Photos Up On Picasa

I found an easier way to show you all the photos I took during my trip. Here is a link to the Picasa album: http://picasaweb.google.com/noz.yamauchi/SouthAfrica#.

Home, Sweet Home

We made it back to Chapel Hill safely and just in time for the first day of fall semester classes for me. And Noz is back in clinic and working on his research. The journey home went smoothly. We took the way-too-small plane back to Jo-burg (I broke my no-propeller rule to go on safari) and then it was London... Did some lovely shopping at Harrod's in Heathrow. And then RDU. Never been in the customs line there and it was crazy-long. I was a bit embarrassed for my home airport, but remain proud of their few international flights nonetheless.

I'll be posting a few more entries this week and then wrapping the blog up. It has been a great learning experience and I'm glad I'll always have it (please, Google) as a way to remember my first trip to South Africa. It won't be the last.

Guest Blog by Noz: Most Incredible Nature Experience EVER

Editor's Note: This blog contains questionable language and may be offensive to some Europeans. I apologize for the lack of photos. Our Internet connection is close to being dial-up and is extremely slow. I will post a lot more when we get back in two days.

Today was the most unbelievable nature experience of me and E's lives.

We are at Jackalberry Lodge on the Thornybush Game Reserve, one of the world's best. Highly recommended. The Drakensberg Mountains (like Grand Canyon, South African-style) sits as the backdrop. It's private, so there are hardly any other lodges or vehicles around. The lodge has only like five chalets/huts, which are amazing. We wake up at 5 am, drink a coffee or tea with rusks (sort-of like biscotti), then take off for four hours of driving and tracking animals. Then we take breakfast, siesta, lunch and then head out around 3:30 pm and track through till nightfall, about 7:30 pm. Then eat a 5-star dinner (usually some beautiful lamb or beef or wild African animal) around a boma (camp fire). Then to bed by 10 pm to do it all over again the next day. Everyday has been a new and incredible tracking day. We have seen lion, ellies (elephants), leopard, cheetah, buffalo, white rhino, black rhino, giraffe, crazy birds, etc. Although its amazing to see these animals from just feet away, we hadn't seen much action. No fights, no mating, no hunting. Mostly just lounging, eating, sleeping. But today--our final full day here--was the day of all days.

Most people think two nights are long enough to see everything, but we are staying four nights. The Italian family that was here earlier thought it was crazy that we would stay so long in one place (they said it in their slightly arrogant, but nice, Italian way). We were woken up by the lodge staff--"Knock-knock--Dank yoouu" in their SA accent. We were still half-asleep, but then we heard a male lion roaring, which really woke us up. He was probably miles away, but their roars travel mad miles across the bush. So cool to wake up to lions and not roosters.

We set out at the break of dawn in the open-top Land Rover (the kind that I always wanted when I was in high school b/c I thought they were so cool) with Van (our driver) and Adam (our bushman guide tracker who sits on an extended seat off the front bumper). We are riding with a family from Paris--parents Brian and Marlena, daughter Victoria (who is a chic French aspiring photographer), and son Oscar. Victoria has a bad-ass Canon with a scope that's about two feet long. I am a bit embarrassed of our Canon Powershot (only really good for Maria Sharapova commercials). I love the French. Soo "joie de vivre". Everything is "magnifique" or "increyible" with them. So much more full of life than the American counterparts. We first run into a family of giraffe eating leaves off tall trees. There were two young babies with the mom and dad giraffe--so cute. We move on. We spot leopard tracks and cheetah tracks. At this point E and I are well-trained to know our tracks. Apparently there is a leopard with two babies, so we started tracking them, but unfortunately after about 30 mins of tracking, we find that there tracks lead into a deep ravine type area, too crazy for even the Land Rover. A little disappointed at this point. E and I are starting to lose a little faith in the tracking abilities of our guides and our mood is sub-par. We are a bit tired (not that we really physically do anything but eat and ride in the jeep), and a bit pessimistic about not seeing cats in action.

We hear there are black rhino several kilometers away. OK, pretty cool. So we go see them. Black rhino are endangered, only about 2,000 left in the world. They are beautiful. But, they just eat and sleep. No action again. Maybe we just won't see anything crazy-exciting while we're here. Maybe the Italians were right. Maybe 4 nights is "Oh, that's crazy" and 2 nights is all we need to see everything there is to see. We move on. There is word that a mother cheetah and her three female youngsters are spotted. I must say it is freakin' hard to find these elusive cats. They don't mind human presence, but trying to find them out here in the bush is crazy-difficult. We tried for hours every day to find these cheetah, but have come up empty-handed.

After several kilometers of driving in excitement and anticipation, we roll up to the area of where they were spotted. We see a decent-sized herd of impala--not really a big deal b/c there are so many around here. Van, our driver/tracker, makes a comment about the impala with a hint of implying that the cheetah may be ready to hunt. At this point, I am excite. I want to somehow herd the impala over to where the cheetah are, but I know I can't mess with nature like that. As we move on past the impala for another kilometer or so, we see the cheetah on a small termite mound/hill. A beautiful mom cheetah with her three young females. Just as we pull up, mom is "mobile." She trots down the hill and through the bush--headed toward the impala. The youngsters wait for awhile and eventually start following her, but well behind her. She is on the hunt! We go off-road and literally follow behind Mom. We see her crouching, stalking quietly toward the impala herd. She spots a young impala.

Then bam! She takes off like Usain Bolt on the juice. She chases the impala, knocks it down once. The impala gets back up and takes off in the other direction. Mom takes off again and after a 40 meter dash, she pounces on the impala, this time for good. She bites down on the impala's jugular and slowly puts it in a sleeper hold. At this point I have crapped my pants. This was a childhood dream come true. Cheetah is pretty much my favorite animal. I used to draw them all the time in 1st through 3rd grade. Maybe I'll start drawing them again in my free time.

Now the mom calls over for her young. A minute later, they come running over. The impala is still barely alive. The mom wants her young to finish the hunt. So the young gals pounce on the impala, and get into the jugular, and then start pulling at it from both ends. They start digging in, and you can just here the meat shredding, the bones breaking, the blood running. We are literally 10-15 feet away. The Japanese in me came out and I was taking pictures and doing Flip video simultaneously while watching and taking it all in. I give high-fives to the Frenchies, who are behind us saying, "ooh que magnifique" "ooh que increyible" and other french phrases that I couldn't get. Victoria has by now taken 500 shots with her crazy Canon. We have about ten due to the Powershot shutter speed. We are trying to become better friends with her so that hopefully we can use our USB later to get her photos. Her's are so much better than ours--not even a comparison. It's like watching grainy TV in our apartment versus watching HD on Naoshi and Debbie's 60" flat screen. Up above there are already 15 vultures circling. Another Land Rover carrying a different lodge's guests are here, so we have to pull out and give them a turn to watch the feasting. (The photo below kinda sucks so small, but if you look close, you can see all four cheetahs. The one on the right is eating the impala.)

It is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a start to finish of a mom cheetah hunting for her kids. I can't describe into words how awesome this was for E and me. We are as satisfied as the momma cheetah now. Our safari trip is complete. If I don't see one more animal on the two remaining game drives we have, I will be cool with that. With our faith restored a million times over in Adam and Van The Man, we take morning tea in an open area over looking the bush and mountains behind, take a leak behind a bush, then make our way back to the lodge. (E's too scared to pee in the bush, and has been getting mad at me about how it's unfair that girls can't do it like guys can. Then Marlena has no qualms and goes behind a bush to drop her draws. I love it. She don't give a F. Joie de vivre. She just saw a cheetah killing an impala. That's getting back to nature.)

We will never forget this day. We lived an episode in Planet Earth, Nat-Geo-style. Can't beat that, son.

Somewhat Random Observations & Notes

I love the way South Africans say goodbye: "shop, shop".

Chutney from a bottle is really big here. I love it. It's like a spicy version of Indian chutney. Kind-of. They use it like ketchup here. Need to try to find it in the U.S. when I get back. Maybe eBay.

Speaking of ketchup, it's not called "ketchup" here. It's tomato paste. And what we call tomato paste, they call spaghetti sauce. It all works out in the end, I guess.

I'm wondering if it's a good thing to have Internet in the middle of the bush whilst on safari?

Focus Group Wrap-Up

Noz and I have arrived in Hoedspruit at the Thornybush Game Reserve safely and are enjoying Jackalberry Lodge very much. It's so quiet and peaceful here, and we've already seen so much wildlife on our two game drives thus far.

Before I get to all that though, I just wanted to wrap up my thoughts about my focus group research. I haven't had reliable access to the Internet for almost a week now, so I apologize again for the lack of updates. Ironically though, now that I'm in the African bush, I have wireless Internet! It's slow, but works. So, I'd like to update my last week in retrospect.

My final focus group session was last Friday in the township of Emalahleni, which is in Mpumalanga province right outside of Witbank. It's about a two-hour drive east of Johannesburg. It was a somewhat challenging last session due to the language barrier. Although the youth spoke English well, they felt it wasn't advanced enough to fully express what they wanted to share so we worked through an interpreter. It worked well, but took twice the time because everything was said once in Zulu by the youth and then interpreted in English. I had to cut some of my last questions due to time, but in the end, it was a very productive last session. The examples I received of real problems youth have faced and used MYMsta to help solve/alleviate were very powerful -- rape, drug addiction, physical abuse. I will be forever grateful to these youth for their honesty and openness. They really welcomed me into their lives for the brief moments I had with them and I am still humbled by their graciousness.

I just tried to upload a few photos I took with the youth and the youth centre coordinator, Yvonne, after the focus group, but it looks like my Internet connection is good, but not that good. Taking way too long to upload. I'll try again later.

Noz is here!

Just a quick update. I haven't had Internet access since Thursday, so I haven't been able to update lately. I apologize. Noz arrived yesterday though, so I'm so happy we're together once again.

I've moved out of the cottage and we're now chillin' at the Holiday Inn. The nicest one you've seen in your life! It's like a luxury hotel here. (But still the cheapest I could find in the Sandton area. Luxury hotels are a dime a dozen around these parts.)

Now that we're at the hotel, we have limited access, so I will try to update the blog as much as I can while we're here. We leave for our safari Wednesday morning and can't wait!

Orange Farm Focus Group

Yesterday I had my third focus group (out of four) in Orange Farm. It is the largest township/informal settlement in South Africa, located about an hour southwest of Jo-burg. No one really knows how many people live here, but it's probably somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000. It's gigantic. (Try typing in Orange Farm, South Africa, in Google Maps or Earth and you'll get some idea of its size.)

The participants in this group were a bit older than in my past ones and because Jo-burg has an interesting culture all its own, it was interesting to hear the differences in how they use their mobile phones and MYMsta. However, there were still a lot of similarities and I'm starting to reach what is called "theoretical saturation" in focus group research. Basically, I'm hearing the same things over and over with the different groups. This is good because it means there are some conclusions and recommendations I can make knowing the opinions of users are on my side. Here is a photo of me with some of the young people from the focus group.


After the focus group, an amazing thing happened. Without any qualifications whatsoever, I judged a dance competition! Not quite sure how it happened, but I had quite a lot of time to just hang out at the Y-Centre afterwards because my dear driver, who also took me to Free State, had other LoveLife travel duties to attend to and was picking me up at 5 p.m., which is when I've been finishing up. However, since the participants were a bit older, I didn't have to wait for them to get out from school and walk to the centre, so we started earlier. So, I had this time and, since the centre was bursting with activity, I just made my way through the facilities/grounds, stopping to chat with people and play with kids there. Here are some boys I met outside. They were a bit shy (especially the one on the right) and could barely speak English, but they could strike a pose! One thing that really struck me was the first boy's clothes. They were pink and white, and meant for a girl, but they were just warm clothes to him.



There was a dance class going on in the room I held my focus group in after I left, and I stayed there to watch the girls get down! And get down they could. The youngest of them was about six, the oldest probably 11, and they were are so adorable. I would clap and tell them how wonderful they were -- some of them would get so shy while others would revel in the attention, but each would just smile so brightly. It really warmed my heart. Their smiles were just so beautiful that I could almost look past their tattered clothes and bare feet.


After staying for a bit, I went back outside and talked to a couple of men who were outside on the basketball court. They seemed fascinated by America and asked lots of questions. Do you have these kind of shacks in America? Can you give me advice to help me find a job? What are you doing here to help people in Orange Farm? These were all hard questions to answer, but I tried my best.

All of a sudden though, the group of dance-class girls ran to me and took my hands, pulling me and saying, "Come with us, come with us!" I went and their dance teacher, who couldn't have been older than 18, informed me that I was going to judge an informal dance competition for them. It was really fun, but I tried to get out of choosing just one group to win! I really didn't want to choose, but the teacher made me do it. In the end, I went with the youngest two girls who danced together. Here they are.


As I asked to take these photos, all of them crowded around me to see themselves in the digital viewfinder, and started asking me questions, touching my hair, hugging me and holding my hands. Their affection was so genuine and contagious, and I just melted.

I kept thinking that these sweet, innocent little girls are just like my precious nieces, Sasha and Kailee. They just want to be loved and deserve every opportunity in the world. But, the road ahead just seems so difficult for them and the injustice of that really hurts. There is hope though. I have great hope for these girls and their families, and that's why I'm here.

My final focus group is in Witbank tomorrow in the province of Mpumalanga.