10th-17th week - Everyone is doing badly in the township

When the students stood in the school auditorium on Monday, suddenly nobody knew where the box and the projector for the morning singing were. It turned out that there was a break-in on Friday. So the police were at the school throughout the day to investigate the crime. However, this was not the only theft we have experienced recently. For example, there was a break-in at our mentors' in the middle of the day or a teacher's laundry was stolen from the garden. But I will come back to another event later. (Although I have already heard a bit about the crime here, nothing has happened to anyone so far, and it is also not common to hear about crimes. As long as you walk around with common sense and do not stay in dark alleys at night, nothing should happen. Besides, there are also places in Germany where you shouldn't stay.)

Fortunately, the rest of the week was calm and on the weekend, we went to the location (a township, but the houses are made of solid walls instead of corrugated iron) with two students after church. We met many of our students there. We only walked a few streets, but the people live relatively normally there and you can't tell by looking at most of them whether they come from a township or a more upscale residential area. The atmosphere there is familial and reminiscent of village life in Germany. People sat outside and the children played on the street with each other and ran around with smartphones and tablets. In the part of the town where we live, on the other hand, everyone stays to themselves on the weekends and rarely appears on the street. The people in the location greeted us and were happy when we tried our newly learned Xhosa.

On Friday, right after school, we took a taxi to PE with other volunteers, from where we went to the Oktoberfest. Beer benches were set up, there was beer, and after such a long time, we all looked forward to a pretzel and a Leberkäsbrötchen. However, the probably biggest difference to the German Oktoberfest were the costumes, which were mostly made up of short shorts, suspenders, and knee socks. However, there was a band from Germany that also played German songs, which we could sing along to loudly.

The following weekend, we went to Kenton-On-Sea with the volunteers from PE, where we were taken to our cottage by boat for the next two nights. On the other side of the river was a nature reserve where we could observe a rhino family in the evening.

The next day, we went swimming in the river and after three people took a shower, unfortunately, the power was used up, so we didn't have electricity or water to cook for the rest of the evening, as the water pump also did not work.

When we had survived the last night well, we were picked up in the morning by a boat and taken back to Alexandria.

On November 12th, friends from the church took us with their pickup to two game reserves. At the first one, we could see giraffes, impalas, nyalas, waterbucks, bushbucks, black rhinos, and a white antelope.

In the second reserve, we were looking for one of the leopards, but we couldn't find one because they hide in the trees.

We found a tame bushbuck in the garden of a hunting lodge, which even let us pet it. But the trip was worth it because of the view at the hunting lodge.

On a Wednesday, when we had another Afrikaans lesson, suddenly a woman stood in the kitchen and asked if there were a few boys here to whom our teacher had given a cookie tin, brandy, a radio, and a wallet. It turned out that 3 boys had broken in while we were in the house. The scariest part was that none of us heard or noticed anything.

On December 6th, it was already the last day of school for the students. The day was used as a 'fun day' just like in Germany, where many sweets were eaten and games were played. In the evening, we grilled with the older students at school, watched a movie, and stayed overnight.

On Saturday, when the teachers and we also started our holidays, we went with the staff to a farm stall for breakfast. We exchanged gifts and sat together comfortably to chat before going on a 5-week vacation.