Let's go Surfing... Surfing Jefreys Bay!

For the people who are saying "I thought Joost went to South Africa for Humanitarian work and not only for holidays" I will dedicate this blogpost to my first 2 weeks of real working and of course to Surfing and Partying!
After 10 days of travelling through Lesotho and Swaziland our first humanitarian workday started.
Ok lets explain the project I choose for with 5 other fellow students. The following 7 weeks we are teaching about 30 teachers computer skills at a school in the township of Port Alfred. Two hours a day we teach how to work with windows, Word, Excel and some Internet. Our working day; we spend 2 or 3 hours in the morning preparing the lesson for that day. From 14:00 till 16:00 we have the class and at the end of the module we have to hand in a manual so they can eventually work more efficient and teach their students the skills they learned.
Our first week we wanted to find out what the level was of the teachers regarding computer skills. We created an exercise in word and excel; very basic like how to make something bolt, change font, insert a picture or table. This way we could distinguish who worked with Word or Excel before and the people who never did.
Patience is one of the key competences you have to have as what looks simple for us like selecting a word or sentence but for people who never touched a mouse before it can be quite a struggle. The week after we started our classes with basic Word. On monday and wednesday we have the beginners group and tuesday and thursday the more advanced group. The enthousiasm of these teachers in our class is amazing to see. The reactions when they manage to insert a photo without help of us is great to see and some are really fast learners. Other people will take ages to type a sentence but we give them extra attention in class.
We are with 6 in our project group and everything goes really smooth. No problems or discussions which is the case with some other project groups.

Ok now a dedication to my weekend experiences. On friday the 8th of May we (I and my harem of 13 girls) decided to go to Jeffreys Bay to surf. Rented some cars and drove for about 2 hours to one of the best surf spots on the planet. When arrived there were zero waves so we hoped that the lessons of tomorrow would bring us more luck. Checked in a nice hostel, played some volleyball and some frisbee (ofcourse!) For the loyal fans you might remember the post of last year "hitchhiking is getting easier and easier" of july 16 2008, where I got a frisbee injury, this was also the case today. During playing long distance frisbee I dove to a frisbee, hit the sand pretty hard a bruised my ribs. That night the pain was terrible; still enjoyed a nice party in the hostel. This party was called Cross dressing party which means all the guys had to wear girls clothes and all the girls guys clothes. These disturbing photos of joost in a dress, bra and makeup between all girls dressed up like guys I will spare untill I come back as these photos could be used against me ;)
I have never tried surfing before and it has been on my list for some time now, saturday morning a 2 hour lesson began. As my rib hurted like hell I wasn't able to stand, but on sunday we rented a board and wetsuit I performed better after taking a reasonable quantity of painkillers. Surfing rules and I will definetly want to become better in it. When back in Port Alfred I went to a doctor to check the status of my injury, after going to the hospital for xray photos to check if they were broken, the doctor said that they just were bruised and not broken and she gave me some strong painkillers.

Last weekend I decided to go to Hodgeback with a smaller group. Hans, Eva and Tim were my travel compagnions. This small village close to indigenous forests, mountains and waterfalls were recommended by various people and it's been said that Tolkien got his inspiration for the Lord of the Rings movies right here in this amazing place. The hostel we stayed in was called "Away with the Ferries" and at night we found out why. In the bushes around the hostel hundreds of fireflies made it look like ferries; stunning. At night we chilled at the fire near the bar on some couches with some beer, making conversations with fellow travellers. At 22:00 an english girl said to everybody that we had to take our shirts of at 22:30 as every friday it was 22:30 topless. What started with an nice housy feeling close to the fire ended up in everybody taking their shirts off incl the bardude (girls were still wearing their bra) dancing on the bar, loud good music, beer showers and having just an amazing insane time together. Yes people photo's have been taken and published on my photo site thanks to Hans the horny motherf......
A big hangover was the result the morning after but after resting in the garden for another hour with monkeys eating some berries a few metres away from us we got up and spend some hours hiking through the forrest and visiting a beautiful waterfall called Madonna and Child. Took some photos incl my famous Yippie-Ka-Jee photo shoot which I made as my Africa trade mark and many more will be taken the same way across the continent.
A nice relax weekend chilling with some nice folks was created.
At this moment we are developing some Excel exercises for our class today and thinking about what to do next weekend. This depends on my rib as in the morning it still hurts quite a bit but with medication it is ok as I want to do some bungee jumps (incl the highest one 216 meter;)) But this maybe has to wait for the weekend after.

And a small update of my accommodation here in Port Alfred; The first 2 weeks we stayed in a nice villa but then had to move to a house with 8 other guys. Nice house, big and a relax living room but in the last few weeks several laptops, camera, ipods were stolen from inside the house. An alarm system was installed 2 weeks ago but last weekend another laptop was stolen and ipod from a guy in our house. A window was smashed in and at the moment we have 24/7 security walking around our house. Also other houses of students were targetted and valuable stuff were stolen. Four guys incl me and Hans are leaving that house and the dean here is looking for another accommodation which is safer for our valuables. Still life is good here so don't worry to much.

For photos; http://picasaweb.google.nl/jcopray/

Hope everything is well.
greets joost

The mighty kingdoms of Africa

What a trip!! Added 2 more countries on my country list, and what kind of countries? The kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland; just amazing!!

Our trip started on friday 24th of April with 3 VW golfs, 10 students and 700 km infront of us the Mountain kingdom of Lesotho. Left pretty early and arrived just after dark at the border and then drove on bad roads and dirt roads through Malealea; a nice hostel like place in the middle of Lesotho. As it was night and the concept of streetlight is unknown in Lesotho, we didn't have any idea how the scenery looked like around our huts. The following day we were enlightened by the beauty of the mountains of more then 2000 meters high and heavy rains. Six of our group decided to do a horse ride through the mountains, I imagined that the day would bring only rain so the rest jumped in my car and crossed the country to enjoy spectacular views in the sun as the rain stopped pretty soon as we left. Lesotho is incredible, we heard from several that it looks like a big township and that it is not that special but I loved it. You do see allot of poverty and people with tored up clothes but many wave back when you drive by and the friendlyness of the Lesothie is just immens. Our second day we spent a short trip on horses to fully enjoy the beauty of the country, at night a nice band with homemade instruments filled our night with some good quality African music. 3 nights passed by and the decision for visiting the Dragonsmountain in the north-east of Lesotho on the South African side was easily made.

In 7 hours we drove in our VW golf parade around the northern border close to the Dragonsmountain range back in South Africa. Our backpackers lodge came with a nice swimming pool and a tap at the bar for drinks. Which did inevitable lead to a high amount at the end of my stay as the cocktails and beers tasted very good. The following day we decided to do a hike upto 31000 meters which took the whole day. After driving for 2 hours and hiking up hill for 3 hours we arrived at the Ampitheatre; a 5 km long edge with a 1 kilometer deep valley next to it. Just stunning!! Our next attraction was the second highest waterfall in the world. Sounds spectacular huh?, well.... the water did fell about 930 meters but the water that fell was less then an average small street flushes daily through their toilets. Still the view was again amazing.
Late in the afternoon we arrived back at our hostel where we had our last drinks with the group as tomorrow we wanted to split up; the 8 girls to the coast and Hans and I to Swaziland.

Another 700 km were ahead of us and our destination; Mlilwane Sanctuary a small wildlife park with a Backpackers inside. Early in the evening we arrived in a nice and quiet place which we called our home for the next 3 days.
The hostel was literally located inside a wildlife park and sometimes you saw wharthogs, antilopes and often an ostrich walking around at the site. Walking around the hostel to the main camp 10 minutes away brought you zebra, wildebeast, crocs, hippos, springboks etc. just from a few meters away; sweeett!
That day, queensday we heard about the car attack in NL; insane huh! Still had a few beers that day and just chilled out at the pool, enjoyed a nice meal cooked for us above the camp fire. In our days in the hostel we met many nice fellow travellers who had travelled for longer around Africa. Allot more nice countries wait for me after South Africa.
On friday the first of May it was workers day and as we heard a reggae festival was close by. First our objective of that day was to go to a National park where white and the rare black rhinos could be spotted but after all we went to the festival with another car of whities. In first place we thought that we would be the only white people at the festival but when arrived we saw that a wide variety of people filled the festival ground.
Beautifully located in a valley with pretty mountains around it, friendly people, good music and atmosphere, cheap beer, good cheap food and that all for 120 rand (10€) entrance.
After 6 hours Hans wanted to leave and eventually we left again in a big group to continue the party around the campfire at our hostel. Life was good so we choose to spend saturdays as well in Swaziland (our first plan was to drive another 700 km to Port St. John) that day was all about chilling out at the pool, drinking beer and enjoying other people's company.
Somewhere in the afternoon something amazing happened; as the ostrich was just walking around drinking abit from the pool she sat down next to the pool moved her head and.... layed a huge egg. I SHIT YOU ALL NOT. Check the photos.
Exchanged with many email adresses and spend the night again at the pingpong table and campfire. Sunday was driving day. As Hans has his driverslicence just 6 weeks I drove again the whole day. Left at 7 in the morning and hoped to be in Port Alfred at 19:00 for dinner. We miss calculated the distance and the combination with bad weather (heavy rain and mist) it took us 17 hours!! to get back. One hour stop incl. I hear a new record of driving 16 hours, 1400km in one day. ;) My bed in our villa felt so good that night, but what a week we had!!

For photo's check again: http://picasaweb.google.nl/jcopray

greets joost