Afrikas bortkomne sønn: 2014

There has been an enormous amoint of things that has happened since i left zambia. becuase i went to midterm, which is a summary of things experienced halfway in our program. the wuestions asked at this event is typically: what has been done, what needs to be done, what was your toughest challenge, what is your best experience so far And they want you to philosophize around whats coming next year. I have had a great time, but I know that I will have to work ten times as hard to be able to make even a slight dent in the cultural wrongdoings, and views that they have were I live, wich is in the bush. They constantly ask for money for alcohol, things, talktime and food. So I will have to make them see that I am there to make them help themselves, not to be their personal Atm machine, food provider or main source of income.

I am very disappointed to say that even my own family asked me for money…like a LOT of money, eventhough it states in the contract that they are not allowed to! So they broke the one rule that was the most important one, at least for me. Now I feel like they only look at me for personal gain, not as a part of the family. But I can see that having a white person live with you is very tempting, and that you think benefits when you live in a brick house with a tin roof and that’s it. So I am going to make sure that the last period of my stay, things will be different. Ill make it very clear in a good way that I wont stand for that.

I will never know why my father asked me for money, and I would like to help, but its just wrong in many ways, and definitively not sustainable. I will help them with whatever they may need in form of bodily assistance. I will plow the fields they have from morning until night, ill even pull the plow if I have to! I will plant seeds until my fingers bleed, and harvest it all on my own if that’s what it takes! But I WONT give anyone any money! I need to show them that everything you want you get with hard work, that’s how I was raised and that’s the values I stand for, and hopefully they will rub of eventually.

Also I might have gotten the sportsvolunteer in our area fired because he never did what he was supposed to, I might have to take a slightly different approach to the sports being done in the villages. Im thinking of trying to find someone who cares for sports, and teach him what I know, so that he can take care of the sports after I leave. Im aware of the fact that me being there might not make a difference in the long run, but im sure as hell going to try!

So we will find out how that ends eventually.

Since one of the people that I used to work with no longer is working with us due to alcohol and female abuse, I have gotten a personal motorcycle! Which I used to get to my village and repack and say goodbye to my family with before I left for Lusaka (zambias main capitol).
Lusaka was nice! King fisher lodge is recommended for those who want the little extra! Really nice rooms with bathtub and marshmallow soft beds! It went by really fast, and many had great stories to tell! Which was showed by incredible slideshows and powerpoint presentations!

After that me an jonjon went to the airport and hopped on the plain to Johannesburg, and when changing the plane to cape town, I thought they automatically sent the luggage to the other plane… but no, they did not. This I discovered when jonjon got his luggage since he was going to Johannesburg to meet Kris and see Orlando pirates versus kaizer chiefs, which is a footbalgame that has a reputation of being totally insane! He was getting his luggage and saw my bag, and said that he thought that maybe my bag was on the belt, so I checked and there it was. If it had not been for him my luggage would propably still be there going around and around on the transporterbelt. So with that catastrophy averted thanks to jonjon, I went along to the gate in Johannesburg only to find to sleeping buddies on the benches, which had the early flight that morning, around 7 am, and me not

flying until 9 am.

Packing was a bitch. I realized I had to much crap packed with me in fear of not having the things I would need, so I seem to have packed everything! Which is making me Wonder if theres anything left in my hut at home. But ill make it work. The flight to cape town went great, but a cranky & hungry nicolaj on the airport put a damper on the festive mood for me when he asked what the hell I was doing in a biltong shop ( jerky/dried meat shop) when we were heading out of the airport to the taxis. I quickly replied : what the hell does it look like im doing? And he went out. It later revealed itself that he was hungry and tired, and that resulted in a slight overlyeager attempt at getting me to follow him as soon as possible.

He has a great way of never getting angry. Frustrated, tired and snippy… yes, but never aggressive or angry, which I love. It all worked out later, we talked and laughed about it, so no harm done. But it proves that these things they take a toll on you, traveling, flying, stressing around the world… its exhausting. But its a blessing to be travekig with people youve ended up calling good friends, and very nice when you get to come to your destination and the food is ready, people you think is awesome is there which you haven’t seen in 4 months, and are sitting around the table and greeting you with a big smile, some have hairy faces, some have cleanshaved heads, that adds some spice to the surprise of meeting again.

Coming to the university of the western cape was really good. The rooms at campus were cool, me and Haakon had separate rooms, but shared a bathroom, which made for some very cool surprise pictures at different times of the day.

The exams went on very quick, and we all passed, and got a lot of bragg for being good at speaking fluently English, and taking things quickly as to the theory that needed to be digested to pass the exams. Spices like "tell 2 truths and a lie" game was very interesting when one of us decided to go all in and say things in class like: “I have never threatened anyone with a machete on a boarder in an African country”, which turned out to be true, with a great story behind it.

We had game development, trying to make new games from indigenous games. This was a catastrophy if you ask me, but at the same time it was hilarious. Some acknowledged the flaws in the system, and had a great laugh! Myself was for some reason really cranky and tired after the morning swim that I had! I hated my life for some reason, but it might have been because of all the things going on, and that it was my body trying to catch up and failing massively at it that was the problem. Systemoverload perhaps. But nothing a lot of sleep during the day didn’t take care of, so eventually I caught up and it turned for the better.

A lot of horse(Norwegian name is Gris) was the case whenever time allowed it (this is a footballgame which makes your coordination and trick skills better).

Our Christmasparty (traditionally called “julebord” in Norway, and abruptly converted to English its translation becomes “Christmas table”) was on Tuesday the 9^th of December, and was unforgettable at the same time as many don’t remember anything…haha. It was legendary, and we had decided in advance that the boys had a competition of looking as ugly as possible. We never told the girls, and they showed up in beautiful dresses, with their hair all fixed and their battlemakeup on.

We started in nice pants and shirts, and went to the bathroom eventually to change. This was actually due to overignition, because someone which name shall not be mentioned forgot the bag with all the costumes in the taxi ( classic overexcitement) and had to make some calls to get it back. But this just added to the spice, we all got a little tipsy and started having drinking games, and then it arrived. We went to the bathroom, changed ant went out one by one, and the girls laughed their asses of. It ended up being a night of legends, and the day after was the worst in a long time! But it got better when I realized that we were doing to watch the FOO FIGHTERS concert at the local stadium! I have never seen anything like it, never have I ever been to watch a music concert in a football stadium either. It rocked ( yes foo fighters is rock) literally, and became a night that’s easily not forgotten as well.

Ole had bought tickets to the concert in Norway next year with his buddy, and ole is a big Foo fighters fan, so he had to facebook home and ask for permission to go and see it. Its not everyday you get to see them in a stadium, and in addition the tickets were half of the price here than they were at home. And ole went with us, or rather HE took us, and had a blast. He was jumping for several hours straight, just confirming what we all have been thinking… that he is constantly on overignition ( and that’s why we love him). It was the perfect hangover cure after a night of a lot of drinking and little sleep.

I felt like I didn’t get a good grasp on the theory of the exams, so im hoping to get a better start next year when we have an exam that’s from January to may. Me and håkon is considering writing about gamefixing in sports of Zambia. So stay tuned to find out more.

We went on after the oral exam and now we have been doing a lot of cool stuff! I have been climbing a little bit with Håkon and Nicolas (a german buddy we met in Livingston, which left the other day). We were in stellenbosch for winetasting while bicycling around from wineyard to wineyard, and visiting the beautiful wineyard of golfplayer Ernie Els! He has a selection of amazing wines. I bought a White wine with the taste of gras, lemon and a lot more ingredients I really don’t remember the name of.

The trip was incredible, but Jonjon didn’t like bicycling on the freeway. He said : I didn’t really feel I had any control of my destiny at any stage of that short trip ( this is freely translated). But I loved it! The cars went fast by, and we just cruised down to the intersection and turned of the road onto a smaller one leading to a small wineyard where they had already started a tasting, and we jumped in and had to pick up the slack of course, so we did 4 different winetastings in the same time the others did 2. Great start to the day!

Renting bicycles was a slight challenge when siggi wanted a basket in front of the bicycle and bikes for girls, which they didn’t have. They only had mountainbikes ( something we thanked god or whoever for at a later time when we realized that Stellenbosch is the place of a LOT of long steep hills). We ended up eating lunch at a place of great finesse, and simon took one look at the place and turned around starting to walk the other way ( the reason for this is that when a place looks like this in norway, its always associated with a bill that after done dining kicks you in the manparts…aka the balls). We took a look at the menu and told simon that this was doable, and he came after. We went in and had a magnificent lunch. I had the porkribs which tasted excactly like the Norwegian dish “ribbe”. And later that evening I had something called “smoked eisbein” with sauerkraut, that made me realize that I have had my Christmas eve dinner, just in separate portions. And this makes me happy!

We then continued our trip and visited some more wineyards and ended up at a small restaurant having a few beers ( very man like). But the service there was the worst ive ever encountered time wise, the waitress used almost 40 minutes just getting us drinks, in her defence the place was filled with people, but there was a lot of other waitresses handling their business quite elegantly, so we decided to pay and continue our journey back to the caravan camping for a short break before we went to town for dinner.

Christmas eve for me is a big tradition, where the family is gathered and theres delicious food either prepared by my mother, grandfather or aunt & uncle, since we take turns on hosting the Christmas dinner. I usually end up being the santa claus for my cousin Leon, which is 7 years old now, but have realized that this year the cape and responsibility must go to someone else. I love the food, the drinks, the mood, the talking about strange topics like “ men also know how it is to give birth, just ask him after the 2^nd day of Christmas when he is done in the toilet”. (for those who don’t get this joke ill explain it: its because us men have a bad tendency to overeat at Christmas, and making it a troublesome effort to get rid of it all a few days later, at least this is the case in our family).

In cape town all of us were in a ice cream shop after eating breakfast one day, when one of us managed to ask the south African man behind the counter while looking him straight in the eyes a delicate question which made all of us just fall apart in laughter. He said and I quote:” do you have BALLS?”. And the person didn’t even realize what had happened before the passing of a lot of time. I still smile when thinking about it!

We took our rental car to Gansbaai for sharkcagediving( yes mom, im sorry) and it turned out to be a little disappointing since there was very little shark to see, eventhough we were up on deck when the first group was in the water ( which jonjon was a part of) and saw a lot of sharks swimming around the cage, but they didn’t really get to see it because of really poor visibility.

Me , siggi and simon was on the sundeck waiting for our turn, and siggi laid down, so I did to, and fell asleep, only to be woken up by siggi screaming :” its our turn get up!” and we ran down, got some weights thrown over our shoulders and a mask shoved in our faces and away we went down in the cage, me with a wetsuit three sizes too small (at least that’s how it felt). The water was freezing cold, and the wetsuit I had on was 7mm thick, which is a lot! So down here its much cooler temperaturewize than Zambia!
Were down in the cage and waiting, and nothing seems to happen. Simons got his little net with him which in Norwegian is called a “ Håv”, and is for children the age of 6. He held on to this thing the entire trip as if it was an extension of his body. He even put it out of the cage at a certain point trying to catch a nonexisting shark, and small fish that he could use to attract the shark with, but without any luck.

Siggi at first had a blast, he said: oh this is perfect for me, I can say I was in a sharkcage, but I don’t get the sideeffect as to actually see one ( this is referenced to the day before when he was really in doubt of singing up for it, because he was really scared). He also said: “ this is completely against all the logic I have ever learned! When they shout “shark shark” they want you to go down and press your face against the bars, but the only thing im gonna do is to wanna go up! Yeah definitively, when they shout down im actually goin up, im outta here then”. I laughed so hard, and simon did too.

So siggi says: “ in three minutes im going up”, and after those three minutes he’s turning around to tell the guy managing the cage that he’s going up, and then they yell “shark go down!”. So we go down and press our faces to the bars and I see a HUGE tailfin, which I have never seen the likes of! And that was it. After that nothing really happened and we went up and the boat drove back to shore. We got served breakfast, lunch in their shop at shore, and snacks and drinks on the boat. But still it was a lot of money, but the boatride did it for me. I love being on the water and just slosh around. There was one of the other passengers that actually delivered his entire breakfast over the side of the boat. This guy was a pleasant gentleman, but maybe slight “posh” in the way he dressed and acted, so I smiled a little and looked at my buddies, and they just smiled for themselves. It’s a good experience to find out how your body reacts to different circumstances.

We Also went to danger point to watch the sun go down over the lighthouse, which was incredible, and the subject to a slight photosession. Siggi says that he gets cohersed into doing photoshoots, but the truth is that he loves it! He’s a shutterbug… no doubt about it!

Yesterday we went to Cape point! The most southern tip of South Africa! It was breathtaking, and really cool to see. Kris said that the beach there reminded him of the scene in inception when Leonardo Dicaprio gets washed up on shore to get “Saito”. I disagreed with him at first, but after following the pathway around the mountain I realized that it really did ressemble a lot more than I first thought. But now I have checked with google and it was Tanger in Morocco that had the beach( still kris is arguing that google must be wrong, and that they should get their shit together). But still it was cool to think that it was there it had been filmed.

After cape point we went to meet the rest of the Norwegian girls, and one of the girls from our program that had to leave because there were to many difficulties tied to here program. She came back for Christmas/summer holiday (since in cape town the summer has started). And so the dinner had a great mood to it at the restaurant “Mexican” in long street, which in many ways is the main street here in cape town.

Theres still a lot of time left here in south Africa, but im afraid that its gonna excessively fast, but ill try to keep the blog updated, and for those who like me as much as to actually read this blog, im sorry that it took so long to get a new addition out.