Heading North

Good Morning from Thohoyandou!

I’m sorry I haven’t been able to update the blog very much so far! I must say though, it is refreshing not to be constantly connected over here.

Our day in Johannesburg was well spent. Truthfully, all I wanted to do was sleep, but in a heroic effort to beat the jetlag we decided to do some exploring of the city. We went to the Apartheid Museum, the entrance to which, fittingly and somewhat shockingly, looks like this:

Having been only 6 years old when apartheid ended, I knew next to nothing about it before this visit. I highly recommend it to anyone visiting the area… it provides a very poignant glimpse at the history of South Africa and the factors that continue to influence the social and cultural makeup of the country today.

The visit to the museum was, of course, a pretty sobering experience. Afterwards we decided to explore near our hotel and get a few beers, which were considerably less sobering.

I only meant to have one of these but got confused by the currency conversion and had seven instead.

The next morning we left Jo’berg to head north to Thohoyandou. The drive up took about 6 hours. Fortunately, the radio station we were listening to kept me up to date on everything happening back in the states, which is to say they spent about 2 hours talking about Miley Cyrus.

Arriving in Thohoyandou, we were greeted by our hosts Vhuli and Martin and their sons Kevin (14) and Feni (10). Vhuli is a project coordinator for the VHEMBE study that I am helping out with and Martin is a family practice physician at the Tshilidzini Hospital. They are incredibly nice people and have been amazingly generous in opening their home to Eli and me. We had brought them some gifts, including a box of chocolate chip cookies baked by the incomparable Julie Green. The picture of Feni really says it all.

That bowl literally had five cookies in it to start

There’s a lot more to tell and hopefully now that I have a little more regular internet access during my days I’ll be able to update more frequently. But I’ll leave you with a final video of yours truly, trying my first ever worm… a staple of afternoon snacking here.

Made it!

Greetings from Jo'berg!

So it took a bit to get here. Six hour flight to London, ten hour layover in Heathrow, and a ten hour flight to Johannesburg. However, it just so happens that I'm reading a book about the Lewis and Clark expedition, and it took those famous bastards like 3 days just to get from Philly to DC. Am I comparing myself to Lewis and Clark? I'm just saying there's evidence to suggest that I'm a much more efficient traveler than they were.

But I digress. You want to hear about Africa. Well, it's only been a couple hours so not much to tell yet, besides the fact that we drove past the tallest building in all of Africa:

Carlton Centre, tallest building on the African Continent (50 Stories).

Don't believe me? Wikipedia it.


Anyway, Eli (a fellow Friends of Tshilidzini co-founder and my travel partner) and I are going to go check out the Apartheid Museum during our time in Joberg today and then tomorrow morning it's off to Thohoyandou! More pictures to come, but here's Eli, as well as proof that all roads lead to Cleveland:

Eli, hour 6 of layover. Calm as a monk.

Our taxi driver couldn't understand why I started weeping at this site.

Hello there!

Hey all! Just a heads up that I'll be posting here whenever possible on my trip to Thohoyandou, Limpopo, South Africa! Hopefully I'll be able to get some good pictures up and keep you all in the loop... I'll let you know when I've arrived!