Report from Strand, SA

Dear friends,

I'm here at PC08 at ComputerLand, the most affordable internet cafe in Strand. Right now the Rand (SA's currency) is hanging at right around 10 Rand to the US dollar. This is very good for me, and also good for the country my friends tell me. It makes tourism and travel like mine quite affordable. With the exchange so near 10, prices can easily be calculated in my head by just moving the decimal point one place. Some things here are are quite close in price to what I'd find in the states, but some things such as food, are quite a bit cheaper. Paying $3-5 for a full restaurant meal would not be uncommon. But I don't really care to dwell on economics.

From the moment I was picked up at Cape Town International Airport I have been whirled into another world. There is so much familiar, and yet so much that is absolutely mind boggling. Every time that I hook my GPS unit to my camera and see the coordinates load, I almost do a double-take. The coordinates have a south component rather than a north. Summer is just beginning rather than winter starting to creep its way in. In the airport restroom i was somewhat surprised to turn around from washing my hands and find a young man waiting with a paper towel ready torn for me. This was the opening salvo for the barrage of new racial and cultural experiences that has intensified in the ensuing days.

In the morning i'm getting used to a first meal consisting of tea with milk (the south African way), rusk (a dipping food that lives somewhere in the divide between biscotte and short bread), and Weet-bix or Tiger B-fast. So far I've enjoyed all the foods that I've been given. Biltong is a jerky like product very popular in the country, and for good reason. Boereworst is a lovely sausage served hotdog style in a bun with your choice of chutney, tomato sauce (ketchup), or mustard. Or maybe it will be served up with a gravy made of tomatoes (say it toe-ma-toe) and onion. Overall the food doesn't seem to venture often into the truly spicy side, but there is a nice assortment of flavors, and Indian curry or sweet chilly are probably the most common "spicy" flavors.

In the past few days I've met such an array of people. Andrew is a fighting coach who teaches jujitsu and would someday love to fight UFC. He is a passionate worshiper of God and only wants to fight if God wants it. Dean is a jolly round man of Afrikaner background who has an infectious smile and spirit. When he greats you he hugs you powerfully and says "blessings, blessings". Jean Baptiste is a Rwandan Tutsi with complexion so dark that even his eyes are dark colored. He escaped the killing as a boy when his mother hid him in a hot brick oven. Kate is a fair skinned English girl and Heinrich is a man with light brown complexion and a heart so very large. Mark is from the UK and moved here to be with his fiance, and Stefan, who is about to take his law exams is a true kindred spirit and in the course of an evening felt almost like a brother. This is the delightful cast of characters who are populating the my time here.

And Cape Town and it's environs are breathtaking! I've gotten to have a wonderful non-touristy tourist experience. Shawn, my host, was scheduled to speak in Hermanus a small town about an hour and a half south of Strand. He took me along for the ride, and what a ride! California's Highway 1 may still hold the place as the most beautiful drive of my life, but it is now facing stiff competition! A serpentine road writhes along the coast with light colored palisade cliffs rising on one side of the road and the deep blue ocean stretching away on the other. Large colorful Protea flowers jumble along the roadsides. Hermanus, our destination, is a quaint seaside town known for its excellent whale watching - known as some of the best land based views in the world. And I was in for a treat. Although the whale season is well advanced, i was able to see a whole handful of whales swimming, raising their tails, and breaching playfully from the cerulean and ultramarine waters. The powerful mammals sank back into thewater with a massive splash of white raging foam. It was one of the most beautiful sights of my life.

Shawn preached that night to a youth group. His message was mixed between English and Afrikaans. Though I can only understand a few works of this Dutch infused language, for some reason it doesn't really sound foreign to me. I feel so completely at home here, that it doesn't seem strange at all. I have been spending time with family members, really and truly. There is a bond that I'm always amazed at - instant and more complete than that which takes years to form much of the time. With brothers in sisters in Christ there is a connection that spans oceans, miles, cultures, and continents. Humorously I've found that Shawn has often told people the story of our unusual meeting in rural Arkansas. So now when I'm introduced, it's often as "remember the guy in the story that I told you?" Apparently there are some cultural things that I was unaware of upon that first meeting. When Shawn was told that there was a man who was "traveling between California and Florida" he immediately thought of the vagrants in South Africa. When a person truly has no place to stay and is on the road and looking for hand outs, it's common to say that you're "traveling between this place and that place". He thought that I was like this and almost refused to meet with me. There was something in his spirit that told him to do opposite of his first impulse... and the rest is history.

Shawn is back to pick me up so I'll be signing off. Many more stories to come. Love to all.

More pictures posted here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021316&l=e3236&id=83500385