Sabie

I woke up from my sleepin (to the astonishingly late 830am) and went to meet up with the owner of the backpackers, who also happened to be a minister. He had offered to take me with him to the church services he does in local township s when I mentioned i was interested in seeing more of rural african culture an life. The first service he performed had a congregation of abou 30 people, where the women sit on one side of the room (not a church, just an abandoned room) and the men on the other.



I had to stand up an introduce myself, and everyone came and shook my hand. I asked permission to take pictures, which they were all happy to allow, since most had never seen a digital camera before and liked seeing their faces appear immediatly after the click of a button. The sermon was conducted in afrikaans with another minister translating into zulu; no one spoke a word of english. During the sermon there were several pauses for singing, which was beautiful. I mantain the opinion that black people were blessed with infinitely better voices an rythm than whites, since there were no instrument and just beautiful indigenous music, made all the better because i didnt understand the words.

After that service we went to another, as the minister volunteers his time to these people and tries to fit in as many townships as possible. The next one was filled with more children, and again i stood and spoke, and again they all shook my hand.

I managed to record the singing on my phone, but until i learn to connect my spare phone onto a computer, and then stick it on the world wide web, you'll have to take my word for it, that they all sing like angels.


















That night, spur of the moment i decided to go caving. The guide took me into these beautiful caves with nothing but a candle to light our way through. You could see the calcium growing on the rock walls, and hear the trickling of the water, that came from the moisture in the soil. Everynow and then youd see a bat fly past the candle, and hear the squelching noise of the mud on the rock floor as you walked, crept, crawled and even slithered around. Eventually we blew out our candles to just listen, and had a mudfight in the pitch black of the caves. I love any excuse to be covered head to toe in mud, so I had a blast crawling through the tiny holes that led to huge caverns.