Durban

From Bucs, we drove about 5 hours to Kokstad. Where we stayed a night at one of the creepiest hostels I have ever seen. I swore that we were all going to get hacked in our sleep there. The place looked like the scenery from the ring. There were animal heads on the walls, and a well in the back yard. We had no cell phone reception and there was no internet, so no contact with the outside world. The last guest book entry was from over a year ago. The room I stayed in had horses all over the walls and a random chalk drawing of a boy named billy whose face was rubbed out. There was also a mirror with half of a woman’s face painted on it. Me and another girl were so scared of our room that we moved a single mattress into the floor of another room and shared it, rather than sleep in our room.
Oddly enough, we all woke up just fine the next morning and had a lovely breakfast. The women working there were very nice and packed us lunches for the road. They also took pictures of us because they were so excited to have a group of Americans come and stay there, they asked us to each individually sign the guest book (my guess is so that it wasn’t so blank anymore).
We hopped in the car and drove the rest of the 4 hours to Durban. In Durban, we stayed at Gibela backpackers, which is right near Florida Road (the big place to go out in Durban). While in Durban we spent almost every day at the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN). We had lectures and seminars and basically not a ton of fun, although it was interesting. We learned a lot more about race problems in South Africa both in lectures and out. While on the campus eating lunch in the courtyard, all of the different groups of kids are based on ethnicity, which is different from the way we divide ourselves in the U.S. Some girls also had experiences at a club when a bouncer threatened to kick them out if they danced with any more black guys while they were there. It was pretty hard for all of us to swallow and I think we decided as a group that we didn’t like Durban all that much.
While in Durban we ran into two other SIT groups who are based there. It was fun to talk to them for a little bit and find out about their experiences. I think that we decided we were all happy to be in the group that we are in and to have chosen our program. So that was a nice bit of reassurance.