Home sweet Home

Now my three month are over. Thanks to the wonderful person in the travel agency in Trier I spend full 90 days in South Africa. And yes I ran into a wall in the middle of it, but I loved each one of those days nevertheless.
As wonderful as it is to be back home with family and friends, which I really missed, as hard is it to come back into a town like Eichstätt, where time stands still. Seen so many things, experienced and grown a lot in my time in Cape Town, it's going to take a while till I can honestly say that I arrived back home. 

Supervisor Insight

The three month working at TraumaClinic and at Good Hope Seminary High School are over now. It was challenging, I doubted a lot, learned a lot and challenged my mindset of thinking about therapy.
There are a few things my supervisors said to me during my time there.
One challenged the idea of therapy as I know it. In Germany, health insurances pay psychotherapy and because everyone has insurance they decide how long a therapy should be. As a behavioral therapist you get 45 hours for a patient to do therapy with. If you need more, you can file a motion of prolonging the therapy and get more hours.
My supervisor challenged this frame, in which I was used to thinking. It's tricky to actually achieve anything in therapy that way. The aim of therapy is to make patients able to deal. We try to help them deal on their own by telling them they need a therapist to do so. That is kind of paradox. Coming from there, my supervisor told me that he doesn't want to see patients more than maximum 5 times. If his input didn't help them till then, it is more than likely that he became part of the problem. How can you help someone onto their feet by telling them they can only stand with you on their side.
Got me thinking.

We also talked about why psychologists want to be psychotherapists. Because we want to help. Maybe. But one doesn't have to study 7 years and get another 3 years of training to help people. Like teachers, therapists have are motivated a lot by power. Power to have an impact. Power to nudge people to do something, anything.
That complicates the paradoxon of therapy, talked about earlier. So we tell someone he can only stand when we are there. That does satisfy the power motive of the therapist. Witches circle.

Another thing that will stick with me, was one wonderful insight of my other supervisor: we get the cases that we need.
I had some tough cases in my time at Good Hope Seminary. Some were easy to handle, many were fun, some really got to me. Those where the cases where I was glad to have Karin as my colleague and supervisors to talk to. In my training to become a therapist to be, I have to have courses of self-awareness. Some of my cases made me aware of some of my soft spots already. Like Heidi said: we get the cases we need.

The Big 5

One of the last things I did in Cape Town: Going on a Big-5-Safari with Karin.

Jeeps the rangers drove us through the game reserve with

It was awesome. We had the perfect weather for a road trip and we did see all 5: Buffalo, Rhino, Elephant, Lion and Cheetah.

Two Elephant Bulls

Well after seeing a whole herd of elephants in Addo with Sebastian the two lonesome bulls there were a little disappointing, but I had seen them before and there was a whole herd of giraffes!









And the lions... well, not so impressive as well. But lions do sleep 80% of their lives in any case, so not so spectacular if you're not the bite.

Lions: one male, two females

These Lions in particular, one male, two female were bread in captivity for rich people to shoot them. So they were fed a lot, what gave them the name of canned-lions. The owner of the game reserve bought these three lions to rescue them from their fait. Down side: they can't live in the same area with the other animals. No one knows how what they would do. Maybe they would simply starve, because they don't know how to hunt to feed, or they would go berserk and kill every other living thing. So they have their own little (actually pretty huge, but solitary anyway).

Rhino Baby (4 years old)

I loved the rhinos though. Very beautiful! With a little luck we saw many of the animals in the park at one water place: buffalo, zebra, rhino and springbock.

Buffalo herd

Springbocks are a kind of deer and the national animal of South Arfica. One of the baseball teams is called springbocks, too. And like the people of the country, springbocks come in every colour: light brown, dark brown, chestnut... and like one of my captonien acquaintance pointed out, in green (football club).

Springbock

And we saw giraffes! Beautiful animals and huge. And they have a tricky tongue to eat around the thorns of their favorite trees. They really did amaze me.

Giraffes

Cheetahs in the Sanctuary

The Lions weren't that impressive, the cheetahs were! The game reserve has a cheetah breeding center. It seems to be tricky to breed cheetahs in captivity, but they manage and they seem to do a good job. Two weeks before Karin and I did our trip there they released two cheetah from the sanctuary into the reserve area. They are doing great, they are hunting, feeding and enjoying their kind of freedom I hope. Upside: the released cheetahs have little sender, so the rangers can track them. We didn't spot the male one, but we did see the female sitting close to her prey watching it. Graceful cats they are.


I'm very glad I could convince Karin to go with me on a safari. I wasn't sure if it would be too much like in a zoo. It wasn't and now I did see the Big 5 of Africa.  

Baboons

I really and still don't get the fuzz about "beware of baboons". Ok I did see some after starting to believe that there are none out there whatsoever. But not highjacking my car, or anything.
The fist ones I saw with Sebastian down at Cape Point. A whole herd of them. With teeny tiny baby ones, a horde of teenagers and grown ups in all sizes. It was nice to finally see the animal and not only the signs.
The only highjacking I saw was shortly later, when a baboon tried to enter a restaurant we drove by.
And last I saw them on Thursday, when Karin and I did a Big 5-Safari actually on the side of the road.
So yes, I guess they are really out there :).

Whales

August to November is whale season at the shores of South Africa. One of the most popular spots to watch whales linger and jump is Hermanus, south-east from Cape Town. Once you have passed the southern townships it is an amazing drive along a beautiful coastline around False Bay. 

Sebastian and I actually saw our first whales in Fish Hoek, which is just outside Cape Town on the way down to Cape Point. Incredible close to the beach there are whales mating, floating and cruising around with their calves. 

Our first spotted whales were pretty lazy, later that day we arrived in Hermanus and actually saw them jump. It was late already and I guess they get tired or they adjusted to the human time table: at around 5:30pm they stopped jumping completely. That only made us come back another day to see them jump some more.

Seeing all those whales in this little bay, called Walker Bay enabled me to relate why my guidebook told me South Africans call that "Whale Soup

"

Sunday Funday

7th floor Mandela Rhodes

Last sunday summer has officially arrived in Cape Town. And with it my first in a lifetime rooftop poolparty. It was at the 7th floor at the pool of a hotel in the middle of Cape Town. As one could have guessed there was a pool and there war a lot of water balloons floating around it. It officially started at 11am. We arrived there at 2pm and it started to fill up shortly after. So many people with teeny tiny bikinis and boys having trained exactly for that. It was literally like in a movie. And now I get why people say that there are so many beautiful people in Cape Town. Seems sommer draws a whole bunch of models and actors to the Cape. 

Cocktails in Camps Bay

All of us had a bad sunburn afterwards, but it was an experience. 

At around 5pm it was crowded full and people where pretty drunk, so we decided to leave. We went to Camps Bay to watch the sunset from there. Cocktails at the beach was the perfect way to complete this sunday. 

Santa Shoebox

The girls are writing exams at the moment so we can't see them in the mornings. We try to see one or two of them after school, but with public transport on strike that is hard to organize, too.
So I did something else today: handing out shoeboxes in two pre-schools in Khayelitsha. The organization doing that is Kidz2Kidz, where Karin and I could attend a workshop about mindfulness a few weeks ago. The project is huge: thousands of shoeboxes are getting packed and handed to children in the Townships before christmas - Santa Shoeboxes.
It was an opportunity for me to see the Khayelitsha, the biggest township of Cape Town and to see what other organizations working with volunteers do.
Handing out things to many kids at a time is always a little unorganized, but it was fun and a wonderful thing to participate in. 

Signal Hill

Devil's Peak and Table Mountain
viewed from Signal Hill

So with my broke arm I'm not really supposed to go hiking. It's been nearly 4 weeks now and I can't leave here without having climbed all the mountains around me. But let's start slow - yesterday: Signal Hill.

Lions Head from the foot of Signal Hill

Started at 5pm with Oliver - another German I met, luckily for me male, so it was save to go anywhere late. We had a lot of time to hike up and we even could pick the spot where we wanted to watch the sun set. It was beautiful. And I could easily do it even the tiny little bit of climbing to get onto the platform we decided to watch from.

Ontop of the platform, overlooking Sea Point

A Savannah (light) in hand we watched the sun go down into the fog over the sea in the distance. A perfect Cape Town evening.

Robben Island

The bus for the tour of the island

Like in San Francisco, here in Cape Town there is an island in the bay just before Cape Town, which houses a very famous prison: Robben Island. Nelson Mandela and many other political prisoners spent many years there. Mandela 27 years of his live. They guides are former prisoners and they tell you they used to call this place the "university", because they exchanged a lot of ideas there. 

Unlike Alcatraz, Robben Island is a pretty big island. There is a whole village there, at least 3 different prisons and the third largest colony of south african penguins. There is a quarry there and many different species of birds and deer. Besides it being a prison and the horrors a prison holds, the island is beautiful. You can see to Bloubergstrand and Cape Town with it's mountains. 

inside the prison

third larges penguin colony

The Robben Island Tour is very touristy and very planned. It is a beautiful landscape around the prison, but you aren't allowed to enjoy it by foot. There is a guided tour through the prison, afterwards there is a guided bus tour around the island to see quarry and the other prisons. You are not allowed to walk around the island yourself. At least we saw a few penguins from the bus. We wanted to go see the colony in the few minutes between bus and boat, but there were no penguins there.

The whole idea of imprisoning politicians was to contain political movements all around the country, but as the guide phrased it most accurately "...political marches mushroomed all around Africa..."

(first time I heard this word as a verb and I love it)

The most ugliest smoothie

Moringa

I found a wonderful small place down on long: Orchard.
They are open till 6pm (makes it possible for me to go there if I come back from the office as well) and they do smoothies and fresh juices, which I both love.
Unfortunately the first smoothie I tried there was the most disgusting thing I ever had in liquid form. It consisted of paw paw, banana, yoghurt, vanilla, peanut butter, spirulina and moringa.
It was green and not even adding strawberries could save the taste.
Nonetheless I gave them another try and the juice I had the next day was very delicious.

What took me so long..

fancy pretty cast

Sorry for the long silence - I ran into a wall and broke my arm.
Tuesday two weeks ago I went to the German school to participate in teachers' basketball. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it, till I literally ran into a wall. I know now, why they kept the gym mats at the wall behind under the basket in the gym of my school, where I used to play as a teenager. I was to fast, couldn't stop and ran hands first into exactly that wall without a gym mat to soften the bounce. I heard snap in both hands and sat there for a while like a bird flying into a window.
X-Rays in the ER (where I had a Winnie the Pooh curtain I really loved) showed a fracture in my left hand. So lucky me I only broke one arm, the right one hurt as if it was broken nevertheless.
It took me a while to change my activities here to being handicapped: no more surfing, hiking, playing basketball or partying. Now two weeks later, the follow up still proves no fracture in my right hand, so I can use it as much as I want, the left one also starts to be useful again. Getting dressed is still a little tricky, but typing is going pretty well already.
I will be catching up with postings soon!

Being a Capetonian

To be a Capetonien you have to:

Number 1 in front of African National Museum

- been up Table Mountain
- have seen the albino squirrel in Company's Gardens
and I don't remember the rest of the list. Well that's the two I have actually accomplished.
Not only have I seen the albino squirrel, but I found out that there are two! I saw it first in my first week here, this week I saw them both! And I am nearly 100% sure that is wasn't the same I saw! They where quite a way apart and the first one was trying to play with a scared child when I passed it, so I don't think it followed me.
So not only did I see it, I figured out that there are two!

Number 1

Nr. 2 in front of Cape Town Gardens High School

Nr. 2 in action

Traffic Signs

South Africans drive on the left side of the road. In the beginning it is all weird to sit on the wrong side and I still try to enter Karin's car from the wrong side from time to time. But I'm getting used to it.

Another thing are the always surprising street signs. I did learn that traffic lights are called robots, when someone describes a way. 

Tortoises crossing

drive slowly: baboons

dung beetles have right of way

On that way you might find signs warning you about crossing tortoises, baboons, or in Addo Elephan National Park they remind you that dung beetles have right of way.

no stopping

This is a sign which took me some time to figure out: "no stopping".

One more sign, which I wasn't able to capture so far is: "no hitchhiking" showing a crossed out fist with the thumb up. 

On my way to work

Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I go to do counseling sessions in the school. I can walk there, it is a 20 minutes walk and it takes me through Company’s Gardens. There are ponds, roses, all kinds of plants, dugs and squirrels! They are so cute and curious. And they are very used to getting fed by people there, so they aren't very afraid of people. Sebastian managed to capture some very good impressions of them.

Dassies

Dassie family at Cape of Good Hope

first dassie spotted in Mossel Bay

Funny little creatures these South African rodents. I hadn't seen them before I went on the road with Sebastian. We saw them first in Mossel Bay and after that we saw many of them. It's dassies and I guess their recommended food isn't toilet paper :).

Dassie eating toilet paper