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

Groups

Since Karin and I introduced ourselves in the classes two weeks ago, the number of girls wanting to see us is increasing every week. To see them all and to follow our supervisors input, we are trying to start groups now for weeks. Jasmin, who is actually working at another school already started a group with depressive girls at our school. Karin wants to do a group on happiness and I am going to start a group on social skills. Jasmin's group started well. Karin and I have some trouble getting started, because every day we want to start it, there is some unforeseen obstacle, like exams in Grade 9 or half the school missing, because of Eid, a muslimic holiday. So we will start next week, finally - hopefully...

Sexual Education

Teenage suicide is one of the big topics we are dealing with here - the other one is teenage pregnancy. We have girls age 14, who are pregnant and seriously don't know how that could have happened. And as suicide that is not only the case in our school, but in all the schools we are working in. In a country like South Africa, where besides getting pregnant they could also get any kinds of STIs that really shouldn't be the case. The kids do learn stuff at school, but it doesn't seem to be enough.
Because that is a topic that concerns all the girls of the school, Karin and I decided to run a workshop on sexual education through all classes. That means 11 classes in our last 7 weeks at Good Hope Seminary High. Tough plan, but we really think liked the idea of making an impact that easy: information.
We started on Monday with one of the 8th grades. And it was fun. We had a plan, we wanted to go over the female circle, sexual activity, contraceptive methods, STIs and consent one by one and answer their questions afterwards. We expected them to be a little shy and ashamed in the beginning - but it came all different. We introduced ourselves and that we are here to answer all the questions they have about sex and they started shooting questions at us immediately. We planned one and a half hour for that, but we didn't manage to answer all the questions at all. We got to nearly all our take-home-messages like just like that. One of them, that contraceptive methods are free in South Africa, if you go to a clinic and free to get from the age of 12.
Karin was a little worried about us not having a proper plan for the workshop, but lost all her concerns with the first run. It was a great success, as far as we can tell - and we had a lot of fun doing it.

The Notebook

Last week I filled the last pages of the first notebook I write down the notes I take during counseling session. By now, Karin and I are both swamped with work. We have around 20 cases each, which feels like 10 too much for both of us. We struggle to keep up and try our best to do each one of our girls justice.

the notebook

Some of them come to us for career or for relationship advice, those are the ones we can relax a little. From my 20 girls only 3 live with both of there parents. Many of them don't know or have no contact to their birthfathers, not to mention them paying anything for them. All of them live in rough environments. Some come from townships, others live in other poor areas. Once one of my girls stood me up, because she didn't have money for the transport to come to school at all. So far I dealt with bullying, depression, sleeping and eating disorders. At the moment I have a few cases with serious abuse. And yes, there are people here that react to me telling them the girls are getting beaten up at home with "this is Africa, we beat our children". I'm still fighting for them. Beating a child is a crime in South Africa as well as in Germany. I also have sexual abuse to deal with and with all kinds of abuse comes suicide notions. Nearly all of them think about or used to think about committing suicide in one or the other way. The province of the Western Cape here has the highest rate of teenage suicides in South Africa, my supervisor told me. It's hard to be a teenager here, some don't make it to adulthood.

There are 5 cases in which I as a counselor have to report the child to the principal: drugs, pregnancy, abuse, suicide/homicide and TB/HIV-infections. In all of the cases it is hard to get the learner to understand that I do not want to "sell him out", but that I am taking measures to protect her. In the case of abuse, the principal has to or at least has to consider reporting the parents to the police and social services. Here in Cape Town they have an organization called "Safe Schools". Following protocol they should be informed about any kind of abuse and find a save place for the child. In reality they are helplessly overwhelmed with reports, so in many cases nothing happens. So we go back working with the child on how they could prevent abuse: are there signs, before it happens? Does it happen on special days or a special time in the day? Can you not be there, when it is most likely to happen?
It reminds me a little of Sisyphus' work. And yes it is frustration from time to time. Like our supervisor said in the beginning: we have to keep in mind that we won't be able to help most of these children.
But besides the cases with nearly no hope, I did have cases where the children mainly wanted to learn how to talk to their mothers, for example. Together we figured out, what to say, when to say it and practiced it a little - next session they came back beaming that they actually talked. Some times it is just about learning how to start talking at all. Some of them give the somewhat surprised feedback, after the first session that that was really helpful. All of them seem to appreciate me and Karin being there.

Good Hope Seminary High

Good Hope Seminary School is High and Primary School for girls. I still couldn't find out, where the primary part of the school is located, the building Karin and I work in is only high school only. It is an old school building and in the hallways there are a lot of pictures of how it used to be years and years before now. It is kind of strange, because the women in the pictures, the staff and everyone is all white in complexion, nowadays nearly all the girls are black or coloured and the teachers are mixed. Our supervisor told us, that Good Hope used to be an upper class High School, positioned in the middle of the City Bowl. Over time it became a school where mainly children from the townships go to. So a lot of kids are commuting to the school every day for hours. The school has a hostel as well, for those kids, who can’t commute, because they don’t have parents or relatives in Cape Town at all, or for those who’s homes aren’t a good place to live for them.

little table in the hallway
in front of the principal's office

All in all there are around 400 students at the school and something like 20 teachers. Karin and I spend the breaks in the teachers staff room, where there is tee and sandwiches. We are pretty sure that we still haven't met all the teacher yet. Some of them are there every break, like the art teacher, who is a wonderful lady with German origins and her daughter, who is also a teacher at the school. 

Counsellor Message Box

The art teacher is a very resourceful connection for us. She is very open and supportive towards us as counselors. She even tinkered a message box for us, to make it easier for the learners to reach us. To come talk to us, the students tell Mrs. Mpuru, the life orientation teacher. She puts them on our lists. Now with the box the students don't have to inform her any more, but can just put their names there. I really like this system and it already came into effect. 
In comparison to the schools our intern-collegues are working in, we were very lucky with our school. The teachers are happy to have us there and are very supportive. The principal always has an open ear for us, too. I went to her with a girl once and I really liked the way she talked with her. She can't change the whole environment of the kids in her school, but she is kind and a save haven there. 
We are at the office Tuesday and Thursday, and in school on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Back in the Office

inner wall between the two doors

Sebastian and I were on the road last week, so I wasn't at the office at all. When I came back into the office in Kenilworth the room was painted!

outer wall

Two of the interns got one of their teachers, who does amazing paintings at their school to paint two of our walls in the office. Our office seems a little under construction all of the time, so the pantings really change the atmosphere. It's nice to not only have white walls.

Surfing

Karin, Alfonso and me getting to the waveline

Alfonso going over basics with us

Yesterday (day after Table Mountain) we went surfing! Karin and I had out third lesson with Alfonso, Sebastian had his first (also with Alfonso). The weather was perfect, the waves good. Karin and I made it to the waveline this time, so we mostly did a lot of paddeling. With the result of having very tired arms very soon.
Sebastian on the other hand did amazing. He learned everything I learned in three lessons in one! It was a wonderful afternoon in the water and at the beach.

Cape of Good Hope

Weekend!

up the coast from the cape

I had my last counseling session till 12:30 today, after that Sebastian and I started on our weekend trip around the Cape Peninsula. Sebastian collected the car in the morning to go surfing again :)

Dassy

We drove via Camps Bay, Hout Bay and Kommetjie down to Cape Point National Park. On the way we had to stop for photos several times, because the route down the coast was so beautiful. Like my guidebook said: one of the most beautiful scenic costal drives in the world! Seriously beautiful. We also stopped at the Cape Point Ostrich Farm. Pretty much like any other farm, but with ostriches. I never understood ostriches as animals. Here in this natural environment they make sense: they look exactly like the bushed growing here and flying wouldn't work properly anyway with the wind blowing like this.
We arrived at Cape Point National Park at 4 something pm. The facilities (meaning restaurants, shops and the cable way up to Cape Point) close at 5 pm, luckily for us the park closed at 6:51pm (sunset). Cape Point wasn't our main focus anyway - we drove straight down to Cape of Good Hope! A wonderful place! Very windy, beautiful stones and the most south-western point of the African country - whatever that means.

Cape of Good Hope

There was a little hiking trail up the stoney coast and we could see Cape Point from there. And we saw a lot of tiny little wonderful dassies.
We drove over there afterwards. On our way we actually saw baboons! Like really live and in color (actually not that red the bud). I will honor that in a special post.

Cape Point

Our destination for tonight was Simon's Town, home of the South African penguins. We arrived there with the last light. Going for dinner at the beach we already saw the first penguins! They are so cute! We will get up early tomorrow to spot them in sunlight.

Table Mountain - finally!

The way up: Plattenkliff Gorge

Yesterday, after work, Sebastian, Karin and I hiked up Table Mountain! Finally! It took me 4 weeks to reach the top, but I did! Of course Sebastian being here made us walk on a workday, but while we were on the road spring finally arrived in Cape Town! Suddenly it is sunny, blue sky and warm! Even in the school it is nice to be in! I don’t have to bring my fleece jumper any more! It was wonderful! Actually it was unbelievable hot at the start. The first hour or so we walked with sun shining directly at us. Not sure if that could actually happen, but it felt like my brain was cooking! Lots and lots of steps later we reached the top via Plattenklif Gorge. It was awesome. The view was clear, we could see all the way down to Cape of Good Hope, we saw Hout Bay, Camps Bay and False Bay, and Muizenberg, where we will go surfing today!

From the top of Table Mountain, we could see all the way to Cape of Good Hope

Table Mountain is huge on the top! You can spend hours just walking around on the top! The view is amazing to any side you turn. We were up at something after 5, the last Cable left at 7pm. We had a little picnic on top of the word, got a beer/savannah at the Café on the top and took the swiss made Cable Car all the way down again.

Pretty funny thing this cableway! It rotates while it descends, but not the whole thing, only the floor inside! So you really do have to step back from the windows, because they move around you – or better you move around inside them! Swiss technology, democratic if nothing!

Through the Karoo

fruit fields in Karoo

sundown from route 62

Having spent nearly the whole week by the sea, we took Route 62, the way through the mountains back to Cape Town. The Mountains there are called Klein Karoo. And it is all different from the Garden Route, but no less as beautiful. The valleys are full of wine and fruit farms, the hills are soft and green. The street signs tell you to look out for turtoise, and really there are tortoise at the side of the street, like hedgehogs in Germany!

We still had nearly 500 km to cover, but we started right after the caves in the morning and had a wonderful time on the road.

the changing light made the mountains look different every minute

Devil's Chimney

After our late and long drive from Addo half way back to Cape Town, we stopped at Oudtshoorn. The lady at the backpackers waited up for us till 11pm and we were pretty exhausted, when we arrived.

We decided to take this stop on our way back, because back on the first day of our trip we found a flyer of the Cango Caves! It is a huge Cave with dripstones, stalagmites and stalagtites. It was beautiful. Like the ones near Kehlheim at home, but way way bigger and so much more dripstones!
There where two tours, one could make through the caves: the normal one and the adventure one. With bungy and shark diving on our resume we chose the adventure one! And it was fun! The first 3 caves (huge!), you were only allowed to look and got the story of the caves. How they have been used many many years ago from bushman, 17something someone found the second one and some more decades later the third was found. And there are many more after that. We saw the first 3 and after those, we climbed through some of the smaller ones. Really climbed! The ways were too small to walk in, sometimes you had to lay flat on you belly like at the "postbox", or wiggle up "devil's chimney". It was fun and wonderful to experience the caves like this!

Addo

After the stop at the  cheese farm stall we drove on for many kilometres. We stopped in P.E. to get cash, petrol,airtime (prepaid cellphone time) and food and headed on to our stay for the night: Orange Elephant Backbackers, 8 km away from Addo Elephant National Parks main entrance! We arrived late and were way to late to book a Safari for the next day – what turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to us.

herd of zebras

 Addo is one of the parks where you are allowed in with your own car, so you can actually do your own safari! On the information centre, there is a board, where the rangers mark the areas, where animals were sighted this morning. So we did our own safari. We were up early again, so we were at the park entrance at something past 8 am. We drove trough the park the whole day, leaving at 5:30pm. It was awesome! First we saw only 2 single elephants (must have been bulls) and many many different deer-like animals. We saw many many pigs (like Pumba of the Lion King), even more zebras and gopher-like ones. Driving around checking right and left – and the road, because dungbeatles (Pillendreher-Käfer) have right of way in Addo! (unfortunately we didn’t see one of those) – was a lot of fun, and I turned out to be a pretty decent animal-finder! In the afternoon we found a herd of ellies than. Like a real herd: mothers and children, with two tiny baby elephants!

herd of elephants
mothers and babies

It was unbelievable and I was so afraid! Standing in the middle of a whole herd of these huge beasts with the tiny little car we had! We closed our windows, sat very still and waited till they moved on.

The passed around our car without anything, and the babies were so cute! They actually move like toddlers, and are just adorable! The mums were huge on contrary and scary to me. One thing that surprised me: Elephants have their tits between their front legs, not like cows between the hind legs! They do look pretty humanly with the two boobs like that!

After that we saw some ostriches, some more elephants, some more deers, some more zebras, lots of birds and monkeys! Cute little monkeys playing in the bushes!

in the middle of elephants

It was a wonderful day in Addo and we were sad that we couldn’t stay another day to try to find the 10 rhinos and 9 lions they have in the park there. We didn’t get to see the big 5, but we saw a lot of amazing animals!

Rainforest - or the Big Trees of South Africa

Rainforest

Next stop (it was still pouring rain) was the big trees. We were in San Francisco earlier that year and saw a lot of mammoth trees there, so we were curious about the big trees of South Africa! We hiked for maybe 1,5h there as well and we really felt like in the middle of the rain forest!

The big trees here look much like the ones in California. They are way not so huge, but the structure of the bark is alike. While in California it is Redwoods, in South Africa it is Yellowwoods. They seem to be able to stand fire as well and grow very old and very tall.

We were totally soaked through after that and hungry. We drove on and found a wonderful little farm stall that sold cheese and bread. They had a tiny restaurant and they served hot lentil soup that day. That was the best that could have happened to us: Tee, warm soup and a blanket. We would have bought way more than we did, but unfortunately we ran out of cash in exactly that moment and my credit card had died on my a few days ago.

Storms End

The Nationalpark was actually called Storms River Mouth, but it felt like Storms End for sure!

After the incredible wonderful hike in Robberg the day before, we wanted to go hiking in Tsitsikamma next. Nice plan, didn’t count the weather in: it was grey in the morning, pouring soon afterwards. So no 6 hours hike in Nature Valley for us. We did want to cover some ground to P.E. so we drove on. We stopped in the section of Tsitsikamma National Park, where Storms River ends into the Indian Ocean.

You can cross that river mouth via a sustention bridge. It was raining and very windy. We did a spontaneous hike up to the viewpoint anyway – which was more than 1 km (like the sign said) away for sure! We didn’t bring the backpack and I was swearing about that pretty soon. It definitely was worth the effort climbing in the rain. It was so beautiful there! And very very windy! You couldn’t even stand at the edge of he view point deck.

Bungy

After our beautiful hike in Robberg, we drove on into the east. We did want to reach P.E. (Port Elisabeth) after all. After Knysna Elephant Park we were pretty set on Addo Elephant National Park, where you can actually see ellies in the wild. But we did pass Bloukranks, where you can bungy-jump down the highest bridge in the world! And Sebastian really wanted to do that. So he did! I didn’t! I tried to capture that in pictures, but murphy’s law, the camera with the tele-zoom died the moment he jumped. He got a whole CD with pictures of his jump afterwards, and a certificate saying that he just jumped the highest bridge in the world!

that is where he jumped!

African Array Lodge

sunrise from the deck

Thanks to Coast to Coast we found another adorable Backpackers to stay in for the night after Knysna Elephant Park: African Array Lodge. Just before Plettenberg Bay, which we wanted to visit the next day, you turn right into a dirt road and follow that for a few kilometres, till you reach a gate. Good think I called ahead, we wouldn’t have found it otherwise and the lady there texted me the code for the door!
It was in the middle of nowhere, a water reservoir under the wooden deck. We were very hungry after the walk and the elephants, and good thing so! The people running the lodge/backpackers are cooks! The menue was perfect, we had beef burgers with avocado, which was delicious and pretty much fell into bed right afterwards.

fantastic breakfast

We did want to get up for sunrise, which was supposed to be amazing from the deck – we did and it was!
And breakfast was even more delicious than dinner. It was beautiful, sitting in the middle of nowhere, watching the sun rise, hearing only birds and whatever else made those sound in the nature around us. And we could already see the half-island we wanted to hike in that day. It was just perfect.

Robberg from afar

Robberg

side of the half-island facing the bay

facing the Indian Ocean

stony coast facing the Indian Ocean

Today (Thursday) we hiked again, this time on our own. We stayed in Ladysmith right before Plattenberg Bay in that wonderfully amazing lodge with njami breakfast and started pretty early for us (which we lost, because we took the key, so we had to turn back again). We wanted to hike in Robberg, the little half-island in Plettenberg. It’s a National Park and you have a chance to actually see white sharks there from the land! We didn’t see great whites, but we saw lots of lots of seals, huge crickets and chameleons! But Robberg is more a nature reservoir than something for animals. There are beaches, cliffs, water all around you and you see for miles and miles. It was as everyone told us: beautiful. We did see whales, as well, but that is actually not so spectacular from afar. You pretty much only see water splashing. But you can imagine the huge beasts underneath!

see it?

Snails

Walking in the beach at Wilderness in the morning, before going into Wilderness with Matthew and Janine we discovered the secret of the snails. Sebastian collected shells, and picked up a snail, because of its pretty house – but it was still in there! The little thingis seem to live in the sand, where the waves just reach them. They dig into the sand when it’s getting to dry and as soon as the wave comes and the sand is wetwet again, they start moving around like crazy. It’s fascinating to observe! You can just stand and watch them, while they wait for a wave and start moving as soon as the wave leaves them.