black is beautiful

hey guys! molo oosisi, oobhuti! well, its been a month in cape town now and i figured i haven't yet written an entry to the blog. so its about time. things are going pretty smoothly i would say. i feel like i've lived here for long now and every day routines make settling in to new home easier. lot of emotions actually so where should i start from? for matthias, ida and marinka, who should be arriving in cape town within next week, take waterproof shoes and clothes with you! :) thats the most important thing, otherwise you can buy everything here, also nice cheap clothes, so no need to carry huge luggage. cape town is very modern, no doubt about that. so if you come here for 3 months and are eager to see "real" africa quickly, you will be disappointed. just to take it easy and slowly, find your way around. i've been very happy to join in the gym. i so believe that regular physical exercises help to balance your mind also. :) here its very cool, the trainers for every aerobics class are "original", meaning the yoga teacher is hindu, hip-hop teacher black guy, kickboxing teacher from japan etc. very cool and authentic! :) until now the most interesting things and days have been visiting antonella's creche (kindergarden) in the black township philippe, visiting cape town sos children's village, hiking in simon's town and around stellenbosch. :) its definitely hiking season now, weather is perfect for that!

our project though is going very slowly i must say. so not many exciting news from that front. it started up nicely but now we are pretty much waiting for some people to agree upon meetings so we could actually start doing something. lets see! well, warm greetings to everyone! :) see you!
aire (the estonian)

Some pics...

On the plane...flying on the Sahara Desert...destination Cape Town!


At Muzeinberg in my 1st wk!


Muzeinberg from uphill.

My simple, humble, freezing room!

Our meeting place...the kitchen!

June 26, Destination: Cape Town, and I did it!

I've been in Cape Town for 3 weeks already! Time is flying so fast!

I was so much excited to come here to Cape Town! At last I was going to realise the wish I had of doing community work abroad. At the same time I was feeling anxious for various reasons including the fact that I had to plan all the journey almost on my own and that I was going to travel all that long distance all alone. Besides, I knew that I was coming to a foreign place without actually knowing anyone in particular and so I was concerned about the whole journey and experience. However everything went well thanks god!

In order to come here, I had to fly from Malta to Munich, then to Frankfurt, then directly to Cape Town. At least I did not get lost in the airports hehe! Well, the weather was quite fine and all in all I had three amazing flights. I was looking all the time from the little window and saw amazing views from up there. However, the 12hr flight to Cape Town was so much long! I never imagined that it was going to take so long. Luckily I could watch some movies and listen to music on the plane and so it was not that boring. I also chatted with the guy sitting next to me. He was from Spain and was going to Cape Town to study for 2 weeks. I tried to take a nap from time to time but it was not so much comfortable to try to sleep on the plane.

It was still dark when we were approaching Cape Town and it was also raining. I could barely see anything from the window except the street lights. Just before landing, we flew over a township and so I saw the little shacks. It was here that I realised that we had actually arrived at Cape Town. I said to myself, "Here I am, let the adventure begin." We landed at Cape Town International Airport few minutes before 5am. I entered the airport, managed to get the Visa, went for the luggage and found Jerome, the taxi driver, waiting for me at the airport. He took me to the office where I had booked the accomodation but it was closed as it was still early. So I bought a coffee and a sim card in the meantime. Eventually I went to the office when it was opened and I took a nap on the sofa there while I waited to sign the contract :) Well I settled all the papers and they took me to the house in Bedford Rd where I was going to spend the 9 weeks.

I put my stuff, took a shower and went to the SAEP office. I met Jane and Norton, Isabel and all other volunteers. Afterwards I visited the townhip and the creche for the first time. I was somewhat shocking to see the township actually and the people living there. It was raining a lot and so water was dropping from the roofs of the little shacks and there were lots of pools in the streets. There's a big contrast between Observatory and Philippi Townhip, and guess a much bigger contrast from the Centre. I met Phelisa, the manager of the creche, the teacher, and saw some of the kids. They are so adorable! They shouted "abelungu" that is "white people" when we were coming in! Arriving back home, I took a long deserved nap and woke up in the evening and some of the other volunteers had come for dinner, to chat a bit, to play cards and have a laugh together.

Overall the house is suitable though it is simple, a bit dirty and with small cockroaches in the kitchen but I'm getting used to them. The swimming pool is just a couple of metres long and don't think we will use it as it is so cold. However the athmosphere in the house is fantastic! The house mates for the time being are Heloise and Pauline, two French girls who are also volunteers with SAEP - the same organisation I am working with. There is also Eva from Holland who is studying here. The three of them are great! They welcomed me and made everything much easier for me especially in the beginning. There is also Fritz who is studying music here but didn't chat for long with him.

Cape Town is an amazing city surrounded by enormous mountains and next to the ocean at the same time. We live close to Devil's Peak and it's like there is something mysterious about this mountain, really. The weather here is so much cold! I never imagined that it was going to be so cold. I should have packed more heavy clothes however I'll try to buy some. I also need to get used to all this rain and think twice before washing and hanging out my clothes as it's the second time already that my clothes are out in the rain!

Places I've visited so far:
Muzeinberg Bay and Kalk Bay - Sat 28 - with some of the volunteers, then went to a Olimpia Cafe and ate delicious mussles :) Then we went uphill and saw an incredible view of the coast with so many waves.
Boulders Beach - Tue 1 - with Jane, Celeste and Michael, and saw the cute little penguins!
I also went to a chinese restaurant with Eva and Pauline, and to a pub nearby with some of the volunteers.

Diet in SA mainly consisting of:
coffee - one tin in one week!
bread - there is such a big variety here!
pasta - almost in every dinner
exotic fruit - they are so much cheap here esp pinapples
chocolate - the other girls are chocoholic too!

I like dinner time especially when some other volunteers come to our house and we have dinner altogether.

On Mon, Tue and Wed I went to Sachigomso creche. The kids are great indeed! I play with them, dance and sing. I also help out while they have their food. I feel love with the creche, with the kids and with everyone and everywhere! In the coming weeks I'd like to do some activities of my own with the kids as for now I had just integrated in the daily plan. Refurbishment in the roofing of the creche is also planned. I am so much enthusiastic about working in this creche. Then on Thu and Fri I stayed at the office and did some filing, searched for some activities to do with the kids and did some other filing.

Sat 5 we did a farewell party for Eva here in the house. It was nice to meet new people. Anfd I will miss Eva and her joyful character.

This was my 1st week...more info of the 2nd and 3rd week here soon ;)

goeie môre, observatory!

weather update: it's sunny again, the clouds have vanished with the rain, the view seemingly extends up to the stellenbosch mountains...


after a nice little welcome 'kuier' for rebecca yesterday, the 6 already south african glennies have made their way to their offices, at least i suppose so. well, 5, to be honest. dear aire is struck down with the flu and as such i am enjoying (more or less) solitude in our attic office which is just being heated up massively by the sun.
so, what have we done throughout the last week? basically: wine tasting. with it: assessment of joint bodies on fair trade certified wine farms. to give some background hints on the encrypted language: joint bodies are a prerequisite in order to be certified fair trade. it's an assembly consisting of workers and the management (more workers though), and members of it are being elected by all the workers. this body first and foremost decides what to do with the fair trade premium but also aims at close collaboration and exchange of ideas and knowledge with the top level positions (note: this is in case of hired labour organisations, such as wine farms are. for small farmers, like the heiveld cooperative in nieuwoudtville, members of the cooperative form the joint body).


accordingly we went with lazarus pick-up, which fortunately has a tarp over its back - we already thought we'd be going on the bakkie in the pouring rain...he likes giving out information in sparse portions - exploring the western cape. first to a farm close to worcester, then to a conference in stellenbosch where noel from EMG was giving lots of background information on the heiveld cooperative and then to another wine farm close to paarl. all along the way: snow-capped mountains.
the basic idea of the trips was to find out whether the joint bodies will need more training on the fair trade standards and the issue itself. and yes, there obviously is the need. especially with those big estates not everything is working according to plan...so this was a good excercise on seeing what's happening on the producer side of fair trade.


we also went to nieuwoudtville, though only for one day on monday, as there was a board meeting of the farmers. we got to know noel from EMG and his wife bettina who's having her own NGO, indigo, and it seems there a quite a few possibilities to become active there. all we need to figure out now is WHEN we will be going there, in order not to miss the wild flowers! everybody promised us that because of the heavy rains, it will be 'mindblowing'.

this week we'll be starting with a market research about recognition and awareness of fair trade and fair traded goods in south africa (there are fair traded wines in the supermarkets, for instance). this will be together with arianna, the intern from FTSA (fair trade south africa), which is an NGO with offices just down the road and with the goal to promote and establish fair traded goals in SA. doesn't that sound good?

bw: aire and i are now residents of observatory. this is where we reside:

A perfect GLEN day

... should defenitly be spent here! Aurore and I just got aware of the fact that GLEN already spread to South Africa - and actually in a quite comfortable manner. So what we are doing next weekend in case of sunshine is out of question ... but wait ... the beach OR the Country Club?

first day at EMG

outside the rain is pouring down while aire and i are sitting, having cold feet, in our OWN office in the EMG-building. we have the first (which is also the top floor) all for ourselves. currently, we are busy reading an article about the certification error the FLO (fair trade labelling organisation) made concerning rooibos tea which leads to actually UNfair pricing and what EMG proposes to ameliorate (nice new word we just learned) this situation. it seems there are a lot more interesting facts to rooibos tea than expected...!

but let's start from the start: after another nice soul from stellenbosch (where we spent our first week acclimatising, wine tasting, feasting and freezing) brought us to cape town, we first cleaned up our apartment, sublet to us for two weeks by an aquaintance from - again - stellenbosch. then we made our way from rondebosch, where we are staying currently, up to observatory, approximately 3 km on main road. it's a nice daily excercise, and if all goes wrong we can try and use the minibustaxi. 'if all goes wrong': i.e. the abovementioned rain. of course we got into another of these extreme showers this morning, and consequently arrived all wet in the office, though we had a big family umbrella we found in the apartment. doesn't help against wet feet though.

so, what are we at? lazarus, our coordinator, is particularly new to the subject of fair trade himself, for he has taken over stephen's tasks only two months ago. so we learn together. pressing issues are a business model as well as the already mentioned pricing issue. apart from that, our first trip to niewoudtville will most likely be already next week. lazarus needs to go there anyway and offered to take us on the back of his pick-up. like that, we can save massively on transportation costs. chances might be he will go further up north and return after one week, so we could stay in nieuwoudtville and he might pick us up on the way back. like that, we could start collecting data for the niewoudtville-documentary and see what else we could possibly do there - and then decide whether and for how long we want to return. on the other side, a more thorough impact study will be needed, in order to make the pricing issue study more comprehensive. that would however need a lot more preparation than the time we're having now.

apart from that, we'll need to stock up on rain boots, hot water bottles (office and home ones) and maybe some warm hats. the weather forecast is not promising at all..