Safrica Day 1 & 2

We left Kirksville this morning at 7:00am for Chicago O’Hare International Airport bound for Cape Town South Africa. The number of stumbling blocks that occurred prior to leaving the state appeared to herald a rocky start to this journey. I set my alarm for 6:00am in hopes of waking up and packing up the last items into my backpack and heading out to meet Rose in the driveway. Conversely, I awoke to Rose knocking on my door and using my computer. Fortunately, I had packed a great deal and still made it out the door on time.

Following that debacle, we headed out of town on Missouri Route 63 North. About five minutes on 63, Rose realizes that her ATM card is likely still flapping in the breeze at the ATM. So we drive back to US Bank and scour the general ATM area for her card. We admitted defeat and headed out of town and thought of the better times ahead of us. As a side note, on our first pit stop for food, we found another US Bank and Rose was able to obtain another card.

So the rest of the drive up to O’Hare was fairly uneventful and we pulled up to the terminal around 3:00pm. We did have to stop one more time to ask for directions to Parkson’s house from an old lady in Moline. Parkson was kind enough to feed us and drive us to O’Hare to spare us the ungodly long term parking charges we would have incurred for our three-week stay.

We reunited with the rest of the SAfrica crew outside the ticket counter at O’Hare and it was official. The SAfrica Trip was on. We checked our bags and got through security without much trouble and made it to the gate. It wasn’t but a few minutes before they began boarding our massive 777 Jet to Amsterdam. The first leg of the journey went quickly. The eight-hour flight seemed like nothing since we had just driven six hours before reaching Chicago. I slept for most of the flight waking up only to eat and use the fabulous aircraft toilets.

After eight hours in the air and a seven-hour time zone difference later, we arrived in Amsterdam at 8:00am, June 21st. The layover was a new experience for me. I had never flown into Amsterdam and the airport was completely different than any I had seen before. There was a museum, several sleeping lounges, and of greatest interest to me, a meditation room. At first I thought this was a loosely translated chapel, but upon investigation, it truly was an area for people of any religion to seek refuge from one of the fastest-paced locales in the world. Intriguing as it was, our stay in Amsterdam was short-lived as we boarded our second plane for Cape Town at 9:30am.

This second aircraft, while smaller, was much newer and obviously more advanced. Each headrest had a screen placed inside to give each passenger their personal entertainment options. I wound up watching The Grudge, National Treasure and a couple foreign films. In addition, I played a couple rounds of chess with other passengers and thoroughly perused the other game selections. I opted to stay awake for most of this flight to make the trip to bed easier when we arrived in Cape Town. Despite the variety of entertainment, this trip was noticeably longer. The entire flight lasted the better part of eleven hours and we arrived in our destination; Cape Town, South Africa at 10:00pm.

After deplaning and exiting through customs, we were greeted by several members of the Atlantis Area Development Program (ADP). These were people that Jena had worked with and were the basis for our planning the mission trip out to Atlantis. On the drive to our hostel, we were given the quick history of the area and the current living conditions. We stopped once for gas (petrol) at the station near the airport and we began talking with one of the attendants at the station. I was nearly shocked to hear the attendant, a pure African ask if some of the ADP staff were “Black or Colored.” It brought up in such a casual manner that it defied all logic set forth by the conservative society that we came from. However, the lines of descent are very clearly drawn in this are where “Blacks” are citizens of pure African descent and “Colored” are citizens with mixed heritage. There is language barrier between most Blacks and Coloreds and the easiest way to decide what dialect is appropriate is simply to ask.

After that experience, we continued our drive to our hostel in Melkbosstrand. Betsy, the lady who runs the hostel, was there waiting for us with hot cups of tea and coffee. I briefly looked around and noticed that we had obviously left the shambled confines of Atlantis and traveled to a seemingly affluent area of Cape Town. Houses appeared manicured and detailed, surrounded by shiny wrought-iron gates. Large placards blazed “Chubbs Security” and “Team Management.” It was fairly intriguing to find such different living conditions within five minutes of each other. We happily unloaded our belongings and retreated to the beds within the warm walls of the hostel.