Thursday, January 20, 2005
Day 18 Kgautswane Tour
20 January 2005
Hello World!!
It is finally my chance to write the blog! Well we woke up morning at a bright 6am. We had gone to sleep the night before to the sound of a goat and woke up to many roosters, but the goat was silently hanging from a tree. The news was brought to us that tonight we would have a feast and goat was on the menu! A few were lucky enough to see the slaughtering, and a few more saw some of the preparation. They even had the liver and soul cooked up in time for breakfast.
After breakfast we began our full day. Our first stop was a secondary school. Here we met with the principal and other faculty and learned all about the school. There was an assembly where we had the chance to greet the 200 students. They were excited to meet us and those of us with cameras were swarmed; they all wanted their picture taken.
(This was for all of you that may have been worried, proof I am still alive.)
We managed to leave the flock of students and headed out to meet Aubrey Johnson, a local farmer. Here we were greeted by another group dancing; they were amazing!
Then Aubrey told us about farming in that area and showed us some of his crop and animals. (He was the one that donated the goat for our coming feast.)
Our last stop was the cultural village. Here we got to see presentations of some cultural traditions such as seeing the chief, the witch doctors, and boys? initiation into becoming a man.
We then headed back to Clara's for the night. A pickup soccer game began equipped with tire goals and all. As the evening went on, more and more people began arriving. Chairs were brought out, and?. And as the saying goes we had to sing for out food. Our group sang a couple songs, some of the Kgautswane folks sang a few, and we even got to sing one together that they had taught us the night before. (Let's just say, their performances were much better than ours!) After a couple people spoke, including our professors, the feast began. We had tons of food and of course goat prepared different ways. The night came to a relaxing end with a lovely fire, a gorgeous starry night, and lots of time building relationships with some amazing people.
Well that's all for now, email me cause I love you bunches!
Melinda Dornbush