Goodbye Durban, Hello Cape Town!

It was a hectic morning! I was really tired from the lack of sleep, and the commotion of making sure I had packed all of my things and was ready to go when Roy came to get us. Zola was still in the hospital which was quite unfortunate, but how things go sometimes I guess. The boys all woke up to say goodbye, and Zotwa the maid was even upset to see me leave. She doesn’t speak a whole lot of English, so that was really sweet to me. I said goodbye to my dad Vusi as well, and then we were off. Miles was already with Uncle Roy. Even though I was really excited for Cape Town and Durban wasn’t even that nice of a place, I felt oddly upset that I was probably never going to see this place again. It was like a bittersweet farewell.

When we were in the car, Miles happened to lightly mention that he didn’t even know where his iphone was and that he would look for it later. Since I am pretty much nuts about making sure I never leave anything behind, I told him that he had better check for it now before we were too far way. Sure enough, he didn’t have it, and after making a call to his host families house, found out he left it in his room in Durban. That sucks! By this time, we were already practically to the airport—today was the opening day of the brand new airport, the old one had closed at midnight, and this new building was much further away—and we didn’t have time to turn back around. It was too late. So, the only thing he could do was to call our local coordinator and have her mail it to him in Cape Town. He was very upset, and I don’t blame him. I would have been too. We arrived to yet more drama at the airport.

Because my travel agent hadn’t booked my flight under one reservation number, I had to pay $110 USD for my extra luggage….Miles had EXACTLY the same amount and weight of luggage as me, and didn’t have to pay anything. I was extremely mad. Miles wasn’t in the best of moods either, so we decided to have some tea before we got on the plane to calm down. We got on the plane, and Miles soon realized that he didn’t have his passport anymore; of course!!! The airline wouldn’t let him off of the plane, even though he was almost positive where it was at and could have ran out and came back within two minutes, and the plane hadn’t even taken off yet. They told him he could either take his stuff off the plane as well, or wait until he got to Cape Town to sort it all out. He obviously chose the latter, and was in a terrible mood the whole way there. What bad luck today! Our flight was only two hours. As soon as we landed, we had to head to the South African Airways help desk to get his passport worked out. During the plane ride, somebody from the airline in Durban sent a “text message” to the plane saying that they had found Miles’ passport. In Cape Town, they told us that they would send it on the next plane to CT and it would be there the same day, and he could pick it up tomorrow. Everything was of course running on South African time, so this whole process took nearly two hours. Auh!

We arrived to an extremely warm welcome from Avril and Marion, our medical director and local coordinator, which was so nice. They were both completely opposite of our medical director and local coordinator in Durban. We had both heard such great things about them and were very excited to get to know the two of them. We dropped our stuff off at our host family’s house and got to meet Lauren, a nursing student on the internship with us from Boston. We had emailed back and forth with her a lot before arriving, so we were excited to meet her. She was so sweet! We were immediately taken to Avril’s house to have an introductory meeting. There is an official “Cape Town” song that is the goofiest, and both Avril and Marion got up and danced and sang the song to us. It was so cute and welcoming; they are a complete crack up together. I’m positive we will have a lot of fun with them. We got our new South African cell phones, maps of the city, program information etc. It was really nice. We went back to our home stay and had dinner with our host mother Joan. She lives alone in a fairly large house—her husband had passed away a few years back and she was left on her own. She is the sweetest lady, and a very good cook. There was an intern from the previous month, Ryan that was here in Cape Town for another two days. He lived n the same house that Miles’ is staying in, so they are temporary roommates. He still had his rental car, so invited us to go with him to a place called Camps Bay that evening. We accepted, and went to the nicest restaurant /bar called Blues, right on the waterfront. Camps Bay is an amazing beach and city front, which is very popular and well known for being so nice. Since Lauren and I had already ate, we just had some dessert and drinks. We couldn’t see too much of the waterfront because of how dark it was, but Ryan told us that he was bringing us back in the morning, so we could get an opportunity to see it before he left. I am feeling very excited about Cape Town and can’t wait to see more!