A little inside look to what the Hubby thinks :-)

Happy Three Year anniversary to my stud muffin of a husband! Three years ago today Jeremy asked me to be his girl, and we’ve been connected at the hip ever since.  I am so blessed to have my partner in crime (not literally, no worries anyone) here with me, and I enjoy being able to share the ups and downs of this journey and everything that comes along with it to him.  To give you insight into what he’s been thinking lately I thought it fit to put in his article that he writes in the blog today.  Jeremy received a scholarship for Africa, and to have it, he had to have a project; the project he chose was to write an article about once or twice a month for the Sioux City Journal in Iowa.  He is a great writer and has inspired me in so many ways.  I hope you enjoy his article about life here in South Africa as much I do!

Love and God bless,

Aj

 Jeremy's Article

Every night here in Port Elizabeth I am reminded of a scene from one of my favorite childhood movies, 101 Dalmatians.  It’s the scene where Pongo and Perdy are discussing how to find their lost pups.

Pongo: There’s only one option left, The Twilight Bark.

Perdy:  The Twilight Bark?  But Pongo that’s only a gossip chain.

If the Twilight Bark is a gossip chain, then the dogs of Port Elizabeth must have a lot to talk about.  I’m positive that if these dogs had Facebook, they would be updating their statuses every hour on the hour.  The majority of homes in our neighborhood have dogs, and all of them start barking at every moving object once the sun goes down.  I notice that there’s no middle sized dogs either; families either have massive German Shepards or tiny little Daschunds.  The small ones seem to have a serious case of small-dog syndrome because they bark even more viciously than the big ones.

The dogs are not just pets, but security as well.  South Africa has an incredibly high crime rate, particularly of break-ins and home robberies.  One tour guide told us that some criminals found a way around the guard dogs.  They would cover themselves with leopard droppings before jumping over the fence, and the dog would hide without hesitation.  Hey, if I smelled a leopard, I would probably do the same!  One of the housing communities for international students is called Annie’s Cove.  It’s not where I live, but probably a 5 minute drive away.  Annie’s Cove has no guard dogs, and has experienced a rash of break-ins since the beginning of the school year.  The last one had three houses broken into in one night, but the last house was home to an older student who had been a US Marine sniper in Fallujah.  When he woke up to see 2 guys trying to take his briefcase, he leapt out of bed and chased them in his boxers back over the walls with a kitchen knife.  Hopefully that will make them think twice before trying again.

We’ve had no such trouble in our house, and in all honestly the neighborhood is very safe.  It’s only the high concentration of international students, with the expensive electronics each brings, that makes Annie’s Cove a target.  We’ve managed to stay busy with school and volunteer opportunities, with time for travelling on the weekends.  Our last trip was to Plettenburg Bay, a vacation town a few hours away from PE.  My wife and I were able to visit two wildlife areas; the Knysna Elephant and Tenikwa Big Cat Sanctuaries.  In South Africa, wildlife areas come in one of three types.  The big game reserves and national parks like Addo Elephant Reserve and the massive Kruger Reserve in northern South Africa are meant to be large tracts of full wilderness for animals to live protected, and largely left alone.  Other than a few safari lodges on the edges, you won’t want to spend much time sightseeing in these unless you’re Survivorman.  The second type would be rehabilitation centers designed to put animals back into the wild.  You can probably take a tour, but only trained staff will be handling the animals and teaching them how to act and survive in the wild.  The third type is the sanctuaries.  These are usually for animals orphaned by poaching or raised by people.  There’s no intention of putting them back in the wild, so the animals live care-free lives fed and cared for by humans.  The sanctuaries’ missions are education and outreach so that visitors will have a better appreciation for the animals in South Africa. 

            At the Knysna Elephant Park, we were given baskets of fruit and vegetables to feed the ellies (everything has a nickname in South Africa).  We’d hold out a piece of orange, which is their favorite, and the ellies would snag it with their trunks.  After feeding them, we would walk around with the massive animals to pet them or take pictures.  The elephants at the sanctuary surprised me; from watching nature shows and National Geographic, I’d always assumed elephants were gentle giants that liked nothing better than to play and frolic in their big clumsy way.  That wasn’t the case at all, I felt like more of an annoyance than anything, and when an ellie wants to move, we got out of the way fast.  In all honestly it was a little unsettling being around them, and every time one moved near me I was reminded of all the horror stories of elephants charging and killing their trainers or bystanders.  I think at heart the elephants were probably thinking what every New Yorker thinks at some point; “you dumb tourists”.

The Tenikwa Big Cat Sanctuary was oddly more relaxing than the elephants, even though the cheetahs were more likely to eat me than the ellies.  We took a tour of the camp by walking through the cages of the smaller cats.  When I watched a leopard eating his supper of chicken breasts I got a good look at his teeth, and I can now understand why a guard dog would cower at the smell of it.  The final treat of the day was taking the cheetahs for their evening walk.  Each of us got a cheetah in a harness and went on a walk along side it with a handler.  Except when you’re holding the fastest land animal on earth, it’s more like the cheetah is walking you.  There were lots of good opportunities for pictures, and I, as I expected, got in trouble for trying to play too rough with the cheetahs.  But hey, someday I’ll tell my kids I almost put a full-grown cheetah in a headlock, and it was awesome.