"Say a prayer for the pretender, who started out so young and strong, only to surrender"

I get caught up in some pretty bizarre situations with even more bizarre people in my life. I think it’s one of my few unique qualities, attracting weird people. One time in middle school I was locked out of my house and two men in a truck with a deep freeze in the back approached me on my front steps asking if I was interested in working for their business selling meat door to door. Hmm No thanks?

While there is a strong possibility that I could have gotten human trafficked that day, I think we can agree that the situation is just plain weird as hell.

Another time, I was sitting next to a friend at a restaurant bar when a 75 year old man wearing a cable-knit sweater and penny loafers (seemingly harmless right?) sitting on the other side of me, without a word spoken between us, began massaging the top of my scalp and playing with my hair. I think this could also be categorized as weird as hell…but I’ll let you be the judge.

" So this is all to preface the new run-in I’ve had since being in Africa, and how I’m not even uncomfortable with these situations anymore due to the fact that they’ve started to become pretty routine. This time around isn’t quite as awkward, but still pretty bizarre. Since my arrival, I’ve become great pals with our driver. His name is Pang (no he’s not Asian), he is completely bald with a large gap between his two front teeth, and he likes to wear mock turtlenecks. Oh wait, I almost forgot, he’s also a trafficker for the biggest drug ring in the city of Port Elizabeth.

Upon discovering this, I was a little bit concerned about my safety but we’ve since become great pals. He shares stories, about breaking both of the kneecaps of people who somehow crossed him, and where to get the best price on a bicycle in town. He’s also become quite a mentor to me, teaching me how to say all of the most offensive cuss words and phrases in the Afrikaans language. I won’t give details here. While his criminal acts most likely go far beyond what I’ve witnessed, I’ve come to appreciate the safety of being friends with Pang. He makes sure other drivers don’t rip me off, and since no one would ever cross Pang, it goes without saying that they won’t cross me either.

I guess the moral of this story is not that I attract weird people, and find myself in bizarre situations, but more importantly that sometimes bizarre works just fine for me. What would life be like without the stories anyway? I guess I just wouldn’t have much to say.

"You've broken the speed of the sound of loneliness. You're out there running just to be on the run"

Today I went back to visit some old friends at “Cheshire Home,” a home for disabled adults that I worked with last year while I was here. Unfortunately if you’re disabled, living in a home full of other disabled people in Africa, not much changes over the span of a year.

There are a lot of pretty heartbreaking things about this place. It’s a home built specifically for the physically disabled, and everyone here is going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives. What the people running the home fail to disclose is that another 6 out of 10 people living in the home also have mental disabilities that are completely ignored and even denied by the staff. On top of this, there are residents whose families live thirty minutes away but haven’t had a visitor in over 6 months. The biggest recreational excitement of the day is afternoon tea, which always has way too much milk in it (in order to keep people from burning themselves) and lasts a span of about 15 minutes. In a nutshell: I’d rather be deaf, dumb and blind living in Haiti right now then be sent to spend the rest of my life at this place.

Depressing feelings aside, coming back reminds me of some of the people I’ve missed since I left them last. Instead of going into details, I’ll offer a brief overview of my crew here:

Jonny: My bff. He’s not too much older than I am and has been disabled all of his life. He has a wandering eye that makes it difficult to tell whether he’s actually looking at you, and he likes to teach me dirty Afrikaan slang words and then sends me around to recite them back to people in the home. He claims to have a girlfriend who’s picture is the background on his phone, but I think he may have downloaded it from an info-mercial.

Florence: aka: Flossy. An older woman who used to be a young and beautiful flight attendant until she got in an accident and hasn’t been able to walk since. Her ability to speak is almost completely gone as well but mentally she is completely fine.

Ass in the Red Beanie: Basically this guy doesn’t ever actually talk to me. He’s a hermit that sits in the front of the recreation room everyday watching his tv show and drinking his tea. If he ever feels that my conversation with another resident is distracting him from his show he feels free to tell me “Shut the F**** up back there! I’m trying to watch something! (Hey, I’d be pissed too if the only microscopic amount of joy in my day was being threatened.)

Lastly, there is Andrew.

Andrew is in his early thirties and is not only completely physically disabled but is also mentally disabled and has short-term memory loss. All of this happened to him when he was 24 and he got into a car accident that completely changed his life.

Each time I walk into the room he introduces himself to me and tells me about how he plays rugby for St. Andrews (something he did do before his crash.) Five minutes into the conversation he gets to whether or not I have a boyfriend, by ten minutes in he’s professing his love to me and in fifteen I have a marriage proposal. (And this cycle repeats itself the next time I visit as he has no idea who I am each time I walk into the room) I tell him, “weren’t you in love yesterday? I don’t want to be a one day thing Andrew.” And he insists, almost as if he’s offended, “No, today is the first time”

At first glance, its hard to think of a life more depressing than Andrew’s. He basically had his entire life taken from him when he was still so young. Now he’s living in a home where family and friends rarely come to visit him and the only excitement in a day is afternoon tea, the same way everyday. He’ll never be able to walk again, he’ll probably never leave this place at all.

But there is also something extraordinary I find in his condition, something I truly envy about him. He has the chance, every single day, to fall in love for the first time all over again. Tell me what in the world could be more beautiful than that?

They came to sit & dangle their feet off the edge of the world & after awhile they forgot everything but the good & true things they would do someday

This week has been really productive in working with various PEPFAR organizations, and completing interviews for my research. At the beginning of the week I worked with and organization called The Olive Leaf Foundation, which runs several programs in the city. These range from a home-based care unit for people suffering with AIDS and the various illnesses associated with it, to HIV/AIDS testing campaigns, and a childrens program to help the kids who are orphaned by AIDS cope in the everyday world.

On Tuesday afternoon the organization hosted a little “day away” for twenty of the AIDS orphans and their care-takers in celebration of Nelson Mandela’s birthday, which is a HUGE deal here. We went to a small farm outside of town, which is basically a petting zoo where we could walk around and see the animals, go for a hayride, and milk a cow. Afterwards the group had a little tea party in the gardens. Most of these kids and women come from extremely poor households, and so this was all quite a treat for them. At the party they gave each of us MASSIVE pieces of chocolate cake. Halfway though I was sure I couldn’t eat any more, but looking around the table, every woman and child had completely finished every last crumb on their plate. I took this as a sign of their situation and thought how disrespectful it would be to throw this food away while many of them came from places where its not uncommon to go hungry some nights.

Needless to say, I have NOT lost any weight in Africa, and I sat at that table and forced every last bit of the chocolate cake down my throat, bite by bite like I was Bruce Bogtrotter in Matilda sitting on the stage in front of the entire school being coerced by Mrs. Trunchbull and her whip. Woof.

I also spent some time at an organization called AIDS Haven, which is an orphanage that takes in orphaned or abandoned kids, most of which are HIV positive. The stories that come out of this place are enough to break your heart six times in one day. Most of the 28 kids were either born with HIV that passed on to them by their mothers, or contracted it from being raped and sexually abused. One set of twins at the home who are HIV positive were found abandoned by their mother outside a pub and brought to the home by a social worker. Another girl here contracted it by her father who sexually abused her and used to make trips over to the home every once in a while demanding to see her. Luckily the “mother” of the home, Aggie, is a scrappy woman who told him if he every crossed the gate into their yard she would kill him herself and now he doesn’t come around so often.

I made the initial mistake of visiting the pre-school age kids one afternoon during the middle of snack time. 15 four and five year olds attacking me in tandem covered in cheetohs cheese dust and snot with sticky hands and faces? SO GROSS, but how can you tell an AIDS orphan, “Hey, would you mind going to take a bath before I pick you up?” So I too left the house that day covered in cheetoh dust that I didn’t even get to eat, and the smell of dirty diapers and little kids. That day though, I’ve never been more happy to smell like processed cheese and toddler poo.

“It’s funny how falling feels liking flying…for a little while.”

On the drive back from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth, I chose to ignore the sound advice from those at home, and I went bungy jumping.

It’s not something I consider a life-long dream, but I have wanted to do it for quite some time and the opportunity just seemed to present itself. The world’s highest bungy jump is located about an hour away near a town called Tsitsikamma. I thought to myself, if I’m ever going to bungy jump, I might as well go big and do it right.

And thus, I jumped off a bridge into a gorge like a spider monkey being chased by a tiger off of a cliff. I don’t really feel like there are a lot of details to share here….

In a nutshell: It was completely amazing. The best way to describe it is in those moments of free fall you feel completely alive. All of your senses become intensely acute. You can feel each beat of your heart, you can hear the air leaving your lungs…..you just feel alive.

In fact, I wish I could wake up and jump off a bridge every morning before my morning cup of tea just to remind myself, it is so freaking great to be alive today.

“She carries a lot of suitcases but all of them are empty because she’s expecting to completely fill them with life by the end of this trip and then s

This weekend I spent in Cape Town, quite possibly one of the coolest cities I’ve ever been to. Sitting at the foot of towering mountains right on the coastline, its absolutely beautiful.

While I was in Cape Town, I was given the opportunity to spend the day in two townships (Langa and Guguletu) which are the “slums” or shack communities outside the city. Largely a product of apartheid, these communities are home to the masses of the poorest people within the cities. Some living in shacks they put together with corrugated aluminum and wood scraps, and other in small, government built housing. The majority of these people have no electricity or running water, and a large number are unemployed.

While this paints a pretty grim picture of the townships, they are also places alive with life. The people hold tightly to culture, tradition and the idea of “ubuntu,” the belief that a community is a family. The streets are filled with music and chattering. Kids are playing soccer, meat is being grilled on fires on the road’s edge. If only I could walk around and not stick out like a sore (white) thumb.

I would write six pages on everything I got to see and do while I was there, but for the sake of those reading this, who are probably far less interested than I am in these things, I’ll give a synopsis.

I first visited an igqira, or a “natural healer.” In the Xhosa culture, these igqira’s are called to their profession through dreams and visions. Those thought to be igqiras out of self interest are not trusted among the community. Anyway, I’m giving information you don’t care about again, so let me get on with it. So this healer had a shack the size of a mediocre walk-in closet, and it was filled to the brim with (for lack of a better term), shit. Hanging from the ceiling were animal skulls, black mamba and python skins and other unidentifiable animal parts. Lining the walls were jars and jars of animal parts, powders, herbs and plants, and more unidentifiable liquids. I got the chance to talk to him about his role in HIV/AIDS treatment which was really interesting, as well as the possibility of purchasing some “boyfriend potion.” He could somehow already tell I needed some…Embarassing, but valid. Haha.

After hearing singing coming from a large cinder-block building next door, we asked if we could go inside, and sat for a while during a church service that was going on. There were only a few women in attendance, and from what I could discover, they had been there since very early in the morning. Almost the entire time I was there, they were singing prayers in their native language, isiXhosa. This part of my day is hard to describe.

But best summed up by this: It was so eerily beautiful that it gave me goosebumps.

After church, I did what every God fearing woman would do- I went to a shebeen for some good old homemade African beer. This was quite possibly the funniest part of my day. I walked into the dark, dirt-floor shack not knowing what to expect. I was immediately greeted by a crowd of fellow beer lovers who welcomed me as if I was the second coming of Jesus. We sat in a circle passing around the beer, which is served in big metal bucket that you literally drink straight out of. There is a good chance that I contracted six different diseases during this time, but hey, I take my chances every chance I get. Before leaving I saw how the beer was made (which would definitely have kept me from drinking it if I had gotten that little tour before hand.) Basically, the concoction sat out on the street in plastic buckets with swarms of flies attacking it and mangy-ass dogs lapping out of it for three days before being served. NICE.

Right before leaving I was proposed to by the toothless man that had been sitting across from me. I told him I had a boyfriend and he said he didn’t believe me. Shocking that I’m somehow that obvious….I must have a scarlet “S” on my back that can only be seen by the trained, African, middle-aged, toothless eye. Note to self: If I’m still single in ten years, or I’m too far past my prime to rely upon e-harmony…I can always find love in an African beer shack.

“You’re too in love to let it go. But if you never try you’ll never know, just what you’re worth."

So I’ve been learning about one of the indigenous tribes to the area, the Xhosa. Obviously all of their customs and traditions are worlds away from what we practice in the western world, but one in particular that happens to contribute to the spread of HIV gripped my attention for very different reasons.

For Xhosa boys to “become men” and prove their courage and strength, they must be circumcised with a spear blade and then immediately go through a period of isolation out in the wilderness where they have to fend for themselves and avoid outside human contact. While this practice initially caught my attention because of its contribution to the HIV/AIDS epidemic (as using the same unclean blade on so many people leads to the spread of AIDS), the implications it makes about the values of these people forced me to also think about my own.

Although I can’t fairly judge the beliefs and traditions of others, I can use them as a counterpoint to think about my own. For the sake of being honest though, getting chopped up down south with a dirty, possibly AIDS infested blade and then going camping seems like quite possibly, the worst idea ever. But for the Xhosa people, enduring and overcoming physical pain is the definition of strength and courage, and thus “makes you a man.”

So if getting your nads wacked with a spear blade isn't the definition of strength and courage to me, you may ask, then what is?

First, I think it must be true that the most genuine strength and courage come out when enduring those things that are genuinely the most painful. Unlike the Xhosa, I don’t think the endurance of physical pain is really the ultimate.

In my life I’ve had a few messy spills: broken bones as a result of falling down flights of steps, jumping 80 feet into a lake only to land flat on my ass, being mauled by a diseased bird in a third world country on top of the e-coli I had contracted two days before… the list goes on. Physical pain, although it can be excruciating, is only temporary. There is an end in site, a time you can look forward to when you know you’ll be ok again.

But I can vouch for this: The worst kind of pain comes from losing something you can’t replace, or from loving someone who doesn’t love you back. It’s that kind that lights a match in the pit of your stomach and doesn’t stop spreading until it has completely consumed you. And the worst part is, there is no end in site, no day you can circle on your calendar when you’ll be alright again or assurance that this will ever completely go away. This is when you are truly tested and to me, strength and courage are defined.

Strength comes from having the courage to always believe that people can change, and to be over the moon in love with someone who you know may never love you back.

It also comes from having the courage to realize that you deserve “over the moon” in return and to say goodbye to that person who is hurting you, even if you cant, at that moment, imagine tomorrow without them.

Strength comes from being able to let go and to move on without being jaded and cynical. To instead, grow and transform beyond what you ever thought possible. To leave behind the past and welcome the future as a brand new beginning full of possibilities and the belief that your “over the moon” is just up ahead.

Moral of this story: I’d much rather get both legs broken twice then my heart broken once. The recovery period is much shorter and life’s too short to always be spent in recovery.

"When I get older, I will be stronger. They'll call me freedom, just like a waving flag."

I've finally made my way back to civilization after a weekend up in the mountains staying with some farmers. After several hours of driving inland over mountains and through orange groves, I arrived on the doorstep at a cattle and sheep farm. The family I stayed with had two sons close to my age, one which attended "varsity" or university in Pretoria, and the other who stayed at home to work on the farm.

The weekend was actually quite uneventful. The first day I hiked into the mountains and down to some caves. The land is absolutely beautiful here. I'll try to post a couple of pictures with this entry from my hike so you can see the view. Little did I know I'd be cross-country hiking down a steep mountainside where I ate it once or twice (leaning towards at least twice.)

On Sunday I visited a local school that kids living across this rural area attend. In a relatively small building that was split into four separate rooms, kids all the way from pre-schoolers to seventh graders are taught. Many similar schools across the area have teachers that come just three times a week to teach classes, although this one had a dedicated staff that came five days a week and some weekends to offer extra help, making it the most successful in the region.

Walking around in the pre-schoolers classroom, a poster on the wall really struck me. The title at the top said "Being A Girl..." and in cartoon figures it addressed issues that involve the rights of girls, even the right of a girl to say no and protect herself against rape. It caught me completely off guard and forced me to imagine living in a place where rape is a reality in the lives of kids as young as three and four years old. Probably not a statistic that mom and dad want to hear, but by per capita statistics, this is the "rape capital of the world," which is also one of the leading contributors to a staggeringly high rate of HIV/AIDS and babies born with HIV. I cant tell you how many times coming to a place like this makes me so grateful for the life I live, but times like these put the battles I face in my own life into a perspective that makes me feel nothing short of selfish.

By the end of the weekend, the weather had become unbearable. Rain had set in and a cold front blowing up from Antarctica was sweeping through. When does a cold front from Antarctica sweep through Africa? Only on the exact day that Diana Price is coming to visit of course. Obviously there was no heating system in the house so getting warm was nearly impossible. I was secretly wishing I could be teleported home to my bed for the night and have dad make me waffles and bacon before being teleported back the next morning to arctic winds and toast with anchovy paste (yum? No, I'd rather munch on warm rabbit turds)

On the way back from the farms I stopped at Fort Hare University which was attended by Nelson Mandela, Robert Mugabe, Desmond Tutu and basically every famous (and in Mugabe's case, infamous) African of the 21st century. To be quite honest, the tour I took was absolute crap. I walked around the campus in circles led by a woman who knew only that there is "lots of history here. You can visit tombstones and monuments, and this is a place where they have meetings." What? What meetings are you even talking about and who is they? Where are these monuments? Aren't those a standard part of the tour? Yeah, get me the hell out of here. Thanks.

Tomorrow I have a meeting to set up my schedule with the various organizations I'll be working with...I can't wait!

P.S. If anyone didn't see it, please youtube Shakira's performance at the World Cup closing ceremony. She is a goddess. I want to be her singing about Africa in a belly shirt. ME-OWWW

"Lord I was born with a suitcase in my hand"

I have arrived safe and sound and finally have access to internet. There's really not a lot to report yet. I don't get started on working with any of the organizations until Monday so I've got some down time before things really get going.

Last night I went to an event called "Fan Fest" at a stadium in the city to watch the Germany v. Spain game on a HUGE screen set up on the field. The scene was crazy, and if you think those annoying horns are loud on t.v. wait until you hear them in person. I of course was cheering for Germany (perhaps the only one in the crowd of thousands) in dedication to Justine and Emelia who are in Germany right now, knowing that their trips would be much more exciting if Germany had made it to the final. Sorry girls. Obviously World Cup hysteria here is in full force. You'd think that South Africa was experiencing a full on revolution. Everywhere you go: World Cup. Can't say I'm complaining though...it just makes my time all the more fun.

Today I made the fatal mistake of getting into a cab driven by a complete lunatic. Don't get me wrong, he drove just fine but he had a few loose screws in the head and it was the longest fifteen minute drive of my life. His name was Terrence (RED FLAG number 1.) Immediately upon getting into his Toyota Tercel, which wouldn't have passed U.S. inspection if a mechanic version of Jesus himself had done the repairs, I knew I was in trouble. He immediately began ranting at a volume high enough for Helen Keller to get the message, half of which was spoken in Afrikaans about cab drivers that will rip me off (eluding to the fact that I must call him each time I need a ride), his promiscuous younger days, and practicing safe sex. What? No thank you Terrence. If the birds and bees talk was ever to happen for me it would not be with an African cab driver in a Toyota Tercel named Terrence. Of course at the end of the ride he completely ripped me off, but I was not about to barter with him as that would have required at least another 30 seconds of dialogue. In fact, I would have probably given my left kidney to get out of the car earlier.

For the next few days I'm going up into the mountains to stay with some farmers which will undoubtedly be a good time. Obviously I wont have internet since I don't think these people have ever used the internet, so my next post will probably not be until the beginning of the week.

Until then,

Keep on Keepin' on

“There’s never a wish better than this when you’ve only got a hundred years to live"

Seven days ago I bought a plane ticket and my life has been complete chaos since. In the midst of all the chaos that often comes from leaving only seven days to plan a trip to Africa, I almost forgot….I’m going to be on a different continent in a week.

Sitting here at Gate A14 it’s all beginning to sink in, and oddly, all this thinking has lead me to linger on not on the adventure ahead of me, but on the somewhat distant past. Before diving in though, let me give you a brief overview of Diana Price circa 1996.

At seven years old I was interesting at best. Many parents like to use the word “special” to mask the fact that there’s an overwhelming chance their kid might turn out to be a complete freak. Fortunately in a family of five children, one potentially bad egg didn’t threaten the bunch enough to raise any serious concerns about my future.

In a nutshell, I was awkward. I had a hair cut that could have been improved with a weed-whacker (most likely based upon the fact that I treated myself to frequent trims with a pair of “Crayola kid-safe” scissors) and I spent most afternoons outside in my brother’s hand-me-downs which made me easily confused for a boy at any distance greater than three feet. Things went even further downhill the day my sisters bought me the most exciting birthday gift I have received to this day; a bug catcher and holding jar.

Wandering around in the woods for entire afternoons to collect bugs, toads, wounded birds, basically any creature that could become an inhabitant of the aquarium I had recently stolen out of the neighbor’s trash (red flag #15: seven year old dumpster diving). At this point my family had begun to accept the fact that I would eventually be Jane Goodall’s apprentice, living alone in the jungle as the next chimp whisperer freak. With two beautiful daughters already excelling in their piano and dance lessons, it was only fair that the third would become the dikey black sheep.

Sometimes on these afternoon expeditions I would lay in the field behind my house waiting for my next specimen and watching planes fly over me. Each time one would pass I couldn’t help but wonder where it was going and immediately wish I was on it too. I dreamed of growing up and having adventures that would take me to places bigger than the woods behind my house and at that time, there was nothing I wanted more. Moral of this story that I strung out far longer than necessary due to boredom: Through all the questionable behavior and awkwardness, not only did I turn out all right, but in the end, it all seemed to give me a little direction. Who knew?

As I sit here waiting to board my plane I realize... I’m here.

Sometimes I become so obsessed….We all become so obsessed with the next big thing, getting to that greener grass, and constantly looking forward to tomorrow to remember that there was once a point in our lives when the things we wanted most are the things we have right now.

How could I get so disenchanted by all of life’s imperfections that I don’t even realize that I’m living out the dreams of my childhood?

I don’t know, but this is kick ass. Lets get this adventure started.