South Africa

Our final "real" stop of this yearlong adventure was South Africa.  From here, we headed to Mexico which means work for Mike and a familiar place for the rest of us.

We flew from Nairobi to Johannesburg and suddenly the Christmas season was in full swing:

South Africa has long been on my bucket list for many reasons:  the beauty, learning more about apartheid, the accent.  We went back and forth on whether it would work out during our year, but I'm so glad we made it.  We learned and experienced so much in our few days in Johannesburg.

We spent a day at Constitution Hill, once the site of the Old Fort Prison where both Gandhi and Mandela were imprisoned.  There was so much symbolism here and pieces of the old prison were left around the court building as reminders to keep moving forward.  On the front "Constitution Court" is written in all 11 languages of South Africa.

The architect who designed the building used a theme of "justice under a tree", the traditional African way.  So in the entryway are these wooden benches in a circle under metal sculptures designed to look like trees.

In the courtroom was this impressive South African flag.

Even more impressive up close because it's all hand beaded.

Parts of the prison were still there and open for tours.  This former prison building now housed an exhibit on Gandhi and his history in South Africa.  Much of what he endured in South Africa influenced his future life of peaceful resistance.

Always fun to see local students on their field trips.

Later in the day, another friend of Mike's arranged a "drive by" of some of the townships in Johannesburg.

This was more of a "middle lower class" neighborhood

But then this was a true township area--just thrown together tin shacks.

This was another township we saw in Cape Town.  Some townships didn't have electricity, but those who had it received it like this--a few poles with lines reaching out to each shack.

Turns out it was Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, and the kids have a tradition of dressing up as adults and asking for money.  Hard to get a good picure, but many of them would stuff their rears and chests and put on wigs.  Quite funny, but dangerous driving since they would run out into traffic asking for money.

A former Innotec team member, Darin Fey, and his wife Jonna, have been in the Jo'burg area for 4 years, helping with a number of ministries.  We enjoyed learning more about where they're working and especially enjoyed holding babies!

Darin is on the left and we're talking with Peet, the founder of Busetsa, a project that will employ local people to make basic pallet furniture.

We learned about furniture for a while but then the girls took off to the baby house on the property, currently home to about 6 babies.

Love the little photo bomber in this one!

Darin and Jonna are helping care for this little girl, Amo, who's 5 and has cerebral palsy.

This is where Amo lives.  Her mother, Anna, is 21.  Anna's parents have died, so she is attempting to finish college, care for her 3 teenage siblings, and learn how to care for a special needs child.  This is where they all live.  We were so impressed with Anna and her sisters who show such love to Amo, and Jonna and Darin have been a great support to them.

They also took us to a community center they've been helping with in the middle of a township.

The girls had fun playing netball.  Faith and Trina started playing and then the girls requested "the tall one" (Ella) and eventually played a game of 4 on 4.

The Feys live about an hour outside of Johannesburg in a game reserve so we spent one night at a lodge within the reserve.  Their everyday drive to and from school or the grocery store or wherever involves seeing giraffes and zebras and other game.  How cool is that?

Our fun little place within Tamboti Lodge

Darin recommended we take an early morning microlight flight over the game reserve with Johan.

What a fun,  peaceful ride.  We saw lots of cool animals, but the rhinoceros continued to elude us (the one animal we never saw on our game drives).

And as we drove back to the lodge, we saw our favorite:  ostriches with their babies.

We met up with one more of Mike's friends, Nadir and his wife and 4 sons, for lunch back in Johannesburg.  Afterwards they took us to the Lion Park to pet baby lions.

So yeah, they look cute, but they were a little feisty!  When they tried to bite and snap, the girls decided to keep their distance.

Nadir's sons were 8, 5, 3 and a baby so they had their hands full.  Mike took care of Mohammad, the 5 year old, in the lion cage.  Aww :)

The only picture we got of Nadir, along with his youngest and oldest sons.  His wife was so sweet and we hit it off right away.  In fact, we were so busy talking, I never got a picture of her!

At the Lion Park, they have caged areas for different game.  We took a nighttime ride with commentary about the animals.  The highlight was watching the lions get fed.

There was a big piece of horse meat on a chain. They let the lions out and the two males dominate.  The cubs kept trying to work their way in until the males would lash out at them.  It was all quite dramatic!

Then it was on to Cape Town.  Talk about a night and day difference!  Johannesburg was hot and dusty and truthfully, felt pretty unsafe much of the time.  Everything was fenced in and guarded.  Cape Town was cool and spacious and open.  But it also seemed a little more segregated with white areas and black areas.  (Of course, that's only my 5 day visit amateur opinion).

The day we arrived we spent the afternoon on The Strand, a beautiful beach

Win-win!  We flew on Sunday morning so we were hunting for a Sunday evening church service.  Came across Hillsong Cape Town--our third Hillsong visit on our travels.

We took a drive along the coast toward Hermanus, a cute town with great whale watching.  The drive was gorgeous and our whale watching was successful.  We sat for a while and wondered if we'd see any, but eventually we saw 6 or 8 in different areas.

Not great pictures since they were pretty far out.

The easiest thing to spot was the spray.

And the coolest part of all was when this big pod (yeah, I had to look that one up!) of dolphins went leaping past

When things got boring with whale watching, we were entertained by these little dassies that ran all over the rocks

So many pretty desert-type flowers in Cape Town.

We even came across some flamingos

Part of our stay in Cape Town was at this bed and breakfast outside of the city.  It was the home of a German couple who had relocated to Cape Town a few years ago.  She made a fabulous breakfast and the girls enjoyed the pool each morning before we headed out.

We also spent a day driving around the wine country.  So pretty!

This little town of Franschhoek, in the valley, was a really cute "Saugatuck-type" town

Not often we see Celia Rochelle's name as we're driving!

And speaking of names--we were surprised to see Lansers in South Africa.  In fact, even one of the Johannesburg airports is named Lanseria.

We spent another day driving around the Cape Peninsula.  This part of South Africa had gorgeous rocky coastlines but also some of the most beautiful beaches we've seen this year.

And then we visited Boulders Beach for the penguins.  We were not disappointed.  There were hundreds!  Cute from a distance, but that place was stinky!

The before and after of molting season

No, they're not penguins, but just as cute :)

And then a day seeing the sights in Cape Town:

The V & A Waterfront

We took a ferry trip out to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for many years.  Interesting to tour the island and the prison, but the highlight of our trip was this group of mostly ladies.  They were a senior citizen Muslim group from some other part of South Africa.  A couple of the women were in wheelchairs.  They were getting completely sprayed by the water and a couple even fell on deck, but they laughed uproariously through it all.  Such examples of just enjoying life.

The last part of our stay was in Muizenberg, a cute town at the top of the Cape Peninsula.  We loved this area.

The beach still had these old Victorian bathing huts.

Our German bed and breakfast couple recommended The Brass Bell.  We ate there twice because the food was great as well as the location right on the water.

We had an early evening flight to Mexico so for our final day I suggested a hike up Lion's Head which is the mountain across from the famous Table Mountain.  The website gave it a difficulty rating of 1-2 out of 5 so we figured it'd be a nice little climb for some exercise but we'd still be fresh for our flight.  Hmm, must have been Edmund Hillary who determined that rating!

It all looked so simple at the beginning

Beautiful views on the way up

OK, getting a little rockier and we knew there were some ladders and chains to help us along, but it's all still good

Hmm, I'm starting to feel a little vulnerable on the side of this rocky cliff

OK, yeah, I'm not going there...  This last part was climbing over rocks with big drop offs on either side.  Mike and the girls continued to the top but I stayed right here.  And we might be in the running for Worst Parenting of the Year.  Trina has outgrown all her shoes so she's more comfortable hiking in her flip flops.  Since I thought it was an easy climb I gave her the go ahead.  So she did this whole hike in her flip flops and did this final part of the climb in bare feet!

It started to cloud over but we had great views of Table Mountain

Let's play a guessing game: Which one is NOT comfortable with this?

We all made it safely down the mountain and then safely through our 36 hour Cape Town to Dubai to Chicago (yes, we were really that close to home for a few hours!) to Monterrey, Mexico flight.  The further along we go, the more we realize and appreciate God's hand of protection over our family.  There have been so many tragic events around the world this year and often they've happened in a place shortly after we've been there (Nepal/Beirut/Paris).  We appreciate your prayers for our family through this year and remind ourselves that God has our days numbered :)