I started
my trip together with some friends, we hired a car and drove to the coast. We
went to Port Shepstone, here they grow a lot of sugarcane, and I always saw
people walking around eating sticks. :D.Later I figured out, those sticks are
sugarcane, so they really taste like sugar and if there are so many plantations of this stuff are
around why should you not eat it. Or better chew it until it doesn’t have any
taste, a little bit like bubblegum. We also saw some banana plantations, really
cool, my first time seeing banana trees! And I saw my first Wale, or at least
something in the water maybe 100 meters away from the coast that is supposed to
be a whale. Later on I saw them a little bit closer, but still from far far
away, I guess for a closer look you have to go on a boat. But it is even
impressing from far away to imagine how big such a whale is, so that you can
still see it.
Our second
destination was Port St. John and I fall in love with this place, so I just
decided to stay here alone while the rest of my group was going further to East
London. But the people in the backpacker where I stayed where really amazing and
I went hiking and horse riding along the
beach. You couldn’t really swim at the beach cause a lot of people got killed
by sharks there, but that didn’t really matter cause it was really beautiful
there. At my last day at this place I
even helped painting an orphanage (Weisenhaus)
so I got to know a lot of really nice people.
Then I took
a shuttle, what means driving about six
hours for just 60 kays cause you have to use gravel roads and taking a taxi,
what means on your way you will always collect some people, it’S like an hop on
hop off system. Surprised that I’m talking about gravel roads? Yes I decided to
turn away from civilization and go to see some lonely placec and “rural areas”.
What am I talking about when I say rural areas? About a place where I have been
there exist statistics that say it’s a rural area cause 83% (of the population
of that area) get there water from rivers, streams and rain, half of the
population uses wood for cooking and heating ; 46% have no toilet at all and89%
have no rubbish collection(means they just burn everything
themselves).Educational only 10% have a metric certificate and around 6% got
any higher education. But I don’t want to say that life in those areas would be
bad, its just a little bit different to what I am used to, so I just tried to
get an impression of how you deal with this kind of life . By the way I don’t
want anyone to think people in a rural area
don’t know about a different life, they wear the same clothing then me,
go shopping in the supermarket, and they also watched the worldcup on a big
screen, so they even have public viewing, just that not everyone has a TV on
its own.
But let me
just go back to my own journey.. first I went to a backpacker at Coffee Bay,
here there was still a lot going on, the backpacker was one of the busiest I
have ever been too, just because it’s a famous place for travelers for surfing
and the amazing nature around. So I went hiking with a group of people mixed up
from every country, Australia, Austria, Usa, Switzerland, Germany, a very
colourful group I can say. I also saw the final of the worldcup at this place
and had an amazin morning with an amazing sunrise for which I got up at 5
o’clock in the morning just to realize that the sun rises at 7, yeah funny
story but I had someone nice to talk to so it was definitely worth it.
Then I
found a nice girl from the Usa and we both wanted to go away from such a busy
place so we hiked to bulungula, a two days hike with a stop in between at a
small village called Lubanzi. Those were the most loneliest places and most
amazing places I’ve ever been to. You can walk at the beach for hours and hours
and will maybe meet some cows and goats, if you’re lucky there is even a donkey
standing at the beach but that’s it! Now
and then you see those little huts and you know there is a village, but
actually you can’t really see where the
one village ands and where the next one starts cause they are spread all over
the landscape and still there is a lot of space and this gives this place
called “Transkei” a special feeling that I can’t imagine having at any other
place.
Such a lot
of air around you, just listening to the sound of the ocean..awesome! And
during the night, I never saw the star sky so clear
like here! Beautiful, just beauty on it’s own.
Okay so much about the landscape, now lets talk about the culture here.
The original people from the Transkei are the koi koi, actually the Transkei
was independent from South Africa till 1994.. this means no vortrekker who came
to industrialise the country and bring new technology so that’s why the place
still has this freedom. That s what the Guy (Silas) who guided us on our hike
told us. And the people want to keep their freedom and peace, they know how
rare places like this are on our busy world.
The people
in the Eastern Cape are from the Xhosa Tribe. So I wanted to get to know their
culture a little bit and how they handle stuff even without electricity and
water and all those things. And I saw life is possible and not bad even without
all this comfort stuff, but kind of complicated sometime s and everything takes
a lot of time.
So me and
Taylor (the girl from the USA) participated at a womans power day. One Girl (23
years) took us to her home in the
village and showed us her life.
Maybe I
should mention that the backpacker in the village Bulungula is run by the
community so everything is organized from the people of the village and nothing
feels like just made up for tourists, they show you how there life goes by
taking you with them.
Taylor and
me learned how difficult it is to carry a bucket full of water on your head, i
guess with those big buckets my neck would break so we just used empty yoghurt
buckets =). Then we had to go, collect the wood in the forest to make fire,
cook pap and some spinach. The vegetables are all grown in their own garden something
that is becoming very rare in my German society I would say.
It’s all
manageable just that it takes you about three hours to cook, so yeah it’s not
just switching in the stove putting your pan on it. Same with going to school,
the girl told me that the school is to far and on those gravel roads taxis take
a lot of time, so traveling goes slow..like I said everything is just a little bit more complicated.
By the way
communication wise mostly the people that work in the backpacker picked up a lot of English,
but if you want to go to the village you should
maybe practice your Xhosa.
Spending my
time at the Wildcoast was the best decision I could do, I enjoyed and learned a
lot. So this is another side of South Africa, something totally different like
my experiences from Pretoria or Atteridgeville. This country on its own has a
lot of faces so you can’t really talk about South Africa as one now just
imagine you talk about ”AFRIKA” saying it
would be like this or like that. People easily do that without thinking
about how many countries there are in Africa and you can’t just put them in one
pot. So let’s just learn that we have to differentiate and take care what we
are talking about.
The only
thing I would say is definitely true about South Africa is that it is some kind
of Rainbow nation and it definitely has a lot of colors in any kind of way.
