Home Away from Home

After our safari, we took the Baz bus (backpackers bus that lets you get on and off where you please), to Pietermaritzburg where Jim and Chris, the executive directors of Edzimkulu, picked us up. We drove to their home 5km outside of a small town (Underburg) in Kwa-Zulu Natal province of S Africa. This will be our home for the next 5 months! It is a beautiful part of the country, right near the Drakensburg mountains. The property is overlooking the Mzimkulu river, and made up of a few small cottages. There are 2 girls volunteering with us for a while, Sharmin and Laurel. They are fantastic ladies and we have lots of fun together - although we outnumber Russ quite a bit.
On Monday we headed to the village (Ndawana) for the first time.

There are about 5000 people spread out over about 40 km. People live in mud huts, and there are a few schools, churches, and tuck shops. There are goats, sheep, cows, and wormy dogs wandering free-range, which makes for some interesting times as we bounce over the pot-holed dirt roads. The goats are adorable, and (if I can't have a pangolin or a bushbaby) I would like to bring one home. Anyway, we had met three of the women in the village previously, so that helped. Most people in the village speak Zulu or Xhosa, with a few speaking Basotho. The village is lively and very pretty...mountains in the background,rolling green hills, women carrying plump little babies wrapped onto their backs and water buckets on their heads. It will all be hard to capture in a photo...