cannot believe i've been here for so long already! on saturday morning (since when have i ever been not hungover and rolling around on the ground with a sausage mcmuffin in my hand on a saturday morning? since this past saturday morning) a bunch of us went to the old biscuit mill market which was quite cool, lots of little boutiquey shops and gourmet foods. then went for a stroll in bo kap which is where the freed slaves (i think, i am so bad at factual info) painted their houses in bright rainbow colours so is a beautiful area in the city bowl.
sunday afternoon was great, went to mzole's in gugulethu, one of the townships. i dunno how to describe it other than it is like a restaurant/various butchers & braais (essentially barbeques)/dance party with a dj. all you need to know is you can buy a beer or cider for like $1.50 and eat meat with your hands out of washing bowls. I wasn't gonna eat but it wasn't long before i started ripping off chunks of meat out of strangers' bowls and lemme tell you, the beef (at least i hope that's what it was) tasted amaaazzzinggggg. i also recognize that i cannot dance like a black chick which saddens me so maybe i should practice (add to list of things to practice as still cannot pronounce xhosa or any words in xhosa without people laughing. i was taught how to say good morning today and it did not go over well). a bunch of my coworkers also came out to meet up with me so overall was fun times. only downside is i didn't know what to do with myself in the evening after drinking all afternoon and couldn't stay there as not particularly safe to be out in the township after dark. so i cooked myself a big fat cheeseburger when i got home.
work has been good if not sometimes very stressful but that is not surprising. though i suppose i was not prepared for how much, how should i put it, misinformation would be given to me by some of the clients so that is something i am learning to deal with. sometimes it feels like detective duty really. am very tired everyday after work but am grateful that i am kept busy. and i think some people are curious about where the clients at the centre are generally from so thus far most of the refugees and asylum seekers i have met with are from Congo/DRC, Somalia, Burundi, Rwanda & Zimbabwe. many of my clients speak another language so i often need to have another client who is waiting to be my translator. i have been feeling inspired to learn french as I feel I should embrace Canadian stereotypes but more so as many Congolese speak french but i am certain this feeling will probably pass.
today during our home visits, we stopped in gugulethu at like this giant open air shack thing where women are swatting flies off various animal body parts like livers, gizzards, things i cannot recognize and some steaks. across the street they are cooking and selling 'smiley' aka SHEEP HEADS. sheep heads all over the damn place. anyway my coworkers picked out some livers and then the woman added slabs of fat that she yanked off literally a giant BLOCK of chunks of animal fat and took it over to get braaid. they were eating just gobs of liver n fat on sandwich bread and gave me so much flack for not eating any and really, maybe another time, but not when i do not have ready access to a toilet, yyyya know what i mean?! lots of 'aaah diana, this is AFRICA. foreigners never get to go to places like this but this is what africans really eat!' shame on me but that's just how it is. oh and that seems to be the universal word here among all the people: shame. i hear that word more than anything else. k i am going off on random tangents so the end for now. will let you know when i eat slabs of pure fat on bread cus that is a very real possibility.
