The "Farm" and Hands at Work

We've been staying with Brooke and Jed at "The Farm" for two weeks now. Their home is sort of a duplex. We sleep on an air mattress in the living room. This place is not what you imagine when you think Peace Corps or Africa. We've spent many evenings watching The Office on their TV. For the most part we've been eating normal food--pizza, tacos, etc. But last night Brooke cooked us a meal like the locals eat. Pap is made of finely ground corn meal. It's cooked so it is very stiff. We ate it with a gravy made with shredded tomatoes and carrots, and a side of cabbage and squash. Delicious! And the other day I tried Chicken feet! I mostly ate the skin, but the locals eat bones, cartilage, and all.

Mike goes out to look for birds quite often. We've seen some really interesting ones, most recently a long crested eagle. He has also spent some time playing hockey with the volunteers who live in the big farm house. We brought ten plastic blades at Jed's request, and they've been creative in finding sticks. No serious injuries yet!
We've come to work with Brooke and Jed quite a few times. They work with Hands at Work, mostly in the office. Hands at Work provides support and training to community based daycares, food banks, and Home Based Care groups.
These HBCs provide services to orphans and people who are sick. Because of all the poverty and HIV/AIDS here, there is a HUGE need for this kind of work. Mike and I went along with a nurse named Emily and some care workers into the "village" (it has the infrastructure of a village but has about 250,000 people). A lot of the houses are made out of bricks, and look decent from the outside. We learned that many of them have almost nothing inside besides mats to sleep on. Some of the homes are only shacks that look like a strong wind would blow them over. We met one woman living in a shack who is HIV positive and lost her husband to AIDS two months ago. Her two small children were there. Emily gave the mom some meds, and took their information. She will help the mom get birth certificates for her kids so they can get some government assistance. The mom could barely lift her arms or talk above a whisper. These kids will probably be orphans soon, too.

This afternoon we are going with Brooke and Jed to an education program where older kids talk with younger ones about AIDS prevention, school exams, and other issues. Brooke says it is inspiring. Tomorrow may be a visit to a daycare and Young Mums in the afternoon. Last week, Mike helped several students get ready for the physics exam. Now our time at "The Farm" is almost over. We've rented a car starting Tuesday, so we'll be off! We both feel so lucky for our time here!

To see more pictures CLICK HERE.

First Week in Africa

We made it! It was a long trip, 19 hours by plane and 3 hours by bus (a big van actually), but we made it safely to Brooke and Jed's place in Masoyi. It's in the Mpumalanga province in the Northeastern part of South Africa. The scenery here is stunning. It's quite mountainous and still very green even though it is autumn. For our first weekend we went to Kruger National Park--one of the most famous places in Africa for wildlife viewing. We stayed there two nights in a very nice rest camp. Our place had a bedroom, two bathrooms, and a kitchenette. The park is setup for you to view animals from the safety of your car, but we didn't feel very safe when a huge elephant made an aggressive move towards us (thanks Jed for being quick on the gas!) We had a great time, and we saw lots of amazing animals like elephants, hippos, giraffes, antelope, hyenas, crocodiles, cape buffalo, warthogs, and baboons. You're not allowed to drive your own car after dark, but we went on an organized night drive and saw two lions. We watched them for several minutes and even saw them mating! Right on the side of the road not even 15 feet from our truck! It was incredible!

We intend to stay with Brooke and Jed for a couple more weeks and do some volunteering for their work place called Hands at Work. We will probably do some camping and also head into Swaziland. Then Kim and I plan to rent a car and head for Cape Town. We're having a great time so far.

We managed to upload a few pictures to Picasa. Click HERE to view them. Hope you enjoy them. We really enjoyed reading everyone's comments, so keep 'em coming!

Setting Off

It's finally here! We packed our backpacks and hope we've got most of what we need to get us through the next year. My cousin Megan is bringing us to The Cities tomorrow so we can catch a Twins game. On Wednesday it's off to Johannesburg via Atlanta. If all goes according to plan we'll be at Brooke and Jed's by Thursday night!

We took a couple pictures of us with our packs. The rest of our pictures should be considerably more interesting!