Addi Feinstein - Finally Blogging

**This is a long post since I have so much to catch up on. I decided to give you a table of contents so you could pick and choose what is interesting to you. I am guessing that only my parents and the very bored will actually read through the whole thing.

Last night I finally received my Zulu name. It is Jabulile, or Jabu for short and it means happiness. I was named by three of Ambrose's coworkers from McCord hospital - Slee, Mimi and Tilly. Ambrose was zulufied as Simphiwe, which means gift, and Rachel was given the name Zinhlwe, or Zinny for short, which means pretty. The 'hl,' sounds a little like a 'sh' sound but coming more from the back of the throat. Ambrose has been insisting that we meet these women for awhile-he told us that they were funny and crazy and that we would all get along very well.. He was right. We had an incredible time - we also learned that they could drink us under the table with ease. We all went to dinner in part to celebrate that two of them were finished with exams. As a result, Slee insisted on ordering multiple shooters, and only stopped when we had physical evidence that Ambrose could handle no more. After that, we hung out in the mall attached to the casino where Slee taught us some Zulu dancing.

Tonight was Thanksgiving and Nancy and Lizzie organized a massive thanksgiving party for the 30+ expats and their local friends at Nancy's place. There was so much food, we didn't even come close to finishing: a 10kg turkey, chicken grilled in southern style, mac and cheese, two casseroles, various vegetables, and stuffing then there werw about 5 pumpkin pies (lizzie loves to bake) a couple of apple pies, pecan pies, pumpkin cookies and ice cream. Overall, it was nice b/c besides bringing the fellows together I was able to meet some more people from the area. Tomorrow, the place where I am working - Caprisa - is having a Holiday party at Pietermaritzburg (an hour away). It will be in some fancy casino with tons of food.

Unfortunately, I don't have pics from the event b/c my camera broke today. It mysteriously stopped functioning. I have some theories as to what happened but I guess it's a moot point. I will take it to the store this weekend.Ireally wanted to take pics of my coworkers though. I hope I will be able to borrow someone's camera.

'also known as Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo is a grammatically correct sentence - it's true look it up in wikipedia:'

Anyway, I could write a lot about this safari experience, but I will just summarize the highlights: elephants, zebras, getting charged by a rhino!!, impala, hungry hungry hippos, croccodiles, rhino attack!! buffalo and oh yeah, buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo is a grammatically correct sentence

Umfolozi-Hluhluwe Bushwalk Six of us decided to do a bushwalk through the bush in this Game Park called Umfolozi-Hluhluwe (remember how the hl is pronounced it's tricky to say). We camped there two nights. The most memorable and frightening moment of that trip was when we nearly got killed by an angry, giant rhino. We had been following rhino footsteps and rhino dung for awhile, hoping to catch a glimpse of some animals as we had not had too many sightings until then. Well eventually we caught sight of one. The rangers leading the group motioned for us to be quiet. We all gently placed the firewood we had been carrying down, took out our cameras and our binoculars. We were watching the rhino when for some reason, it took notice of us. Let me describe what happened next: The rhino lifts up her head stares at us and I hear someone say RUN! and we all started running into the bush. Now we knew that we were supposed to hide behind a tree since rhinos have terrible vision, but the rproblem was that they just had these super narrow trees where we were located.. Anyway, after I hear Run! I hear a Boom! and then Gunshot! then snorting, grunting, branches trampling and finally, someone saying that everything was clear. A few of us were managed to fearfully huddle behind a pathetically narrow tree when ambrose approached us, greatly shaken. Ambrose had not been able to run anywhere and was very nearly trampled by the rhino. Luckily Richard, one of the rangers, had fired his rifle towards teh ground to scare him and Chris had thrown a piece of wood to further confuse the rhino. At the last inute the rhino, who was with her calf, changed directions.

Anyway, this was a very humbling experience. We fully realized that we were no longer on our own turf and that we were small and helpless in the turf of these powerful beasts. At camp, we spotted an elephant in the distance. The elephants are the most feared of the animals. Apparently, they are completely unpredictable and there is not much you could do except shout at them if you come across one of these giant animals and hope for the best. We also heard a lion's roar, a hyena's bark and many baboon coming from different directions of our campsite Needless to say, we didn't sleep very well that night. In retrospect, the bushwalk seems to me a little bit foolish to do - sort of like jumping the fence in a zoo and sleepign with the lions. Nevertheless, lots of people love the experience. I am glad i did it. There were some very special moments and it was amazing to see nature as it is, almost completely untouched by humans - probably the way the earth looked before humaniy. Our guide had us pause at several ponts just to sit and appreciate the sounds of the birds, crickets, and frogs. Other times, we just fell silent while watching zebras, impalas and buffalo grazing in the distance

On sunday afternoon, we drove to St. Lucia for a boatride to see the hungry hungry hippo and croccodiles.

Penguins! Calling the rescue rangers on table mountain!; beautiful views! more penguins!; cape point, stunnig coast line! southern most point in Southern hemisphere! Robben island, the Waterfront; going out on Long street...

A few of the fellows went down to Capetown to attend an HIV/TB conference and others of us decided that this would be a good opportunity to just go and explore the city. People I talk to always rave about Capetown, and it truly was stunning! I was not disappointed. The air was crisp, the coastal views were uniquely beautiful and the nightlife was a lot of fun.

Ambrose, Rachel and I hiked up Table Mountain and while it was one of the most beautiful hikes we have done, it was not very easy but more importantly, it was not very well marked. In fact, at one point, we had no idea where to go. For some reason, we thought the best was to go past a barbed wire and go up a nearly vertical incline. A few minutes of crawling the side of this mountain, we decided there was no way that this could be right and we called the rescue rangers. Well with teh help of Hugo the ranger, we learned that we were not suppoed to go past the barbed wire. Instead, we should have scrambled up the boulders that were behind the waterfall. The detour was almost worth it for the incredible view we had (see pics). Eventually, we made our way to the correct path and continued our climb of ladders and chains and just regular path to the top.

On another day, we drove to Cape of Good Hope and Cape point near where the indian and atlantic ocean meet and the southern most point on the continent. The way there was very scenic, and along teh way, we stopped at penguin bay to look at the penguins (see pics!) Some of you know how much I lvoe penguins.

On Sunday, we went to Robben Island where we got a tour by a former prisoner. I wish the tour guide had shared some more stories from the years where they kept political prisoners there. Nelson Mandela's autobiography told a lot of fascinating details about their day to day lives and the incredible obstacles the prisoners overcame in order to study, complete advanced degrees, organize strikes and lead political movements. Mandela was able to write most of his autobiography in prison through some elaborate collaboraton with other prisoners in spite of frequently getting denied studying/writing privileges. Eventually, part of his manuscript was found in the garden, and he was denied even more privileges. Also impressive was that the prisoners were able to resist/change the discriminatory policies in whcih blacks were given different (less) food and attire (shorts) than people considered Colored or Indians. Anyway, it was a relatively brief tour of all that .

Anyway, we just drove around after that, and had dinner/drinks at a neighborhood called Camp's Bay.

The first 20 pics on the durbs/capetown album are from Rachel's Hawaiian party. Before the party, Rachel had a few of us come over to her house and paint on some cardboard she had collected with acrylic. You will see the results in the pics.

This last weekend was quite an adventure. 18 of us (yup 17 americans/canadians and one fearless South African research fellow/med student and 5 cars) went on a camping trip to a place in the Drakensbergs known as Injasuthi. Much like Giant's castle (which you may remember from the last album) this area has a number of caves featuring San paintings from several thousand years ago.

Friday started strangely enough when the power went out at CAPRISA, where I work, forcing vital AIDS research to come to a screeching halt for that afternoon :-) . Actually, this only meant that journal club was canceled and that at least a couple of cars would be able to head out a little earlier than planned. So, my car and Boris's car (Boris is a doctor originally from Germany who came from Boston to do research in SA) were on our way by 3:30. Things were going relatively smoothly for the first couple of hours of the car ride. We played a bunch of lateral thinking puzzles and listened to some tunes on my ipod. It was getting dark by the time we reached the roughest part of the trip.. a 30 km stretch of poorly paved road filled with potholes, running through largely empty fields dotted with the occasional roundaval (the traditional, round Zulu hut).

It was on this road that the problems began. At one point, my car hit the side of the road and we all heard a loud troublesome noise. As soon as the car stopped, about 100 kids from the surrounding seemingly empty fields started swarming around our car excitedly trying to figure out what was happening. When I finally got out of the car, feeling only a little like a celebrity fighting through throngs of paparazzi, I noticed that the front tire was completely flat, before I had a chance to comment, Ambrose ponted out that the back left wheel was completely flat as well. It was then that the severity of our problem hit me. We had only one spare and we had a half hour left before they were locking the gates at our lodge.

We phoned the other cars in our group who luckily were not too far away. One by one the four other cars lined up around us. Meanwhile, a number of adults and even more kids started surrounding the cars intrigued by the five car full of foreigners stuck on the side of the road. The kids were fascinated by our digital cameras and kept asking for their pictures to be taken (and for sweets!).; Vivek bought them reeds to eat from the side of teh road and some of the others started playing games with them to distract them. . In the meantime, we decided to try fitting spares from different cars. Also, one of the cars had a jack which was essential. We switched the car's spare with no probelem, but eventually had to settle on a spare that was much too large for the front tire. Monique, a manual car expert, drove the rest of the way on the wobbly front wheel and spare back tire to our chalets. A few of the cars went ahead to keep the gates open and to start preapring dinner. The drive back was nerveracking. The front wheel looked like it would come off at any given moment. We drove slowly and carefully, stopping frequently, with one car behind us and another in front. We eventually arrived and left the car matter to rest until after our hike.

By the time we arrived, dinner crew was in the middle of preparing an elaborate meal. The main course was prepared using the braai (grill) . But this was no ordinary braai. The grilled chicken was marinated in an incredible sauce and there were also chicken sausages and plenty of vegetarian options - including roasted veggies and squash. Off teh braai, the crew also prepared a few different kinds of salads and steamed carrots. Anyway that was the most elaborate meal of teh weekend and the most I will talk about food in this email. Oh and we concluded the meal with s'mores, of course! However, they had to be South Africanized as they don't really have the proper ingredients. After that, we introduced those who were not familiar to the game of Mafia and played ad nauseum..

In the morning, breakfast crew prepared a delicious meal. We then consolidated all our snacks to prepare bags full of trail mix and the 18 of us were on our way. The hike the first day was all uphill and fairly strenuous. We also had cross the river in the valley several times along the trail which entailed either wading through very cold water or leaping vast distances (for people with shorter legs) from stone to stone. Towards midday, we arrived at the caves and the guide that had come along for that purpose played a tape recording that taught us the meaning of the cave paintings. These painting may have been painted while the San were in a trance like state and many of the pictures depict dancing scenes, shamans with the spirit emerging from their bodies and of Elands - the large antelopes that are found in the region.

We then parted ways with the guide and continued on our way to the cave over hang where we would sleep. The walk seemed to stretch for a very long time but ultimately we reached our final river crossing. Around that area, there was a small waterfall and pool of water that some of us decided to swim in. In fact, the water was close to freezing and we challenged ourselves to jump in or to at least to try to ease our way in. One group member was brave enough to actually stay in the water for about 10 minutes though I have no idea how - it was the kind of cold that knocked your breathe out. However, unforutnaly, one person dislocated her shoulder amidst our gallavanting and continued to have significant pain throughout the rest of the trip.

At night we used a small campfire and two gas stoves to prepare our dinner ( i was part of that dinner crew) and s'mores. We played a few games, sang songs and thenwent to bed so that we could begin our day early the next day. The next day's hike was just everything we did in reverse. It was fairly uneventful. I will fastforward until we arrived back to the INjausthi lodge where I promptly called my insurance company. After several exchanges, theyh finally sai dthat a tow truck was on its way and would be there within an hour. Three hours later a flat bed truck finally arrived!!! One car stayed behind with me and we followed the truck and my car (see pics) to Estcourt where I got two new tires and continued on my way back to Durban.

So, that was the latest adventure. Yesterday we all went out for a good-bye dinner as one guy who had been doing research for a year and is now applying for med school was leaving. Only when we sat down did we discover that this place, albeit in a good neighborhood, was a place where a few customers and the owner were mugged and shot. You do hear these random stories of violence every so often but for the most part, you don't really feel it.

Hello everyone!! Well, I fthink I finally have compiled enough blogworthy pictures to start a blog. However, it has proved to be a more difficult task than I anticipated. So, instead, I have sent you a photo album with > lengthy captions. My first few weeks at Durban were spent finding a flat, > buying a manual car, learning to drive a manual car ( in that order) and figuring out what I was doing at work. There were also a lot of adventures along the way/