A Long Awaited Visit

For the past two weeks, I’ve been able to enjoy the much missed company of my boyfriend, Jeff, and it was marvelous. We worked hard at the clinic and beyond and spent as much time as we could exploring Mthatha and the Wild Coast. I feel like it was the most intense two weeks since I’ve been here, but we could have done nothing and I would have been happy just to have his company. This way, though, we got to enjoy company and adventure! I am so thankful that he had the chance to come out and see Mthatha, Itipini, and the Wild Coast first hand. These are things that, no matter how much I try, I can never really explain to people and I’m glad he got to experience them. That we got to experience them together. It's the vitality of shared experience that really makes the entire thing worth emptying our bank accounts to make it happen. It was also really nice to feel like I was home again. Just having him around reminded me of all of the things I love about Oklahoma. So (before I start getting to sappy), I’ll end by summing it all up simply: It was a GREAT last two weeks!

Jeff made quick friends with the Itipini kids which called him uJesu which means "Jesus"!

I let one of the kids use my camera!

Shootin' pool with the boys in the Itipini rec room.

In the minibus taxi on our way to Coffee Bay - right after I threw up out the window. Twice.

Jeff and Nolitile, a Xhosa woman from the area that was walking home and stopped to come and join us on the grass just to chat. Between her broken English and my broken Xhosa, we managed to have a really nice conversation.

We were working with number series in tutoring and Jeff got really excited when one of the series they were supposed to solve was the Fibbonacci Sequence!

This is the sign that we put on our door the first night he was here. These are our Xhosa names: Mvuyisi (Jeff) means "bringer of happiness" and Nofikile (me) means "I have arrived" (the "no" inbetween simply means "and" or "with").