It begins..

We spent last weekend at the Shell Festival, ate our first Kudu burgers and learned a bit more about the culture. Jeffrey's Bay is a tourist area, known by most surfers for the Super Tubes (which we have yet to see). The primary languages here are Afrikaans and Xosa – we are both picking up as much Afrikaans as we can, but we haven’t made much progress. Almost everybody speaks English.

The town is segregated by color, despite the fact that color isn't a factor on where you live in Post-Apartheid Jeffrey’s Bay. The “colored area” is marked by clusters of small houses; some of which are built with scrap wood and tin roofing, but most of which are concrete. Many of them are owned by the government, but some are privately owned. In other cases, people build by the side of the road illegally and eventually the government just allows to them to live there. The base is closer to this neighborhood, but also a short walk away from the beach and all the downtown shops and restaurants. The white area, which was named during Apartheid when people categorized as black, white and colored lived separately, includes apartments overlooking the beach and privately owned homes (many of which are gated) on the other side of town.

Classes are going really well so far and we have started doing some work in the community, including cleaning up the litter in the streets and helping the locals with yard work. We will be posting more this week about our everyday life and our plans for outreach. Feel free to post any questions and we’ll answer them in our next post.