Jo’burg Airport and other misadventures

We’re tired, and the flight, though uneventful, was long. But we’re in Jo’burg and ready for the last leg of our journey – a one hour flight to Maseru, Lesotho.

Alas, it is not to be: after two long and painfully slow moving line ups for Passport Control, we missed our flight. Oh-oh. Note to self: a two hour layover in Africa is not sufficient. The next flight, four hours away, is full. The flight after that is the next day, Oh-oh, again. We’re expected and have no contact numbers, just a rough sense of where our meeting spot is in Hlotse.

Somehow, a feat we attribute to our willingness to wait in yet another line up, the ticket agent issued us boarding passes for the supposed full flight, no doubt meaning some other poor soul got the boot.

But wait: a sudden concern… our bags are overweight, quite dramatically. Oh no, we’re fine – the consulting ticket agent (read: guy who hangs around but doesn’t actually service anyone) is standing on the scale. Now THAT’S funny.

We arrived, albeit a tad late. Our rental car was waiting and at the risk of sounding whiny, we were disappointed to see that it has no sound system. Last year the kids had a ball dancing to CD music at the end of each day! Now that we’ve seen the Leadership Camp schedule however, it’s likely none of us will have an ounce of energy left to dance at the end of the day.


Letter writing and circus skills

Each morning of Camp the students rotate through sessions such as Gender Equity, Self-Image Development, Goal Setting and HIV/AIDS and Health. Their afternoons will be spent with such groups as OYAP (HIV/AIDS education), PSI (HIV/AIDS testing) and S&D Circus Activities, as we’re known on the schedule. We’ll be teaching trapeze, acrobatics, stilt walking, clown, mime, puppetry and juggling to students age 10-20. Our new responsibility is Speech Writing and Sponsor Letters class, one of the morning sessions. Stay tuned for more on this endeavour!


The trapeze tree

You know it’s meant to be when, for the second year in a row, I find a suitable tree in the Camp’s circus area. This area, Pitseng, is beautiful: mountainous, rocky and lush. The vegetation is diverse but there just aren’t a whole lot of big trees. So we’re lucky to have found level(ish) red dirt ground for stilt walking AND a strong enough tree from which to hang the bar. This same area will provide us with shade in the afternoons and will serve as the performance area for the final student show.


And so it all begins tomorrow…

As I write, Dean is sleeping off a belly ache. We’re hoping it’s simply the change of diet plus the travel, and nothing more. Later today, when we return to our rondavel, we’ll finish stringing the diabolos and Dean will repair the one stilt that needed help. We’re impressed with the condition of last year’s gear – the Raphoka Primary School principal tells us they enjoy circus on Fridays, so while the stuff’s being used, they’ve taken good care of it. They even made an inventory list down to every last juggling scarf and hacky sack. Which is great, as we’re borrowing some of their stuff for this year’s group!

The next six days will be full, and I’m unsure whether we’ll make it to town for internet access. Rest assured I’ll post again as soon as I’m able!