Arrival in South Africa - first weekend

A year ago, I applied to Volunta for a one-year FSJ and I have already arrived in South Africa.

Before my arrival, I could only imagine very little about South Africa. Even after the preparation seminar for all volunteers who travel to Africa with Volunta, you fly to an unknown country that you hear very little about in Germany. If you generally talk about Africa in Germany, you imagine rather poor people who still live in their tribes in the jungle or on the savannah and are happy despite poverty. And even though I have learned more about South Africa than others in Europe, both at school and at the preparation seminar, I still couldn't imagine exactly where my 3 fellow volunteers and I would end up. For this reason, before my departure, I made all possible preparations to protect myself from possible attacks and other criminal activities - like wearing a money belt under my clothes. In addition, my mother gave me some over-motivated tips and told me measures that she would take in my place.

On August 11th, the volunteers whose places of use are in Namibia and South Africa met at Frankfurt Airport to fly together to Johannesburg, where we 8 South Africa volunteers continued to Port Elizabeth (PE), where we also landed on the afternoon of August 12th and our 4-person group for the service station in Alexandria was warmly and lovingly received and equipped with the most necessary things, such as a new cell phone number and currency.

A little away from the airport, we then drove to a restaurant in the city and I caught myself being a little surprised that the people here look so 'normal'. The people here wear clothes that you also see in Europe and everything looks very westernized, not like South Africa from the imagination, but like a vacation spot, directly on the ocean a restaurant with a beautiful view, good food and a few palm trees on the promenade.

After the meal, we went to a supermarket outside of PE to buy the essentials for the next morning, and even the supermarket reminded me of an American one from the outside.

During the one-hour drive to the small town of Alexandria, we could observe the landscape with sand dunes, ostrich and buffalo farms, the tree-covered hills of the Addo Elephant National Park, and endless vastness, while the sun was shining and you could walk around in a blouse, even though it is winter. At this point, the 4 of us still thought that in winter we wouldn't freeze as much as other previous volunteers had told us.

When we arrived in Alexandria, our mentors showed us the most important places for the time being, the supermarket and the school (Alexandria Christian Academy), and then took us to our new home. We now live for a year with 4 people in a large house with a garden right next to the 'Quin Sculpture Garden'.

For the rest of the day, we unpacked our suitcases and each of us settled into our rooms, where there was a name tag for school and a towel embroidered with our names as a welcome gift.

As it got later and cooled down outside, we noticed that even though the sun shines during the day and you can walk outside in a blouse, it quickly gets cold in the evening and you even freeze in the house and put on one or two jackets, because the houses here are hardly insulated. Although we have portable heaters in the house, we do not use them because we have prepaid electricity that has to last for the whole month.

The next day we were released from church and had time to settle in. We went to the supermarket and came back from the supermarket with a 10 kg bag of rice and potatoes each, as these food items are cheap here, unlike dairy products.

We spent the rest of the weekend a lot of time together in our new shared apartment, as we only got to know each other at the preparation seminar two weeks before departure.