S. Africa -Christine

My name is Christine Aoko Muga. I am in Form Three east. I was among the six students who were selected from St. Aloysius to attend the Taize program at Cape Town in South Africa.  We departed Kenya on 22nd September. It was a very nice experience since it was my first time to travel on a plane. I was very anxious as we were waiting to board the Kenya Airways flight number 784 which was supposed to take off at 1650. Exactly at 1620 we boarded the plane and the activities of checking the boarding pass by the air hostess went on smoothly.

My seat number was 324 and immediately my boarding pass was checked, I moved forward and made myself comfortable. I really enjoyed the take off and it was really exciting. I could not imagine myself being above the clouds. The whole journey was a great success and after five hours, we were in Cape Town. After the check in process in Cape Town international airport, we were warmly received by our hosts.

Arriving in South Africa at night didn’t prevent me from admiring the beauty of Cape Town. The city was developed. The drive to the host house took about thirty minutes. On arrival we were warmly welcomed by Kevin (our host) and his wife who offered us something to eat and after completing we all went to bed.

We began our tour of the city of Cape Town. Our tour guide took us to the water front where we had a wonderful photo session. We also visited the Cape of Good Hope and the place was really nice. We had great time and we had delicious lunch in a beautiful hotel.

On our second day, we visited the beach of Atlantic Ocean and we also had a chance to visit the Roben Island. We visited the castle of good hope where we had a historic view of Cape Town since the time of colonialism. Each and every place we visited we took photos for memories of our visit to Cape Town.

On the next day we visited Langa Township. We were accompanied by Cyprian, our tour guide. He briefly explained to us the history of Langa Township and took us round to have a view of how it looks. After the tour, we went to a nearby restaurant to have lunch. We then headed to St Joseph Marist, where the Taize program event was to take place.

It was time to prepare ourselves for another life. The registration process was successful as thousands of youths from different parts of the world arrived. Interaction with different people was fantastic and I got to know very many people within few minutes. At 5pm meal was distributed and at 6pm we had a song practice session and afterwards we headed to the host churches and families from St Joseph’s Marist College, Rondebosch.

My host center was in fact Rebond and Kengotion. Good-shephard and my host center code was D10. We were a group of twenty youths who were hosted in that church. We were received warmly by the families. I was very lucky to be hosted by Jean Arendse who was a widow and had no child. We became great friends as she was very kind and did all things for me in a loving manner. I’m very glad that this event gave me the chance to know how to live with other people.

The kind of workshops we had and the songs we sang were very interesting. The whole program was a wonderful and I really enjoyed it. I made many friends from different countries and we shared a lot of things together. On Sunday, we attended Mass from parishes of the host churches and after that, lunch was served. We headed back to St Joseph where we boarded the bus to the airport. Our flight was supposed to depart at 11:00pm and we waited patiently for it.

Indeed it was a very amazing experience in South Africa and I really thank all those who made it possible.