Durban…. Bollywood style!!!!

I spent a wonderful week in Durban… Fantastic people, food, weather, beach… Could you ask for more? Why yes you can… You could ask for a local contact named Pastor Bobby Freddy of HIV Education and Life (HELP) in Chatsworth. He is an incredible super human who treated me like family the minute I got off the plane. He and his other pastor friend took me to his house to meet his family. I was welcomed with open arms and big hugs. This was very comforting because I had been having some internal conflict about what I’m doing on this trip and am I achieving anything? Pastor Bobby has a warm family. His wife Priscilla is a mother to all, his two daughters are darling, two sons are great, baby granddaughter is beautiful smiley, and there is a cute little puppy named Patches.

I have to give props to Pastor Bobby's son Ashley for making this week so fun! Ashley is currently waiting for his work visa and will be running the soon to be “Ferrari World” in Abu Dhabi. He spent the last three years in Singapore, and before that was the big fancy manager at the world’s first man-made Wave Park for flow riding at the Gateway Mall (biggest mall in the southern hemisphere). He was such a good sport, carting his father and me to meetings all over Durban. Poor guy had to get up at the crack of dawn to sit in traffic to get me at the hotel then schlep the big speaker and amplifier so the TeachAIDS sound would work through my Netbook. We're now bff’s. Maybe I’ll go see him when Ferrari World opens and channel my inner Ricky Bobby. Ashley is one cool cat.

Pastor Bobby and Ashley took me to the largest harikrishna temple in the southern hemisphere. You can see the temple from far away. I know you’re shocked but it had a ton of bling on it.

Next we went to the Bangladesh open market. I had just learned that Durban and the province it is in has the second largest Indian population outside of India. Pastor Bobby had read my past blog and noticed that I took a picture of a woman de-feathering a chicken. He wanted to show me Durban style feather removal….. The irony is I can watch a triple bypass open heart surgery… chest plate sawed open and pried apart, heart stopped and put on bypass, vein harvesting, cauterization etc…without flinching, but this scene of chickens in cages, the wind blowing up all kinds of bad smells was almost too much for me. They had a machine that kind of looked like a bread slicer, the round blades turn and go super fast and pull all the feathers off…… blach… I almost threw up…. Oh the smells…. After Bobby got pictures of this, we walked through the open market. WOW! Super fresh veggies and tons of yummy looking hot peppers! Pastor Bobby bought me a samosa. Yum! Potato, because I still had one day of lent left until red meat heaven. I had a feeling this week would embody my Indian curry boot camp. YUM YUM YUM! A long time ago I thought I didn’t like curry. Coconut curry veggies were my nightmare when I worked at PF Changs. In Fiji on a surf trek, I discovered that I do like curry. Maybe there was something in the curry I had before that I was not fond of. You would think that with my obsession with spicy food I would be the queen of spicy brieanne…. I have narrowed it down to I like coconut and I like curry but not together.