Jumping From an Airplane

I have such an awesome weekend to type about, get ready for some excitement!

March 5-9th our whole group took a scheduled excursion to Durban, a city on the eastern side of South Africa in the Kwazulu Natal. Luckily, the Rand has been in our favor so plane tickets were cheap enough to fly all thirty of us. We left Thursday morning at 11 am for the airport and checked all thirty of us in. It actually was extremely easy- not much hassle. We were flying Kalula, a small airline that flies mostly between the main cities in South Africa. What a fun airline too! The plane was painted a really bright lime green color. The inside had a lot of lime green in it too and holy cow, the safety “speech” was sooo funny. Some good quotes were “please turn off all blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries,” “in the case of an emergency and the aircraft must land in water, life vest are under your seats, but don’t worry, we are not going anywhere near the Hudson River today,” and “there are many ways to leave your lover, but only eight ways to leave this aircraft.” They sure know how to capture everyone’s attention. In the airport I also recognized a few swimmers that had won awards at the Redhouse River Race that I swam last weekend. I did get a chance to talk to a few of them at the luggage claim, which was kinda fun. Lucky them too- flying to their big swim meets!

That afternoon after we had arrived we got settled at our backpackers called Surf N’ Dreams and then headed out to check out the largest “Hindu” temple in the Southern Hemisphere called the Temple of Understanding. I say “Hindu” because it sounds like it’s more of a non-denominational Hindu temple. We learned a bit about the religion, which I didn’t retain much of because his accent was really hard to understand. After that we headed downstairs to watch some traditional Indian dancers. That was pretty sweet. I guess I didn’t really explain the dynamics of Durban. Durban has a huge Indian population. The main industry here used to be the sugar cane industry and many Indians were brought over here long ago for cheap labor in the factories. After watching that really awesome performance, we preceded over to Taste of India, an authentic Indian restaurant that set out a buffet for us, paid for by the program! Nothing better than free food! I was completely stuffed and ate a lot of food that I have no idea what is was called. I figure though I can just refer to Kari for the names of those. That’s right; I studied abroad in South Africa and still got a taste of India.

Friday I woke up bright and early at 5 am to get ready for the Shark Boat ride. We took a bus down to the harbor at 5:45 am and started our boat tour at 6:30. The boat took nine of us out to watch the crew check the shark nets put out to keep the sharks from the beach. If a shark had been caught in the nets, then the crew would have killed it and brought it back to be dissected. Sadly, we did not see any sharks that day. We did have a pretty chill morning just hanging out on the boat though. There were HUGE swells and a few of us got sick. I luckily did not, but I’d get close when people would start talking about it. We decided that sea sickness is mental and biological. After we came in we got picked up in the bus with everyone else and told them a huge story about seeing a shark. They believed it for about 2 minutes. Then we headed downtown for a tour of the city. Our tour wasn’t super great, but we really did get to see what the city was like. We saw a couple of cool markets, an Indian one, a medicinal one, and a normal city market. There were stands selling stuff on the sides of streets everywhere too. At one point we walked through a small passage way with stands on both sides and it was slightly covered too. It totally reminded me of Old Jerusalem. The medicinal market was really interesting. All the stands were selling powdered stuff, which were different plants that had been ground up. They were for all different things such as attraction, enemies, love, etc. We did get to see a Mosque too, which at one time had been the largest mosque in the Southern Hemisphere. A man talked to us a bit about Islam and it was super interesting. He used to be Baptist and had converted. He was saying that he used to engage in debates against Muslims. He showed us the Quran and told us that Muslims believe Jesus lived, but that he was only a prophet. Their worship space is very plain and mostly used for prayer. There main objective is to follow the will of God and live a good life following the example and words of the prophets. I could kinda see how he could have converted coming for a Baptist background. Coming from a Catholic background with the Eucharist would be a bit harder. I just kept thinking about John 6 where Jesus talks about “eat my flesh and drink my blood.” That is something that would be too hard to overlook. I really enjoyed hearing all of it though. After that we headed over to the Cathedral in the city, just a couple of blocks down and checked that out. That was really pretty. Our tour was pretty much done after that, so a bunch of us stayed to go shopping. We had lunch and then looked around at the outdoor market. Things down here are very cheap. I got a Roxy t-shirt for 6 bucks. Yeah! We headed back to our hostel from there and got ready for the night. Many of the girls bought new dresses at the market, so we all got dressed up and ready to go out. That night we were scheduled to go to a Jazz club. The club was beautiful and right on the harbor. The sun was setting when we got there and the sky was beautiful and pink. We all got food and drinks and just kinda hung out.

Saturday morning we headed to the Kwamule museum at 9:30. This museum had three different rooms that we checked out. The first one was really dedicated to the history of Durban. It talked about the Indian population and the markets. The second room was mostly dedicated to the oppression of the coloureds under Apartheid. There was a huge replica of a passbook. All non-whites were required to carry these around with them during the Apartheid and could be asked for them at any moment. If they didn’t have them or they had not been stamped by their employer they could be fined or even imprisoned. The third room had the story of a young black man who was involved in the MK. The MK was basically formed by the ANC (Mandela’s party) and known as their armed wing during Apartheid. After the ANC used many non-violent tactics they felt after the Sharpville Massacre in 1960 that it was time to take a different route. So they started the MK, which would start using acts of sabotage against military structures and transportation and communication systems of the government. The museum told the story of this young man who had planted a bomb near a mall and as a by product some innocent people were killed. He was tried by the government and executed. After the Apartheid government fell, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed to try to bring out the truth from the violent past and heal some past hurts. This case was brought up and the family of a young child who was killed in the bomb made a statement. The father forgave the young man because he was fighting for a just cause against the oppression of the state. The father’s statement was remarkable to hear. This white man chose to forgive a black man who killed his innocent child. We’re learning bit by bit about the remarkable forgiveness that has taken place in this country. After the museum a group of eleven of us took a taxi out to an airport about an hour away to go SKYDIVING!!!! WHOOOO HOOOO! Yes, that’s right. I jumped out of a plane! It took us a while to get there and it took all day for all of us to skydive, but it was so worth it!! We all went in pairs and my partner was Amy. When it was our turn we suited up in this awesome red jumpsuit with a huge black spot on the bum. I’m assuming it’s for our landing since we totally land on our butts. We put on our harness and then headed out to wait for the plane to come down after dropping the last two. We tandem dived with our two certified divers, Vernon and Martin. I was with Martin. We hopped into this tiny little plane that seriously only fit the four of us and then our pilot, who looked like a taller version of Nick Davidson from home who is also a pilot! The view flying up was gorgeous. As we left Durban we had gone through a really hilly landscape. It wasn’t mountains, but I would maybe call it foothills. They were all green and covered with trees. As we flew up we were able to see all of that gorgeous countryside. It was getting later in the evening so the sun was getting a bit lower on the horizon. We were trying to reach 10,000 feet and it left like it took forever to get up there. Martin told us when we were at 3,000 and it seemed like we had already taken a long time to get that high! At about 6,000, we started to get ready though. I had to sit on Martins knees and he buckled us together. Amy was the first to go so I watched her slide one leg at a time out the door of the plane and then it was my turn. One by one I put each of my feet out the door and then we rocked twice and jumped out! We did a flip in the air right away and I saw the bottom of the plane upside down. Then we just free fell on our stomachs for about 30 seconds. It was sooo AWESOME!! Then Martin pulled the parachute. Usually he taps us on the hip, so we can pulled it, but I was so thrilled with falling that I didn’t even feel it. From there we just floated down. There are two lines that you can pull too that steer the parachute and my instructor kept pulling me in spins. The view was absolutely beautiful too. I held Amy’s camera on the way down, so I have a lot of really fun pictures. At the bottom we landed on our butts and the whole adventure was over. All of us finally got done about 6pm, so we loaded up and booked it back to the hostel to change and then hopped back in the car to head to the ballet. We saw the Bolshoy ballet, which was a mix of a bunch of different pieces of ballet from all over the world. It was my first time seeing ballet and it was amazing!

Sunday morning a few of us got up nice and early to walk to Mass just down the street at 7:30am. Mass was good. Something that we’ve noticed a lot here- they generally do not sing much during Mass, at least at the mainly white churches. They do use the antiphons that we don’t usually use, that are usual printed in the books that have the readings in them. They read those in the beginning, end and before communion. If they do sing they use this book that has the lyrics, but no music is printed in it. If you know the melody of the song then that’s great, but we never do. I’m guessing not many other parishioners know the songs either because no one ever sings super loud or super well- maybe that’s why they don’t sing much. After Mass we got back to the hostel and found out that some of the boys got stolen from in the night. Five of them had money stolen from them while they were sleeping. In addition to money, a camera and cell phone were stolen too. It was weird too because some of the boys who had money stolen from them had their cameras moved over and then the robber took from their wallet underneath. They were stolen from while they were sleeping too. It was kinda odd. In all they got about 1,000 bucks taken from them. Funny thing is too, the robber left his hat! I’m not sure if we ever determined how they got stolen from, if the robber came in through the door or jump a fence. The owners of the hostel were partially at fault because we were not given any real security rules. Police came and they had to talk to them, but after that was done we headed out for a nature walk. Our bus took us to a nature reserve on the top of the hill probably still within city limits, but a bit more in the country. We walked for about an hour on a trail and then looked at birds in the Aviary. Before leaving we checked out some snakes in cages at the entrance. After looking at them for a while Amy asked the woman in charge when they fed them and the woman looked around and said, “Well, usually on Fridays, but there’s no small children around now, so I could feed them now if you like.” We said, “Yeah!” She then led us out back where there is a cage of mice and picked two of those out. Then she brought us back in and started taking some snakes out of their cage and showing us them. The last one was a pretty good sized constrictor snake that a few of us got to hold. Then to feed it she picked up the mouse with this pliers thing, but it was too wild and she thought it would bite the snake, so she proceeded to take it outside and hit its head on the wall to “knock it out a bit.” Then she put it in the cage with the snake and we got to see the snake constrict on the mouse and kill it and then eat it. Something that I’ve never seen before! After that we headed back to the hostel to hang out for a while. That night we went to a one-man play called The Chilli Boy, which was a bit of a comedy about old Indian woman who reincarnated into a gang boy when he walked through her ashes. It was pretty good and the man was a really good actor! There were a few culture jokes though that we definitely did not get.

Monday morning we flew out at 8am back to Port Elizabeth. That night we had “Johnnie Aid.” If you’ve ever seen the show The Office, it was modeled after the episode where the office gets stolen from and Michael has an auction where he says he is going to auction off Bruce Springsteen tickets. We wanted to raise some money to give back to the boys after they got robbed. We all put up something to bid on including breakfast in bed, a workout buddy, a hug, back massages, dinners, and star gazing. We raised a total of 4,900 Rand, which is about 490 dollars. It was a really funny night.

I still have last weekend and this week to catch up on, but I’ll try to update soon.