Prep for South Africa

In two days I will be flying to Johannesburg from Amsterdam, with a layover in Heathrow for a couple hours. Yesterday I paid my residence permit for the Netherlands, so when I re-enter the country in May they won't deport me back to Canada haha. I also received vaccinations yesterday, and need to pick up malaria pills either sometime today or tomorrow.

Our new project group for South Africa is working well together. I've been appointed the group leader by our professors, so I'm in charge of group meetings, creating agendas, and making sure we are staying on track. It's also a nice resume-builder!

This past week we've been writing, writing, and re-writing our research proposals for South Africa. These are basically the guidelines for the type of research that we'll carry out. After changing our problem statement about 4 times already, we're going to let it go for now and just wait until we arrive. Chances are, we'll have to change our focus when we arrive anyways. At least this is what other students have told us, who did this same trip last November.

South Africa has been in the news lately! There have been problems with the democratic voting in Zimbabwe, which is located just to the north of South Africa. President Mugabe in Zimbabwe has been accused of "fixing" the votes, so that it looks like he won. His political opposition is calling for a re-count, but Mugabe says "no way!" Mugabe's been in power now for over a decade, and he's seen Zimbabwe change from one of the most advanced countries in Africa to one of the worst, with almost a quarter of the population leaving the country due to out-of-control inflation. Local money is now almost worthless in Zimbabwe.....you are better off if you have cows or chickens, because at least farm animals don't change their value. Mugabe also kicked all the white farmers out of the country, which lead to the collapse of Zimbabwe, because the black farmers who took their place had no idea how to farm. Anyways......long story short, the South African President is now putting pressure on Zimbabwe (along with other countries in the region) to force an election recount. The U.S. has accused South Africa of not putting enough pressure on Zimbabwe. It's all very political.

Here's a link to the BBC front-page article about it.

Another news flash: there have been protests this week in Johannesburg due to rising food costs. This problem isn't just in South Africa, but it's happening world-wide. Reasons for this include the growing appetite of China's middle-class for meat and wheat.

So far, South Africa is still stable enough for us to go, although we'll be closely watching the situation. If it gets to be too much, we might have to cut our research short.