorganized a lot of things are here. No one at the center knew anything about the performance and didn’t even tell the kids they couldn’t perform all their songs they just cut them off after the first one. The center its self was huge, even bigger than the ACC in Toronto (I thought it was called the ACC for a good week before I learned the center in Durban is actually the ICC and I thought it was quite the coincidence haha). It was a really frustrating experience. However, in comparison Canada seems like the most neurotic country ever haha. Also we’ve quickly discovered that time is not really relevant here. Pam the manager of Agape told us that
“ just now” in Africa means in 2 days or maybe a week. It seems like a nice idea sometimes cause I’m chronically late for class in Canada, but it’s also really annoying when nothing ever starts on time and it’s hard to get anything done immediately.

Also Durban the city is very “sketchy” to say the least. We went into the city at night for dinner and afterwards had to drive home through the city. It became a ghost town with no one on the main streets because its so unsafe to walk around after dark.(which is at 5 here since its winter) Also all the “ladies of the night” which is quite the euphemism if you ask me for prostitutes and street kids doing drugs could be seen. I’m really glad we chose a hostel (by pure luck) that was just outside the city because I would not want to sleep downtown at night, (let alone even be there at night)

Today we went surfing at the beach in Durban which is fine and safe during the day and we were with locals who knew where to go and where not too. It was really fun and although I have some pretty “narly” as they would say here battle wounds from my board I wasn’t actually that bad at it. I was a but scared of the sharks though because everyday the lifeguard comes on the intercom at the beach and says and I quote “ this is just a friendly reminder to please refrain from swimming because due to the fact that we have recently removed the sharks nets there are currently LOTS OF SHARKS! And he yells the last part too. Louise and I died laughing the first time we heard him. Normally know one really cares about the warning and the local surfers say its just so no one can be held responsible if someone gets bitten. They say that you only have to really worry when the minnows come because then the water becomes a “mass feeding frenzy”…..the minnows are set to arrive tomorrow. So I don’t think I’ll be surfing through any “feeding frenzy”. I was also rather concerned today though when I cut my knee and it started to bleed… and I was terrified the sharks would come running ( well swimming haha) On the drive in to Durban today with our new surf friends we saw really young kids around 7 or 8 begging for money which was defiantly something you would never see in Canada. It was weird also because we all developed this instinct after working at Agape that whenever you see a child you just want to run and pick them up and play with them so seeing kids the same age as some of the Agape kids on the street was hard. Be-more does have a project aimed at helping street children though so I felt better knowing that there are people trying to help them.

I’m off to eat dinner though but I promise to be safe in the water and not surf if the minnows make it here.

Thanks for reading!
Take care
Xoxox
Margo

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