Graduated!

Dear readers,

It has been a month since my last blog and there happened so much! First of all: my partner in crime and I did our last tuckshop. Unfortunately it wasn’t such a success as the first one, but I was glad to see that the children enjoyed our products! Secondly, Roxane and I did our final test at the 27th of June and we, as you might have seen, both graduated! Even though we only got a six for our thesis, we both got an eight for our oral exam about the thesis and an eight for our oral exam about our Health Promotion assignment. Thirdly, the day that I heard that I was graduated, I also received an email from the Wageningen University of Research that, if I handed in a copy of my bachelor degree, I was accepted to their master programme Nutrition and Health. This means that I will start with my master of science in September!
Weeks and weeks ago, I promised you to tell you something about the results of our research. As I said before, we researched the anthropometric status of South African children at a primary school in Grabouw. This means that we researched how many children are underweight, overweight, stunted (= impaired growth and development, or in other words: too small for their age) and wasted (also known as thinness or low weight-for-height). The children at the school in Grabouw are more often underweight, more often overweight, more often stunted and also more often wasted than the national average of South Africa. One fifth of the children was experiencing impaired growth, fifteen percent was underweight, fifteen percent was overweight or obese and five percent was wasted. So, just to be short, not only underweight is a problem here in South Africa, there are also a lot of children who are overweight, which we call ‘double burden of malnutrition’. We recommend further research, not only with the children, but also with the teachers and parents, so hopefully the next Nutrition and Dietetics students will pick it up where we left off.
Then: our well-deserved vacation. After Roxane and I graduated, we packed our bags and went on vacation with our housemates Carlijn and Tobias. The first day, we flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg and drove a few hours to our first accommodation. The second day, we drove further to Kruger National Park where we did a self-drive through the park. I’m glad nobody saw us that day, cause we were acting like four hysterical children every time we saw an animal. We saw three of the Big Five, so the mission for the next day was to find the other two animals of the Big Five during our guided game drive. Unfortunately, they didn’t want to see us as much as we wanted to see them.. The next stop was Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary in Swaziland, where we did a sunset game drive, unfortunately without sunset, but we went to a place where we could overlook Swaziland. I also rode on a horse for the first time in my life and that animal made me really scared. Instructions how to ride a horse would have been nice for a first time, but no, the guy thought I had a natural talent for horse riding. After Swaziland, we went to St. Lucia, a place on the east coast of South Africa. Here we tried for the third and last time to find the Big Five, but unfortunately we failed again.. The first week was already over and we went to Durban, where Carlijn and I dropped Roxane and Tobias at the airport and travelled further with the two of us. We exchanged the game reserves for the beach. After the beach in Durban, we drove to the Southern Drakensberg, where we stayed three days. The first day we did a short hike after we had drove for four hours. The second day, there was a Sani Pass Tour arranged for us. We went into the Southern Drakensberg and Lesotho. It is so gorgeous there! We saw shepherds walking with their sheep, I saw one of their houses from the inside (you can call it a hut of two by two square meters, I tasted homemade bread and beers and I went to the highest pub in Africa!! The last day, it was time for another hike, because yeah, what else would you do in these mountains with amazing views and waterfalls?! After Southern Drakensberg, the next stop was, of course, Northern Drakensberg. And it is actually the same story as the Southern Drakensberg: breathtaking. The first day we got there, we did another hike after our four hour drive. And the day after, guess what?! Yes, we did another hike. You would think that it’s getting boring to hike all day every day, but in these surroundings it just doesn’t. We did a hike of seven (!) hours to find the Tugela Falls, the second highest waterfall of Africa, and we found it, but because of the drought there was not much left of the waterfall  And then, our trip already ended. We drove back to Johannesburg and flew back to Cape Town.

The end of our vacation also meant the end of my journey here in South Africa. Today is the day that I’m leaving this place that I called home for the last five months. My bags are packed and my room is as empty as it was when I came here.. I really felt sad when I took my South African flag off from the wall and I also do feel really sad now that I’m typing this. But.. as I learned here.. alles sal regkom. I will take my SA flag with me to The Netherlands, and I’ll also take all my photo’s, video’s and wonderful memories. Tonight at eleven PM, I’ll fly back to The Netherlands and, although I’m deeply sad to leave South Africa behind, I’m also excited to see my friends and family again, so I would say: see you in about twenty hours!