Spring Break: The Rural Life

Local kids walk up to 10 kilometers
getting to and from school

            Up the coast to Kosi Bay, we found ourselves just a few kilometers from the border of Mozambique. Our original plan was to go over to Ponta D’Ouro for a day, but there have been nationwide riots for the past few days that have forced the US Embassy to evacuate, and flights into the country to be cancelled. So, it just seemed like a bad time to visit.

            When planning the trip, we all thought that Kosi Bay was going to be a bit of a resort town. Seafood restaurants, gift shops, adventure companies, ect. It was far from that. As we entered town, we found a vibrant marketplace set up along the main road with thousands of people walking in the road and around the produce vendors. Women were carrying huge baskets of food on their heads (just like the movies) and there were barefoot children in school uniforms lining each side of the road, walking home from school. It was by far the most ‘African’ place I had been to yet. We decided to stop and get some food for dinner so we went to the grocery store for some items, and then got produce in the roadside market. In the market, we were the only white people there, but we all felt much safer there than in Cape Town. The food was SO cheap. It cost R5 for a bunch of lettuce and R7 ($1) for about ten tomatoes. It made me wonder how these women made enough money to live off of.

Young Boy Herding Cattle

            It took us a while to find our backpackers (hostel) because it was about two kilometers off the main road on rough sand roads. Following little arrows, we slowly meandered past old women plowing fields by hand, children playing, and people burning fields to get rid of the old grasses in order to make room for new crops. It was true, rural Africa. Our accommodations were extremely cool, as all the pathways were above the sandy ground on wooden walkways and our room was a stucco hut with mosquito netting above the beds… this was malaria country.

            We were still able to get in another day of snorkeling in one of the four major lakes in the National Park. The lake we were in was a salt-water lake that was protected from sharks by being really shallow, and protected by hippos and crocodiles by being to salty. To get to the snorkeling spot, we had to cross over the river mouth with all of our belongings on our head so they didn’t get wet. It proved even more difficult on the way back because the tide had gone up over a foot. The water was once again really warm and the five of us spent the entire day floating along the coral reefs looking at all the bright fish and… eels! Not a fan of the eels. My favorite sighting was the lionfish, which has red, and white stripes and has long spiky things come out of its body. We also played around on some of the tallest sand dunes in the world.

Collecting Grass to Make a Thatched Roof

Burning the Fields

            The following day we decided to go for a hike to the lakes from our backpackers. We hired a local guide to show us the way because it was several kilometers and there was no specific trail. He led the five of us through a maze of  fields and villages, past the locals who were growing peanuts, yams, bananas, and tomatoes. We learned a local greeting (probably in Khosa of Zulu), but I don’t remember it, and most of the people understood ‘hello.’ It was odd to see old women plowing the fields by themselves or burning the dead grasses as there were very few men working on the land, and even fewer children… although that is probably because they are back in school after the strikes have ended. We hiked through a lot of sandy and dry farmland and then lastly through a bit of lush jungle before reaching one of the lakes. It was a really interesting to see the lives of the rural South African before we drove back to Durban for our flight back to Cape Town. The end of Spring Break… so sad.