The holiday season looks very different here as one would expect; an African Christmas.

Instead of snow-capped mountains; I’m looking out on rolling desert hills dotted with green cactus and clusters of mud huts. Rather than winter sweaters, I donned my flip-flops yesterday. No blustering snow here, just summer storms of warm heavy rains, rolling thunder with explosions of lightening (sounds amazing on my little tin roof!).

I had a wonderful vacation on the Wild Coast with John. We backpacked North along the ocean, staying in mud huts next to the sea and camped in the jungles with monkeys. We forged three rivers and braved sand storms. It truly felt like we were back in time. We passed not one other person, following trails made by sheep and cow herds. My sandles blew out and Vibram’s became cumbersome, so I hiked barefoot for two days. At one point we were crawling on all fours with our packs on our backs because the forest hills were so dense. We walked through many African compounds that I’m sure had never been visited by a white-foreigner before. It was a beautiful and surreal experience.

Since returning to the village, lots of exciting things have come-to-pass along with a shift down to the slow pace of Zulu living.

One highlight was presenting gardening crates I received from the Department of Agriculture to 10 neighboring families. Each crate contained diverse seeds, tools, and fertilizer to help them in our shared community garden out front of our compounds.

Also for the first time, the DOA came to plow the fields and donate corn seed to over the 20 family fields surrounding the compound I live on. Previously, the plowing has been done by ox and hand. The grandmothers who manage this, now older and with many orphaned children to caer for, where overjoyed to have this work completed for them.

Now I’m working on getting water irrigated to the fields. It takes them all day, hauling water on their heads to the fields each day to water the crops.

John helped facilitate an Art Exchange for World AIDS Day at the local primary school. He played guitar and the kids drew 40+ drawings to share nationally with another chosen school. He started a plot in the community garden with some seeds from home (thanks Dad!) and local starts from the community.

After spending Christmas with my Zulu family, we are meeting up with other PCVs to hike the Drakensberg Mountains escarpment bordering the Lesoto “Mountain Kingdom” and bring in the New Year.

Well my loved ones, I think of you always and especially during this blessed Holiday Season. I miss you dearly and hope that we treasure our health, happiness, and many riches during this season that we were simply born with.

All my love and Merry Christmas, Ang