South Africa 2011-2012

The past few weeks have been full and wonderful as always, at least in retrospect if not always at the time.

We recently received some exciting news from Siyavuna’s end. We had been having trouble with the brand that we had been semi-legally calling our own: Kumnandi (“delicious” in Zulu). We found out too late that the name Kumnandi was owned by KFC, and so we were scrambling to try to come up with another Zulu word that also started with a K and that sort of meant the same thing; quite a stretch, as you can imagine. Fortunately, my boss was told recently that KFC had decided to liquify the brand, and though the paperwork isn’t official yet, Siyavuna now owns the rights to Kumnandi, which is spectacular news. If you haven’t already, please “like” our Kumnandi facebook page (I’ve already invited many of you) and invite your friends to like it too! Since I’m an avid facebooker my boss instructed me to build up the page, and if you have suggestions for it feel free to tell me.

Otherwise, working with Siyavuna continues to be, well, work. I’ve been even more needed lately because my colleague Lindo has been attending mandatory sales trainings for the past few days, and I’m the only other one there to make the Co-Op run in the meantime. It’s rewarding to see it grow, though; Lindo and I get competitive with each other to see if we can beat the other’s sales amount from the previous day!

The fun here continues to be had as well. Since my last post I’ve attended a wedding at Lake Eland, gone bowling with some friends from church at the Wild Coast Sun, had a semi-legal campfire on a beach with many friends and delicious (and entirely legal) s’mores, and attended the Ugu Jazz Festival, the link for which can be found below. Let’s just say that last one involved a lot of rain, some epic traffic jams, a random man helping me get the GCF car that I was driving out of a ditch as well as making sure I made it into the festival, no phone network (making it impossible to locate the friend I’d planned to go with), drunk people everywhere, not anther white person in sight, and another random man walking me home at 4:00 am. I certainly think I got R200 worth of stories out of that night!

http://www.ugujazzfestival.co.za/

Malin, one of the Swedes, left on June 17th, and Markus will leave on Monday, July 2nd, so soon there will only be three of us! (I think the maintenance staff will be crying when he leaves; he was so valuable they offered him a job here, but he had a girlfriend to get home to in Sweden so he couldn’t really accept it.) One of my South African friends also recently went to Redding, CA for five weeks, but of course I'll see him again before I leave. I’m still on the lookout for a new Co-Op volunteer who can stay with it for six months - one year, so tell me about anyone you know who might be interested. There is a girl from Italy (a friend of Wim’s) coming to work with the Co-Op full-time from July 30th - November 30th, so the Co-Op doesn’t need someone immediately, but when she leaves they will.

Perhaps my most exciting news is that I finally have a flight home. I’m going to fly to Cape Town with a friend on Wednesday, September 26th, spend Thursday and Friday in Cape Town with her, and on Saturday, September 29th I’ll fly from Cape Town to Johannesburg and then from Johannesburg to Washington, D.C.. I’ll arrive in D.C. at 6:25 am on Sunday, September 30th. I’ll also turn 23 the same day Nelson Mandela turns 94: July 18th, 2012. I don’t have plans for that day yet, but it’ll be a nice one I’m sure! From what I hear, he's kind of a big deal here. :)