Hello everyone! This is Satchel here and I am going to tell you about my adventures here in South Africa in our first week. The trip started out with a scary event at the San Francisco Airport. Everyone finally arrives at around 4:30 a.m., and we were all sitting down in the corner of the airport when suddenly my mom couldn't find my dads and her own passport. My sister, Weezie, accidentally left them at our house, about an hour drive from the airport. In the end my dad drove back to the house, got the passports, and then came back. We got to our gate in the nick of time, 8 mins before it left. We flew to N.Y. and then got on South Africa Airlines which was 9 hours to Dakar, then another 9 hours to Johannesburg in South Africa. I was kind of dumb on the plane ride because I had not stretched for at straight 18 hours so when I got of the plane I was walking like a 100 year-old man whose legs were twisted in weird angles.

That night mostly everyone went to the mall which was acrross this small bridge from our hotel. I, on the other hand was passed out. The next day we headed to the organization, Umsobomvu, which took us a while to say it right. I was surprised to learn how much they were doing and how much their method worked. Everyone was very nice and we got take- out food at this place which was actually good. Near the end of the meeting we got to meet our old friend from the meetings we had in Washington D.C., Mbogeni. He still had his very amazing smile and I was happy to get to see him again. After that we all went with this nice young man from Umsobomvu and he showed us this building which had all these people working on giving people microloans. I had learned about Microfinance earlier this year for one of my spanish projects but I learned even more by listening to what Umsobomvu had to say. I had a fun time going to their buildings.