Lillian Aya Bruhn

Lillian made her grand entrance on July 29, 2011 at 7:33 pm.  The first week has been a blur of feedings, poops, and attempts at REM sleep.  She is growing well and getting chubbier every day, and she is sleeping long enough at a time to keep us sane.  We love introducing her to family and friends and are happily settling into our roles as parents. 

With Great-Grandma Nelly

Her favorite place in the world to sleep

Her first book

Hazel, our goddaugher, meets Lillian

Getting to know her Uncle David and Aunt Stephanie

Nicely swaddled in David's arms

With her mama

David wants her to know all about molecules

Big trip to the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market

At the market

With Grandma Martha and Aunt Stephanie

Sleepy baby

And still sleepy...

Her first dress from Aunt Caitlin

Four generations

Brand new

Leaving the hospital

With Monkey

Good sleepyhead

Excited for her first wedding!

Goodbye, Durban.

We’ve been back for more than six weeks. But looking out our windows at a sea of gray and snow, we miss tropical Durban more than ever. It’s not just the warmer weather, though. We miss the chaos of the city, the jumble of people and colors, the constant drone of the honking taxis, the thrill of managing to make it across the street alive, the gogos with bags stacked on their heads, the babies bundled in towels on their mothers’ backs. We miss the beachfront, where women in hijabs strolled alongside the lean, muscled Zulu lifeguards. We miss the people we worked with, the courageous women at the clinic, easing the impact of the AIDS crisis one child at a time, and the committed lawyers at the LRC, striving to make real the promise of South Africa’s new Constitution. We miss the way our values and beliefs were confronted, challenged, and stretched by our daily experiences there.

We want to return to South Africa, though it will likely be a good long time before that happens. In the meantime, we’ll keep the people and places with us, remembering.

One of the ubiquitous taxis that provide transportation for about 80% of South Africans.  The Durban ones sport great names.

Downtown Durban for the holidays.

The BAT Centre, an organization supporting local artists and musicians.

Bunny chow - Durban's gourmet dish of curry in white bread.

The largest mosque in the southern hemisphere.

Not quite sure what's in this aisle.

Durban's court.

The street Natty worked on.

Watching Sheep and Towers in Lesotho

Most of the books and websites talk about taking a tour up Sani Pass, a treacherous road connecting South Africa and Lesotho through the Drakensburg mountains. But somewhere we read that it’s possible to walk up. So, on our second to last weekend in South Africa, we drove through the foothills to a comfy hostel 6,000 feet up the mountain, ready to conquer the pass the next morning.

We woke up, packed as little as possible for our stay on top, and set out for the South African border post. Sani Pass is 8 kilometers long. Elevation at the bottom is just over 6,000 feet. Elevation at the top is 9,300. That’s a long way up, especially for our sea-level lungs. It was a perfect day, sunny with a gentle, cool breeze and the valley spreading out below us. Looking up, though, was a different story, with the daunting hairpin turns winding their way above us into Lesotho. By the time we arrived at the top, we were blistered, hungry, and very happy to see the highest pub in Africa. The Lesotho border post was a riot. It seemed to be an optional stop, but we wanted those stamps on our passports, so we stepped over barbed wire and abandoned tires, walked past some lethargic guards, and handed over our passports.

Fully stamped, we found our hostel, which was an old barn in the middle of a tiny traditional village. A few hundred meters away, past traditional stone homes, sheep, and some curious children was the pub, where we found some warm food, cold beers, and views that made us feel as though we were on top of the world. We asked the bartender for advice about what to do while in Lesotho. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “You should go see this tower. It’s tall and pretty neat.” Then he waxed philosophical about the benefits of watching sheep.

Armed with that advice – watch towers and sheep – we went wandering on top of the escarpment and spent the afternoon watching sheep and towers. Good pastimes in Lesotho, it turns out.

We managed to drag ourselves out of bed at 4:30 the next morning to watch the sunrise. The sun illuminated the clouds blanketing the valley below and covered the mountains in gold. It didn’t take long for the sun to burn through the clouds, and our descent was as clear as our ascent, and a lot less work. Happy to find our car still waiting for us back at the South African border post, we headed back to the sea for our last week in Durban.

The top of Sani Pass

Sheep

Horse

Sunrise

Traditional Basotho homes

Sani Top Lodge

Lesotho beer

Tower for tower-watching

Clouds hanging at the edge of the escarpment

A long way from our Boston

South African border post

Are we really going all the way up there?

Finally!

Sheep, for watching