Molweni!
My apologies for dropping off the face of the blogging earth. I've been swamped with work and trying to fit in those last lunches, dinners, game nights and dances with friends before they all depart on marvelous adventures for November. Our time here in Stellenbosch as a group has drawn to a close, and now it's sadly time to say goodbye. I, however, will be remaining here to await the arrival of Mom!! I really can't say how excited I am to spend 10 days of my last three weeks with her here. We'll keep you updated as to our adventures when the day arrives. :-)
Otherwise, I really have very little to say. As some of you have heard me rave about, it's finally consistently warm outside, and feels like more of a summer than the one I had in Washington before I left, minus work at the club and plus a lot of reading and paper-writing. I've written approximately 10,347 words in academic papers in the last week and a half, and I still have one more 3,000 word essay to go! This, of course, is in addition to my isiXhosa final presentation/exam last week, both of which went well. But it's all so close to being done--just a few more days.
We Americans have all been enjoying a ridiculously high exchange rate for the last few weeks--I think it finally began to drop from 11.3 yesterday and is sitting at around 10. For the first several months it remained fairly steady at 7.3ish--hopefully it sticks around closer to 10. :-)
I need to get back to my last paper: a comparison between two of Bessie Head's novella's "Maru" and "The Cardinals". Whoopee!
Hoping all is well at home! As much as I love sunshine, I miss the briskness of fall days, and the colorful leaves. Everyone's pictures on facebook make me a tad jealous. So enjoy it!
Happy Halloween!!
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
I picked the right semester to be here
Today, I'm feeling very lucky to be in South Africa. How many internationals have the opportunity to witness the changing of a still-young democratic government, by such radical but relatively safe means? The most political unrest in the country since 1994, and I am here to witness it (safely).
Just in case you've missed the news: last Saturday the ANC (South Africa's ruling political party since the collapse of apartheid) asked Thabo Mbeki, former ANC president and current South African president, to leave office before his term finishes in April 2009, because of questions about his involvement in the corruption trials of Jacob Zuma, the current ANC president (and the man who will most likely become South Africa's next president). Mbeki assented fairly quietly and will be stepping down officially tomorrow (Thursday). In the last two days, 10 other government ministers (most of Mbeki's cabinet) as well as the deputy president have also resigned, also official as of tomorrow. This puts South Africa in a potentially perilous position: suddenly, the country which is only 14 years and two presidents out of such a crippling system as apartheid is faced with having no president and, even worse, no governmental officials. Just saying the words sounds terrifically scary: I'm living in a country with no president and no government.
But the hopeful thing is this: the economy built up by Mandela and Mbeki together over the last 14 years, the stability of the democracy for which South Africans fought side by side for so many years, is proving itself strong enough to handle the supposed blows of such a radical governmental change-over--even in the wake of such recent violence as the xenophobic attacks last spring, even in the face of what some here call "Afro-pessimism"--the idea that Africa is doomed to always be a more violent, dangerous, third world continent--even in the face of a multitude of government officials being charged with various corruption scandals (even the hint of which would not be tolerated in America, as has been seen again and again), even with the highest crime rates, rape rates, and percentage of AIDS victims in Africa (and the world?). ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe will be sworn in Thursday as temporary president until the elections in April 2009.
And I get to live here while history is being made.
The amazing thing about South Africa is its ability to hope and its capacity for inspiring hope in other people. Yesterday afternoon I had the privilege of hearing Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu speak in Stellenbosch's Faculty of Theology (I'm still on a high...). His message focused on the youth of South Africa, and how they--and older South Africans, as well--need to focus on the progress that has already been made; they need to look at the leaps and bounds they've already made as a people since apartheid. He spoke of youth as being gifted with idealism and hope--a gift, he said, that had to have come from God. "God gave young people the gift of idealism. He says to you, dream. For when you dream, you are dreaming my dream". Tutu is an amazing and wise old man. Adorable, too. He randomly bursts into giggles, and he made his audience laugh for several minutes at a time so he could hardly speak. And the best part: AIFS has arranged for us to go and hear him say an Anglican church service in Cape Town Friday morning, a far more intimate meeting than yesterday's press-and-other-famous-folks-attended ceremony. I don't really do the celebrity obsession thing, and I don't particularly care for the word "hero", but I greatly admire Tutu and the incredible wisdom with which he's worked and helped South Africa grow in the last 50 years, both spiritually and as a whole people.
I am so lucky to be here right now. :-)
CNN's take on the political situation:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/09/21/south.africa.mbeki.resigns/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/09/23/south.africa.resignations/index.html
My favorite Tutu quote from yesterday, which is slightly unrelated to the above: he was describing the political struggle of apartheid and how emotionally and spiritually devastating that was for some people. We never doubted that God was in charge, he said. "We knew He was in control. But when things got tense, sometimes I wanted to whisper in His ear (mimes reaching up and pulling God's ear down towards him) 'God, we know you're in charge. Please...could you just make it *slightly* more obvious?'".
Just in case you've missed the news: last Saturday the ANC (South Africa's ruling political party since the collapse of apartheid) asked Thabo Mbeki, former ANC president and current South African president, to leave office before his term finishes in April 2009, because of questions about his involvement in the corruption trials of Jacob Zuma, the current ANC president (and the man who will most likely become South Africa's next president). Mbeki assented fairly quietly and will be stepping down officially tomorrow (Thursday). In the last two days, 10 other government ministers (most of Mbeki's cabinet) as well as the deputy president have also resigned, also official as of tomorrow. This puts South Africa in a potentially perilous position: suddenly, the country which is only 14 years and two presidents out of such a crippling system as apartheid is faced with having no president and, even worse, no governmental officials. Just saying the words sounds terrifically scary: I'm living in a country with no president and no government.
But the hopeful thing is this: the economy built up by Mandela and Mbeki together over the last 14 years, the stability of the democracy for which South Africans fought side by side for so many years, is proving itself strong enough to handle the supposed blows of such a radical governmental change-over--even in the wake of such recent violence as the xenophobic attacks last spring, even in the face of what some here call "Afro-pessimism"--the idea that Africa is doomed to always be a more violent, dangerous, third world continent--even in the face of a multitude of government officials being charged with various corruption scandals (even the hint of which would not be tolerated in America, as has been seen again and again), even with the highest crime rates, rape rates, and percentage of AIDS victims in Africa (and the world?). ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe will be sworn in Thursday as temporary president until the elections in April 2009.
And I get to live here while history is being made.
The amazing thing about South Africa is its ability to hope and its capacity for inspiring hope in other people. Yesterday afternoon I had the privilege of hearing Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu speak in Stellenbosch's Faculty of Theology (I'm still on a high...). His message focused on the youth of South Africa, and how they--and older South Africans, as well--need to focus on the progress that has already been made; they need to look at the leaps and bounds they've already made as a people since apartheid. He spoke of youth as being gifted with idealism and hope--a gift, he said, that had to have come from God. "God gave young people the gift of idealism. He says to you, dream. For when you dream, you are dreaming my dream". Tutu is an amazing and wise old man. Adorable, too. He randomly bursts into giggles, and he made his audience laugh for several minutes at a time so he could hardly speak. And the best part: AIFS has arranged for us to go and hear him say an Anglican church service in Cape Town Friday morning, a far more intimate meeting than yesterday's press-and-other-famous-folks-attended ceremony. I don't really do the celebrity obsession thing, and I don't particularly care for the word "hero", but I greatly admire Tutu and the incredible wisdom with which he's worked and helped South Africa grow in the last 50 years, both spiritually and as a whole people.
I am so lucky to be here right now. :-)
CNN's take on the political situation:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/09/21/south.africa.mbeki.resigns/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/09/23/south.africa.resignations/index.html
My favorite Tutu quote from yesterday, which is slightly unrelated to the above: he was describing the political struggle of apartheid and how emotionally and spiritually devastating that was for some people. We never doubted that God was in charge, he said. "We knew He was in control. But when things got tense, sometimes I wanted to whisper in His ear (mimes reaching up and pulling God's ear down towards him) 'God, we know you're in charge. Please...could you just make it *slightly* more obvious?'".
Friday, September 19, 2008
Long, long, long: Spring Break in September OR the Garden Route (with no Gardens)
It’s difficult to write well about intensity of emotion. In one of my English elective classes last week we read a poem by a woman (Ingrid de Kok) who worked as a transcriber for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the collapse of the apartheid government and the installation of democracy. Her job was to listen to the recorded confessions and stories of victims and oppressors alike who spoke before the Commission and transcribe their narratives into a written format still available for reading today. One of the main points of her poem (which is beautiful, though I won’t take the space to include it here) is that much of what was expressed in those interviews was completely incomprehensible when constrained to written language. It was simply beyond words, and the author struggled with the writing of it: “But how to transcribe silence from tape? Is weeping a pause or a word?” Even silence can mean a thousand un-transcribable things. In another realm, Mystics throughout the centuries have struggled trying to explain experience with the divine to those who have not had that experience; the language simply isn’t there. Some do the best they can; others make up new vocabularies to suit their intentions. But they almost all struggle with it.
On a MUCH less drastic level, this is kind of how I feel about this country.
It’s been a week now since I returned from “spring break” on the Garden Route, and I still don’t know what to write to you all at home, sitting in Washington or Minnesota or wherever, already tired of election advertisements and campaign speeches and polls, celebrating the last warmth of summer as the leaves start to turn (maybe soon, maybe not, depending on where you are…). I had plenty of experiences of which to tell, I just don’t have words for them. I’ll do my best, but I may be a bit scattered. My apologies in advance, then….
Day 1: Ostrich Riding
We drove out under the auspicious eye of the constellation Orion—my favorite constellation and one that I have not seen in a long time since at this time of year in SA the only opportunity to see it is after 4 am but before the sun comes up. Anyone who knows anything about me at all knows I am very rarely up at these hours; hence, I have not seen Orion for at least 2 months, and was very grateful to stare sleepily up at his bright-burning belt as we drove out of Stellenbosch at 5:30 am on Saturday the 6th of September.
Luckily our drivers were not as sleepy as the rest of us were; my van passed out pretty quickly and slept most of the long car ride there while our poor driver had to keep himself awake the whole morning. We stopped once for gas, and to my astonishment I stepped out of the car to find I recognized the countryside we had paused in. On my first trip to SA we had stopped just up the road for lunch on a sunny January day on our way, I believe, to an organic olive farm in the Klein Karoo. Perhaps we stopped after the farm; I don’t really remember clearly. As astonished as I was then, this random déjà vu continued throughout the week: we’d be driving through beautiful hills and low scrub-lands, start to climb a hill, turn a corner, and suddenly I heard Barbara Temple-Thurston’s voice in my head telling me that whoever saw the Indian Ocean first would get R5 (Barbara was the professor who led my first trip here, and a native of SA). Soon a sign for George would appear, and I remembered clearly making this drive the first time. The most surprising of all these remembrances was near the end of our trip; we were driving along through the town of Knysna for the second time, on our way to the Buffalo Bay Backpackers where we would be staying for two nights, and I looked over to see a market along the side of the highway that looked strangely familiar. As I stared I realized that this is the market where I’d purchased many presents for friends and family on my first trip; my most memorable market experience had occurred here (wherein I got trapped in a young man’s tent and given an address, a phone number, a name and an insistence that I write him when I went home, as well as a 6-7 in. carved baboon I promptly named Eric and which now belongs to one Kaitlin Hansen). It was with great excitement that I fit together the puzzle pieces of my previous journey. I didn’t realize how little I actually knew of where I was or what I was doing until I saw it this second time, as someone who can call South Africa ‘home’, even if just for now.
On to the less theoretical and more practically exciting aspects of my week (as Americans we all love the practical, or so I’ve learned). That first day we split into two groups and visited an ostrich farm and the Cango caves, a network of huge, very old caves stretching into the hills for hundreds of km. The caves were beautiful, but on the whole much less exciting than the ostriches. We have caves in America that look quite similar. Walking through them, I was reminded of two things: the Eye-Witness Gems and Stones book my brother used to own (so, consequently, I walked through the caves thinking about Stefan) and the time my dad dragged us to some similar caves in (I think) Iowa and all I remember is when we reached the bottom of the tour/caves the tour guide turned off the lights and it was so very, very black and it kind of scared me. Random thoughts. Anyway, *ostriches*.
I felt bad for our guide at the Ostrich Farm. He was very boisterous, but he had to be to talk over the simple ENERGY of our group. I swear most of them are so American they can’t even SIT quietly. They’re good people, but loud. Anyway, there were 30 of us and four other poor tourists in our group, who took being with us relatively well. We were given some background info on the farm and on ostriches themselves and then taken to see some of the animals. Ostriches, by the way, are incredibly stupid, quite ugly, and amazingly fierce. Males are black, females are brown. Some members of our group got to ride a few of the birds and feed some as well. As a whole, it was a smelly stop—they feed the birds extra calcium so that they’ll produce more/stronger eggs so the farm can in turn sell the eggs. One ostrich egg is the equivalent of 20 chicken eggs, and can withstand fantastic pressure. Pretty interesting stuff.
Day 2: Cats and Monkeys and Keurboom
Day 2 was fairly chill, but also exciting. The morning was spent (for me) relaxing and journaling at a local beach, once just sand but because of crazy weather the last few weeks now covered in huge rocks. Much of the Garden Route is along the coast (at least what we traveled) and much of the coast has been completely ravaged by the worst storms in a decade. But more on that in day 3…
In the afternoon we again split into two groups and one toured Monkeyland while the other went to our first surprise for the week: Tenikwa. Monkeyland is a corner of the Tsitsikamma National Forest, caged off as a monkey sanctuary. Hundreds of monkeys—either born in captivity, captured, injured or for some other reason unable to live in the wild—live in the jungle-forest of ML. We walked through the forest with a guide and just looked at monkeys swinging by on trees, feeding from stations periodically placed and even heard them arguing with one another. I helped a giant tortoise with a cracked shell climb over the edge of a feeding box so he could eat (unfortunately, I have no pictures of me with the tortoise). A couple girls had their sunglasses stolen from on top of their heads by passing monkeys. A little yellow one tried to climb my leg. I saw a ring-tailed lemur feeding her tiny baby, and was within 6 inches of another of the same family. All in all, pretty exciting.
Tenikwa, like Monkeyland, is also a sanctuary for normally wild African animals. But there are no monkeys here, there are….CATS. And as most people know, Africa has some wicked cool (big, dangerous) cats. Unfortunately, there were no lions at Tenikwa. But there were cheetahs and assorted other cats in the cheetah family, and there were most definitely cheetah cubs. The most exciting part was the petting of said cubs. They’re so adorable and playful you just want to pick them up and bring them home with you. Until you remember that they could probably eat you if they wanted. Even as 5-month-old cubs, they were bigger than most small dogs. Pictures to follow, hopefully.
Day 3: The Not-Bungee and Equally Dangerous Hike
Monday, day three, was a big day for many of my fellow Americans. This was the day of the bungee jump off Bloukrans Bridge; at 216 meters (approx. 709 feet), this is the Guinness Book of World Records certified highest bungee jump in the world. Apparently our group set a new record at Bloukrans for the number of people to jump in one day—40 something (I don’t know the exact number). Rather than spending $90 to jump off a bridge (I guess the classic maternal exclamation “if everyone else jumped off a bridge would you do it too?” can be safely negated with confidence, as I’ve twice had the opportunity to jump off this bridge with peers and have not) I chose to go on what turned out to be an equally life-threatening 6.4 km (3.9 miles) hike along the coast in the Tsitsikamma National Park. A hike sounds safe enough, by itself, but introduce certain factors and immediately you may have a problem. Several of these came into play for my little group of five, including but not limited to big, slimy rocks, washed out trails, rain, missing (necessary) bridges, and a guide who believed we were fine by ourselves and was consistently ¼-½ a mile ahead of us. Our first warning was the bright orange construction netting over the trail entrance, which Mike (our guide and current AIFS director here in Stellenbosch) promptly leapt over with the words, “We’ll turn back if it’s too dodgy”. No, I take it back. Our first warning was driving along the coast to the trail-head and marveling at the destruction from the storms the last few weeks. Holiday homes and campsites were completely demolished, foundations shifted, bricks dislodged, plants and trees uprooted and once-sandy beaches covered in rocks. We should have made the connection between “hike along the coast” and the coastal destruction we were witnessing. The construction netting and bright red stop sign would have then been an obvious sign that, indeed, the trail was perhaps not the safest for hiking at present. But rather than go back to Bloukrans and watch our comrades have the adrenaline rush of a lifetime, we hopped the fence and ignored the warning signs.
I tend to overdramaticize, just a tad. It was a beautiful hike, in all, and though not easy it was great fun. The end-point was a waterfall that flows into the ocean, a sight that I hadn’t ever seen (hadn’t even thought about ever seeing—the Pacific I know is accompanied by open beaches or development where no waterfall could possibly form). The trail we hiked, however, was rated difficult even in good condition, because of the rough terrain—a majority of the hike was over those giant boulder-type slippery rocks you encounter only at the beach, and which you never know if they are actually slippery or just look like they may be covered in wet algae, a discernment made more difficult with the addition of misty rain. The “easy” part of the trail, through a beautiful and mysterious-feeling jungle, was as ravaged as the rest of the coast we had seen. Parts of the hillside upon which the trail sat had simply collapsed into itself, slid into the ocean, or been uprooted into piles of ancient aloe and tree roots. Bridges cemented into the rocks were just…gone. One was still there, but sideways and shoved by the waves under an overhanging boulder several feet from where it should have been (and consequently completely useless to us). When, on the way back to the car, it began to rain and Mike left us to fend for ourselves (I honestly don’t know what he was thinking; I was fine but the others were NOT experienced hikers and were struggling quite a bit) it made the day all the more complete in absurdity. I mostly felt bad for the kids who had to bungee in the rain, however. I can’t imagine hanging upside down 216 meters off a bridge, tied by the ankles to a cord that could just possibly become slippery in the rain and fog. Luckily, no one got hurt. And as we were reminded several times, Bloukrans has a 100% safety record.
Days 4 & 5: Jeffrey’s Bay and Elephants
Tuesday was a free day for doing one or two of 4-5 different activities planned by the backpackers at which we were staying in Jeffrey’s Bay, which has some of the best surfing in the world. We could choose between surfing, sandboarding, a township tour, shopping, chilling, or horseback riding. I, having always wanted to ride a horse (that 10 minute pony ride at the zoo when I was 6 does NOT count) and having ridiculously romantic ideas about even the *concept* of horseback riding, naturally chose that. Everything is an adventure with me; I swear I’m not allowed to simply have a normal time with anything. While the afternoon group who went riding (the same trail and guides and horses as my morning group) came back glowing and talking about how magical and perfect it was, my group came straggling back a half hour late, beat up, bruised and wanting nothing more than to shower and snuggle in bed for the rest of the day.
(I really did love riding the horse. Not even my hips aching two days later could take away the slightly magical concept of riding a horse. I’m not entirely sure where this overly romantic notion came from, but I have an inkling it was all those books I read as a child. The desire to ride horses has been hidden deeply, alongside a desire to have been born in colonial America and live in a hollowed-out tree in the mountains by myself (My Side of the Mountain, anyone?). Riding horses is obviously the most practical of these desires. And yet it took me 21 years to get there.)
Just a rundown, since this is getting long: the horses were barely broken and mostly untrained. Since I spoke up about never having ridden before, I was given one of the lazy horses named Lady. Lady, I learned, had to be at the very back of the line because otherwise she would kick any horse behind her. Luckily, this impulse didn’t act up until the very end, but by then I was so ready to be done with the over-2-hour ride that it only irritated me more. Two girls fell off while their horses were galloping because the horses wouldn’t stop. The trail was half dunes and half beach (which was gorgeous) and most of the horses started galloping as soon as they got on flat sand. My horse, however, decided this was the time for a leisurely walk. No matter how hard I kicked or coaxed she would not go any faster. One of the girls who fell off walked half the trail home; I arrived only five minutes before she did, still on my horse.
Many people had similar experiences with their activities that day, I guess. My roommate had a hard time with both sandboarding and surfing, and considered the day a dud in general. I heard similar stories from other friends. The evening was spent hanging out at a backpacking place along the beach—the coolest backpackers I’ve been to by far, though not quite the most gorgeous location.
The next morning we woke early (6 am) and drove to Addo Elephant Park, a long drive followed by a cold, windy safari inside the park. We saw lots of elephants, a few Kudu and other antelope-type animals, and a warthog. No black Rhinos, unfortunately, or lions. But the elephants were almost close enough to the vehicles to touch, and there was a week-old baby with one tribe, which was fantastic to see. We drove from Addo to Buffalo Bay (several long hours) and were entertained that evening by a live Rasta band called the Reggae Ambassadors hired specifically to play a concert for us in the backpackers. I wish I could post video clips for you to hear, but alas, I cannot.
Last Day: Ahoy, Rastafari!
Our last day was spent in Knysna, half shopping and half touring a Rastafarian community called Judah Square in the middle of a township—the community from which the band of the previous evening had come. Our tour guide was one of the more interesting characters I’ve met so far in South Africa, though not the most educational as to the Rasta beliefs and way of life. His hair was one gigantic dread hanging all the way down his back, nearly to his knees. There were even little Rasta chil’uns! For the sake of time, I won’t go into what I did learn of the Rastafarian religion and community, but feel free to leave me a comment and I’ll send you a message with more info. In fact, if there’s anything in this blog you want to hear more about feel free to ask. I’m trying to keep it short but I tend to be wordy anyhow….
That evening we were treated to an amazing dinner on the Knysna waterfront (which was another of those “oh! I’ve been here!” moments) and awoke the next day to make the long 5ish hour drive home to Stellenbosch.
Immediately upon my return I set to reading a book I needed to do a presentation about on Wednesday (darn, back to procrastinating), which I succeeded in doing and quite well, in fact. My professor was impressed by my “American”-style presentation (which apparently means not just reading my presentation notes but actually “engaging” with my topic). I also was given back the English paper I turned in just before break on Snow White (for a different class), and was very pleased with my mark (as was my professor, who made me and another student read our papers out loud for the class). So I’m feeling affirmed and productive this week, which is nice. The last few days of break I spent with a bad throat-cold I feared might be tonsillitis, as several other students in my group have had it (one had his tonsils removed yesterday). This cold, however, has dissipated since with tea and sleep and a lack of sugar. Good deal.
Sorry about the length—there was too much to say! I trust all is well back home, and my love goes out to each and every one of you.
Cheers!
(and check out the new pics to the right...)
On a MUCH less drastic level, this is kind of how I feel about this country.
It’s been a week now since I returned from “spring break” on the Garden Route, and I still don’t know what to write to you all at home, sitting in Washington or Minnesota or wherever, already tired of election advertisements and campaign speeches and polls, celebrating the last warmth of summer as the leaves start to turn (maybe soon, maybe not, depending on where you are…). I had plenty of experiences of which to tell, I just don’t have words for them. I’ll do my best, but I may be a bit scattered. My apologies in advance, then….
Day 1: Ostrich Riding
We drove out under the auspicious eye of the constellation Orion—my favorite constellation and one that I have not seen in a long time since at this time of year in SA the only opportunity to see it is after 4 am but before the sun comes up. Anyone who knows anything about me at all knows I am very rarely up at these hours; hence, I have not seen Orion for at least 2 months, and was very grateful to stare sleepily up at his bright-burning belt as we drove out of Stellenbosch at 5:30 am on Saturday the 6th of September.
Luckily our drivers were not as sleepy as the rest of us were; my van passed out pretty quickly and slept most of the long car ride there while our poor driver had to keep himself awake the whole morning. We stopped once for gas, and to my astonishment I stepped out of the car to find I recognized the countryside we had paused in. On my first trip to SA we had stopped just up the road for lunch on a sunny January day on our way, I believe, to an organic olive farm in the Klein Karoo. Perhaps we stopped after the farm; I don’t really remember clearly. As astonished as I was then, this random déjà vu continued throughout the week: we’d be driving through beautiful hills and low scrub-lands, start to climb a hill, turn a corner, and suddenly I heard Barbara Temple-Thurston’s voice in my head telling me that whoever saw the Indian Ocean first would get R5 (Barbara was the professor who led my first trip here, and a native of SA). Soon a sign for George would appear, and I remembered clearly making this drive the first time. The most surprising of all these remembrances was near the end of our trip; we were driving along through the town of Knysna for the second time, on our way to the Buffalo Bay Backpackers where we would be staying for two nights, and I looked over to see a market along the side of the highway that looked strangely familiar. As I stared I realized that this is the market where I’d purchased many presents for friends and family on my first trip; my most memorable market experience had occurred here (wherein I got trapped in a young man’s tent and given an address, a phone number, a name and an insistence that I write him when I went home, as well as a 6-7 in. carved baboon I promptly named Eric and which now belongs to one Kaitlin Hansen). It was with great excitement that I fit together the puzzle pieces of my previous journey. I didn’t realize how little I actually knew of where I was or what I was doing until I saw it this second time, as someone who can call South Africa ‘home’, even if just for now.
On to the less theoretical and more practically exciting aspects of my week (as Americans we all love the practical, or so I’ve learned). That first day we split into two groups and visited an ostrich farm and the Cango caves, a network of huge, very old caves stretching into the hills for hundreds of km. The caves were beautiful, but on the whole much less exciting than the ostriches. We have caves in America that look quite similar. Walking through them, I was reminded of two things: the Eye-Witness Gems and Stones book my brother used to own (so, consequently, I walked through the caves thinking about Stefan) and the time my dad dragged us to some similar caves in (I think) Iowa and all I remember is when we reached the bottom of the tour/caves the tour guide turned off the lights and it was so very, very black and it kind of scared me. Random thoughts. Anyway, *ostriches*.
I felt bad for our guide at the Ostrich Farm. He was very boisterous, but he had to be to talk over the simple ENERGY of our group. I swear most of them are so American they can’t even SIT quietly. They’re good people, but loud. Anyway, there were 30 of us and four other poor tourists in our group, who took being with us relatively well. We were given some background info on the farm and on ostriches themselves and then taken to see some of the animals. Ostriches, by the way, are incredibly stupid, quite ugly, and amazingly fierce. Males are black, females are brown. Some members of our group got to ride a few of the birds and feed some as well. As a whole, it was a smelly stop—they feed the birds extra calcium so that they’ll produce more/stronger eggs so the farm can in turn sell the eggs. One ostrich egg is the equivalent of 20 chicken eggs, and can withstand fantastic pressure. Pretty interesting stuff.
Day 2: Cats and Monkeys and Keurboom
Day 2 was fairly chill, but also exciting. The morning was spent (for me) relaxing and journaling at a local beach, once just sand but because of crazy weather the last few weeks now covered in huge rocks. Much of the Garden Route is along the coast (at least what we traveled) and much of the coast has been completely ravaged by the worst storms in a decade. But more on that in day 3…
In the afternoon we again split into two groups and one toured Monkeyland while the other went to our first surprise for the week: Tenikwa. Monkeyland is a corner of the Tsitsikamma National Forest, caged off as a monkey sanctuary. Hundreds of monkeys—either born in captivity, captured, injured or for some other reason unable to live in the wild—live in the jungle-forest of ML. We walked through the forest with a guide and just looked at monkeys swinging by on trees, feeding from stations periodically placed and even heard them arguing with one another. I helped a giant tortoise with a cracked shell climb over the edge of a feeding box so he could eat (unfortunately, I have no pictures of me with the tortoise). A couple girls had their sunglasses stolen from on top of their heads by passing monkeys. A little yellow one tried to climb my leg. I saw a ring-tailed lemur feeding her tiny baby, and was within 6 inches of another of the same family. All in all, pretty exciting.
Tenikwa, like Monkeyland, is also a sanctuary for normally wild African animals. But there are no monkeys here, there are….CATS. And as most people know, Africa has some wicked cool (big, dangerous) cats. Unfortunately, there were no lions at Tenikwa. But there were cheetahs and assorted other cats in the cheetah family, and there were most definitely cheetah cubs. The most exciting part was the petting of said cubs. They’re so adorable and playful you just want to pick them up and bring them home with you. Until you remember that they could probably eat you if they wanted. Even as 5-month-old cubs, they were bigger than most small dogs. Pictures to follow, hopefully.
Day 3: The Not-Bungee and Equally Dangerous Hike
Monday, day three, was a big day for many of my fellow Americans. This was the day of the bungee jump off Bloukrans Bridge; at 216 meters (approx. 709 feet), this is the Guinness Book of World Records certified highest bungee jump in the world. Apparently our group set a new record at Bloukrans for the number of people to jump in one day—40 something (I don’t know the exact number). Rather than spending $90 to jump off a bridge (I guess the classic maternal exclamation “if everyone else jumped off a bridge would you do it too?” can be safely negated with confidence, as I’ve twice had the opportunity to jump off this bridge with peers and have not) I chose to go on what turned out to be an equally life-threatening 6.4 km (3.9 miles) hike along the coast in the Tsitsikamma National Park. A hike sounds safe enough, by itself, but introduce certain factors and immediately you may have a problem. Several of these came into play for my little group of five, including but not limited to big, slimy rocks, washed out trails, rain, missing (necessary) bridges, and a guide who believed we were fine by ourselves and was consistently ¼-½ a mile ahead of us. Our first warning was the bright orange construction netting over the trail entrance, which Mike (our guide and current AIFS director here in Stellenbosch) promptly leapt over with the words, “We’ll turn back if it’s too dodgy”. No, I take it back. Our first warning was driving along the coast to the trail-head and marveling at the destruction from the storms the last few weeks. Holiday homes and campsites were completely demolished, foundations shifted, bricks dislodged, plants and trees uprooted and once-sandy beaches covered in rocks. We should have made the connection between “hike along the coast” and the coastal destruction we were witnessing. The construction netting and bright red stop sign would have then been an obvious sign that, indeed, the trail was perhaps not the safest for hiking at present. But rather than go back to Bloukrans and watch our comrades have the adrenaline rush of a lifetime, we hopped the fence and ignored the warning signs.
I tend to overdramaticize, just a tad. It was a beautiful hike, in all, and though not easy it was great fun. The end-point was a waterfall that flows into the ocean, a sight that I hadn’t ever seen (hadn’t even thought about ever seeing—the Pacific I know is accompanied by open beaches or development where no waterfall could possibly form). The trail we hiked, however, was rated difficult even in good condition, because of the rough terrain—a majority of the hike was over those giant boulder-type slippery rocks you encounter only at the beach, and which you never know if they are actually slippery or just look like they may be covered in wet algae, a discernment made more difficult with the addition of misty rain. The “easy” part of the trail, through a beautiful and mysterious-feeling jungle, was as ravaged as the rest of the coast we had seen. Parts of the hillside upon which the trail sat had simply collapsed into itself, slid into the ocean, or been uprooted into piles of ancient aloe and tree roots. Bridges cemented into the rocks were just…gone. One was still there, but sideways and shoved by the waves under an overhanging boulder several feet from where it should have been (and consequently completely useless to us). When, on the way back to the car, it began to rain and Mike left us to fend for ourselves (I honestly don’t know what he was thinking; I was fine but the others were NOT experienced hikers and were struggling quite a bit) it made the day all the more complete in absurdity. I mostly felt bad for the kids who had to bungee in the rain, however. I can’t imagine hanging upside down 216 meters off a bridge, tied by the ankles to a cord that could just possibly become slippery in the rain and fog. Luckily, no one got hurt. And as we were reminded several times, Bloukrans has a 100% safety record.
Days 4 & 5: Jeffrey’s Bay and Elephants
Tuesday was a free day for doing one or two of 4-5 different activities planned by the backpackers at which we were staying in Jeffrey’s Bay, which has some of the best surfing in the world. We could choose between surfing, sandboarding, a township tour, shopping, chilling, or horseback riding. I, having always wanted to ride a horse (that 10 minute pony ride at the zoo when I was 6 does NOT count) and having ridiculously romantic ideas about even the *concept* of horseback riding, naturally chose that. Everything is an adventure with me; I swear I’m not allowed to simply have a normal time with anything. While the afternoon group who went riding (the same trail and guides and horses as my morning group) came back glowing and talking about how magical and perfect it was, my group came straggling back a half hour late, beat up, bruised and wanting nothing more than to shower and snuggle in bed for the rest of the day.
(I really did love riding the horse. Not even my hips aching two days later could take away the slightly magical concept of riding a horse. I’m not entirely sure where this overly romantic notion came from, but I have an inkling it was all those books I read as a child. The desire to ride horses has been hidden deeply, alongside a desire to have been born in colonial America and live in a hollowed-out tree in the mountains by myself (My Side of the Mountain, anyone?). Riding horses is obviously the most practical of these desires. And yet it took me 21 years to get there.)
Just a rundown, since this is getting long: the horses were barely broken and mostly untrained. Since I spoke up about never having ridden before, I was given one of the lazy horses named Lady. Lady, I learned, had to be at the very back of the line because otherwise she would kick any horse behind her. Luckily, this impulse didn’t act up until the very end, but by then I was so ready to be done with the over-2-hour ride that it only irritated me more. Two girls fell off while their horses were galloping because the horses wouldn’t stop. The trail was half dunes and half beach (which was gorgeous) and most of the horses started galloping as soon as they got on flat sand. My horse, however, decided this was the time for a leisurely walk. No matter how hard I kicked or coaxed she would not go any faster. One of the girls who fell off walked half the trail home; I arrived only five minutes before she did, still on my horse.
Many people had similar experiences with their activities that day, I guess. My roommate had a hard time with both sandboarding and surfing, and considered the day a dud in general. I heard similar stories from other friends. The evening was spent hanging out at a backpacking place along the beach—the coolest backpackers I’ve been to by far, though not quite the most gorgeous location.
The next morning we woke early (6 am) and drove to Addo Elephant Park, a long drive followed by a cold, windy safari inside the park. We saw lots of elephants, a few Kudu and other antelope-type animals, and a warthog. No black Rhinos, unfortunately, or lions. But the elephants were almost close enough to the vehicles to touch, and there was a week-old baby with one tribe, which was fantastic to see. We drove from Addo to Buffalo Bay (several long hours) and were entertained that evening by a live Rasta band called the Reggae Ambassadors hired specifically to play a concert for us in the backpackers. I wish I could post video clips for you to hear, but alas, I cannot.
Last Day: Ahoy, Rastafari!
Our last day was spent in Knysna, half shopping and half touring a Rastafarian community called Judah Square in the middle of a township—the community from which the band of the previous evening had come. Our tour guide was one of the more interesting characters I’ve met so far in South Africa, though not the most educational as to the Rasta beliefs and way of life. His hair was one gigantic dread hanging all the way down his back, nearly to his knees. There were even little Rasta chil’uns! For the sake of time, I won’t go into what I did learn of the Rastafarian religion and community, but feel free to leave me a comment and I’ll send you a message with more info. In fact, if there’s anything in this blog you want to hear more about feel free to ask. I’m trying to keep it short but I tend to be wordy anyhow….
That evening we were treated to an amazing dinner on the Knysna waterfront (which was another of those “oh! I’ve been here!” moments) and awoke the next day to make the long 5ish hour drive home to Stellenbosch.
Immediately upon my return I set to reading a book I needed to do a presentation about on Wednesday (darn, back to procrastinating), which I succeeded in doing and quite well, in fact. My professor was impressed by my “American”-style presentation (which apparently means not just reading my presentation notes but actually “engaging” with my topic). I also was given back the English paper I turned in just before break on Snow White (for a different class), and was very pleased with my mark (as was my professor, who made me and another student read our papers out loud for the class). So I’m feeling affirmed and productive this week, which is nice. The last few days of break I spent with a bad throat-cold I feared might be tonsillitis, as several other students in my group have had it (one had his tonsils removed yesterday). This cold, however, has dissipated since with tea and sleep and a lack of sugar. Good deal.
Sorry about the length—there was too much to say! I trust all is well back home, and my love goes out to each and every one of you.
Cheers!
(and check out the new pics to the right...)
Friday, September 5, 2008
I'm leaving...in a Kombi?
This will have to be short, both because I have little to say and little brain capacity with which to say it.
Not a whole lot has happened here in the last couple weeks, except the usual snow-balling of stress and work that happens mid-semester in any college or university setting. Last Wednesday I turned in my first English paper at this institution, an event which made me curiously nervous despite the fact that I've been writing English papers for almost...well, close to half my life. I actually--and here it's a pity certain professors and/or former teachers aren't reading this--had my paper done two days *early*, with over 7 outside references, and it ended up being almost 1 000 words over the minimum. *shakes head* I was kind of in shock, I think. It was a very interesting topic, though--I had to analyze Neil Gaiman's short story "Snow, Glass, Apples", a twisted but excellently written re-telling of the fairy tale Snow White, from the perspective of the stepmother. We'll see how my efforts turn out.
As for the future: in roughly 4 hours myself and 69 (ish) other folk will be straggling into 9 7-seater Kombi vans to head out on what promises to be the best week of the entire semester. I should have been asleep about 4 hours ago, but I'll have a long drive during which I can sleep tomorrow. Our trip will last about a week and take us on what's called the Garden Route--a route of the most famous (and beautiful) tourist attractions in South Africa, including Jeffrey's Bay (with some of the best surfing in the world), the Tsitsikamma adventure forest (some options include ziplining through the forest canopy; Monkeyland, a primate sanctuary for different monkeys from all over the world and bungee jumping-the highest jump in the southern hemisphere) and Addo Elephant park. We'll also go climbing through the Cango caves, tour a Rastafarian township and have the opportunity to do a multitude of things such as whale-watching, sea-kayaking, horse back riding (on the beach), sandboarding (like snowboarding, but on dunes) and surfing. I myself don't know how many of these I'll be able to participate in (as most things, they all cost $$) but the trip should be exciting no matter what. And when we return in a week...plenty to blog about!
Signing off for now!
Not a whole lot has happened here in the last couple weeks, except the usual snow-balling of stress and work that happens mid-semester in any college or university setting. Last Wednesday I turned in my first English paper at this institution, an event which made me curiously nervous despite the fact that I've been writing English papers for almost...well, close to half my life. I actually--and here it's a pity certain professors and/or former teachers aren't reading this--had my paper done two days *early*, with over 7 outside references, and it ended up being almost 1 000 words over the minimum. *shakes head* I was kind of in shock, I think. It was a very interesting topic, though--I had to analyze Neil Gaiman's short story "Snow, Glass, Apples", a twisted but excellently written re-telling of the fairy tale Snow White, from the perspective of the stepmother. We'll see how my efforts turn out.
As for the future: in roughly 4 hours myself and 69 (ish) other folk will be straggling into 9 7-seater Kombi vans to head out on what promises to be the best week of the entire semester. I should have been asleep about 4 hours ago, but I'll have a long drive during which I can sleep tomorrow. Our trip will last about a week and take us on what's called the Garden Route--a route of the most famous (and beautiful) tourist attractions in South Africa, including Jeffrey's Bay (with some of the best surfing in the world), the Tsitsikamma adventure forest (some options include ziplining through the forest canopy; Monkeyland, a primate sanctuary for different monkeys from all over the world and bungee jumping-the highest jump in the southern hemisphere) and Addo Elephant park. We'll also go climbing through the Cango caves, tour a Rastafarian township and have the opportunity to do a multitude of things such as whale-watching, sea-kayaking, horse back riding (on the beach), sandboarding (like snowboarding, but on dunes) and surfing. I myself don't know how many of these I'll be able to participate in (as most things, they all cost $$) but the trip should be exciting no matter what. And when we return in a week...plenty to blog about!
Signing off for now!
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Learning to Chill
OR The "This is Africa" Concept Part II: Learning to "Chill"
Part I: The Kids
A few weeks ago, right after my last blog entry, it was requested that I write a bit about the kids I'm working with once a week. I've been trying to think of a coherent way to do this, as our sessions there are only once a week and feel as scattered as anything else in this country. TIA, right? Well, when it comes to the kids in the ISOS Kayamandi after school program (run by the International Student Organization), TIA to the max. Most stereotypes--okay, so they don't have flies in their eyes and I haven't spotted a rib yet, but many stereotypes--about African poverty is fleshed out in the black township (the pc term is an "informal settlement", I believe) of Kayamandi. Kayamandi literally (and ironically) means "nice home"--from the Xhosa "khaya" (home) and "mnandi" (nice). It's a fairly small settlement (as far as townships go) of about 30,000 black South Africans who live on the hill above Stellenbosch, across a bridge and on your way towards Cape Town. Kayamandi is curiously developed, in fact, since about half of the homes there were built in the 40's (and they *are* actual homes) and about half are nothing more than cardboard-and-corrugated tin boxes that may or may not last the next rainstorm. There are also sections of Kayamandi devoted to mass communal living--boarding "houses" originally built to house miners who migrated during apartheid to find work, leaving their families behind. Since the abolition of the pass laws that forbid women and children to join their husbands in such places, buildings that used to house 100-200 miners now house the miners AND their families. A bed two grown men used to share uncomfortably now is used for an entire family. A few toilets are shared by an entire building full of these families. The chief problem with these former boarding houses (really, long shelters with rooms off either side and one pitiful kitchen at the end) was that they were built during the height of mining--and haven't been updated or touched by the government (other than the addition of electricity, in the bare minimum). These are the homes the kids I work with live in--it's impossible to talk about them without describing their circumstances.
We work every Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday (I work Thurs.) at the iKhaya Primary School with four classrooms of 6th and 7th graders (two of each). The 6th graders were added to the program this year because of the overwhelming turn-out of international students who applied to volunteer. Since the 7th graders have the more established program, their daily activities vary by week--these last two weeks they've been talking about/writing poetry and performing it in a slam style. The 6th graders, with whom I work, work on maths or other homework. Both groups receive a snack (if it's available--usually just half a slice of bread with peanut butter or a small apple) and then participate in a game outside, weather permitting. They love playing kickball (which we taught them last week) and foursquare (which was taught to them last term by the other group). They've taught us some of their games, too: they have crazy hand slapping games that all have songs (although, when we asked them to teach us the songs we found that they didn't even know all the right words) and the girls adore playing handball (while the boys prefer soccer). It's a pretty easy program, really. Fairly simple. Help the kid to maths and practice his/her English. We have almost a one-on-one ratio in my classroom, which is exciting.
And then there are the little details that make it frustrating, the moments when I have to remind myself to relax. We volunteers appear at the International Office at 13:30 every Thursday afternoon, not knowing what we're doing that day with the kids or how we're going to get to the school (sometimes we take multiple trips in a 10-11 seat Kombi van, sometimes the 30+ of us cram into 1 Kombi and a smaller car). When we get to the school, the iKhaya kids are usually not out of school yet--half the kids in our program have to walk 1/2 a mile from their school uphill to get to the program, so we still have to wait for them to arrive. In the meantime, the classroom we will occupy for homework help is completely trashed and usually full of milling kids.
Now, it's a given that kids are messy; I've worked with them long enough to know that and accept it. But I have yet to figure out how one classroom of kids so completely destroys a room like the iKhaya kids. The room is in disarray even when it is clean, which doesn't help. There's a permanent stack of random teacher's books and posters in one corner, broken desks and chairs in two others. Behind the door is the temporary garbage pile from the day, usually about 1/10 the size of the final pile that gets scraped together. The room itself is filled with bigger metal desk frames laid across with wooden boards, smaller individual desks, and various chairs of all sorts of materials and states of disrepair. The wooden slabs that make "tables" are mostly broken into 6-8 in. wide strips and, as they are not bolted to the metal frames, usually are on the floor by the time we arrive. The first task (which is the kids', not ours, although we try to help a bit) is to stack all the chairs so the floor is clear for sweeping. Then they sweep, taking turns by some undefined system and chattering to each other in Xhosa. Sometimes the boys look sullen and throw the broom at the girls and a small fight ensues, but it's usually resolved without our help and the room slowly gets clean. There's no way to describe the mess of papers, posters and just DIRT on the floor. The posters on the wall change daily because they're continually ripped off and end up on the floor. Last Thursday we threw away the multiplication tables that were on the wall the weeks before. The kids seem unbothered by the mess; they just go about their business cleaning it up as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Finally, all the trash is swept out the door into a giant black trash bag which someone lugs from room to room down the corridor outside, and it's gone. We then set up chairs and desks and within a few minutes the room is (finally) full of quietly working kids. The day is pretty smooth from there. Their English is relatively good, considering most of them have only been speaking it for a couple years. Like any kids their age, some of them have attitudes the size of the mountains that surround our town. But they're good kids, for the most part. They have a very strange system of multiplying and dividing by drawing lines on scratch paper that comes from a lack of understanding (I think), but they get the right answers. They love tricking us in Hangman when their homework is done. They're very tiring, but they're crazy, and they love to laugh.
Part II: Trippin'
The last few weeks have been full of trips, spontaneous and planned, to Cape Town, Cape Point and Simon's Town, home of the Boulders Beach Penguin Colony. Two weeks ago I had my first real clubbing experience, and spent a couple nights out dancing with some friends until the wee hours of the morning, first in Stellenbosch and the next night in Cape Town. Dancing in clubs/bars is refreshingly un-American--people seem to care very little what they look like, and the hours fly by singing along to bad 80's dance-techno (think Bob Sinclair) and 90's favorites (from Sublime to Nirvana to the Beastie Boys) that were popular when I was in Junior High-mostly American, which is unfortunate, but not particularly current. Travel to Cape Town (except for an evening out where we were transported by the International Student Organization) is an adventure in itself--it requires riding the train from Stellenbosch, a trip most white South Africans would NEVER take. We receive surprised looks on both ends of the line when we ask for regular tickets and not first class, and always have a police officer or security official asking if we're alright in the train station at Cape Town (just to be sure we're not lost). Having spent so much time riding Tacoma's public transport system, it doesn't bother me much either way. I wouldn't go alone and I wouldn't go after dark, and I don't flaunt my money--no iPod, no phone, keep the camera away. But other than that, what is there to do? We have yet to have any problems and we've ridden both directions twice. We can't stay stuck in Stellenbosch, nor do we have the money to rent cars or hire a taxi. My friends, despite their verbal acceptance of our chosen method of transportation, still freak out a little every time we board the train. Hearing stories has got to have an effect on a person, I guess.
Last weekend I and two other girls from my program (Katie and Robin) practiced our go-with-the-flow attitudes by spontaneously hopping on the train Friday afternoon to go to Cape Town. We had called when we decided to go, Friday morning, and made reservations at the Cat and Moose Backpackers on Long Street, one of the restaurant and nightlife hubs of Cape Town. Two hours after making reservations, we were in the train station, ready to go. It was, altogether, 24 hours of relaxing, good food, and wandering around a beautiful city with much to explore. Like any backpacking place, Cat and Moose was small but somewhat sprawling, eclectic and full of the go-with-the-flow vibe. South African reggae-ish music full of drums and marimbas played in the background as we were let through the locked gate. Backpacking places (hostels in other countries) in South Africa radiate chill-a word not foreign to me before coming here but one which is used frequently among both Americans describing South Africans and South Africans about everything else. If registration doesn't work out, just "chill". If we don't get that transportation to Kayamandi until a half hour later, just "chill" (conversely, if there is only one method of transportation and that means 30 of us have to cram into one vehicle, just "chill"). If your driver on that excursion makes your stomach churn more with his driving technique than the last time you rode the Gravitron at the fair, just "chill". The key is that the method doesn't matter: if the outcome is important, it will happen. You will survive. 30+ people in one car means no one is going anywhere even though the driver maneuvers like a bat out of hell (on crack). TIA, folks. The crazy, spontaneous, safari-going, ostrich-riding, cheetah touching Africa that emanates practiced calm in the face of ridiculous amounts of stress and such glorious statistics as the highest rape rate in the world and one of the highest crime rates.
Before I came to Africa, I was slightly nervous about the fact that the majority of our group of Americans are from the East Coast. As my brother reminded me, it’s good to mix it up and meet new people. But the simple fact is, the west coast of America has a specific kind of vibe that the east coast does not—a hippie, majority liberal, organic food eating, Birkenstock wearing, coffee gulping kind of nature that doesn’t seem to contrast well with the hurried nature of the American city. Seattle and Portland and everything in between have a particular reputation, deserved or not, for this nature. Maybe it’s a movement that turned into a label people felt they needed to become in order to fit in; maybe the lack of sun in the west has damaged our brains. Maybe it’s the mountains or the trees so close to the I-5 corridor. Maybe it’s just a student movement that thrives in the 20-somethings and dies with entrance to the “real” world. Whatever it is, it’s there. It’s that nature that produced our amazing music scene. It’s that nature that produced the coffeehouse eclecticism for which Seattle is so famous. This nature, I would venture, is America’s version of African “chill”—a nature which approximates but which in some ways cannot come close to the raw naturalism of Africa. Our chill doesn’t involve life-threatening animals and desert safaris—we have a spoiled yuppy kind of chill involving caramel macchiatos and locally grown, farm-share veggies. I never saw myself as fitting into this scene very much until this trip, but it’s now hard to avoid: I drink 99% more coffee than the girls with whom I spend time; I ride the train to Cape Town without freaking out. I hate shoes and would rather go barefoot anywhere; my idea of a relaxing evening may involve a movie and pj’s, but it just as likely might involve smoking hookah and listening to music. One of the things I miss most about my room is the ability to burn incense and candles. This isn’t to say that East Coast-ers as a whole dislike these things. I know some very relaxed folks who don’t do any of those things. But as a whole, it’s interesting to see the differences between east and west coast, between this African “chill” and my own place in Washington.
The content of our weekend is actually fairly unimportant in this discussion. We had fun; we wandered around the city, went out to a nice dinner, went to a Kurdish restaurant for dessert and saw a belly dancer there. We went to the South African Museum and Planetarium (which was *amazing*, actually). We met up with some friends and rode home to Stellenbosch. It was a good weekend, overall. All of them have been lately.
Little brag about seeing the penguins. They're not particularly cute, but they're PENGUINS. Hundreds of them, in BUSHES. Which is weird, but that is where they orginate. We saw a lot of babies just shedding their gray baby fuzz. The beach was beautiful, and we had a nice sunny day for our trip. At one point during the day (up at Cape Point) some members of our group had an altercation with some baboons, which ended in lots of pictures and a frantic park ranger. The girls and I went on a hike down to the Cape of Good Hope and met some baboons on our way back to the parking lot, but they walked by us without a problem and the only one that even looked at us was a baby less than a foot tall.
This was a bit longer than planned; sorry! There's so much more I wish I could say, but there simply isn't time. I hope the end of summer finds you all well!
Part I: The Kids
A few weeks ago, right after my last blog entry, it was requested that I write a bit about the kids I'm working with once a week. I've been trying to think of a coherent way to do this, as our sessions there are only once a week and feel as scattered as anything else in this country. TIA, right? Well, when it comes to the kids in the ISOS Kayamandi after school program (run by the International Student Organization), TIA to the max. Most stereotypes--okay, so they don't have flies in their eyes and I haven't spotted a rib yet, but many stereotypes--about African poverty is fleshed out in the black township (the pc term is an "informal settlement", I believe) of Kayamandi. Kayamandi literally (and ironically) means "nice home"--from the Xhosa "khaya" (home) and "mnandi" (nice). It's a fairly small settlement (as far as townships go) of about 30,000 black South Africans who live on the hill above Stellenbosch, across a bridge and on your way towards Cape Town. Kayamandi is curiously developed, in fact, since about half of the homes there were built in the 40's (and they *are* actual homes) and about half are nothing more than cardboard-and-corrugated tin boxes that may or may not last the next rainstorm. There are also sections of Kayamandi devoted to mass communal living--boarding "houses" originally built to house miners who migrated during apartheid to find work, leaving their families behind. Since the abolition of the pass laws that forbid women and children to join their husbands in such places, buildings that used to house 100-200 miners now house the miners AND their families. A bed two grown men used to share uncomfortably now is used for an entire family. A few toilets are shared by an entire building full of these families. The chief problem with these former boarding houses (really, long shelters with rooms off either side and one pitiful kitchen at the end) was that they were built during the height of mining--and haven't been updated or touched by the government (other than the addition of electricity, in the bare minimum). These are the homes the kids I work with live in--it's impossible to talk about them without describing their circumstances.
We work every Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday (I work Thurs.) at the iKhaya Primary School with four classrooms of 6th and 7th graders (two of each). The 6th graders were added to the program this year because of the overwhelming turn-out of international students who applied to volunteer. Since the 7th graders have the more established program, their daily activities vary by week--these last two weeks they've been talking about/writing poetry and performing it in a slam style. The 6th graders, with whom I work, work on maths or other homework. Both groups receive a snack (if it's available--usually just half a slice of bread with peanut butter or a small apple) and then participate in a game outside, weather permitting. They love playing kickball (which we taught them last week) and foursquare (which was taught to them last term by the other group). They've taught us some of their games, too: they have crazy hand slapping games that all have songs (although, when we asked them to teach us the songs we found that they didn't even know all the right words) and the girls adore playing handball (while the boys prefer soccer). It's a pretty easy program, really. Fairly simple. Help the kid to maths and practice his/her English. We have almost a one-on-one ratio in my classroom, which is exciting.
And then there are the little details that make it frustrating, the moments when I have to remind myself to relax. We volunteers appear at the International Office at 13:30 every Thursday afternoon, not knowing what we're doing that day with the kids or how we're going to get to the school (sometimes we take multiple trips in a 10-11 seat Kombi van, sometimes the 30+ of us cram into 1 Kombi and a smaller car). When we get to the school, the iKhaya kids are usually not out of school yet--half the kids in our program have to walk 1/2 a mile from their school uphill to get to the program, so we still have to wait for them to arrive. In the meantime, the classroom we will occupy for homework help is completely trashed and usually full of milling kids.
Now, it's a given that kids are messy; I've worked with them long enough to know that and accept it. But I have yet to figure out how one classroom of kids so completely destroys a room like the iKhaya kids. The room is in disarray even when it is clean, which doesn't help. There's a permanent stack of random teacher's books and posters in one corner, broken desks and chairs in two others. Behind the door is the temporary garbage pile from the day, usually about 1/10 the size of the final pile that gets scraped together. The room itself is filled with bigger metal desk frames laid across with wooden boards, smaller individual desks, and various chairs of all sorts of materials and states of disrepair. The wooden slabs that make "tables" are mostly broken into 6-8 in. wide strips and, as they are not bolted to the metal frames, usually are on the floor by the time we arrive. The first task (which is the kids', not ours, although we try to help a bit) is to stack all the chairs so the floor is clear for sweeping. Then they sweep, taking turns by some undefined system and chattering to each other in Xhosa. Sometimes the boys look sullen and throw the broom at the girls and a small fight ensues, but it's usually resolved without our help and the room slowly gets clean. There's no way to describe the mess of papers, posters and just DIRT on the floor. The posters on the wall change daily because they're continually ripped off and end up on the floor. Last Thursday we threw away the multiplication tables that were on the wall the weeks before. The kids seem unbothered by the mess; they just go about their business cleaning it up as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Finally, all the trash is swept out the door into a giant black trash bag which someone lugs from room to room down the corridor outside, and it's gone. We then set up chairs and desks and within a few minutes the room is (finally) full of quietly working kids. The day is pretty smooth from there. Their English is relatively good, considering most of them have only been speaking it for a couple years. Like any kids their age, some of them have attitudes the size of the mountains that surround our town. But they're good kids, for the most part. They have a very strange system of multiplying and dividing by drawing lines on scratch paper that comes from a lack of understanding (I think), but they get the right answers. They love tricking us in Hangman when their homework is done. They're very tiring, but they're crazy, and they love to laugh.
Part II: Trippin'
The last few weeks have been full of trips, spontaneous and planned, to Cape Town, Cape Point and Simon's Town, home of the Boulders Beach Penguin Colony. Two weeks ago I had my first real clubbing experience, and spent a couple nights out dancing with some friends until the wee hours of the morning, first in Stellenbosch and the next night in Cape Town. Dancing in clubs/bars is refreshingly un-American--people seem to care very little what they look like, and the hours fly by singing along to bad 80's dance-techno (think Bob Sinclair) and 90's favorites (from Sublime to Nirvana to the Beastie Boys) that were popular when I was in Junior High-mostly American, which is unfortunate, but not particularly current. Travel to Cape Town (except for an evening out where we were transported by the International Student Organization) is an adventure in itself--it requires riding the train from Stellenbosch, a trip most white South Africans would NEVER take. We receive surprised looks on both ends of the line when we ask for regular tickets and not first class, and always have a police officer or security official asking if we're alright in the train station at Cape Town (just to be sure we're not lost). Having spent so much time riding Tacoma's public transport system, it doesn't bother me much either way. I wouldn't go alone and I wouldn't go after dark, and I don't flaunt my money--no iPod, no phone, keep the camera away. But other than that, what is there to do? We have yet to have any problems and we've ridden both directions twice. We can't stay stuck in Stellenbosch, nor do we have the money to rent cars or hire a taxi. My friends, despite their verbal acceptance of our chosen method of transportation, still freak out a little every time we board the train. Hearing stories has got to have an effect on a person, I guess.
Last weekend I and two other girls from my program (Katie and Robin) practiced our go-with-the-flow attitudes by spontaneously hopping on the train Friday afternoon to go to Cape Town. We had called when we decided to go, Friday morning, and made reservations at the Cat and Moose Backpackers on Long Street, one of the restaurant and nightlife hubs of Cape Town. Two hours after making reservations, we were in the train station, ready to go. It was, altogether, 24 hours of relaxing, good food, and wandering around a beautiful city with much to explore. Like any backpacking place, Cat and Moose was small but somewhat sprawling, eclectic and full of the go-with-the-flow vibe. South African reggae-ish music full of drums and marimbas played in the background as we were let through the locked gate. Backpacking places (hostels in other countries) in South Africa radiate chill-a word not foreign to me before coming here but one which is used frequently among both Americans describing South Africans and South Africans about everything else. If registration doesn't work out, just "chill". If we don't get that transportation to Kayamandi until a half hour later, just "chill" (conversely, if there is only one method of transportation and that means 30 of us have to cram into one vehicle, just "chill"). If your driver on that excursion makes your stomach churn more with his driving technique than the last time you rode the Gravitron at the fair, just "chill". The key is that the method doesn't matter: if the outcome is important, it will happen. You will survive. 30+ people in one car means no one is going anywhere even though the driver maneuvers like a bat out of hell (on crack). TIA, folks. The crazy, spontaneous, safari-going, ostrich-riding, cheetah touching Africa that emanates practiced calm in the face of ridiculous amounts of stress and such glorious statistics as the highest rape rate in the world and one of the highest crime rates.
Before I came to Africa, I was slightly nervous about the fact that the majority of our group of Americans are from the East Coast. As my brother reminded me, it’s good to mix it up and meet new people. But the simple fact is, the west coast of America has a specific kind of vibe that the east coast does not—a hippie, majority liberal, organic food eating, Birkenstock wearing, coffee gulping kind of nature that doesn’t seem to contrast well with the hurried nature of the American city. Seattle and Portland and everything in between have a particular reputation, deserved or not, for this nature. Maybe it’s a movement that turned into a label people felt they needed to become in order to fit in; maybe the lack of sun in the west has damaged our brains. Maybe it’s the mountains or the trees so close to the I-5 corridor. Maybe it’s just a student movement that thrives in the 20-somethings and dies with entrance to the “real” world. Whatever it is, it’s there. It’s that nature that produced our amazing music scene. It’s that nature that produced the coffeehouse eclecticism for which Seattle is so famous. This nature, I would venture, is America’s version of African “chill”—a nature which approximates but which in some ways cannot come close to the raw naturalism of Africa. Our chill doesn’t involve life-threatening animals and desert safaris—we have a spoiled yuppy kind of chill involving caramel macchiatos and locally grown, farm-share veggies. I never saw myself as fitting into this scene very much until this trip, but it’s now hard to avoid: I drink 99% more coffee than the girls with whom I spend time; I ride the train to Cape Town without freaking out. I hate shoes and would rather go barefoot anywhere; my idea of a relaxing evening may involve a movie and pj’s, but it just as likely might involve smoking hookah and listening to music. One of the things I miss most about my room is the ability to burn incense and candles. This isn’t to say that East Coast-ers as a whole dislike these things. I know some very relaxed folks who don’t do any of those things. But as a whole, it’s interesting to see the differences between east and west coast, between this African “chill” and my own place in Washington.
The content of our weekend is actually fairly unimportant in this discussion. We had fun; we wandered around the city, went out to a nice dinner, went to a Kurdish restaurant for dessert and saw a belly dancer there. We went to the South African Museum and Planetarium (which was *amazing*, actually). We met up with some friends and rode home to Stellenbosch. It was a good weekend, overall. All of them have been lately.
Little brag about seeing the penguins. They're not particularly cute, but they're PENGUINS. Hundreds of them, in BUSHES. Which is weird, but that is where they orginate. We saw a lot of babies just shedding their gray baby fuzz. The beach was beautiful, and we had a nice sunny day for our trip. At one point during the day (up at Cape Point) some members of our group had an altercation with some baboons, which ended in lots of pictures and a frantic park ranger. The girls and I went on a hike down to the Cape of Good Hope and met some baboons on our way back to the parking lot, but they walked by us without a problem and the only one that even looked at us was a baby less than a foot tall.
This was a bit longer than planned; sorry! There's so much more I wish I could say, but there simply isn't time. I hope the end of summer finds you all well!
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Food, tree-killing and trains
Seven of us Stellenbosch students--6 AIFS and 1 South African--are sitting around the dinner table. My roommate and I have borrowed our neighbor's table to enlarge our own and across the brown-and-red patterned cloth covering both tables is spread the remains of the stir-fry dinner we've just shared between us. We're conversing easily, bantering such light subjects as the African National Congress(SA's ruling gov't party since 1994) president's denial of the fact that HIV leads to AIDS and whether or not men should be allowed to (let alone be responsible to) look after their children in order to let their wives work. Peter, our saucy and often pessimistic neighbor from upstairs, leads the opposition on any newly broached topic. As the only South African in the crowd and a veteran of the changing American students in his building (AIFS consistently uses the same rooms for students, semester after semester) he enjoys playing devil's advocate and testing the waters of conversation. Despite the gentle arguments that ensue in his presence, however, he has proved the most friendly of our block-mates, and the most willing by far to give us advice about everything and anything South African: where to go out(and where NOT to go out, under any circumstances), where to get the best deals on a Tuesday night without getting mugged, what the general view of the current economic situation is (at least, among the sons of white Afrikaans farmers, that is), how hard white South African engineers have it, whether or not Cape Town is going to be ready for the 2010 Soccer World Cup, and, most importantly, where we can possibly find tortilla chips in this backwards little town.
To say the least, our conversations with Peter are both entertaining and enlightening. :-)
Dinner has become a weekly ritual, trading locations in the block every Thursday. This week was Andrea's and my turn--next week we move to the first-floor apartment of our AIFS compatriots Frances and Jace. Last week we dined next door to my apartment on the second floor, sharing the home of Katie and Karen, also here with AIFS.
Food, in our short month here, has been transformed from a treat to a bane to a necessarily communal experience. After two weeks of alternately eating yoghurt with granola and PB&J, the four of us second floor girls (Karen, Katie, Andrea and I) gathered together in search of something more....substantial. Lo and behold, in a dinner party we found the excuse to make such delicacies as chicken tacos (of a sort) and sweet-and-sour chicken stir-fry over rice, balancing this fine cuisine with some of the new wines we were introduced to at the recent Stellenbosch Wine Festival. All four of us girls (the boys conceded to liking it as well) have become partial to a sweet sparkling rose wine made by the House of JC Le Roux, which not only tastes amazing but makes us feel sophisticated as well....and it's only about $4 a bottle! Good deal all around.
People aside, the thing I miss most being here is access to a full kitchen. In order to save our money for adventures later in the semester, it's imperative that we buy our own food and cook at home. But it's simply not practical to purchase all the spices and baking supplies I'm used to having at hand to use for cooking. Simplicity is the name of the game, when it comes to food. Peppered chicken breasts, potatoes, and feta cheese have become staples, along with the aforementioned yoghurt with granola and, of course, peanut butter and jelly. Last week (yes, it took me three weeks) I gave in to a craving and rediscovered how absolutely amazing green salad is. Somehow it had slipped my mind all this time, though I don't quite know how (I doubt I will forget again, at least not this trip). Nothing very exciting in our diet, to be sure. The only real "South African" food we've had was purchased or prepared on our prepaid AIFS excursions. Hopefully we'll be introduced to some more authentic South African foods or meals before too long.
While I've not been eating (which has been a majority of the time, incidentally) I've dutifully attended classes and read boatloads. I've printed enough articles and stories between my three English classes to re-compose at least one small tree, which is slightly frustrating as one, who, on the whole, appreciates trees in tree-form. My homework this weekend is to read the original fairy tale Bluebeard (written down by Charles Perrault) and two re-visioned versions of it (Margaret Atwood's "Bluebeard's Egg" and Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber"). Interesting tales, at least, if I have to kill trees to read them.
Saturday a group of us spent the day in Cape Town--riding the train to and from and visiting the Castle of Good Hope (a former military fort and the oldest building in South Africa) and a museum known as the Slave Lodge (so-called because the museum is housed in the building where the cape slaves, chiefly imported from other African countries, were kept during the colonization of the province). It was a sunny, relaxing and informative day, and we all found it freeing to be exploring at our own pace and not following the watch of an impatient tho' well-meaning tour guide.
I sign off, happier (and warmer!) than I've been yet. I hope this blog finds you the same!!
Sala kakuhle!
To say the least, our conversations with Peter are both entertaining and enlightening. :-)
Dinner has become a weekly ritual, trading locations in the block every Thursday. This week was Andrea's and my turn--next week we move to the first-floor apartment of our AIFS compatriots Frances and Jace. Last week we dined next door to my apartment on the second floor, sharing the home of Katie and Karen, also here with AIFS.
Food, in our short month here, has been transformed from a treat to a bane to a necessarily communal experience. After two weeks of alternately eating yoghurt with granola and PB&J, the four of us second floor girls (Karen, Katie, Andrea and I) gathered together in search of something more....substantial. Lo and behold, in a dinner party we found the excuse to make such delicacies as chicken tacos (of a sort) and sweet-and-sour chicken stir-fry over rice, balancing this fine cuisine with some of the new wines we were introduced to at the recent Stellenbosch Wine Festival. All four of us girls (the boys conceded to liking it as well) have become partial to a sweet sparkling rose wine made by the House of JC Le Roux, which not only tastes amazing but makes us feel sophisticated as well....and it's only about $4 a bottle! Good deal all around.
People aside, the thing I miss most being here is access to a full kitchen. In order to save our money for adventures later in the semester, it's imperative that we buy our own food and cook at home. But it's simply not practical to purchase all the spices and baking supplies I'm used to having at hand to use for cooking. Simplicity is the name of the game, when it comes to food. Peppered chicken breasts, potatoes, and feta cheese have become staples, along with the aforementioned yoghurt with granola and, of course, peanut butter and jelly. Last week (yes, it took me three weeks) I gave in to a craving and rediscovered how absolutely amazing green salad is. Somehow it had slipped my mind all this time, though I don't quite know how (I doubt I will forget again, at least not this trip). Nothing very exciting in our diet, to be sure. The only real "South African" food we've had was purchased or prepared on our prepaid AIFS excursions. Hopefully we'll be introduced to some more authentic South African foods or meals before too long.
While I've not been eating (which has been a majority of the time, incidentally) I've dutifully attended classes and read boatloads. I've printed enough articles and stories between my three English classes to re-compose at least one small tree, which is slightly frustrating as one, who, on the whole, appreciates trees in tree-form. My homework this weekend is to read the original fairy tale Bluebeard (written down by Charles Perrault) and two re-visioned versions of it (Margaret Atwood's "Bluebeard's Egg" and Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber"). Interesting tales, at least, if I have to kill trees to read them.
Saturday a group of us spent the day in Cape Town--riding the train to and from and visiting the Castle of Good Hope (a former military fort and the oldest building in South Africa) and a museum known as the Slave Lodge (so-called because the museum is housed in the building where the cape slaves, chiefly imported from other African countries, were kept during the colonization of the province). It was a sunny, relaxing and informative day, and we all found it freeing to be exploring at our own pace and not following the watch of an impatient tho' well-meaning tour guide.
I sign off, happier (and warmer!) than I've been yet. I hope this blog finds you the same!!
Sala kakuhle!
Monday, July 28, 2008
This is the story of how we begin to remember...
Two days ago, I was huffing and puffing my way up a mountain.
Lungs screaming, legs like lead, myself and roughly 24 other AIFS students struggled our way up the side of a mountain in the Cederburg mountain range, aiming for the Wolfberg Cracks--two narrow ravines that would lead us to the top of the range. My group's guide (who I'm fairly certain must be part mountain goat, part Spiderman) half ran the twisted trail in front of us, stepping lightly from rock to rock and pausing to scale boulders and squeeze through tight cracks when we less-in-shape hikers insisted on stopping for a breath of the winter air.
When we left campus Friday afternoon, we had no idea we'd be undertaking such a task. We were going "camping"-staying in small, very comfortable (except for usual lack of heat) cabins in the wilderness of Cederburg--about 4 hours from campus to the North. We'd been warned it was colder than Stellenbosch and tried to pack accordingly. We'd been informed we would have the option of hiking, but had no idea "hiking" meant climbing a mountain.
The trail started at the foothills, a short drive from our camp, and immediately began curving and twisting as it wound its way upwards over rocks and through sand. As a whole we hiked about 9 miles (round trip)--something like 16km. The trail was steep and our guide a little merciless insofar as resting was concerned. The view, long before we reached the top, was worth every ache.
There are very few words to describe the actual experience of standing on top, once we reached it. It probably meant something different for all 70 of us that did; we each had our own moment of surfacing from the cracks and our own first deeply drawn breath in the afternoon sunshine. It was like emerging on the surface of a different planet--Mars, maybe--perhaps the moon. For one thing, it was a plateau, but uneven and so, so rocky. We moved from the freezing winter shadows of the crack to the full-blown African sun and gentle wind. A few bushes (uncomfortable, prickly things, with very little beauty) grew in smaller cracks between boulders. It was littered with clumps of rock in every size and shape and in many different colors. Dips and valleys lay in every direction. In the distance--back down near the entrance to the cracks--hills stretched out across the horizon, hazy and softly hidden in the clouds. Behind us--my first view as I stepped out of the cracks--mountains similar in size and shape to the one I stood on had multiplied and spread out along the skyline. The plateau of the top seemed to extend forever, and I felt if I walked far enough in one direction I could just hop from one mountain to another, and to another and another. I was Jack at the top of his beanstalk, before the giants and golden harps and all the trouble.
I think the closest emotion to what I felt was awe. Maybe it's cheesy (it kinda feels that way) but there really is no other word for it. There was a sense of accomplishment, yes, an exhaustion at the physical exertion to even get there, a kind of triumph. There was the vast emptiness of the top--the magnificence of the structure and the view before me. But the emptiness of the top was full of...something. Peace, maybe? Even the wind was silent. When my compatriots were actually quiet (which is very little, as a whole, since they are *quite* American) the silence was incredibly piercing, but still gentle, in a way. I felt like Moses. No wonder God spoke to him on a mountain.
I guess there's a reason people categorize "mountain-top experiences" completely by themselves.
Coming down was easy, almost joyful. I ran ahead in the front, leaping from rock to rock and trying to keep up with our spirited guide Jac. At one point I slipped and landed a little hard on my hip, but the bruise was worth the adrenaline of half-flying down that steep path.
The rest of the weekend pales a little in comparison with the hike, though it too was intense and beautiful and worth the dirt and cold. Friday night I lay under the most bountifully starry sky I've ever seen in my life--so many constellations and all so very close together. I saw four very clear shooting stars in the space of an hour. I sang Paul Simon's "Under African Skies" with a friend as I froze under that sky, and the cold I have now was completely worth it. Until this point in my life Minnesota's night sky has held the record for most beautiful, but sorry, Grandma, South Africa's got one up on you guys there. :-)My pitiful little camera couldn't even begin to capture the beauty of it, though one of my flat-mates' did. Before we left Sunday we went wine tasting and stopped by some caves nearby where supposedly Apartheid leaders held highly secretive meetings throughout the 20th century (and carved their names in the rock to prove it). We also stopped by the site of some 1,500-year-old Bushman rock art--red elephants, painted on a wall, being chased by the figures of men. Pretty sweet stuff. A little hard to conceptualize in its age.
Despite the amazing quality of the trip, it was nice to be home in Stellenbosch in my own (warm) bed last night. Today we began our second full week of classes, which are settled and going fairly well, so far. I (mostly) figured out my English dilemma and am signed up for three of their classes (on myth, S. African Women writers and women's narratives from Apartheid Prison-houses), as well as classes in Theology, Xhosa and (later in the semester) The History of the Wine Industry in the Western Cape. On top of this I'll be volunteering in the local township Kayamandi once or twice a week, acting either as a pre-primary teacher's assistant or a 7th grade after-school tutor. We find out our placements at a meeting tomorrow night. Either way, I'm WAY excited to be getting involved outside the Stellenbosch bubble with the local cultures, especially with kids. I couldn't stay away from them for long. :-)
I miss playing my horn and get a little lonely when I come home to only one roommate and a quiet building full of (mostly) strangers. Andrea's wonderful, but I miss both my bustling homes in Washington and the families (blood and otherwise) that fill them. Friendships take time, though, and I'm sure more will come.
Until next time,
Ndiyavuya ukukwazi (I am glad to know you)
Sala kakuhle! (Stay well!)
Lungs screaming, legs like lead, myself and roughly 24 other AIFS students struggled our way up the side of a mountain in the Cederburg mountain range, aiming for the Wolfberg Cracks--two narrow ravines that would lead us to the top of the range. My group's guide (who I'm fairly certain must be part mountain goat, part Spiderman) half ran the twisted trail in front of us, stepping lightly from rock to rock and pausing to scale boulders and squeeze through tight cracks when we less-in-shape hikers insisted on stopping for a breath of the winter air.
When we left campus Friday afternoon, we had no idea we'd be undertaking such a task. We were going "camping"-staying in small, very comfortable (except for usual lack of heat) cabins in the wilderness of Cederburg--about 4 hours from campus to the North. We'd been warned it was colder than Stellenbosch and tried to pack accordingly. We'd been informed we would have the option of hiking, but had no idea "hiking" meant climbing a mountain.
The trail started at the foothills, a short drive from our camp, and immediately began curving and twisting as it wound its way upwards over rocks and through sand. As a whole we hiked about 9 miles (round trip)--something like 16km. The trail was steep and our guide a little merciless insofar as resting was concerned. The view, long before we reached the top, was worth every ache.
There are very few words to describe the actual experience of standing on top, once we reached it. It probably meant something different for all 70 of us that did; we each had our own moment of surfacing from the cracks and our own first deeply drawn breath in the afternoon sunshine. It was like emerging on the surface of a different planet--Mars, maybe--perhaps the moon. For one thing, it was a plateau, but uneven and so, so rocky. We moved from the freezing winter shadows of the crack to the full-blown African sun and gentle wind. A few bushes (uncomfortable, prickly things, with very little beauty) grew in smaller cracks between boulders. It was littered with clumps of rock in every size and shape and in many different colors. Dips and valleys lay in every direction. In the distance--back down near the entrance to the cracks--hills stretched out across the horizon, hazy and softly hidden in the clouds. Behind us--my first view as I stepped out of the cracks--mountains similar in size and shape to the one I stood on had multiplied and spread out along the skyline. The plateau of the top seemed to extend forever, and I felt if I walked far enough in one direction I could just hop from one mountain to another, and to another and another. I was Jack at the top of his beanstalk, before the giants and golden harps and all the trouble.
I think the closest emotion to what I felt was awe. Maybe it's cheesy (it kinda feels that way) but there really is no other word for it. There was a sense of accomplishment, yes, an exhaustion at the physical exertion to even get there, a kind of triumph. There was the vast emptiness of the top--the magnificence of the structure and the view before me. But the emptiness of the top was full of...something. Peace, maybe? Even the wind was silent. When my compatriots were actually quiet (which is very little, as a whole, since they are *quite* American) the silence was incredibly piercing, but still gentle, in a way. I felt like Moses. No wonder God spoke to him on a mountain.
I guess there's a reason people categorize "mountain-top experiences" completely by themselves.
Coming down was easy, almost joyful. I ran ahead in the front, leaping from rock to rock and trying to keep up with our spirited guide Jac. At one point I slipped and landed a little hard on my hip, but the bruise was worth the adrenaline of half-flying down that steep path.
The rest of the weekend pales a little in comparison with the hike, though it too was intense and beautiful and worth the dirt and cold. Friday night I lay under the most bountifully starry sky I've ever seen in my life--so many constellations and all so very close together. I saw four very clear shooting stars in the space of an hour. I sang Paul Simon's "Under African Skies" with a friend as I froze under that sky, and the cold I have now was completely worth it. Until this point in my life Minnesota's night sky has held the record for most beautiful, but sorry, Grandma, South Africa's got one up on you guys there. :-)My pitiful little camera couldn't even begin to capture the beauty of it, though one of my flat-mates' did. Before we left Sunday we went wine tasting and stopped by some caves nearby where supposedly Apartheid leaders held highly secretive meetings throughout the 20th century (and carved their names in the rock to prove it). We also stopped by the site of some 1,500-year-old Bushman rock art--red elephants, painted on a wall, being chased by the figures of men. Pretty sweet stuff. A little hard to conceptualize in its age.
Despite the amazing quality of the trip, it was nice to be home in Stellenbosch in my own (warm) bed last night. Today we began our second full week of classes, which are settled and going fairly well, so far. I (mostly) figured out my English dilemma and am signed up for three of their classes (on myth, S. African Women writers and women's narratives from Apartheid Prison-houses), as well as classes in Theology, Xhosa and (later in the semester) The History of the Wine Industry in the Western Cape. On top of this I'll be volunteering in the local township Kayamandi once or twice a week, acting either as a pre-primary teacher's assistant or a 7th grade after-school tutor. We find out our placements at a meeting tomorrow night. Either way, I'm WAY excited to be getting involved outside the Stellenbosch bubble with the local cultures, especially with kids. I couldn't stay away from them for long. :-)
I miss playing my horn and get a little lonely when I come home to only one roommate and a quiet building full of (mostly) strangers. Andrea's wonderful, but I miss both my bustling homes in Washington and the families (blood and otherwise) that fill them. Friendships take time, though, and I'm sure more will come.
Until next time,
Ndiyavuya ukukwazi (I am glad to know you)
Sala kakuhle! (Stay well!)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
