Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Bafana Bafana- a journal style

Today was Bafana Bafana day - so at noon everyone was supposed to go outside and honk horns and blow vuvuzelas (the horn that i'm holding in previous picture) They are quite loud and VERY popular. So at noon our office left with everyone else and stood on the street and cheered as cars drove past with south african flags on their cars, honking, and blowing vuvuzalas! it was insane and pretty much a block party. In Sandton, (another area of town) there was reported to be 60,000 people gathered for this at noon today. It was incredibly loud here, i can only imagine what it was like there!! Unfortunately my lock was off on my camera and it let me take pictures without a SD card =( soooo no pictures from today.
After a bit more work and calling every number in the phone book for Kodak to see if we can get free film development or camera donations - none of the numbers worked... that's usual here i found out. "It might work tomorrow"...lol.
Then Kiley and i headed to the inner city part and met with some guys that run a safe house there. I felt like i was in india again and surprisingly more comfortable there than any other part i've been in. It was heading towards the later part of the afternoon and so we kept our meeting time short for us to hightail it out of there. One of the guys mentioned that part of the city had a strange vibe today. That kind of information and random police roadblocks sent us the long way back to the office quickly. The safe house had a great space for the holiday program coming up.
Then on the way back we passed the Serbian Soccer team bus and their police escort.
I waved at them for you, cohort 7!!!
love,
april

5 comments:

Josh said...

Thanks.

fran said...

What is bafana bafana? Is it like a song banana, joanna, bafana? Why do we blow our horns at noon? And the fact that safe houses are rare is a scary thought; just so you know.

Anonymous said...

I was wondering if you would be so kind as to bring me back some World Cup memorabilia. I'll definitely pay you back. A jersey (I would love to have a Kaka jersey) or even just a WC vuvuzela would be awesome. Love you and sounds like you're having a fantastic time.

Christina said...

sounds so interesting. i'm glad you are getting so engaged! miss you

Anonymous said...

I am glad that you sent them our greetings!