June 12: Thohoyandu

I landed in Johannesburg at 8:40 am Sunday morning (2:40 am Eastern) with five UVA students. A 15-hour flight is ridiculous, though I did get to watch four recently released movies and watch the sun rise over Africa on a camera attached to the plane’s tail. The weather was freezing – 2degC – and I spent most of the day half asleep since I couldn’t sleep on the plane and lost six hours. We met up with three students who had been here already and another group of students arrived later that evening, so we had a fairly large group who stayed the night and drove out together on Monday. There’s a pretty wide mix of students, mostly undergrad students, with majors ranging from civil engineering to finance to biology. Many have been working on their projects here for a while and have a lot of knowledge about the area and culture that’s been handy. One of the girls even attended my high school and graduated the year after me.

The drive from Johannesburg to Thohoyandu (translates to “head of the elephant” in Tshivenda, I’m told) was only about five hours and the weather was wonderful. South Africa uses the driving on the left system for its roads, which is still somewhat confusing (very glad I didn’t volunteer to drive!). For the first few hours I would look up at cars and wonder where the drivers were or look into the front seat of the car I was in and wonder why the person in the left seat didn’t have her hands on the wheel.

Thohuyandu proper is actually a fairly busy town, maybe the size of Norton, VA, but looks a lot larger because there are always people everywhere. The air is very hazy, presumably from constant bush fires and people burning trash, and everything is covered in red dust from the clay in the ground. There are KFCs and a lot of modern restaurants and shops. I was able to get one of the best veggie burgers I’ve ever had at a restaurant called Nandos (made of cornmeal instead of rice and wheat) and the Shoprite grocery store has veggie hot dogs (with fewer additives than all the brands I can find in the states). I don’t think I’ll have a lack of vegetarian-suitable food if I can get the motivation to actually cook. The food is pretty cheap too, an entire dinner on Monday costing only R44 (approximately $5.50) and some of the other students here said that they can easily live on $6 per day.

We are staying at a park off of a major road just outside of the city area called Acacia in little brick structures called chalets. They can accommodate three people each and have a tiny kitchen (with two electric burners and a minifridge). The complex was having some electrical problems all Monday night and Tuesday morning where the power went out many times for a few minutes each time, but it’s been fixed and hopefully we’ll have consistent heat tonight and I don’t have to worry about my hot dogs spoiling. I've heard stories about mischievous monkeys living around here, but I've yet to see one. There are some huge blue lizards, though, that live in the ceilings.

Some faculty from the University of Venda came today to give a short lesson on Venda culture and language. It’s definitely harder than German and I’ve had a hard time remembering much of it, but the structure seems simple. The other students here met with their partners from Univen and I got to speak with a man named Paul who is studying law and working with the ceramic water filter team. My orientation starts tomorrow, so I’ll get more details about the project I’ll be doing then.

I haven’t been able to pick up a modem for internet yet, so a group of us are using a computer lab at the university. Hopefully I’ll have a more reliable connection soon.