Hey everyone, I leave today so I’m afraid this will be my final post on here. I’ve really had fun with the blog, so I think I’ll have to find some other crazy project to do so I can set up another one. But yeah, seeing as this is my last post, I thought I’d try and make it a bit special. So here we go!
5 Things that would have been good to know before I came to South Africa:
1. When driving in South Africa, “Stop” actually means “Keep Going. If you’re going to hit somebody - pedestrian or otherwise - swerve, beep the horn, shout something rude out the window, whatever floats your boat... just keep going.”
2. A five-seater car can be a 7 or 8-seater car if you use your imagination.
3. In the UK it tends to only be used sarcastically, but when a South African says “Shame!” they actually mean it. So if anything bad happens here, the standard response is “Ach shame!” and you leave it at that.
4. South African tenses are messed up. Here, “just now” is used like, “I’m GOING to do it just now,” not like we Brits would say “I DID it just now”. So if someone offers to give you a lift to the shopping centre “just now,” I’m afraid you won’t be meeting Matt Smith.
5. And “now now” means later....... yeah, we had trouble with that one too...
So that’s a few of the things I’ve learnt here, my advice to travellers is as follows:
1. If you’re meeting a South African anywhere and they say “now” AT ANY POINT in the conversation, make sure you get a specific time from them. It saves a lot of time, effort and sunburn as you wait outside Mugg and Bean, thinking they’re going to show up in the next five minutes. You’ll thank me an hour or two later.
2. Before you go anywhere in a large group, assess who are the smallest/most flexible members of the group and make sure you call shotgun before they do. It’s ok, they’ll be fine in the boot, so long as you remember they’re there.
3. Look both ways before crossing the road. Then again...again... and probably again. And just before you cross, you might want to take a minute to invent a third or fourth way to look and double-check there too. Remember, “Stop = Keep Going."
4. And don’t bring socks. You won’t use them.
As far as my final week in SA has gone, it has been so hectic that I’ve barely had time to feel sad that I’m leaving. Good old Cubañas threw an indoor beach party, so we dressed up for that. I don’t think we were quite expecting the sheer amount of sand that we found on arrival. There was a good 2-3 inches of sand covering the entire bar! Annoyingly I didn’t take my camera with me, but some of my friends took some good photos; I’ll try to get hold of a few of them instead. Savannah cider was holding a scratch card competition to win Savannah beach hats, so we ended up getting a lot of Savannah. Nobody won a hat, but we ended up with Savannah flip-flops, a Savannah beach ball, a towel, and even a Savannah stress ball (which was affectionately given to me... not sure what they meant by that?).
My other roommate, Natalie, left for Switzerland on Friday. I was working on Friday so she came into SANCCOB for a tearful (and slightly fishy-smelling) goodbye hug. When I went home to my now empty room, I found that she had decorated my bed with sweets and one of those Hawaiian flower-necklaces, as well as a short note that made me cry a little. I am going to miss Natalie a lot; she is such a fun person and was my first friend in SA. I miss coming home to French music playing on her iPod, especially French versions of Disney songs. We had fun singing them in two different languages at the same time at the dinner table. I hope you had a safe journey home Natalie! Have an awesome Christmas and I can’t wait to see you again! Je t’aime aussi!
I also did the final dive of my scuba diving course; we went diving in False Bay (Indian Ocean side, infinitely warmer than diving in the Atlantic side) and went inside a wreck. Very cool indeed! Some of the other divers saw an octopus and a cuttlefish – I must have been too busy trying to blow bubble rings or something. But yeah, got my qualification now and super happy!
I worked my last day at SANCCOB on Saturday, I got to be the supervisor on Pen 2! It was nice to be trusted with supervising a pen, but it was a little scary knowing that I was going to responsible for anything that went wrong. But other than some minor drama with the nebuliser early on, the day went relatively smoothly. I’m going to miss SANCCOB so much. I would recommend working with them to everyone! The staff are so nice to you, you get to meet and work with other volunteers from all over the world, and after each day I have worked there I went home filled with a huge sense of achievement – you get so much done in just one day and I always feel that I have made a difference. The African Penguin is now officially classed as “endangered” so the work SANCCOB does is really important to the survival of the species. Anybody out there looking to take a gap year? Spend some time working at SANCCOB. It is one of the best things you’ll ever do with your life.
I have had real fun here. I know I’ll find some time to come back again, but I’m sad to be leaving. On the other hand, I’ve run out of money, so I think going home is a good idea. But if anyone is expecting me to come home with a tan, I’m afraid you will be sorely disappointed. I’m British remember? I get sunburnt and then go pasty white again.
It’ll be really good to spend Christmas with my family and see my wife and friends again. I can’t wait for Christmas dinner, Christmas carols and Christmas weather (sorry South Africa, but 30-something degrees is not normal for Christmas. You’re doing it wrong). I’m almost looking forward to be woken up at 3am on Christmas morning by my little sister, asking me if I’ve got any scissors.
Sorry this post has been so long, I promise I won’t do it again. Thank you all for reading! See you soon guys x
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