Sawubona Durban!

I’m finally here in Durban, where I’ll be spending the majority of my time here in SA. It was a 6-hour drive from Joburg to Durban, and we got here on Sunday afternoon. There wasn’t much along the side of the road except for savannah plains and a bunch of ostriches. We’ve been staying at the Happy Hippo hostel since we’ve been here which is an international backpackers hostel right across from the beach and next to Ushaka Marine World, which is apparently the 5^th best marine park in the world. The beach is beautiful.

Durban is kind of a mix between South Beach Miami, and Newark NJ- if you can visualize that at all. The closer to the beach you are the nicer and safer the area is, but as soon as you go further into the city the streets get worse and worse it seems. Yesterday we had a mission to take the public buses into the city and go to some various locations in pairs so that we could get a good feel for the city. The goal was to talk to as many people on the buses as possible and we found that they were all actually really friendly once we told them what we were doing and why we were here. We weren’t allowed to bring any bags- only the money in our pockets. My partner and I went to the Victoria Market, which was pretty far in there and not in the best neighborhood. After talking to a woman on the bus and telling her where we were going, she insisted on getting off the bus with us and leading us right to the market and dropping us off there even though that’s not where her intended stop was. It’s definitely the women who are looking out for us and I feel comfortable going up to most women on the streets to ask them for any help or directions. I’m gaining a new knowledge of street smarts here, and yesterday made me feel much better about going into the city and not making myself a target.

Today we went to our school building for the first time, which is in a residential neighborhood and is actually a house. We had our first real Zulu class and I learned that my name actually has a click in it! It’s pronounced Al-e-(click)-a. The click is the same sound as if you were riding a horse and wanting it to go faster (kind of like with the side of your mouth). It was a great discovery. My Zulu tutor’s name is Mne and he’s a student at the local college. It’s pretty hard, I’m not going to lie, but I’m strangely good at it compared to the rest of my class for some reason. I have my clicks down. At one point during class I looked out and saw a bunch of monkeys casually walking by right outside. That’s one of those things that made me really realize that I’m in Africa.

Tomorrow we move in with our home-stay families in Cato Manor, a township just outside of the city. We’re all a little nervous just because our Zulu’s not very good, but this is honestly the best way to learn the language and really immerse ourselves in the culture. I’m going over some key phrases right now that will be essential to know tomorrow including “can you please repeat” and “I’m just learning Zulu.” I’m so excited to meet my family though and I’ll fill you all in about it the next time I have Internet access.

Sala kathe! (that means good-bye but don’t even try to pronounce it- it looks wayyyy simpler on paper!)