Yay! Camping!

First, I apologize for not having pictures to go with this account of my weekend. All my devices were dead. This annoyed Lebo a lot. He likes my camera. 

This weekend, a couple of us wanted to break away from the group. Traveling in a group of ten can get pretty exhausting, even for an extrovert like me. Me-time is essentially non-existent here. We decided that to save money and to just rough it for once, we would go camping. At first, my friend Rachel and I were so excited, spontaneously screaming “YAY CAMPING!” whenever any silence in conversation happened. Lebo took us camping. Lebo has never camped before. He packed real glasses, ceramic plates, a tent that slept technically four but comfortably 3 and a tent sized for 2 children and a bunch of blankets instead of sleeping bags. He didn’t make any reservations at any campgrounds.  Our “YAY CAMPING!” became a little more tentative… like “yay camping!” but still, with enthusiasm.

We drove about two hours away to meet with a place he had to do business this and frantically tried to find a campground before night fell (around 5:30 PM, it’s kind of pathetic). We would pull up to the gate of the campsite and read the number on the sign and call and ask if there was space available. Three times we were turned down.

Yay …. Camping!

We were in an Afrikaans area. Afrikaans are the Dutch descendents that originally colonized South Africa and are notorious for their racial tensions with blacks during the Apartheid era. They are very tall and big bones. We, not so fondly, call them “the neanderthaals” or even less fondly, “the ogres.” If you can’t tell already, we don’t find them to be particularly friendly. We finally found a place that would let us camp. Lebo was the only black person on the entire campground. The old South African flag was up. No one spoke to us. Lebo said, “if anyone asks, I’m only your driver.” Our neighbor sat outside his camper and unabashedly shot us death glares for the next 2 hours.

Yay….camping…

The “bry” that they gave us (a fire pit), was very tall. It was more like a grill. So the only way to be around the fire was to stand. When it was time to go to bed, out of sheer desperation for more body heat, all five of us crammed into the four-person tent. Lebo got fed up with tent life about 30 minutes in and turned on the car for heat and slept in there. Nights in South Africa get down to about 35 or 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  The four of us spent the next 6 hours fighting over blankets and shuddering. I think I maybe got a good 2 hours of sleep.

Yay. Camping.

Lebo woke us up in the morning by playing Rick Ross on his blackberry. He seemed to think camping went really well.

Rachel turns to me and drearily mumbles “camping” …without the yay.