PS! We were advised never to bring any valuables outside, so still not many good pictures.
Did you miss part 1. Read it here
After getting the visa stamp and walking through the custums we were met by a group of people welcoming us. This was the first cultural shock. The staff and volunteers meeting us were singing, clapping and dancing at the airport. Luckily we had two weeks of training in Paarl (1 hour from Cape Town) before beeing left alone somwhere in Southern Africa. Paarl was a safe and quiet place not to different from home, at least the area we lived in.
We were paired up with an African volunteer to share a room and not just room, we shared a bed, and not just the bed, we also shared the blanket (after a few days we found out everyone else had separate blankets and we also got one each). We got a lot of useful information and played various games. Every break was spend playing Tejre (A ball and clapping game named after the way many Africans say my name).
Somethings are forgotten over the years, but a few things are still easy to recall from my memory. Some of us had a nice hike in the mountains singing Shoshaloza one day (had to run realy fast down since the break was not so long). We went to church one Sunday and I was amazed by how everybody formed a long line shaking the hands of everybody else before leaving.
Beeing from Norway and not used to meet segregation I am colorblind when it comes to people. Half the volunteers were Europeans and the rest where African. When we were at the hotel I didn’t feel there was a difference between us. Then one day we were visiting a township to see what we could expect to work in. After a week together we had become god friends and some might even hold hands. This was not very accepted in the community and our trainers (volunteers from last year) told us to keep some distance between the Europeens and Africans for safety reasons. To me this was a shock. I could never imagine this could offend someone, but I’m really glad I got this experience here in this group and not beeing alone somewhere else (but I still had some both good and bad experiences connected to apartheid later on).
One more unforgetable thing was a visit to Robben Island. The guide told us that white prisoners got 4 tabelspoons of white sugar a week, colored got one tabelspoon of brown sugar and the blacks didn’t get any sugar at all. Why? Another thing from Robben Island I’ll always remember is how I tried to feed a penguin with a gras straw. If I had used my brain I should know they don’t eat grass, but fish. It wasn’t interested in the straw, but bit my finger instead.
Read the next post here
