I woke up Sunday a little worse for wear from the party night before, and headed to the airport. After an overnight flight and two layovers I arrived in Durban, South Africa. Like a walking zombie I collected my bags, and headed out to meet the taxi driver my destination had arranged for me. And my destination was….. how to explain? A volunteer/backpacker spot I found on the internet after days and days of searching before I left New York. I had wanted to spend some time volunteering, but most of the places I found weren’t quite right. After a lot of thought I decided I wanted to get involved with a project that was part of the local community, possibly related to farming/food supply, rural, and would take volunteers for a relatively short period of time with no experience. What I found was a lot of for-profit organizations, that were pricey by South African standards. There’s a lot of benefit to those types of companies with the organization and resources they provide, but I wanted something less packaged. One website led to another, and after a couple of inquiries I settled on Be Out in Africa.

I didn’t know a lot before I came other than it was small, in a rural village in the Wild Coast/Transkei region of South Africa, and was involved with the community through various projects including gardening and water supply. You pay to stay there, but the overhead is basically nonexistent, and about $35 US a night covered very basic food and accommodation. It was started and run by one guy (Louie), and you could stay as long or short as you like, and be as involved as you wanted to be in the volunteer aspect. No press, no reviews etc. It was a risk, but I had the time so I decided to chance it.

During the 5-6 hour taxi ride I dozed ever half hour, and rapidly went from city to country. The architecture changed, the landscape changed – everything. There were wide open stretches of land with few buildings, broken up by an occasional cow in the road, and fields with semi-controlled fires (I guess set to burn down the grass). Every once in a while we’d drive through a small city/town swarming with people darting in and out of slow moving traffic, shops (some in buildings, some in makeshift structures built from corrugated sheet metal or trailers), people with stands on the side of the road selling things, ladies carrying things on their heads. This wasn’t Europe anymore. Eventually we went from hillsides to forest, paved roads to bumpy dirt roads, and arrived to my destination after dark. Louie and the guests greeted me and brought me into the main building which was one large round building where the kitchen/living area was, with lofted sleeping areas above. After dinner and conversation I settled into my one bed loft space and called it a night.

I woke up the next day (Tuesday) and had an early breakfast with the group. There was Louie, Stephanie from Switzerland who had been there 2 months, and Lisette and Martyn from Holland who had been there about a month and were planning to stay for 11 months.

They showed me around, and if it hadn’t sunk in the night before – in the light of day I knew I had never been anywhere like this. It was nothing but fields and valley, hills and round huts all around. Adding video of the view from right outside the house. Listen to the wind – brrr cold!! See the 2 round houses about 3/4 of the way through the video? The building I stayed was right behind them.

There is almost no infrastructure in the town (Gwexintaba pronounced with a small click where the “x” is) – just a primary school. There’s dirt roads and no electricity, phone lines or running water. Where I was staying there were 2 outside toilettes, one with an open side instead of a wall with a view of the valley. (I never could get comfortable with the open one. There was no one there to look in, but I couldn’t help but think of what might pop out at a vulnerable moment.) The shower was also outside the main building. The water came from a tank, and you lit a small metal container filled with kerosene and paper to heat the water for a hot shower.

They showed me the garden where they grow their veggies. It was winter, and the garden had fall off a bit so they were in the process of building it back up again. Replanting and setting up a drip irrigation system. I’m sure I won’t remember everything correctly but I think they had tomato, sweet potatoes, spring onion, basil, corriander (which I thought tasted exactly like cilantro. Just looked it up on Wikipedia – it IS cilantro), chard, spinach, garlic, pineapple and rosemary among other things. The garden was organic so no chemical fertilizer, and they used natural methods of pest control. They planted sporadically with the veggies all mixed up so if a bug was attracted to one type of plan it couldn’t travel easily to the next one of the same type. The intention is to live as sustainably as possible – solar panels, organic garden, compost etc.

After my tour we went for the 15 minute drive to Magwa Falls which was just the other side of the village. The homes we drove past were mostly traditional round huts called roundevals made of mud bricks with thatched grass roofs. Most were painted turquoise (some were pink) with black borders around the bottom of the buildings. Some were more modern rectangular shape, and some had corrugated metal sheeting over the thatched roof. Generally each home is 2+ buildings – one for cooking and one for sleeping. The floors are coated with layers of cow dung mixed with water, and then spread evenly. It’s not uncommon for extended families to share a home. Also the men can have a couple of wives, but from what I heard each will have their own homestead. Some of the houses grow corn, and a few more grow a couple of veggies. It was hard for me to tell who had livestock because cows, goats and sheep roam all around. Literally – you look outside while working one day and they’re right out the window. Look out again a couple of hours later and they’ve moved on. As a city girl on my first day there was lots to absorb. Attaching a pic I took from later in my trip so you can see what the round houses look like.

When we got to the falls we parked outside a comparatively super-luxe and modern building – completely empty and locked up. Apparently a large sum of government money was allocated to building a tourist/information center with a view to the falls. Whoever was responsible for that must have had a lot of foresight because I didn’t see one tourist outside of our group in my 10 day stay there.

The falls themselves were beautiful. 144 meters high dropping into a steep gorge. The area immediately below was virtually untouched – not only because it was hard to get to, but also because there is some superstition around it. I was told the local Sangomas (healers) will go to collect plants there though. While we were there they showed me the water powered ram pump that Louie installed a while back. The water pump is set a little ways down the falls, and provided water for the project’s house and for the village. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but it somehow uses water and the force of gravity to pump water from the falls back up into the village. It is literally the only source of “piped” water, and saved the women walking several bucketfuls of water the half hour back to their homes everyday. A couple of months back the pump stopped working, and as you can imagine it was a hot topic. (The Headman paid Louie a visit to discuss during my stay there.) Louie had checked the pump and pipes leading all the way back to the village but couldn’t find what was wrong. He had heard about other potential pumps, and was putting out feelers to see if he could get a replacement.

After the waterfall we went back to the house and spent the afternoon with some of Louie’s friends that made the long drive for a visit. It got dark by 5:30, so after they left we made dinner and went to bed early. I forgot to mention….in our setup no electricity = no electric stove or refrigerator. Everything was cooked on either a portable gas stove or over a fire. Shopping was once a week, so no meat or perishables that couldn’t be used up before they went bad. Kudos to the chefs (i.e. everyone there who took a turn cooking).

The next morning was Wednesday – gardening class day! After years of talking Louie finally got the school principle to agree to a set schedule to incorporate the gardening class into the curriculum for one of the classes. They were given Mon, Weds, Fri from 8-9 am, and started the term the week before I got there. As an outsider it has taken him a long time to build relationships with the small community. His vision was to establish a volun-tourism based set-up that uses tourism to fund/support projects to improve the quality of life for the local community. Step 1 was water supply. Step 2 was to help refocus the community on gardening to produce a larger portion of the food they eat, and also teach sustainable methods of gardening to maintain healthy productive soil. The families receive government aid checks and use that to buy most of the food they eat. Their diet is very basic – a lot of bread and corn based things (including pap which is like corn meal porridge). They are not starving, but would benefit from a more balanced diet with a greater variety of foods. Plus, if they are able to grow more of their food, they can use more of the aid they receive for other basic necessities. Not to mention be more independent if those government checks go away. The current strategy it to focus on the educating the children with the belief that once they learn and are successful in growing a variety of veggies they will bring them home to the family, and hopefully adopt the skills in a home garden. What does this all hinge on? Easily accessible water supply. Gotta fix that pump!

After class we went for a drive to Lusikisiki for the week’s grocery shopping. Kind of overwhelming. Most of the shops seemed to sell a little of everything. From underwear to TVs to vinyl flooring. There was the main street with shops, a couple of banks, a couple of big grocery stores and hardware stores. There were tables set up along the streets where people sold all kinds of stuff – cell phone chargers, oranges, bamboo mats, you name it. Stephanie pointed out a land line phone sitting on a sidewalk table where people could come and pay to use it if they needed to make a call. As the only white people around we kind of stuck out. Took this pic on the way to town.

The rest of our day revolved around looking into this other water pump Louie had heard about. A preacher not far from the village had installed it for his house, but it had been out of use for several years. He told Louie he could have it if he helped him chop down some (a lot) of trees around his house. Before he agreed he wanted to make sure it was in decent shape, but it was mostly buried underground so he couldn’t get to it. We dropped a couple of guys off on the way to grocery shopping to start digging it up. On the way back we saw they had hit a glitch. A giant slab of cement surrounded the pump, and water from the stream covered the area they needed to dig so they couldn’t really see what they were dealing with. Fortunately a couple of guys had hitched a ride from us on the way back, and Louie offered a little financial incentive to get their help getting it out. They all dug in, diverted the stream, and success – got it out!! They also came across a small snake which was….exciting, and enough to keep the girls out of the water.

Thursday I spent most of the day helping Lisette and Martyn work on their house.  They are the ones that are here for 11 months, and are building a small house that they will live in during the rest of their stay.  The bottom half is build out of earth bags, and the top half out of wood.  I was helping out to fill some of the cracks so the wind didn’t blow in as much.

That evening we were joined by another Dutch couple who would be staying for the next two weeks.  And I think that’s about enough for this post!!