Month One on the Race has wrapped up, and my team is in Nelspruit for debrief with the rest of the squad. In a few days we’ll be on our way to Swaziland for all-squad month, and I can’t wait to get there. I loved our time here in Phoenix/Durban, but it’s time to move on to our next location.
One of the things I love the most about my team is that we all love to laugh. Put the seven of us in a room together and hilarity will ensue within minutes. There were quite a few funny moments this month and I’ll do my best to describe a few. I hope you find them as amusing as we did.
-We had been in South Africa for approximately half an hour when the first incident happened. Kyle and I went to put everyone’s luggage in the shuttle/taxi that would take us from Johannesburg to Durban, when I tripped over a concrete parking barrier. I was still wearing my heavy backpack, which came over my head and pulled me down on top of the concrete thing. I slammed into it and literally couldn’t get up because the backpack was too heavy. Kyle had to pull me upright and his version of the story is even funnier than mine.
-The main method of transport is by taxi, and by “taxi” I mean a 12-passenger van that could have upwards of 20 people shoved in there. The drivers practically fly through town and are usually playing some kind of gangster rap at ear-shattering volume. Besides the driver, there’s a guy who rides in the taxi to arrange passengers like puzzle pieces. At one point, this guy tells the man sitting next to Gretchen to move so Danny can “sit next to his wife.” Oh my…
-One afternoon, Kaitlyn and I were sitting outside of the house, minding our own business, when about a dozen monkeys swarmed the house. They were climbing all over the roof and the house, so we ran inside to get our cameras. When I came back, one of the monkeys grabbed my pocketknife from the ground and ran away with it. It jumped onto the neighbor’s roof and dropped the knife into his yard.
-The thing with South African English is that some words mean completely different things. One day at lunch Zach asked for a napkin. Our hosts found it hysterical because that “napkin” is their word for diaper. Another amusing one is “honking,” which while to us it means beeping a car horn, to them means “smells.” So if you were to say “someone’s honking outside,” it means “someone outside stinks.” (Their word for beeping a car horn is “hooting.”
-Our ministry hosts had a gate outside their front door, which locked with a padlock. One day we left for the morning and left the keys under a bucket outside, meaning we had locked them out of the house and wouldn’t be back for a good five hours. Oops.
-Danny and Jarred have team phones for talking with AIM, and about halfway through they had to buy more minutes. Danny went to take care of it, but there was a lapse in communication and he accidentally bought electricity credits. We didn’t know this until he spent three days trying to add the credits to his phone.
So that’s a glimpse of some of our funnier moments from Month One! I’m sure we’ll have plenty more as the year goes on.
I won’t have internet in Swaziland, but I am still hoping to be fully funded before leaving Africa! I need 21 people to donate 100 dollars for that to happen – if you are interested in making a tax-deductible donation, please click the “support me” tab on the left!
