Politics...

Two weeks from now I will be grateful to be on American soil again. For a rainbow nation, there is so much race consciousness here - and the industry which must be doing very well in SA is the security industry. Guards, gates, razor wire, and armed response signs are everywhere. So ubiquitous that, after awhile, you don’t even see them anymore. Missed President Obama’s State of the Union speech this year, but I did see President Jacob Zuma on SA television, presenting his State of the Nation speech at the opening of Parliament on February 11, which was also the 20th anniversary of the freeing of Nelson Mandela from prison. Zuma’s speech sounded like the typical “State of the… “ speech, outlining accomplishments and future agendas. Nelson Mandela was present, sitting between Winnie and his current wife, Graca Machel. He is frail, looking up in surprise from the printed text of Zuma’s speech which he was reading, every time his name was mentioned. Afterwards, there was some footage of Archbishop Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Jacob Zuma leaving the auditorium one behind the other.

Jacob Zuma succeeded Thabo Mbeki when he was ousted over some scandal last year. Of course, Zuma has been behaving scandalously too, both recently and several years ago when he was brought up on rape charges (but acquitted). A leader who claims that taking a shower after having sex with an HIV-positive woman makes it all better is not what this nation (with its high rates of HIV) needs. Recently, the media was also abuzz with the news that he had fathered his 20th child with a woman who is not one of his four or five wives, the daughter of a friend. His family had to make recompense to her family in the traditional Zulu style. Any South African I have spoken to here in Cape Town, regardless of race, thinks that Zuma is a disgrace. But he has a huge following elsewhere in the country, especially in KwaZulu-Natal province.

Capetonians are also not very satisfied with the ANC (African National Congress, the ruling party) anymore. Last year they elected Helen Zille as provincial head of state (for the Western Cape province) and, as head of her party, the Democratic Alliance, she has become a very vocal critic of Zuma. Zille is loved by Capetonians, liked by South Africans elsewhere and with her at the helm of the DA, may at least provide the nation with a viable opposition party, something I think SA very much needs. Zille is a white woman who first gained attention as a journalist when she was active in exposing many of the horrors of apartheid.

Discrimination in this country didn’t just start in 1948. Apartheid only codified what was happening for many years before: white supremacy and colonial rule which left a legacy of racial, economic and land segregation policies. The liberation struggle has been going on for over 100 years. ANC (outlawed during apartheid) was established early in the 20th century. According to what we are told, many changes have occurred in SA since its first democratic elections (1994) with many socio-economic improvements and improved equality and legislative reforms in the last decade. But SA continues to face inordinate challenges in relation to poverty and unemployment amidst its ambitious reconstruction and development plan. They say the divide between rich and poor continues to grow and continues to bear the scars of its apartheid history. A long way to go before the dream of being a rainbow nation where all the colors are equal is realized…and they need another Nelson Mandela.

South African English

This afternoon, as I write this, the rest of the group - those who haven't already dropped out - are attending their IsiXhosa lesson. I was planning to start Afrikaans this afternoon, but there was a mix-up and they cancelled the lesson. I am giving up on IsiXhosa - it is just too hard and I am not using it anyway!

So here is some information on how English is spoken in SA. We all know that the Aussies have their special lingo - so do the South Africans!

Howzit? How are you?

Izzit? Really?

My bru - My brother

Just now - Sometime soon

Now now - Very soon

Yebo -Yes

Bakkie - Pick-up truck

Biltong - Dried meat/Jerky (very popular food - you can find it anywhere)

Tsotsi -Thief

Dorp - Small town

Doff - Stupid

Cherry - Girlfriend

Braai - Barbecue (also very popular!)

Takkies - Sneakers

China - friend

So much for useless information! But here is something really important: The South African National Anthem Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika is sung in four languages (Xhosa, Sotho, Afrikaans, and English) and when I heard it sung by that rainbow group of mostly young spectators at the University of Cape Town rugby game I attended, it was thrilling! The anthem was composed in 1897, adopted by the ANC and, of course, banned during apartheid.

More Adventures in Cape Town...

Now that we are in our fourth week here, the demands on our time by CCS are fewer, so I am planning to spend the whole school day at Blossom Street Primary several times this week. The children in all the groups I am working with need the help so badly.

This past weekend, several of us drove out to the wine country and the town of Stellenbosch. Lovely countryside once we got there, but passing through the Cape Flats was depressing, as usual. Miles upon miles of shacks - of the 40 minute drive, it took us about 30 minutes to travel past the enormous slums of Cape Flats townships: Langa, Athlone, Guguletu, Nyanga, Khayalitsha, etc. These are all communities started when the apartheid government kicked people of color out of the southern suburbs (such as Rosebank - where home base is), the downtown, and the Table Bay areas. Some communities, like District 6, were even leveled (yes, homes which some of these people had lived in for generations). Folks were forcibly moved to the dusty, barren, sandy, windy wastelands of the Cape Flats - where the Cape Town airport also is. So that is why the first sight people see coming into town are these miserable areas where the shacks crowd up one against the other, with outdoor toilets stacked in a row opposite the hovels, which are fenced off from the highway. These shacks are electrified by webs of wires hanging down from the street lights. People spill over the fences and hang out in the grassy strips along the highways. This is also where the children play.

Passing these scenes makes it difficult to enjoy the prettier places I am traveling to visit, especially the opulent vineyard establishments surrounding Stellenbosch. The contrasts are just too great. And Stellenbosch was a very white town!

On Sunday I was privileged to be able to join a group hiking in Orange Kloof (a ravine) on Table Mountain. One can only hike in Orange Kloof with a permit and the elderly mountain man type with whom we hiked had one of these. Actually, it was Clem, the husband of the woman who conducted the walk out from the cable car station on Table Mountain the previous Sunday, when I was up there with Michael Arrowood. Clem picked me up at 7 A.M. and we walked with the others (all South Africans) up a fire road and then up a rocky trail to a green ravine where we saw the day's prize, the glorious red disas (wild orchids) disa uniflora. Smaller blue disas were also spotted along the way, in addition to many proteas, ericas in bloom, and a huge lycopodium, among other treasures. The high point/low point of the day was when the group misunderstood Clem's directions pertaining to the huge water tunnel through the mountain he brought us to. We thought he meant for us to go through the tunnel and the folks at the front went charging on down the 800 steps in the pitch black darkness of the wet, cold tunnel. I, of course, followed - never quite sure I am understanding the South African English anyway, but Clem and one other did not. The steps ended in nothingness (I never got there) and I turned around when the group headed back. All the way up those steps - only this time one could see because of the light at the end of the tunnel, where Clem stood. Apparently he had shouted for us but we never heard because of the sound of the rushing water. There was a wet railing to hold onto in the darkness going down - and no idea just how much of a drop-off it might be if one missed a step. So, needless to say, the way was made in baby steps. Heading back UP, one could see that falling off the staircase would only result in a drop of several feet - not hundreds! What I learned is how important it is for a hike leader to be VERY specific about what he/she says...one never knows how people might be perceiving the words they hear. Apparently, this had never happened to poor Clem before and he has taken many, many groups to the tunnel. He was so worried about us...me, especially, because I was the most senior of the group (excepting him) and a foreigner to boot!

You ask about the weather? Too hot! It was in the mid-90s on Saturday and also warm on Sunday except that in the green ravine where we hiked there was a cloud cover and breezes which kept it cool.

You ask about the pictures? The top two are from the District 6 Museum (those signs are from streets now missing from what was District 6), then there's Clem and the adventure in Orange Kloof - and me emerging from the tunnel of darkness. Sorry those disas are sideways...

Valentine's Day celebration at Blossom Street Primary

Friday was a big fund raiser day - organized by the teachers, not the parents, to supplement federal monies and school fees to help pay for basic school needs. There was a "market" with things to buy, food goodies, drinks, etc. And then there was the contest for Mr. Valentine and Miss Valentine (both lower and upper grades) of Blossom Street Primary School. Those children who entered, by paying a fee, were placed on a "stage" in the interior courtyard formed by plywood boards placed on tables, where they preened and strutted their stuff, in their Valentine Day attire of choice - red and white suggested. We volunteers were the judges, and it wasn't easy. All the children were charming.

Saturday was supposed to be a hike into Skeleton Gorge up Table Mountain with Michael Arrowood, who is spending a few days in Cape Town at the end of his tour - but he didn't make his plane from Jo-burg. So I took the train to Simon's Town to see the penguins again and stood there transfixed for several hours. Much of the courtship behavior is finished and the females are either scratching their nests in the sand or already sitting on their two eggs in very basic nests. The males take their turn as well. Both parents must be watchful or a crafty kelp gull will make off with their eggs. I actually saw this happen - and saw the gull drop the egg on a nearby rock to crack it and devour its contents.

Sunday was the cable car up to the top of Table Mountain with Michael - this time with plenty of time to wander and ponder. Even saw a dassie aka rock hydrax - most closely related, they say, to the elephant. A lovely elderly hiker-type led a guided walk and was very informative. Then on to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, which never seems to amaze me with its varieties of the indigenous fynbos plants of this region - the proteas, the ericas, and the restios (horsetail grasses).

They are keeping us very busy after placement this week. Yesterday we attended a special performance in the township of Gugulethu of singers and dancers who teach about HIV and how to prevent it. Today we went to two museums (the Slave Lodge and the District 6 Museum) and then came back to language lessons. I had decided to switch from isiXhosa to Afrikaans (since I have gone as far as I think I can with isiXhosa) but the Afrikaans teacher didn't arrive today. IsiXhosa is one of South Africa's eleven official languages - and the one mostly spoken by the local blacks. It was thought that it would prove useful for me at school, but all the children understand basic English. Afrikaans, however, is spoken in the staff room. It is the language in which the teachers crack their jokes and I would like to be able to understand it a little. It shares some vocabulary and sounds with German, so I might catch on. IsiXhosa, on the other hand, is very different from anything resembling English, with clicks for C, X, and Q - and different clicks, mind you, from a cluck, to a sound you would make calling a dog, and another you might make calling a horse. Difficult, to say the least. Will tell more about the Slave Lodge and District 6 (one of the areas from which black and coloured South Africans were forcibly removed during Apartheid) another time...

And today it was back to work! But I am having such a wonderful time working with these children.

About the volunteer experience so far...

The Cross-Cultural Solutions home base (top picture) in the Rosebank section of Cape Town was built in the late 1800s (as a farmhouse) and is large and airy with high ceilings! I am really psyched this time because, somehow, I have a room all to myself! We get our meals here and they serve a variety of cuisines, some heavily spiced and others stewed and potted. Beef, lamb, chicken, etc., always a fresh salad, good vegetables, no desserts. And they cater to special requests such as vegetarian or low salt.

Breakfast is at 7 A.M. and we are in the vans by 7:45. Even though my trip to the township of Athlone should only take about 15 minutes, I am in the van for an hour each morning because we must first head into the downtown area (before the traffic builds up) to drop off volunteers who work at refugee centers and job training centers. Next we drop off a volunteer at Groote Schuur Hospital (where the world's first heart transplant was done in the 1960s - remember? - I'm the only one in this group who does!). Then we head out to the township areas to drop off the orphanage and day-care folks. Finally, Peter and I are delivered to Blossom Street Primary School. Oh, for those days in Tanzania when I could walk the pot-holed, red dirt roads to Mwereni Primary. and back.

Blossom Street is a well-run school carefully overseen by Mr. Davids who has been principal there (first a teacher) for many years, and his mostly-experienced staff. I am working with a Mrs. Joan Abrahams, who is about my age, rather a strict disciplinarian with a very warm heart. She has almost 35 students - not that large a class by African standards - and teaches the reading and social studies for her class and the other fifth grade class. Since it is still the beginning of the school year here, I spent the first few days assessing the reading abilities of all the fifth graders and am now happily taking them in small groups to another room for instruction every day. They are delightful, well-behaved children and I am enjoying every moment. Mrs. Abrahams and I are getting along very well. Her daughter (along with her grandsons) have been living in New York for the past several years, working on a doctorate at Columbia and one of the first stories she told me was how she (Joan) was subjected to racial profiling in a shop on a visit to her daighter in New York and how totally unexpected and disappointing that was for her. She didn't expect that to happen in the USA after she had suffered so much discrimination in SA over the years. Made me feel awful!

Blossom Street Primary is organized around an interior open courtyard, typical of many African schools, and is much better supplied than Mwereni in Tanzania. There are books, maps, chalk, erasers, posters on the walls, staplers, scissors, a copy machine in the office and all kinds of other things I never saw in Tanzania. Yet the desks are the same double wooden benches and the children labor in the same kind of large, thin, narrowly-ruled composition books you just don't find in the U.S. Blossom has the feel of a 1950s NYC public school; Mwereni felt more turn of the (20th) Century.

More next time...

The Other Cape Town...

Cape Town is a city which contains a stunning national park, Table Mountain, in its heart. The city is basically arranged around the mountain and encircles it by about 270 degrees. The real estate on the Table Bay side of the mountain is prime and includes the downtown and the waterfront. On the other side of the mountain, real estate values decrease with altitude until you are in the Cape Flats which is where those former township areas are. A township was, of course, a designated district where blacks or coloureds were mandated to live during apartheid and its inhabitants had to carry passbooks clearly showing who they were, of what race, why and when they were allowed to leave the township (to go to their jobs in the white areas). If you were not carrying your passbook or exceeding the curfew limits, you were thrown in jail or worse. Of course, whites had to carry passbooks too, but their movements were not as curtailed.

The areas in the Cape Flats are still referred to as townships, even though people can come and go freely now. These areas contain some decent housing, but are overwhelmingly populated by very sub-standard housing. Shanties, shacks, former hostels (built for male workers during the mining days) where large numbers of families share communal cooking and eating space and inhabit one room. Really awful. The unemployment rate in South Africa is an overall 38%, but you know which groups have jobs and which have much higher unemployment rates. In the white areas, you see plenty of blacks in the service jobs; in some of the less prosperous inner suburbs, such as where the CCS home base is, you see integrated neighborhoods and people of this "rainbow nation" interacting; and there are many properous black and coloured South Africans - but overwhelmingly the have-nots are black!

For those of you who are wondering, black is an African tribal native (Xhosa, Zulu, etc.), and a coloured is anyone mixed. Coloureds could also include Malaysians and Arabs who were originally brought here as slaves, as were natives of Madagascar. This term is not a slur - it is how people identify themselves - and proudly. Actually, the word native is considered a slur by black folks.

Whites are either of English ancestry or Afrikaaners or both. Afrikaaners are also proud of their "pioneer" heritage. Where I did see lots of wonderful rainbow interaction was at a rugby game at the University of Cape Town. Lots of people I have spoken to have said that it will take some time yet - the next generation perhaps - before true racial harmony exists. I think it might be much longer, because in the meanwhile you have this awful disparity between the way less than 20% of the population thrives and how the majority barely manage to survive.

Meanwhile, at CCS we spent the first days involved in orientation, language lessons, history and HIV lectures. My placement is at a primary school in Athlone, one of the formerly "coloured" townships, and I am enjoying myself immensely. More about that next time.

Final destination - Cape Town!

Cape Town is an incredibly beautiful city but, before you see the beauty, you see the extreme poverty of township housing on the way from the airport to downtown. Shacks, often little more than pieces of corrugated metal hammered together, line the highway into downtown. We were told that, in an effort to clean things up for the World Cup, the government has built some public housing, and sure enough, soon we passed a section of small, neat, stuccoed cement block houses lining the road, behind which were more shacks.


Our hotel was in Seapoint, on the other side of Table Mountain, one block from Table Bay. Quite nice, but we were told not to go walking at night. Daytime walks along the water were lovely, though. During my last days with the Overseas Adventure Travel group, we had a city tour and visited the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, saw the Moslem part of the city, and had dinner with a coloured family (seems hard to write but here it is PC) in their home in one of the townships. Renee and I did a "must see" trip to Robben Island where we viewed the cell in which Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his life. On Saturday, January 30, the day I was due at Cross Cultural Solutions, we took the cable car up Table Mountain for spectacular views and we drove along the coastline out to Cape Point, which is not where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet! The best part about the day was the visit to the penguin colony where we saw African pengins enacting their courtship rituals, braying and even mating. During my time here, I definitely plan to go back to the top of Table Mountain and also to the penguin colony - I could have spent a half day at each, instead of just a half hour. I left the group as they were entering Kirstenbosch Gardens back in town because I knew I would have plenty of time there for a much longer visit (probably several visits) and because the gardens were a short cab ride from the CCS home base which would be my abode for the next five weeks.

So here I am, living with 19 people younger than me (some by a lot), making this very stratified city my home for the next 5 weeks. Just another challenge....

On to Lesotho...

The next day our conveyance was a 4x4 vehicle which took us up another precipitous and bumpy road to Sani Pass in the mist at about 10,000 feet and into the independent kingdom of Lesotho, crossing a border out of South Africa again. The highlands of Lesotho have an alpine feeling, as did the restaurant in which we ate lunch, dubbed "the highest pub in Africa." Most interesting was a visit to a wild and remote-feeling Basuto village where people live much like they did centuries ago, yet raising a white flag if they have bread (baked over cow dung coals) or a red flag if they have meat (from their herds of goats) for sale to the odd traveler who ventures up this road.

Returning to lower elevations at our hotel in Himeville, I hiked out to the top of a majestic waterfall, its flow draining from the spectacular highlands we had just visited.

On to KwaZulu-Natal Province...

Continuing south through lush, green countryside we crossed the border back into South Africa and headed into Zululand. Shaka, the great and terror-inspiring Zulu warrior-king, led the only significant battle in which the British were defeated (1879). He also is known for things like slaughtering his own children and ordered all old mothers in his kingdom killed when his own mother died so that his subjects should share his pain. He came to power by assassinating his brother; in turn, one of his other brothers assassinated him.

Our next stop was Simunye Lodge, which was a tractor-driven ride down from the plateau on a long, bumpy, precipitous road into a green canyon -- and then we trudged in the heat (about 80+ degrees) across a river on a footbridge and up a hill right next to a Zulu Village. Our lodgings were in a rondavel - a bit less rustic than the real thing, though. Of course, we met the chief and were entertained with singing and dancing and demonstrations of battle lore. The second day we had some time to wander around and to relax by a very unique pool built into the canyon wall. I actually had the first massage of my life there - the equivalent of $14 for an hour's full-body massage!

Leaving Simunye the next day, we had the same tractor ride uphill. Continuing south on our van, we passed more rustic-looking homesteads, but also large sugar-cane plantations and huge tree farms (pine, eucalyptus). We drove into Durban, which has the largest Indian population outside India, and visited a spice market. We had hoped to have lunch on the Indian Ocean waterfront, but it was all torn up in preparation for the 2010 World Cup. (Lots of road work going on all over South Africa, as well, to get ready for this event.) I wasn't unhappy when we headed back out into the green countryside, west toward the southern Drakensberg mountains, the region in which Cry, The Beloved Country was set.

On to Swaziland...

Leaving Kruger, heading south, we passed farms and villages which provide vegetables and farm-grown game meats for Kruger lodges. Yes, we ate ostrich (tastes and looks like beef), kudu (very tender beef), and guinea fowl (tastes like chicken) in Kruger. Also passed commercial farm operations - sugar cane, sorghum, etc. All of these large green open spaces make you think about how crowded the city townships are and make you wonder if South African tribal cultures wouldn't have been much better off staying on the land than moving to the city. But, of course, they moved for jobs in the gold and diamond mines, to build the English and Afrikaaner infrastructure, and to work as domestics in the homes of the white folks. Sometimes they were, in fact, forcibly moved. Today there is a "willing buyer, willing seller" approach which is redistributing some of the land because many fear that if this does not start to happen SA will degenerate into a Zimbabwe situation.

Then we walked across the border from SA to Swaziland. Condom dispensers (free) at the border crossings - in fact, everywhere you look in SA - an attempt to combat the 14% HIV rate. Swaziland is a tiny country which has a king with many wives in many houses who drive many fancy cars. Yet, the village and school we visited (a stone's throw from the king's palace) were very poor. The (female) chief of the village (the Umphakatsi) cares for many HIV orphans, the school is minimal (we brought some donations) and the homesteads (collections of huts, sheds, and some stone buildings in which a patrilineal group of relations live) we visited were spare. Our tour company, Overseas Adventure Travel, and its parent organization, Grand Circle Foundation, have - over time - constructed flushable latrines on the school site, replacing the long drop toilets of the past. They have tackled similar projects in all the countries they visit.

As we traveled on, the scenery included terrace farming, wooden roadside stalls, and picturesque homesteads, each containing a rondavel (round hut) for family meetings, etc., among more boulder-strewn green Drakensberg slopes. If there is dissension in these family homesteads - such as among the multiple wives, it may only be discussed in the rondavel, not argued out in the household. Seems like a great way to keep the peace - no bickering allowed! That night, to our surprise, our lodgings at the Mkhaya Game Preserve were stone "cottages", open at waist level to the night air and night critters (no screens). Kind of like an AT shelter, but in the African bush.

During our time at Mkhaya we saw both the black and white African Rhinosceros, dung beetles, and more elephants, giraffes, zebras, etc. No lions here but we did walk out tracking hyenas.

From the Highveld to the Lowveld

From busy Jo-berg we traveled west to the beautiful Magaliesberg Mountains to visit a Cheetah Reserve. I was happy to learn that outreach education here is directed at schools and also livestock ranchers, to encourage new methods to protect flocks against this endangered species and other predators in ways that don't harm the predators. We also saw a band of African Wild Dogs which one seldom sees in the wild. Then a long drive east through areas with large farm and ranch holdings to Grasskop where we spent time the next day walking/hiking above the Blyde River Canyon (third largest in the world after the Grand and the Copper). Blyde, however, is a green canyon and the area around it is a nature reserve. The land above the canyon has blocky-looking sandstone outcrops everywhere and is just stunning and part of the northern Drakensberg Mountains.

Then onto Kruger National Park for the next three days where we sighted the Big 5 (leopard, lions, cape buffalo, elephants and rhinos), numerous antelopes (nyala, kudu, bushbuck, waterbuck, impala), wildebeest, zebras, giraffes, warthogs, hippos, and wonderful birds. Although I have been on many game drives in Africa, our second day in Kruger was the most exciting yet. In the morning a black mamba (Africa's most venomous snake) took a warning jump about 2-3 feet high right alongside our vehicle - not a foot from where I sat. This was a new experience for Dylan, our ranger, and he wasn't happy about it. During the afternoon's walking safari we watched as an old bull elephant crossed the wide river in front of us and come within 50 feet of the rock on which we were warily sitting. Just as he passed, the wind changed and he scented us, swung around and snorted and bellowed and made like he might charge. At that point one of our (armed) rangers (the same one who had been so upset by the mamba in the morning) got up, strode in front of us and started to loudly mimic the call of the go-away bird, which says "go away, go away, go away". His partner shouted as well and when Dylan picked up a stick to wave at the elephant, the behemoth turned and sauntered away. Apparently, the interpretation was that the elephant was invading our space, and we challenged him back. Also, the fact that we were on a rock outcrop was a positive thing for us - elephants prefer walking on the ground. Just another very exciting day in Africa!