Mini America, plus some

I'm not entirely sure where I've landed, some place called Pretoria, South Africa. For all intents and purposes, it looks like I'm back in America. Only, it's an America I've never really seen with my own eyes, only in movies and on TV. The America where people live in mini mansions and water their lawns every day and night and have high walls with fancy electric fences running along the top. The America where you never see your neighbors because there's too much protective gating all around. Where shiny shopping malls are filled with thousands of items you actually have no need for (machines to crack your eggs for you, glittering jewelry, thirty different kinds of soap...) all at exhorbetant prices. It's terrifying, really. We're not supposed to walk around by ourselves, especially at night, which seems ridiculous given the wealth of this area. But then you realize that right next door are the "rougher" parts of town, where people kill each other in broad daylight for a petty theft. Certainly a different scene than Rwanda, all around. The initial shock has started to wear off, as I've been here for 5 days now. I still relish in my hot shower and the breakfast served to me at the "guesthouse" that they put all the med evacs in, but I'm itching to get back to Rwanda and my village.

It is really interesting to see a part of South Africa though, and my curiosity about apartheid has been spiked. Our guesthouse is exactly what I've always imagined a colonial era white man's home in Africa to look like (I hope that makes sense?)...its Victorian to a T, lacy curtains and china dishes, manicured lawns and gardens, heavy dark wooden furniture, help staff wearing black dresses and white aprons and caps...you feel like you've stepped back in time. And I don't like it. Almost all the waitstaff or workers I've seen around here are African, and the owners are white. The white kid who drove me from the airport made several racist comments...its definitely a challenging environment. Obviously, this is a small, rich part of the country though, and quite different from the rural areas. I've gotten to talk to several SA volunteers while here, as well as volunteers from Zambia, Burkina Faso, and Swaziland, and problems in rural Africa are problems in rural Africa...there are certainly differences, but for the most part we're all facing similar challenges at site.

On the plus side, our PC doctor here took all the med evacs (who were able) on a "walking safari" over the weekend. It was funny because the reserve is smack between highways on two sides, and the city on one end, so from certain places you could hear cars flying by, or see tall buildings rising up, but it was GREAT to get out of our Victorian prison and walk around. We actually saw most of the wildlife the reserve has to offer too-- giraffes, zebras, impala, wildebeest, birds, etc. I've seen all of that before in the Serengeti, but the rules are a little different over here, and besides the fact that we weren't limited to our safari landrover, its also ok to "offtrail" it here...so we did our best to leave the footpaths and get as close in as we could :-P Our wonderful doctor guide also wisely advised us that if we bent down and acted like we were grazing, we might be able to get in even closer...of course we immediately took his advice, giving him quite the entertaining spectacle, but I do think we got a little closer...:-P I'll attach that picture for y'all, it makes me laugh.

Other than that, I'm just waiting to hear when I get to go back home to Rwanda. Since I only needed one root canal, I didn't expect to be here so long, but with the PC you never know!