Mavoso Chases Us Home
About 33 hours ago we were on a safari truck driving around the Pilanesberg National Park in South Africa. We were near the end of the drive when about 100 yards down the road we saw, Mavoso, the dominant bull elephant for the breeding herd in the park. He saw us, too.
He walked closer and he stopped about 50 yards away, pausing to shake his head and flare his ears at us, while moving his front legs up and down. This is evidently elephant sign language for "get out of my way." We had no where to go but sit on the road. Our driver told us to be absolutely quiet so he would not think he was intimidating us. As Mavoso came closer and closer he wagged his head back and forth several times. He walked right up along side our truck and turned to face us. We were in an elevated four wheel truck and Mavoso looked down on us. By Marcus' account, Mavoso was within about a foot of the truck. Other students have said that his trunk was brushing against the truck. The driver shouted, "NO! NO! Go away, Mavoso!" Mavoso sort of raised his head and stepped back away from the truck. Then he walked along the side and went behind us. After pausing for a moment about thirty feet behind the truck, he turned and charged us. Luckily, the driver had the trucked restarted by then and away we went. A few students, who shall remain nameless, jumped in the laps of other students for safety. Just ask Brandon. The students on the back row can tell you what he looked like up close and personal.
After we pulled away, it seemed like a universal consensus that it was time to go home. After starting out at Johannesberg Airport at 6:00 p.m. and stopping over in Dakar, Senegal, for an hour to refuel, we arrived in the Washington, D.C. (Dulles) airport at 6:00 a.m. this morning.
We'll be home soon!
Hysterical laughter, a chorus of squeals and giggles, shouts of ‘nyaah!’ followed by echos of ‘awkward elephant’ while holding your arm up to your nose like a trunk. Games of ‘would you rather’, and ‘two lies and a truth’, Dr G. Unit convincing me to fool them into believing they had eaten worms as part of their lunch in the village while his eyes twinkled mischievously at the thought, appearances on national TV, nicknames received which you can’t shake yet somehow form an attachment towards, Cath and I; the unforgettable, invincible, hysterical duo (a bit like Tweedledee and Tweedledum!)--a partnership never to be seen again by any other group. 
From the wonderfully helpful boys in the kitchen, Blake, Will, Marcus, Brandon, and the ‘click click’ that came from Chris D and his camera, who all braved the icy Atlantic for a few minutes of brilliant exhilarating fun, to endless hours of ‘would you rather’ and giggles with Leslie, Ashley, Andrea and Roshni. From flaming Rachel [literally] to ‘yeeha!’ Sam. Heather with her Polaroid journal, Jade, Mindy and Steph, who silently braved the ‘dog box’ [back of the van]. My home-girls, Hannah and Nicole-always helpful and full of nonsense, Chicago Jen and oh-so-cool Chris P. Who would have thought this herd of students from Belmont Tennessee could capture my heart so.?
On Saturday, we left the lodge and headed for the Pelegano Village which is the home of Daniel and Elijah, twin brothers who are both fantastic artists. They own and operate a factory called Two In Arts Art Factory in which they create paintings, sculpture, and jewelry to sell. They set up an art workshop for us to work with them.
What I always love about working with children is that kids are pretty much the same everywhere, especially at the toddler stage. They play the same types of games (clapping, sitting, standing, running, yelling, and banging), sing the same type of songs, (“Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”, “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes”), and are fascinated by the same types of things (dirt sticks, bodily functions, and funny faces). Even though they speak only a handful of English words (“Teacher, Look!” being their favorite), and I speak absolutely no Steswana, we could communicate with the universal child language of laughter, tears, hugs, and pointed fingers.
Our group had a good discussion time last night and the general consensus is that this trip continues to change us in profound ways. We all are being changed in different ways, and once everyone returns home it may take us a while to process everything that has been experienced.
As I ascended the jagged rise of Cape Point (in quite an out-of-shape manner), I began to hum the Rocky theme song. There is something about the golden horns in it that sing of the heart of kings and it made me really anxious to reach the zenith (yes, mom and dad, my college tuition is buying me an array of new words). In a moment that seemed to pause all of time, I triumphantly raised my fists to the sky as I gazed upon the 360 degree view warranted by the final vantage point. This was the place that I had always heard about in New England sailing lore; the place where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet in a tumultuous love affair. The words of Dr. Smith (or Bon-Bons as we have so titled her) seemed to describe the whole scene perfectly. "We are on top of the world, at the end of the world." 
We continued exploring the Table Mountain National Park by driving down to the 
CCFM was the first post-apartheid radio station in the entire country and therefore the first Christian one as well. Growing out of a wonderful idea by a local church trying to reach out into the community in 1992, the major adventure began. They had absolutely no kind of experience and no previous station to turn to for help. When inspired, anything is possible and it wasn’t long before they had the whole system built from the ground up.
Our caravan of combis (South African for vans) wound through Cape Town and arrived on the other side, already considerably high with an unhindered view of the city and port. Here we met our ride: a 60-passenger cable car that took us the rest of the way until we were approximately 1,086 metres above sea level.
It was hard work and not nearly as rewarding at the immediate feedback that comes from working with children. There were no hugs, no laughter from smiling children, and no songs in Afrikaans. We could hear the chatter of the group stacking bricks, the swish of spade being pushed into sandy soil, the grunts of digging up stumps and poles, and the low conversation of work. Twice the students filled up the bed of a pickup truck with large stones they had unearthed. Six former fence poles with 150+ pounds of cement were pulled out of their holes. Metal beams and pipe and wiring were dug up and stacked neatly on the back of the property. The team working with bricks patiently moved 3,866 bricks from a huge tumbled pile and turned them into a neat and orderly stack.
At the end of the day, we talked about how the twenty-two of us (Dr. Overby missed all the fun by choosing the day to visiting another university partner) had worked for a total of eighty-eight hours--basically we had done the work that it would have taken one person to do in two weeks . . . in just four hours. As a non-profit organization, attempting to use every dollar (or Rand) to change lives, Living Hope exists on volunteer labor. The money we saved will go directly into making some else's life healthier and better.
What an inspiring way to start a day--a breakfast discussion of Desmond Tutu’s No Future Without Forgiveness led by Dr. Bonnie Smith. As we would witness during the day (and throughout the previous days for that matter), the people of this amazing country are managing to overcome a terrible page in history called 
We came back a little early from the children's club this afternoon and several of the students headed to the beach just off of our Team House. It may be winter in South Africa and the water may be cold, but it did not stop these intrepid travelers from hitting the surf. Mandy and Cath are two of our hosts and they regularly frequent the beach so they took the students down to the water.
Four other students were not quite so brave as to go swimming, but they were persuaded to get their feet wet. The picture on the left shows Mindy, Laura, Jade, and Rachel as a small wave sneaks up on them. 
The children started showing up around 3:00 and we began by standing around outside with them singing us songs in Afrikaans, a language of South Africa. After some spirited singing and dancing we moved into the shipping container that houses the children's club. Shipping containers are often reclaimed, painted inside and out and made into very sturdy and useful buildings. There were probably about forty children and the twenty three from our team crowded into the shipping container. As the children sang at the top of their lungs and beat the sides of the container for rhythm, we felt as if we were inside a big metal drum.
Confused by the time change, I woke up an hour earlier than I meant to on our first morning in Cape Town. But I was grateful for extra time to listen to the sounds of the sea and reread a portion of Tutu's No Future Without Forgiveness, the book all our classes are reading in common. Tutu's image of South Africa as a place for "all God's rainbow people" seemed to take shape for those of us on Belmont study abroad today.
After nearly 30 hours of travel, the Belmont in Africa team arrived at the 