Our travel to the next site was a bit convoluted , but we ended up spending a couple of nights at the golden horse casino hotel in Peitermaritzberg. Quite fancy, mostly slot machines as far as I could tell. I blew 100 rand ($14).
The community here had been booted off land that subsequently became a citrus farm and a sugar cane farm. They were quite obviously better off than the first community. I had interesting meetings with the town councilors, and the tribal chief in his home. The most interesting visit though was to lily of the valley – a kind of orphanage for children infected by or affected by HIV-AIDS. 100 or so kids were there ranging in age from infants to 15. they are well cared for in a subdivision sort of facility with 6 kids to a house and a house mother in each of them. We went to one where a dear little baby about 18 months old smiled and reached out her arms to be held. Her house mother was feeding one of the others at the time. She was just happy to be snuggled.
This part of the trip was where my stomach upset started. When I went home after the second day of meetings I slept a bit between visits to the bathroom, and the next day decided not to go to the meetings. Apparently some of the arrangements had got screwed up, so I did not miss anything – just a visit to the traditional healers ( witch doctors) who told peoples fortunes.
I was so glad when our travel to cape town later that day was over – travel is difficult when you have a digestive problem. Decided that given where in the world we were there might be a possibility that I had malaria, so went to the doctor early Saturday morning.
The hotel staff arranged for me to go to the chris barnard hospital, and they took blood tests etc and no malaria, just a stomach problem. When I talked to Bob later on he had the same symptoms, so it was probably something I got in Turkey rather than Africa. Anyway, now I am much better. We had a day off yesterday, and managed to do a little shopping on the waterfront in cape town. That is a happening place.
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