made it

So here I am, I’ve made it safe to my hotel room in South Africa. Little bit confused as I’m meant to be sharing with 3 others and there is only 1 double bed! Could get cosy!
My 24 hour journey had its ups and downs – and a few shaking moments, but what really surprised me was what the bus trip from the airport to Hotel showed me, here are a few:
• A spar, toysRus and other multinational companies.
• A guy living in a tent on the grass verge between a motorway and an A road.
• Many people in jump suits working along side the road.
• Everything was in English
• If you are HIV+ you can text a number and get 5million rand compensation / insurance – about half a million pounds.
• Cities and shanty towns side by side.
• People selling fruit
• Alot of cars like mine!
• And many other things I’ve forgotten already...
To put this all in to context, I decided to fly down to London from Manchester, as I didn’t really want to go through London after the last couple of days, and suitcases on escalators are a pain at the best of time. Having flown for an hour I then had about 4 hours at Heathrow terminal 5! Before flying albeit delayed for 11 hours to Jo’burg, in which I had a choice of movies, music and could watch a map of where we were, how high we were and the temperature outside! As well as 2 cooked meals. I flew over countries struggling with famine and left a country with riots. I just hope that what I do out here will be worth the environmental impact, amongst other things.
But I’m safe, happy and have had lunch. Not sure about plugs, may have just blown a fuse in my laptop plug, so we shall see how long this lasts, but here I am, registered and raring to go. Just need to find some Helen Kim Scholars now.

Rach