OB Adventures - Matt

Well, what a week it's been. Sam and I's original intentions for volunteering at Outward Bound South Africa were to have a relaxing two weeks of volunteering. Something entailing repairing old gear and putting some work into the base camp grounds all while working on our tuk tuk and getting ready for our journey north. Apart from 'technically' volunteering at OBSA none of those other things happened.

We had three days at the actual base camp in Sedgefield, just outside of Knysna. Upon arrival we found out that everyone that Sam and I were professional rock climbers that were long time instructors with Northwest Outward Bound School. We're not sure how that gap in communication happened but for those of you that don't know us very well, Sam and I work logistics at NWOBS and we are rock climbers but are by no means professional. Anywhoo, on the first day we arrive on the beach where Deon, the OBSA Ops Manager and out contact, was doing some kayak training with the new instructors. This meant surfing Kayaks in the waves on the coast. We were then told we were going to be training the instructors to lead climb tomorrow, most had little or no climbing experience, and then, three days down the line we would be co-instructing a course while mentoring the new instructors. Feeling as though we'd been thrown somewhat indelicately into the deep end, Sam and I started flailing our proverbial arms and legs wildly in hopes of keeping our proverbial heads above water. Sink or swim, ya know.

The days that followed included soccer, trail building as community service, rock climbing in beautiful places (something I never thought I'd get to do and left me kicking myself that I didn't bring my gear), a braai (Afrikaans for barbecue), an education in the differences in course prep between OB schools, and a extremely long 6 hour drive go a 3 hour distance while being blasted with South African christian gospel/rock/pop to our course area outside Robertson. Here I would just like to say that racial tension is unfortunately still strong in SA. Not on a legal level but certainly on a cultural one. Blacks and Whites here are so culturally different that they seem to naturally break up into segregated groups. No one is excluding anyone, but people at OBSA and the hostel I am now in at least, are clearly more comfortable in like minded groups. An example being that the blacks that we were working with here were very comfortable yelling and shouting and being generally noisier than whites appeared to be. Instead of going over to someone sitting a long way away they would just project the voice at such decibels that I would never be able to accomplish, with no thought of poor old Matt sitting right in front of them with just recently perforated ear drums. This one first sight would probably be taken as quite off-putting to most westerners, but one of the most beautiful things I saw was late one night after dinner three of the black instructors were walking out of the lodge and right in the doorway one of them started singing (there always singing something) and then the others joined in until they were belting out this song, alternating versus, stomping their feet and clapping their hands. One of them, Kayah, didn't even take the time to put down the dish of leftovers he was holding but still tried to clap his hands. It seemed as though they were just taken by this small spark of a tune which ignited their need to make music and move as a group. This is one of my fondest memories from my time in OBSA and I wish that I, or any of the other white people just sitting there watching, would have or could have joined in. This is only a sliver of the giant pie chart of racial problems left in post-Apartheid SA but was one that I felt would be relatable as well as relatively easy to portray.

The course that followed all of this was a clinic of appreciation for the resources available to NWOBS. about half of the packs the students used were in full good working condition. These were 75L + 10 packs that the 12 and 13 year old students were just unable to fill for the three night trip causing a bulky, unmanageable and uncomfortable carrying style, much less unable to properly wear because of their size. The students were all from a scholarship program (Students for a Better Future) set up for underprivileged, but highly intelligent, youths in Capetown who are just about to start high school and would otherwise be unable to go since in SA you have to pay to go to school, even public schools. The students were a wiley and energetic bunch, and I was surprised how well I did remembering names like Mayibongwe, Muzafirr (roll the r's) and Qiqimba (each 'qi' is pronounced as a tongue click). But we took these students down a 60m abseil (repel) over a dry waterfall and forced them to fight like dogs amongst themselves to build a raft out of wood poles, rope and plastic 42 gallon barrels.

As the students were rolling away on the last day I started teaching the other instructors the B, double E, double R, U, N song which succeeded in getting us some beers for our end of course braai (roll the r). After that was another six hour drive back to Sedgefield and the next day we went to George and waited for our bus to Capetown, that left at 11:30pm, by watching The Force Awaken (Hell Yea!), going to the beach and dancing my face off and getting a little buzz on to a South Africa ska band with friends we made at OB (sweet sweet friends).