Table Mountain and Cookies

Hallo, hoe gaan dit met jou?

Or, Hello, how are you? In Afrikaans. This is the language I hear most frequently at the office and in passing casual conversation around here. Although South Africa has 11 official languages, each area seems to have two or three languages that are most dominant. Cape Town is mostly English and Afrikaans. In the Eastern Cape, it’s more Xhosa (pronounced Kho-sa). Some of the women and children who come into KID CRU speak Xhosa and it is quite interesting to listen to because it includes a clicking sound as part of the language. In the office, most people speak Afrikaans to communicate. While they try to remember to speak English around me, they often forget and lapse into Afrikaans. I’m considering investing in an English-to-Afrikaans dictionary to try to understand more of the basic phrases, as it has been hard for me to pick up more than ‘yes’ (Ja), ‘no’ (Nee), ‘thank you’ (Danke), and the few words that actually sound close to their English counterparts. Interestingly, most advertising and signage throughout Cape Town and the Strand, where I am staying until Wed, is in English.

Wednesday was another beautiful day in Cape Town. The sun was shining and it was warm enough for me to break out my lighter sweater. I woke up with a sore throat, and I think I started running a bit of a fever towards the middle of the day, but I still went to work (don’t worry, I washed my hands lots and stayed away from the kids). Half way through the day, Marcha convinced Gareth and me to play hooky and go visit Table Mountain because it was supposed to be the last sunny day of the week and the cable car that takes you up and down (much like the tram at Grouse Mountain) was closing for maintenance starting Monday. Gareth and I picked up his girlfriend, Rachel, who I recognized from my work last summer, and we drove to the base of the mountain. It was really the first time I drove through a lot of Cape Town and the town layout and housing is a different style from the Strand. Below are pictures from Table Mountain:

Cable Car on the Way up

View looking down from the Cable Car; Cape Town

Small Towns at the Base

Lion's Head Peak

Dassies- don't they look so cute!

Up close Dassie- rather ugly :)

Cape Town and surrounding suburbs

We also made roti (Malaysian bread) that night. I had bruises on my palms from rolling out close to 50 or 60 roti.

Thursday and Friday were rainy again, but busy at work as we began to prepare for our evaluation week next week and also for the first visits, which start on the 31^st. We only managed to enrol 3 patients, sitting well below our target of 8, but that is the way that enrolment goes. It was funny to listen to the women as they spoke of myths about what makes women go into labour (we enrol the women at the labour and delivery ward, shortly after they give birth). Some said that rainy weather makes babies come, and others said they like to come when it is warm. All we really know for sure (from looking at data), is that September will be a busy month. If you don’t know why..just count 9 months back.

Saturday, it was too rainy to do much. We tried to go to one of the National Parks, but it closed due to rain. Marcha tried to show me around a bit, but the paths were all wooden boards and were quite slippery. We stopped for the day and hoped for better weather Sunday. At home, I convinced Marcha to show me some traditional South African baking. We made Hertzoggies (which surprisingly doesn't translate to hedgehog)

It also thundered Saturday, and Tiger, one of Marcha’s two dogs it quite afraid of it. Here is a picture of him in his hiding place (the shower). 

We could not get him to budge from it for a good hour. At 7 years old, he is quite the big baby, but he still thinks he is Lucy's mom (Lucy is Marcha's other dog. I will post a photo of her when I get a good one!)

Other than that, not much else to report. The weather is looking up again for Mon-Wed (the forecasts only go 3 or so days in advance because the weather can change so much here), so hopefully I can get up to more adventures.

Hope everybody is doing well at home! And if you would like a postcard, please comment here or message or email me your address and I will try to send those out this week.