My month of volunteering in Cape Town has been absolutely magnificent. It’s almost an injustice to attempt to summarize it in a (hopefully) brief blog-post, but here goes.
Last time I left you, I was on a plane headed from Uganda to South Africa. From Entebbe, I had to transfer flights in the infamously dangerous Johannesburg. I had to clear customs and make it across the terminal in less than an hour, and I was very nervous about making it happen. I was further stressed out that the airport would be a complete shit-hole, full of inconveniences and crime, which would add precious minutes to my journey. However, the airport was marvellous, one of the nicest I’ve ever been in. I had no trouble at customs (I was worried that I would have to provide proof of my departure in under ninety days, as Hillary had to do, and I didn’t have that), and the cross terminal trek went swimmingly. I even managed to take out some Rand (South African currency) without getting hassled/robbed/shanked. As I arrived at my flight to Cape Town with forty minutes to spare, I rejoiced in the apparent ease of it all. It would be a couple days before I would realize that my bag had been broken into while in transit (apparently a common occurrence at the Jo’Burg airport). Only the outer pockets had been broken into and I thankfully didn't have anything too valuable in them. The thieves got away with my external speakers (cheap, replaceable) and my bag of five or so international travel adapters (much harder to find, kind of annoying).
All-in-all though, the journey went well. I arrived in Cape Town International at about 2:30PM and awaited my pickup. I was met at the gate by a representative of a taxi company holding a sign with my name on it. In my total lack of planning and preparation, I had no idea what to expect. I think I was hoping that the actual organization would be picking me up and not a taxi service. They made me pay too, R230 (a bit less than $30) which I thought was weird. I later found out that my pickup had already been paid for, so I was reimbursed. I got in the cab and the driver said “Howzitt bru? Where to?” Again, I was not prepared at all, had no contact info, and only knew the name of the suburb I was headed to. When I responded with “uhhhh” he checked the receipt and, thank Buddha, found the address.
Finally arriving in Muizenberg, I met with Tim and Iviwe who are the co-ordinators of Dreams to Reality, the charity with whom I would be volunteering. Tim is a white South African whose parents are of Italian and Scottish decent, and he speaks English and Afrikaans. Iviwe is from the Xhosa people, one of the many groups of indigenous people that come from the area that is now called South Africa. I give these descriptions for no other reason than to illustrate what a unique place South Africa is. The country has 11 official languages (English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa being three of them) and has incredible diversity. As I’m sure many of you are aware, the country has a very tumultuous recent history. The remnants of the apartheid era are still very much present, and as a result, the country is definitely the most racist place I have ever been to. Some (not many, but some) of the white population believe that they are inherently better than the black and coloured (mixed race, the Afrikaans people are ‘coloured’) people. A lot of the Afrikaans people I met were torn between trying to act white or black, and some of them believed that coming into contact with a black person would be doing their own race an injustice. Different groups across the country want drastically different things, and no one in the political arena can shake the overbearing racial issues from dominating discussions.
On an arguably more interesting and definitely less intense note, the languages in South Africa are super interesting. Of course English is most widely used, but there is also Afrikaans, which is basically Dutch with additions from random other languages (like English and tribal South African dialects), Zulu (the native tongue of President Zuma, who has five wives, lining up with the polygamist tradition of the Zulu people), and several languages which use a variety of ‘click’ sounds. Xhosa is one of them; it is actually pronounced “ *click*-khosa” when it is said properly. Being on the train and hearing a conversation in Xhosa occurring next to you, clicks coming up every so often, is actually insanely interesting. I guess I sound like naïve or rude or something when I talk about it like a sideshow, but that’s not what I’m after. Different languages interest me very much, and South Africa is the first place that I have been to that has languages that contain any sort of sound completely foreign to the Western world. Iviwe’s first language is Xhosa and her last name even has a click in it. So cool.
Anyway, I kind of went on a bit of a sidetrack there, but I wanted to fit in a rant about the racial diversity and languages of South Africa somewhere, and I figured rather get it out of the way early. Anyway, Muizenberg. I arrived on a Thursday and my program was not set to start until Monday. As I waited, I met some of the old volunteers and got myself acquainted with the area. Hillary and Bree arrived in the next couple of days. Muizenberg is a town about thirty minutes south of downtown Cape Town. It sits on False Bay and near Cape Point. (If you look at a map of South Africa, the southwestern side has a peninsula hanging down from Cape Town, that’s Cape Point, and the large bay to the east is False Bay.) Cape Town has a number of reputable surf spots, but Muizenberg lays claim to the best rolling wave in the world. What this means is that it is maybe the best place on earth to learn to surf. Just watch out for the sharks. The town has a cool hippie culture as well as plenty of surfers, longboarders, and kite-surfers (holy mother of god, Muizenberg is the windiest place ever). It is easy to forget that you are in Africa when in Cape Town and its surrounding towns. It hides its poverty quite well. The main area of Muizenberg is very touristy, with an assortment of shops and restaurants set against a gorgeous backdrop of jagged peaks and glorious white-sand beaches. However, South Africa is a country absolutely ridden with poverty, and Cape Town is hardly an exception. Scattered across the country are ‘townships’ (essentially glorified slums, calling them ‘townships’ make them seem like I could but a ‘townhouse’ or something posh there). The closest one to Muizenberg is called Capricorn, and that is where the kids that we would be helping live. The townships are leftover embarrassments of the apartheid-era’s government’s attempts to create housing for non-white people. Capricorn is full of coloured and black people and they speak exclusively Afrikaans within its boundaries. Walking around at day is doable, somewhat dangerous sure, but manageable. At night though, a whole new beast awakes. The township is divided into sections controlled by various gangs (The 26ers, The Funky Boys, and The Americans, just to name a few) and the crime rates are absolutely appalling. There is a constant turf battle occurring in Capricorn, and from what I can tell, it is completely pointless (welcome to the world of gang warfare hey?). Previous volunteers have been mugged, violently attacked, and, in one instance, raped, by the gang members of Capricorn. Like I said, it’s easy to forget that you’re in Africa while walking around Cape Town, but a trip to one of the hundreds of townships will remind you in an instant. Even out of the townships, the residents meander down to the more touristy areas and hassle tourists. Cat-calls, insistent begging, and professional pickpockets are just a part of daily life in Muizenberg; one adjusts quickly.
The program that I was volunteering with was based out of a place called Surf Shack, one of the many surfboard rental shops on the beachfront. Each day, we took a group of young teens living in the township out into the water and taught them how to surf. The idea was that we could show them that there is a better life out there if they wanted to pursue it. 95% of these kids grow up seeing nothing but their run-down township and are exposed to people who are unreliable drug addicts or alcohol abusers and so they fall into the same destructive patterns of the people around them. Putting them all in wetsuits and providing them all with boards to use after school, not to mention the surf instruction, is a service that their financial limits would never allow without the help of a charity organization, and that is one of the ways that DTR helps the kids in the Capricorn Township. The kids that I dealt with were between the ages of 12 and 14 and were, understandably, complete shits. They were young adolescents being thrust into a world completely foreign to them, and they didn’t know how to act around people that weren’t from a life of extreme crime and poverty. Some of the kids took a while to instil their trust in me and, again, that was completely understandable. Most of these guys have been abused or thrown aside for most of their lives and the idea of someone actually wanting to help them seems so bizarre.
There is a group of about 13 kids that come to the afterschool surf program every day. Like I said, some of them were complete shits. Mark, for example, I absolutely despise. He’s a very troubled kid and is almost certainly going to end up deeply entrenched in The 26ers gang. He thinks that pretending to be a badass by beating up kids smaller than him and throwing up gang signs and fake guns is cool, and trying to show him that it just isn’t is a huge stretch for someone like him. He was always making creepy sexual advances towards the female volunteers (he’s 13) and when he didn’t like what you were saying to him, he would shout spitfire Afrikaans at you, knowing you couldn’t understand. I eventually started responding by shouting what little French I could muster up to insult him (“Vous etes une morceau de la merde” not even close, right?) just to show him that it can work both ways. The thing about Mark is that you can tell that he is just scared. He’s afraid of heights, he’s afraid of the water, he’s afraid of authority, the list goes on and on. I feel like he just puts on a hardass act because that’s how he’s learned to cope with his harsh surroundings. I’m almost certain he has been terribly abused by his family. Nigel is much the same. The thing is, he has huge surfing talent. He doesn’t even try when he’s in the water (he could rip up a 6’8” board but he spends his time fucking around on big 8’ foamies instead) and it’s a travesty. With a little bit of dedication, this kid could actually tear himself away from his current life of crime and abuse and make something of himself, but it’s hard getting through to him. I won’t talk about all 13 of the kids, but I’ll mention two of my favourites: Benedict and Charleston. Benny is a somewhat shy kid. We require them to all wear brightly coloured rashguards so that we can identify them in the water (it gets really crowded at Muizenberg beach) and Benny was confident enough to request the bright pink one right from the get go when all the other kids were telling me that pink was “gay.” After a couple weeks of him working that rashy, the other kids started following suit, and they now all rush to get the pink ones when we hand them out. Oh and you know that whole “errrrday I’m shuffling” thing? Yeah, that song is about Benny. Errrday he’s shuffling, and I do mean errrrrday. Lay down a simple beat for him and he’ll bust a move right there on the concrete, or on the beach while we’re warming up to get in the water. The kid’s got style. He’s also very polite, always saying please and always thanking you when you push him into a good wave. I’ve been gone from the program for a week now and wouldn’t you know it, I miss the guy. Another gem is Charleston. This kid, oh man, where to begin. He’s a showman. All he cares about is dancing and making jokes. We probably shouldn’t encourage it, but nearly every time he stands up on a wave he checks to see if any of the volunteers are watching and if they are he puts his hands on his head and thrusts his hips in a terribly sexual manner, causing side-splitting laughter from all of the volunteers. The Surf Shack has showers where customers are meant to quickly change out of their wetsuits and rinse the saltwater away. The kids of course abuse this privilege and always weasel their way into minutes with the hot water (understandable seeing as they don’t have much access to running water, let alone running hot water). We tell them that they have been hogging the showers for too long and that it is the girls’ turn to come change and we can’t have boys in the showers while the girls are changing, and every day, like clockwork, Charleston responds with his hip gyrations while he says “let them come, let them come.” To be honest, I think he might be gay.
The surfing itself was an absolute blast. Each of the kids took a board out, but many of them got bored or distracted very quickly and ditched their boards on the beach, leaving them available to us. Some of the kids were actually really good at surfing and as such didn’t need our help when they were actually in the water, and they loved surfing with us. So more often than not, I would end up with a board of my own, paddling for waves with the youngsters. I knew how to surf already, I’ve been to Tofino on Vancouver Island more times than I care to count, and have surfed in Costa Rica as well, but my time in Muizenberg developed my surfing level much higher than it was previously. The waves at Muizenberg are very forgiving and getting to the back is, for the most part, not too much of a challenge, so I made a lot of progress. Like any foreign surf spot, the locals can at times be a bit of a handful. Even though Muizenberg is known as a “beginner” beach, on certain days a large swell would roll in and some of the locals would paddle their short boards out to the back and tear up the waves. I was always very courteous (nothing worse in this world than pissing off a local, Kevin knows from our Costa Rica trip), but on one or two occasions I badly cut off a local. (Those not familiar with surfing: cutting someone off is when you paddle for a wave that someone has either already caught and is riding, or is about to catch and is closer to the break of the wave. Don’t do it.) I always went out of my way to apologize and offer some sort of explanation, and they were always accepting enough of the apology, but I usually rode the next wave in more or less right away. There’s another side to surfing in Cape Town: the sharks. South Africa has the highest concentration of great white sharks of any surfing area in the world, and precautions are taken to avoid attacks. All along the beaches at Muizenberg, there are shark flags which are controlled by lookouts who watch the bay from half way up the nearby mountain. A green-flag means there is definitely no shark in the water, a black flag means the visibility is poor but nothing has been spotted, a red flag means there has been a shark sighting or threat of a shark (a dead seal or something) within the last couple of hours, and a white flag means they have spotted a shark by the beach: get the fuck out da water. During my month surfing there, I saw the green flag twice, it was usually the black flag (visibility is poor in the summer most of the time). Twice while I was in the water, the shark alarm was sounded. Rather than freak out like some people (Lejla!) I got pumped. As we made our way out of the water, I was high-fiving anyone who cared to indulge me, and I then rushed to the white flag and made someone take a picture of me. The day I arrived, I said it was my goal to be in the water while the alarm was sounded and hells yeah I accomplished that goal. Good job Adrian, thanks Adrian.
After surfing, we fed the kids a simple meal of peanut butter sandwiches, fruit, and juice, before attempting the most difficult task of the day: walking them back to Capricorn. If we just left them, they would fuck around in Muizenberg all day and never go back home. They hate their home and I feel for them. I’ve been there: it sucks. Nonetheless, we have to at least attempt to make sure that they get home safely, and it’s a job that all the volunteers hate equally. Usually it’s two volunteer’s job every day to walk the big group of them back, and keeping control of 13 young teens who are amped from a surfing session and high on the sugar they stole from that coffee shop we just passed (wait, what? fuckers) is impossible. The walk back to the township from the Surf Shack is a good forty minutes on a bee-line, but with the kids it takes over an hour. As we were leaving Muizenberg and heading into the more dangerous areas near the township, the kids would turn somewhat serious and tell us to leave them. This is not because they want to screw around more, once you got them out of Muizenberg there were no shops you had to be careful they don’t steal from, it is because they were genuinely worried that their people will rob us. It’s a somewhat valid concern as well; I always took off my watch and bracelet before a walk through the township and even so I was always on edge.
Before I leave my section on the surf program, the staff at the Surf Shack deserves special mention. Dave and Fiona, the owners, put up with a lot of shit from both the kids and the volunteers getting used to the somewhat young program and I take my hat off to them. They took everything in stride and were nothing but helpful throughout the whole ordeal. They are both also just fantastic human beings and what they’re doing by allowing Tim and Iviwe to run the program through their business is very commendable. Grant, Antony, Kasper, and David were great fun and I enjoyed spending the days talking about who-knows-what with them. Even the older couple that worked there (I never learned their names, they kind of hated us), thank you for rolling your eyes and cursing us in a somewhat discrete fashion. Everyone else that rolled through, teaching lessons, making us coffee, or giving us motivational speeches, if you ever read this for whatever reason, thank you for making my time in Muizenberg unforgettable. What you are doing with the kids is making a big difference, and the world would do well to have more people around with your patience and kind hearts.
There is more to DTR than just the surf program. Other programs include teaching at the local school and helping out at the three daycares within the township. Tim and Iviwe put their blood and sweat into this program and work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They do an absolutely astonishing job and frankly, I’m not sure how they pull it all off. Kudos guys, you’re true legends. In total, during my time there, there were over thirty volunteers from all over the world. There were some Brits, an Irish woman, lots of Canadians, a couple of Germans, a few Aussies, a trio of New-Yorkers, some Chinese people, you name it. As is usually the case when you go around the world volunteering, the people were absolutely amazing. Some of the people that I met during my time in Muizenberg have worked their way into my head so deeply; I have made a handful of lifelong friendships (you know who you are). I don’t think that I could have picked a better group of people to spend a month with if I tried. Any of you reading this: if you’re ever travelling where I’m living, you can have my bed. We can either snuggle or I’ll take the couch but either way it will absolutely stupendous (you read that in British James’ voice, don’t lie). Regardless, I absolutely must see some of you again, so whether you come to BC or I go to Texas, England, Australia, or wherever, a reunion is in the cards. Warm those vocal chords, the nearest karaoke bar won’t know what hit it.
Which I guess brings me to the other side of my time in Muizenberg. Sure, we were there to help those in need, but you wouldn’t have known it from our bar tabs. I had been more or less on budget throughout Kenya and Uganda, but South Africa was a Rand-storm the likes of which have never been seen. Nearly every night there was something planned by someone. Most of the madness usually occurred on Tuesday nights (of course) at a bar/restaurant in Kalk Bay called Brass Bell. After some, erm, warming up, the group of us would stumble into two pre-arranged taxi vans and head off to our own little hole in the wall for a night of karaoke. Roll your eyes if you must, but there’s nothing quite like a good drunken sing-along, and the DTR group owned the shit out of the stage at Brass Bell. I won’t go through the tiresome details of a night of boozing and singing, but I’m sure you can imagine it. Some of the choice cuts that I treated the crowd to were Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’ with my new soulmate Paulina, N’SYNC’s ‘Bye Bye Bye’ (with an attempt at an accompanying dance) with the boys, Chris, George, and either one or both of the James’, Shaggy’s ‘It Wasn’t Me’ (shabadaba dabadaba dabadaba , shabadaba dabadaba dabadaba , shabadaba dabadaba dabadaba ….SHAGGY!) with George, Garth Brooks’ ‘I Got Friends in Low Places’ with everyone’s favourite Saskatchewanian Mallory (that’s how you know I’m drunk – I sing country, and enjoy it), and of course the essential Bon Jovi songs with Aussie James and a group sung ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ led by yours truly. With the night of mayhem behind us, and after a quick dip in the neighbouring tidal pool, we would call up our taxis and force them to deal with the lot of us: 30 absolutely disgustingly drunk, loud, and overly friendly volunteers. George lost his cellphone on his third night in South Africa because he was leaning too far out of the window, and someone who shall remain nameless (you!) puked in one of the vans on a particularly messy night. God I felt bad for the guys driving those cabs, at least we paid them well. Other shenanigans included The Melting Pot in Muizenberg which had a fantastic vibe (or at least I thought so) and a stage for open-mic/jamming. George, Aussie James, and I fully intended on taking stage one fateful Wednesday night, but the group ahead of us was absolutely jaw-droopingly amazing and, I’ll admit it, I bitched out. If I was going to be playing drums it would have been fine, but George was on drums and I knew my guitar playing would not come close to matching the standard that these guys set. In the end though, I definitely regret not going up because fuck it, I’ll never see those guys again. Plus, we would have torn that place up with our rendition of Coldplay’s ‘Shiver’. There was also a night at Springbok, one of the Cape Town area’s more famous clubs, located in Claremont, a couple pissups at a place called Cape to Cuba. They served fantastic booze and food but it literally took a half hour to get a drink, which resulted in me doubling up on most of my beers. There were flurries of Rand storms during my time in Muizenberg, some like no other I had ever seen. Much Rand was chucked, and much fun was had.
It wasn’t all fun and games though. Two volunteers had their drinks spiked at Brass Bell during separate karaoke nights, myself included. Now, Tim, if you’re reading this, I know that you don’t believe that I was spiked, and that’s fine, I’ll deal (Hillary might not though,) but I think that you were just angry that I didn’t try anything sexy with you. I’ve been outrageously drunk before, believe me, I have, but that fateful Tuesday there was something besides alcohol running through my bloodstream. I have never gone completely blackout to the point that I still cannot remember the things people have told me that I did, and the entire next day was a complete haze. Apparently Bree woke up at 4:00AM to me at standing by her sleeping head as I stared at her and slowly walked on the spot, so god damn creepy. I couldn’t walk in a straight line for the next 24 hours, and before Hillary left the house for the surf program, I asked her “what time it was” four times in about a ten-minute time period (I was wearing a watch). I also sent a plethora of fucked up texts to everybody in my phone asking, among other things, what time it was (a weird question when your cellphone has a digital clock). Hillary also had her digital camera and R1500 stolen that night. We learned very quickly that we needed to be more careful. That was definitely our messiest piss-up. Fun was had, tunes were belted, Rand was tossed, but lessons were learned.
And that was just the week days. On the weekends, much more craziness was afoot. One of the major tourist attractions along the coast in South Africa is to go shark-cage diving. This means getting in a boat, heading to the middle of the ocean, getting in a cage, and trying to bait a great white shark close to the boat so that you can see them up close. I gave a lot of thought into whether I even wanted to go with the group that was doing this one weekend. Most of you will know that I’m not exactly a fan of animal cruelty in any of its forms, and I couldn’t decide if this was humane or not. I came to the decision that: we were not hurting the animals, we were not feeding the animals (just baiting them), and we were barely interfering with the animals, so it was ethical. It was later, while talking to a guy named Nick (incidentally, one of the coolest people I’ve ever met) that I realized it’s not exactly a good idea. While not “cruel” in the sense of direct abuse, he was right to say that it is a practice that is putting a dangerous precedent in place. We are training great whites to have violent reactions around humans, and after a few generations of this practice, sharks may start to have a more aggressive inherent nature towards us, whereas now they just leave us alone 99.9% of the time because we aren’t prey to them. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t gone. I thought I had made an informed decision, but I had not. If you go to South Africa, don’t go shark cage diving. It’s just another of the hundreds of ways that we fuck with animals in their natural environments and the long-term consequences can only be negative. And then of course there is the other reason that I regret my decision: I dropped R1150 and never even got in the cage! The full group of us on the boat was about 17 people and the cage can only fit 4-5 people so there were four separate groups. The first group got lucky I guess and had four or five sharks charge the cage (I at least got to see them from the boat, holy shit what remarkable creatures). The next group included Hillary, Bree, Darby, and Rebecca, and they waited in the cold water for probably over an hour with absolutely nothing. I was on deck, all wet-suited up, when after a while the guide told us that it was time to pack it in. What?!? Half of us didn’t even get in the water, and only four people actually saw a shark while in the cage. We were pissed right off. Apparently though the guide warned us of this and a refund was not in the cards. Darby even bought the video for an extra $25 (why Darby, why?) and it’s legendarily shitty. All it contains is ten minutes of us standing on the boat looking impatient and pissed off with a tacky drum ‘n’ bass and accompanying synth line playing in the background. So yeah, shark cage diving was a complete bust.
On another weekend, a much more successful one, a group of 13 volunteers rented two cars and drove to the nearby wine region, Stellenbosch. South Africa is world renowned for its wine and it seemed like a travesty to not go check it out. We had an absolutely legendary weekend, jamming out to Rihanna on the way down and taking a wine drive on Sunday. On our way there, about ten minutes from our final destination, George slammed on his brakes and pulled over. His passengers asked why, and the answer was that apparently there was a good animal sanctuary nearby where we could view some cheetahs for 5 Rand (the infamous 5 Rand cheetahs, anyone who was there is pissing themselves with laughter right now, don’t ask). We stopped and asked around (“excuse me sir, where are the 5 Rand cheetahs?”) and eventually found a very posh wine farm with the fabled animal sanctuary. We stopped and had a walk around on what was possibly the hottest and sweatiest day of my time in South Africa. I had already seen cheetahs during my safari in Kenya in September and so I knew that everyone was in for a disappointment. Yeah they’re the fastest land animals in the world, but they’re lazy as shit and hardly ever move. It was a nice time, 5 Rand well chucked, but the real destination was still ahead. We arrived at our hostel in Stellenbosch soon after, a delightful little place cleverly named the Stumble Inn. After exploring the town for a little while, a group of us headed to the hostel’s second building in search of their pool. What we found was a tiny excuse for a pool full of greasy water and fun-hating 30-somethings. We were there to have fun and mess around, as you do in pools, but they were there to judge us. To be fair, as soon as we arrived, George did stand at the edge and shout “excuse me everybody, I have a very important announcement to make: CANNONBALLLLL!!!!!!!!” before soaking everyone in a five-mile radius, but I mean come on, it’s a pool.
The most fun was undoubtedly on Sunday when we did a wine tour which consisted of being driven to four different wine farms and being given loads of wine to sip (yeah, right). We spent the day feeling pompous, sniffing wines for god knows what, enjoying smoky aftertastes and lengthy finishes, and slowly getting buzzed. The second farm that we at stopped allowed us to taste six different wines along with a cheese tasting kiosk (um, hell yes) which we were allowed to cycle once. Man did we ever take that place for a ride. They had three different booths for wine tasting, and after getting cut off at one, we moved to the next one. Some of us ended up with more like 12 or 13 samples of wine before the staff told us that we had had enough. Me though, I spent my time abusing the cheese-tasting. Included in the price was one cycle of the cheese-table, but I cycled five times. George or James would jokingly approach me after my third or fourth session and say “oh my, did you know they had cheese-tasting?!?” to which I would respond “you don’t say! Cheese-tasting? Splendid, let’s have a taste.” I’m sure they knew what we were up to but they didn’t bother stopping us. Incidentally, the cheese was some of the best I’ve ever tasted, and we paired it with their wine like a pro. Had a nice, um, red with that cheese. The day ended at the second oldest wine estate in South Africa, dating back to the 1700s. We were quite drunk by that point, and during our tour of the wine vats, Ashley got locked in one of the warehouses. It was about twenty minutes into our wine-tasting when we started to wonder where she was. We saw her taking the walk of shame back from the production area; she apparently had to break out through a window after getting left behind and trapped for twenty minutes. There was also a rather sizable confrontation between one of the guides and Darby, Hillary, and Bree. This guy was kind of an asshole and spent most of the day ragging on Americans, which Darby took great offense to (she’s from the Carolinas), and he also made a couple of cracks about the general stupidity of our group. Whatever man, it’s your tip.
And that’s about it: surfing, underprivileged youth, and a plethora of shenanigans. Yup, I covered it all (actually probably not but 6000 words, my fingers hurt). The words I’ve written here will never do justice to my time in Muizenberg but I hope I have at least provided a bit of a glimpse into the amazing time I had. My trip in Africa keeps getting better and better and I’m meeting new amazing people all the time. My word do I ever love backpacking and volunteering abroad, I highly recommend that you reading this back home tear yourself away from the rat race, if only for a couple of weeks, and experience something like this. Next I will be writing about the week after my program ended, including seeing folk-legend The Tallest Man on Earth live in Cape Town and the trip to one of the best surfing areas in the world: J-Bay. Till next time, keep it classy.
(P.S. “It’s almost an injustice to attempt to summarize it in a (hopefully) brief blog-post” hahahahaha valiant effort Adrian, I’m shit at keeping things brief).
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