First day!

When I first knew we were going to South Africa, I wonder what our accommodations were going to be like. Here is a link to the website of the B&B we are staying at: http://www.hobiebeach.co.za/

First, the photos are really well done. Things look bigger and more luxurious than that are, but it is nice. In fact, if anyone is going to Port Elizabeth, I can give it a hardy recommendation. Fred, the proprietor is very friendly as well as his staff. Breakfast today was fantastic. We are staying near the beach/vacation area. Below is a shiny hotel near is. We are not staying here, but I thought it was a good contrast compared to a good portion of the day.

I am not going into great detail with this post as I need to digest some of the experience and put them in perspective, but the stark reality was the amazing difference between the haves and have not's. Don't get me wrong, we have some of the same thing in the states, but the degree of the disparity here is profoundly different. On the way to the school we are visiting, Emafini Primary School, I got to see first hand some of the shanty towns I had heard about. I did not get any photos that do it justice.

I may try to describe it better in another post. But imagine if you could fit the town of Lake Waccamaw, NC in a couple of square miles with no running water, no sanctioned electricity, and each dwelling being compared to the worse dilapidated storage buildings you see in Columbus county.
50%, give or take, of the students at the school we are visiting come from these areas.

Emafini is a warm caring school with great teachers. I was worried about how I could help. Well, I found out today they need my computer help. They have some student information software and some computers they would like get going. It's a mandate from their national Department of Education. I feel like I want to learn more about Emafini and it's students, or learners as they are called here, before I discuss more about them in my blog.

We also visited the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, great experience for a later post. They had a warning about monkeys, but disappointingly I didn't see any.