South Africa Trip

After a slow to non-existing internet connection, to my flash not coming off my camera, to my laptop busting and having to take it apart to get my files off of it, I finally have all my pictures from my trip. I have uploaded about 200 of them to Flickr, along with the full sizes

I’m starting to realize how far reaching globalization is reaching. When you are in the mountains of Swaziland and there is a cell phone tower in the middle of avocado trees, you start to think that something is up. Everything is being put on the same page. Culture and uniqueness is going out the window.

Rachel and I are just starting to wind down from our trip here. We leave in two days. The last week here without Charity and Shane has been a lot more finding out what Hands at Work does as a whole. My IT skills have been used occasionally here in the office so I’ve been

The story in the bible about Jesus washing feet is about servant hood. However it is kinda of outdated. No one washes each other’s feet here or in Canada. When we tell the story we constantly try to make washing feet somehow relevant. I’ve had my feet washed 3 times in the past at youth

I’m writing this a week later, so I will probably skip over a lot of things without thinking. The rest of the week in Swaziland was a slower pace but we got a lot accomplished. Shane and the grandchildren filled in a 3 foot deep hole that was dug for a new water hole. It

The last few days have been a lot slower pace. Jayme and Heather left back for South Africa. Jayme and her husband Lynn were our contacts to get here and Heather works for Global and is up here on a 6 month leave doing some video work for Hands at Work. We drove in off

One of the major things that threw me when I got here, to Africa, was not even being remotely prepared for the awkward situations I would be in. I’m a fan of awkward usually. The Office is one of my favourite shows and I thrive on making people’s faces go red. This kind of awkward

On Wednesday we went to a garden that is being started up by Nomsa and her volunteers. The garden is probably 75 meters by 50 meters and we helped put a fence around it. They were waiting for a pipe to be put in so they could get water from the top of the mountain.

The internet here moves at a lightning fast 30 bytes a second, so I e-mailed this to Ron for him to post for me, we head back to South Africa tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll be able to get some more posts up, possibly some pictures but I don’t know, but I have lots of great

The last two days we spent at Kruger park scoping out animals in their natural environment. We saw elephants that were going to attack us. A leopard. Giraffes. Monkeys and Baboons. Water Buffalo. Hippo. Tons of Impala. Crocodiles and a slew of other animals. It was brilliant and majestic. It is one of the best

You know when you are watching TV and you get this idea of what Africa is like. Houses made out of garbage, dirt roads, people walking/sitting around everywhere. Today was a day like that. It blew my mind. I went with a nurse named Tulee to do some home based care visits today, and everything

Today was a great day. Rachel and I spent the day with the children at K2, a preschool for orphaned children. We ate some pape (boiled corn meal) with a soup like dip for it. The children were beautiful. It was hard to imagine none of them had parents. I sat in class with Cindi

We are finally here. While its 10am in Sarnia, its 4pm here and we are all exhausted. Charity and Shane lost their main big piece of luggage and found out that it is all the way in Detroit. It never ever made it at all along the way. We’re going to try to get it

Well, we have started our trip. Rachel and I are sitting in the Chicago airport waiting for Charity and Shane to arrive (which we gave them 40% chance of making it on time). It wasn’t without our mishaps and problems getting here. The long wait on the Bluewater Bridge, the traffic jam in Port Huron