eshowe, the heart of zululand, or whats been up the last month....

Hey all,

I'm writing from Eshowe, a hotbed of Zulu culture in the middle Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa. The past three weeks since I wrote last have been jammed full, and explaining them is a daunting task - so I'll try to work backwards from where we are now.

This week, in traditional Traveling School style we had the best of intentions for having a full and uninterrupted classes. But as is becoming the spirit of this trip, we've decided to forego normalcy, regularity and routine to attend a shamanic healing, a zulu wedding, visit an orphanage, and go see a traditional Zulu dance. Somewhere in there the girls are also writing a children's book in Afrikaans, and living the lives of their alternate personalities for the Game of LIfe in Math Applications. Somewhere in there, they do 5:55am workouts, and somewhere in there find time and the stimulation to have fascinating conversations about culture, materialism, and the global AIDS crisis. And thats just for my classes. Oh yeah, and to have mad crushes on our guides.

It sounds a little bit crazy. It is a little bit crazy. But its so amazing to be a part of a group of young women who are this passionate and energized, and to be facilitating the process of their awareness just exploding.

The girls have been incredible. I can't say enough good things about them. Each one of them has their goofy, ridiculous silly side balanced beautifully by mature, insightful questioning of the world around them. It brings out a giddy excitement in me - even when I'm drained, or thinking about home, or distracted.

We've had such a string of experiences - living out of a beige safari truck, camping most nights, washing our own clothes by hand, helping to prepare our own food (we do have a wonderful Zimbabwean man Peter with a devious sense of humor who directs most of our cooking), cleaning our own dishes...our lifestyle right now is simple - and it leaves us enough time for impromptu talent shows, lip syncs and sing-alongs on long truck rides, high stakes ping-pong tournaments.

To balance a simple lifestyle we've had a consistent set of intense activities, which the girls have so far always embraced with a cry of "Carpe Diem"...Rappelling down a 300 foot wall next to a waterfall, re-enacting the Battle of Blood River at 5:00am in the middle of a circle of 67 bronze covered wagons, biking through a township, performing at a township school, hiking the Amphitheater - the best known hike in the Drakensbuyrg. Every day brings something new and spontaneous...If I start reflecting on all the conversations we're having, the ideas about race, privilege, power structures, gender, consumerism, culture, values, food justice, you'd be here all day reading. I'll try to write more soon addressing some of the experiences we've had pertaining to those ideas.



For now, my time's running out - so much love to you all. I'm thinking about you...hopefully can get some pictures up soon.

Heather