Taneli in Cape Town 2016

I spent 6 days in Cape Town as a holiday from my normal activities here in Johannesburg. Soon as we arrived in downtown Cape Town it felt like a different country. I haven't been to the actual Joburg center that often but the biggest difference I noticed straight away was how clean it was, there wasn't nearly as much trash littered around.

I found us a hostel with pod beds so that can be crossed off the list, and the hostel was pretty nice in general too. I got the same experience what I've been used to hostels in Europe, good service, friendly people and most importantly showers, I haven't been to a shower for the whole time here since I always have to bath.

We went for a night out with some people we met at the hostel, others had worked around Africa and were taking some time off like us and others were backpackers. I got my first trouble with thieves when we were going back but luckily they only took my sunglasses.

We spent lots of our time in the Waterfront, mostly eating. I mostly ate seafood which I do normally anyway when going out to eat but I had to do it much more in Cape Town, it being a coastal city.

Only tourist attractions we got to actually go to were Table Mountain and the penguins close to Cape Point, or the more well known name for it, Cape of Good Hope. The girls also took a sightseeing bus around, but I was still debilitated by our night out so I couldn't join. Still, I felt like got everything I could've wanted, minus some extreme thing like abseiling or sky diving.

I have been lucky with the public transportation in Johannesburg, taxis are generally pretty banged up and might take a long time but only one of them has broken down so far. But in Cape Town we ran into problems several times. The most notable one was when we were on the train back from the penguins and Simon's Town and it decided to stop dead on the tracks between stations. After 30 minutes people were freaking out, one woman was yelling at the driver to open the door and tell us what's going on, one man wrapped his belt around his fist and said he'll beat the driver with it and another man had scissors out. We finally got to the next station but it wasn't our stop so we had to walk and get a public taxi. The guy with the scissors helped us and showed us where to go and in the taxi he explained he would've stabbed the guy with the belt if he started a fight. In the end I gave him 20 rands for helping us since I wasn't too keen on getting stabbed.

Regarding work, we held the sport's day on the Saturday before I went on my holiday. There were some kids coming early to the centre who wanted to help us carry all the stuff to the field which helped a lot. The event went well, but organising was a mess, in ours and school's end. We were supposed to have the whole field for us but there was a library group there also. When the first kids started arriving, I was at the gate helping split different aged kids evenly but it wasn't good enough for Sydney and we took 30mins of the start to sort them better. I held the warm up, Sydney explained the rules and prayed but after that everything got messy. During the event the volunteers didn't let Sydney explain the game and everyone was doing their own thing. For the 2nd event I had to gather everyone around and tell them only one can lead the sport and others have to just help them the way it's specified, and it seemed to help. Sometimes people needed reminding of how to do things but we managed.

Now I just have 3 weeks left here and I don't know how I feel. I don't feel homesick at all but Finland is my home country so I feel obligated to want to go back. Hopefully I have time to go to Soweto for a historic tour and learn more of South African history, a trip we've planned since I arrived here.

Lion King

I had some trouble with my internet connection because I ran out of airtime (that's what they call prepaid usage here) and couldn't get wifi connection, so I haven't been able to update the blog. Now that I think about it, pretty much everything here is prepaid, even electricity is bought at local shops as units.

After the last blog update, we went to Soweto, which apparently is the biggest part of Joburg. We drove around with the guys and went to the biggest mall there. For some reason everyone always wants to show the malls, I guess they just want to show the fancier parts of their country.

Our car broke down that same day and we had to walk to the gas station because we thought it just ran out of gas. After filling the jerry can, a nice security guard gave us a ride, and once again I was on the back of a pickup truck. At least I got my exercise for the day when we tried to jump start the car by pushing it up and down the road.

Speaking of exercise, I've started jogging and made a mistake on the 2nd day when I woke up bit too late and went running at 10am when the sun starts getting really hot. I can't complain though, there hasn't been a single cloud besides couple odd days of rain during the 4 weeks I've been here.

Last week was 100% lazing off, we had no work besides Sydney helping one girl with her English because her report wasn't so good last semester. We also went around asking for funding for the centre since money is a problem right now, but it was just meeting new people and having coffee and then telling a bit about the centre and where the money would go. I got to know the amount of money what the children's event held back in Finland at my school generated, and I'm grateful of it. With that funding on the way, we hopefully can make some of the ideas happen that I've suggested to Sydney. We'd like to thank everyone who participated in making the event happen.

Back to my lazing off days, I've been hanging out with Rocko and the others, or how they like to call the group, the "broforce". We went to some local festival with fairground rides, stalls and other amusement park stuff. With them I eat way too much chips though, we always get chips and bread to eat. Oh yeah, that's the common way to eat chips here, you put them on slices of bread and it's called khotes, which is Zulu language.

Sydney and his family was invited to a birthday party on Saturday and I decided to stick around with them and go empty the party of their food supply. We drove some ways towards Pretoria and I slept most of the way but when I woke up I felt like I was in a different country. I've seen maybe 10 white people in total in Joburg and Lenasia but all the sudden we were surrounded by them on the freeway. Oh and once again I was in the back of a pickup truck.

On Sunday I finally reunited with the girls who also came to do their work practice here, but they're working on a different side of Johannesburg in Benoni. We went to Lion Park, which is exactly what you could guess by the name. There were other animals too, like giraffes, ostriches, mangusts, hyenas, cheetahs, african wild dogs, zebras and antelopes but the highlights were seeing the lions eat and getting to pet the lion cubs.

Even though the lions were in captivity, it felt like a mini safari. The enclosures were big and we drove around in big open safari trucks. You don't really realise how huge the lions are until they walk right next to the car, or how cute the cubs are until you get to pet them. We also went crazy with the girls in the gift shop, because they had everything that we'd planned to buy as souvenirs. I thought I need to get a second check-in bag for the flight home just to carry all the souvenirs back.