The Fires of Africa

Every winter, all of the old grasses are burned. It does two things, it kills all the bugs that are living in the weeds and it allows the new tender vegetation to grow faster and be more healthy. While the burning is going on though, it seems like all of Africa is on fire. All the smoke makes for some spectatular sunsets.

Is this what you woud call the "mass transit" system for South Africa?

We went to visit some friends in Swaziland a few weeks ago, as we were driving down the highway, we saw this cool hair salon. I figured Emily would be most interested, and this is a very nice one. I'll post some pictures of the "regular" salons a bit later. Then as we drove on, we saw these guys taking a cow to market. It's all tied down tight so it can't jump out, I guess it knows what's in store, wouldn't a nice hamburger taste good right now?

Swaziland

We try to do service whenever we can. Recently, we came acroiss a service opportunity in the community. They have here what they call "Tuck Shops". a tuck shop is a [very] small store maybe 8' X 8' to 16' X 16' square where they sell bread, soft drinks, potoao chips, tobacco, candy, sandwiches etc. So we brought the full time missionaries and did the job It turned out quite nice. The tuck shop owner gave us sandwiches and drinks befre we left.

World Cup Soccer

I can't tell you how exciting it was and how much fun we had at the FIFA World Cup Soccer Game at the Moses Mobhida Stadium in Durban on Saturday. Truly, a once in a lifetime experience. I'm not sure who Moses Mobhida was, but he must have quite a guy to have a soccer stadium named afer him. Soccer is a very big sport here and all throughout the world.

I thought it might be nice to see the local shopping mall. This is a picture of the Newcastle Victoria Mall. It has about 15 stores (all of which close at 5:00 PM and at 2:00 PM on Saturday). Interestingly enough, when the mall is open, there are no lights on so it's difficult to tell if anyone is working. It's been an adjustment to say the least. Most of you know that I'm not a big "mall shopper" anyway, but this one is a real beauty.

We are doing well here in South Africa. We have been busy and are enjoying our work. It's getting cold here with nights around 35 degrees. They tell us the winters get very cold with lots of wind. Winter is the dry season so they say there's lots of blowing dust, dirt and sand.

We visited a family a few days ago that just had a baby. The mom went to the [provintial] hospital about midnight, the baby was born about 3:30 AM and they sent them home at about 8:30 AM. The provintial hospital is the public hospital specifically for Zulu's. The cost is about 20 Rand (US$3.00) to see a Dr. and can take as long as 8 hours to be seen. That's government run health care for you. Is that what we'll have in the US?

In as much as blogging is new to me, I hope I can attach a few pictures of the baby. If I can, look in the background. You'll see that the living room, dining room, kitchen is all in the same area. The entire room is about 10' square. Look to the back left to see the kitchen. How much do we take for granted.

Some of the Animals we've seen so far

The Wards have started a blog. This is the first posting We'll try to update it weekly so our family and friends can see more of what we're doing. We'll attach pictures and notes to give a better and mre detailed view if the country, the culture and and people.