Geographically-minded as our friends and family are, we've gotten quite a few "where exactly are you?" questions since arriving on Mauritius. The answer is that we're on a teeny tiny island in the Indian Ocean, a bit east of Madagascar, a while still west of Australia. (It was a 4 hour flight from Jo'burg to here; it will be a 12 hour flight from here to Sydney.) Officially part of Africa, the population of Mauritius is majority of Indian descent, followed by Creoles (the descendents of Africans originally brought here as slaves), Chinese, and a small number of Europeans, mainly French. There are no indigenous people here-- I think the first place we've ever been where that's the case-- and there seems to have been something very evening about the fact of everyone being an immigrant, as the culture is syncretic in every realm, and the Mauritian identity seems to be stronger than any separate ethnic one. Which is not to say that the island's history isn't full of the same bad stuff as so many other places: it was the subject of battles between colonial powers, going from Dutch to British to French; it was built on the labor first of African slaves and then of Indian indentured servants; and it was long taken advantage of in the colonial model as a producer of sugar cane for its European rulers. But since independence in 1968, Mauritius has had free, multi-party elections every five years, educated a highly literate and largely bilingual population, and developed its economy in a diverse manner.
Our first several days were spent in Mahebourg, in the island's southeast, which is relatively undeveloped for tourism. The town itself was sleepy and relaxed, although the streets were packed with holiday bustle on Christmas Eve. One of the highlights of such a mixed population is, for us, the food: many restaurants serve Indian, Creole, Chinese, and French dishes, or a mixture thereof, in addition to others that specialize in one of the same. We rented bikes for easy rides to the beach, tried to visit a long-running cookie factory (they were closed, so we just had to buy the cookies in a supermarket), and visited a nature reserve called Ile aux Aigrettes. The latter is a small island just off the Mahebourg coast, where the Mauritian Nature Conservancy has gotten rid of all exotic species and replaced them with native species, including ebony, palms in different shapes, the large Aldabra tortoise, and the very rare pink pigeon. We got a glimpse of the pigeon, which was not as excitingly bright as we had hoped, but did have a definite pinkish hue. We also went for a hike up Lion Mountain, the most prominent natural landmark in the area-- or I should say I tried to go for a hike, and Erik actually did. Not far into it, we encountered a stretch of vertical rock that required climbing, not hiking; I made it up that one, but when we immediately ran into another, I gave up, dizzy already. Erik kept going, climbing more than hiking for much of the way, and was rewarded with gorgeous views. I sat looking at the ocean and sang myself Christmas carols (a little sadly, I'll admit).
On Christmas Eve we joined our hotel owner at a Catholic service, all in French, which may have served to make us more homesick rather than less. We went for Chinese food that night, which made me feel a bit more at home in the spirit of a wonderful New York Times piece I remember from 15 years ago, "Erev Christmas"-- about all the Jews in New York gathering at Chinese restaurants (the only thing open) on Christmas Eve. Our hotel had placed a little Christmas tree in our room, which we decorated with flowers that had fallen off a tree, and Santa did manage to find it, even putting an orange in Erik's dirty sock. We spent Christmas on the beach, which we certainly can't complain about, but it sure didn't feel right. It helped, though, that the beach was packed with Mauritian families, for whom a sandy Christmas picnic WAS the tradition. So for a day, we tried to pretend it was ours too-- and also talked a lot about past and future years, at home.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Friday, December 22, 2006
Homelands and Hartford: Experiences of Race in Post-Apartheid South Africa and the U.S.
Throughout our travels we've been forced to rethink many of our conceptions of our native land, the good ol' U.S. of A. In many instances, despite their articulating severe criticisms of the American government/foreign policy, we've been surprised to find that so many people across the world have such a positive view of what the U.S. represents, and less surprised but still overwhelmed about how many people we meet ask us how they can move to the U.S.
South Africa felt different from any other country that we have visited on this trip, and also the most similar to the U.S. (and especially Hartford). Despite having our camera stolen in Mexico, and despite having been hassled and verbally harassed to some degree in nearly every place we've visited, before South Africa we haven't felt afraid or endangered. By contrast, in South Africa everyone we talked to tried to make us afraid, and we also felt some of that fear ourselves. In thinking about this feeling and South Africa's history of Apartheid (and the "Homelands," politically semi-autonomous Black areas that were supposed to demonstrate to the outside world that South Africa's racial separation worked for all) , we wanted to write more retelling and reflecting on our experiences of race there compared to our experiences of race in Hartford. We'll focus first on South African perceptions/stories of race, next on some of our own experiences/conversations there, and finally our reflections/comparisons to the U.S.
[Since our relatives are the primary readership of this blog, we want to first make clear that we were (and continue to be) very cautious and careful not to put ourselves in dangerous situations. Our only personal experience with crime in South Africa happened the day we arrived in Cape Town, a half-joking attempt at intimidation by 2 young men]
In our experience, an overwhelming aspect of race today in South Africa is all about crime and fear. Fear there is of an entirely different degree from the racial fear in the U.S. At least a part of this fear is justified by reality, by the statistics. South Africa has an incredible amount of violent crime: 52,000 murders per year in a country of 4 million whites and 40 million blacks (along with millions of people classified as coloured or Indian), and the highest (rate/number?) of rapes of any country in the world.
Again and again, we heard from people stories and personal experiences about crime. Our friends in the Peace Corps told us that P.C. volunteers are not allowed to visit Johannesburg. Several volunteers they know have been mugged. One had been "barred" (choked from behind with a steel bar) and bitten in Pretoria; he had to undergo the incredibly toxic and painful HIV-preventive vaccination. Bitten--like the stereotype of savagery, the humanity of the attacker being transformed into animal fury.
Johannesburg is portrayed as the center of all evil. Marcus, the English journalist that we traveled with in Ghana, had been working on a free lance piece in Nigeria before we met him. He was mugged his first day in Lagos. Marcus had worked previously for three years in Mexico; he said that Mexico City was like Disneyland compared to Lagos, and then later told us in an email that people in Nigeria said that Johannesburg is more dangerous than Lagos. Driving at night in Joburg, people don't stop at red lights, for fear of being highjacked.
The occupation with the highest death rate in South Africa is police officer: police are targeted and assassinated by criminals, and some police stations have hired private security firms to protect their police stations. The second most deadly occupation is a farmer, since farms are often isolated and therefore more vulnerable to attack.
While we were in Cape Town, 2 township tours were mugged. A year before, a bus full of German travel agents who were visiting was mugged on a township tour, and they caught the next flight back to Germany. Like the biting aspect of the P.C. volunteer's attack, here is another example of the outburst of anger: targeting those (whites on a township tour) who are actually trying to bring in money, tourism, etc. to impoverished areas.
It wasn't just whites who were afraid of crime: driving from Manyeding with the bride and groom, the bride told us to be careful walking around, and that she had recently been "barred" for her cell phone. Like in the U.S., many of the victims of crime are nonwhite: our Cape Town host's cleaning woman, who lives in a township, has her house robbed every few months. Our host told us she pretends to be asleep when the robbers enter so that she isn't harmed, knowing that the robbers will be back as soon as they've given people time to acquire new goods.
Like Rachel mentioned in her Urban Experiences blog, everything in South Africa has at least a fence around it, and probably more. (One of the more lighthearted examples of security was a few blocks from our host's house in Cape Town, the entrance to the hiking paths is padlocked (neighborhood residents are given a key) to keep out "sangomas:" traditional healers who were stripping the bark from some of the trees near the entrance to use in their medicines.) If plastic bags used be referred to as the "national flower" of South Africa (a problem which has since been solved by charging a minimal amount for plastic bags in stores), then razor wire is the "national plant." Never have we seen so much anywhere: at a gas station, the sidewalk fence between the pumps and the store entrance was looped with razor wire, presumably to deter would be robbers looking to make a quick getaway. The schools around Manyeding village were fenced with razor wire; they, like many of the houses with razor or electric wire fences and bars on the windows, looked more like prisons. One German told us about his friend who lived in a gated community outside of Pretoria. I almost had to laugh when he said that she's been robbed there several times, wondering if _anyone_ in the U.S. would live in a "gated community" that despite that status still has regular robberies.
Although we had many interactions with people around the issue of race, two of them stand out. The first was in Nature's Valley, talking at the pub with a white couple (an Afrikaaner man and an American woman) who owned a contracting business that employed about 40 workers. They spoke about the problems they have with all (whites included) workers, and their disagreements with Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), the South African version of affirmative action. While genuinely reflecting the realities of their situation, they also used the phrase "I'm not a racist but..." several times, as well as the half-joke, "What's the difference between a tourist and a racist? Two weeks." While we certainly disagreed with some of what they said, it was an interesting conversation in terms of giving us a glimpse of some of the issues from a very different perspective than our own: that of small business owners trying to make their company work in a new political and economic climate. Their attitudes were not just a simple as "black and white."
The second interaction occurred poolside in the Drakensberg mountains. A group of Colored (again, the South African term for people of mixed race: not as far as we can tell considered inappropriate by anyone but still difficult for us to write/say because of its history as a derogatory term in the U.S.) people about our age were starting their weekend, drinking and talking loudly. A white man who was sitting nearby came and condescendingly yelled at them, playing the race card from the start by first of all saying "I don't know whether you're staying here," and then justifying his own rights there by saying that although he lived in England now, he was born in South Africa. When he returned to his seat, the Colored people grumbled loudly "Go back to England" before eventually one of them offered him a glass of wine and some kind of reconciliation took place. This interaction was notable for its boring predictability, and the fact that while race wasn't really at issue (people being loud), that's what came to the forefront. In some small way maybe it represents the difficulty, the understandable wariness that all racial categories of people have in trying to live together in the "new" South Africa, which despite massive amounts of crime and violence has also experienced incredible change (our Servas hosts in Durban telling us that the downtown has basically gone from being 95% white to 95% black since Apartheid, and that this has happened peacefully).
In closing with a few thoughs on similarities to race in the U.S., one large factor in the perception of both is the media. In South Africa, the media seemed to relish the bloody headlines in a sensational, tabloid way. While it's clear that there is a reality to the crime and problems around race, it's also clear to us that, like our walking tour of Soweto demonstrated, crime and the perception of race as a type of fear is far from the only reality.
But crime does exist in South Africa, and because it's a part of daily life, it's how most whites experience the category of race and Apartheid inequalities directly. Living in a poor area of Hartford, we were also victims of crime: in some way, the statistics say it's almost bound to happen, if not to you directly than at least to someone you know closely. Fear and crime are the individual experiences, which understandably obscure the structural, the historical inequalities. Like in the U.S., those who are able flee these areas in their self-interest of avoiding crime--we heard time and time again about white relatives who were urging family still in South Africa to leave the country.
We felt that while talking with the white business owners in Nature's Valley gave us valid angles on social and economic questions of the present, it did not give possible answers to the sometimes insurmountable-seeming question of how to work to redress past wrongs. Some of the more extreme attempts at doing this (at least in Africa) seem like complete failures, for example president/dictator Mugabe's seizure of white farms in Zimbabwe (although these have the additonal problem in our view of not being done with sincere intentions but rather for Mugabe's own political preservation).
One white resident who, coming back from a hike, gave us a lift back to our lodge in the Drakensberg expressed surprise that the U.S hasn't been able to solve our race "problem," given that the demographic numbers are reversed (with blacks being 12% and whites over half of the U.S. population; and a much higher ratio of blacks to the white minority in South Africa). Maybe these numbers are part of the reason that the U.S. doesn't have quite the same fear--whites are more able to exist in the suburbs, away from inner cities and nonwhite populations, whereas, even with the hyper-segregation of Apartheid, it seems much more difficult for whites to live apart in South Africa. The numbers are not in their favor.
Despite this difference in numbers, what does feel very similar to the U.S. is the vast inequality between people, with much of this based in racial categories. While we don't believe that inequality is the only cause of crime, it certainly seems to be one of the main factors. In South Africa, people committing crimes don't just target whites, they target people who have something attractive to steal, and the majority of these are still white. Although the U.S. has the history of slavery to overcome, even its evils seem less in comparison to the acts of Apartheid. One example of this difference of degree, and still the strongest visual example of inequality in South Africa, is the housing. Blacks and other nonwhites were housed in "townships" under Apartheid, and today structures ranging from flimsy shacks to more solid small houses still stand, usually still completely separated from a nearby town or white residential area. Taking Hartford as an example, the housing of the poorest (and nonwhite) residents is certainly unequal, but even the worst public housing project does not resemble the total segregation of Apartheid townships. Most of the U.S. non-project housing differs from wealthier housing not necessarily in terms of the type of structure, but in terms of upkeep. Again despite its inequality and inadequacy, in comparison the housing for the nonwhite poor in U.S. cities seems like something which developed because of neglect mixed with racism but still in a slightly more organic process, compared to the stark, completely unnatural, hyper-racialized construction of the Apartheid townships. We write this not to excoriate the conditions of race in the U.S., but in attempt to demonstrate the degree of difference in South Africa.
One positive way in which South Africa differs from the U.S. on race is the willingness to confront some of these issues, and the belief that a way can be found to live together peacefully. These beliefs have a long history: in the African National Congress's 1955 Freedom Charter, it rejects the contemporary Pan-African Congress claim of Africa for the Africans and instead resolves that all residents of South Africa can live together. In comparison to leaders like Mugabe, whose attempts to overcome racial wrongs of the past seem to lead only to more problems, leaders like Mandela and now Mbeki have not blamed all the problems of the nation on its history or its white residents. On the Soweto tour, the Colored brother (who also told us that he didn't think blacks should be leaders of a nation!) of an ANC member who hosted secret meetings with Mandela remarked that he was very impressed by a speech Mandela made recently saying that blacks have a lot to learn from the successes of whites. The ANC goes to seemingly great distances to support its rhetoric of forgiveness, to build on some of the successes of the post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Committee: it even offered a state funeral to P.W. Botha, the last hardline Apartheid leader in the 1980s, when he recently died.
South Africa is a place of extremes, simultaneously extreme hope and extreme despair. It has experienced some successes in overcoming Apartheid, and in these we think may provide a model for working to achieve harmony among different peoples and overcome the categories of race by working towards greater economic and social equality.
South Africa felt different from any other country that we have visited on this trip, and also the most similar to the U.S. (and especially Hartford). Despite having our camera stolen in Mexico, and despite having been hassled and verbally harassed to some degree in nearly every place we've visited, before South Africa we haven't felt afraid or endangered. By contrast, in South Africa everyone we talked to tried to make us afraid, and we also felt some of that fear ourselves. In thinking about this feeling and South Africa's history of Apartheid (and the "Homelands," politically semi-autonomous Black areas that were supposed to demonstrate to the outside world that South Africa's racial separation worked for all) , we wanted to write more retelling and reflecting on our experiences of race there compared to our experiences of race in Hartford. We'll focus first on South African perceptions/stories of race, next on some of our own experiences/conversations there, and finally our reflections/comparisons to the U.S.
[Since our relatives are the primary readership of this blog, we want to first make clear that we were (and continue to be) very cautious and careful not to put ourselves in dangerous situations. Our only personal experience with crime in South Africa happened the day we arrived in Cape Town, a half-joking attempt at intimidation by 2 young men]
In our experience, an overwhelming aspect of race today in South Africa is all about crime and fear. Fear there is of an entirely different degree from the racial fear in the U.S. At least a part of this fear is justified by reality, by the statistics. South Africa has an incredible amount of violent crime: 52,000 murders per year in a country of 4 million whites and 40 million blacks (along with millions of people classified as coloured or Indian), and the highest (rate/number?) of rapes of any country in the world.
Again and again, we heard from people stories and personal experiences about crime. Our friends in the Peace Corps told us that P.C. volunteers are not allowed to visit Johannesburg. Several volunteers they know have been mugged. One had been "barred" (choked from behind with a steel bar) and bitten in Pretoria; he had to undergo the incredibly toxic and painful HIV-preventive vaccination. Bitten--like the stereotype of savagery, the humanity of the attacker being transformed into animal fury.
Johannesburg is portrayed as the center of all evil. Marcus, the English journalist that we traveled with in Ghana, had been working on a free lance piece in Nigeria before we met him. He was mugged his first day in Lagos. Marcus had worked previously for three years in Mexico; he said that Mexico City was like Disneyland compared to Lagos, and then later told us in an email that people in Nigeria said that Johannesburg is more dangerous than Lagos. Driving at night in Joburg, people don't stop at red lights, for fear of being highjacked.
The occupation with the highest death rate in South Africa is police officer: police are targeted and assassinated by criminals, and some police stations have hired private security firms to protect their police stations. The second most deadly occupation is a farmer, since farms are often isolated and therefore more vulnerable to attack.
While we were in Cape Town, 2 township tours were mugged. A year before, a bus full of German travel agents who were visiting was mugged on a township tour, and they caught the next flight back to Germany. Like the biting aspect of the P.C. volunteer's attack, here is another example of the outburst of anger: targeting those (whites on a township tour) who are actually trying to bring in money, tourism, etc. to impoverished areas.
It wasn't just whites who were afraid of crime: driving from Manyeding with the bride and groom, the bride told us to be careful walking around, and that she had recently been "barred" for her cell phone. Like in the U.S., many of the victims of crime are nonwhite: our Cape Town host's cleaning woman, who lives in a township, has her house robbed every few months. Our host told us she pretends to be asleep when the robbers enter so that she isn't harmed, knowing that the robbers will be back as soon as they've given people time to acquire new goods.
Like Rachel mentioned in her Urban Experiences blog, everything in South Africa has at least a fence around it, and probably more. (One of the more lighthearted examples of security was a few blocks from our host's house in Cape Town, the entrance to the hiking paths is padlocked (neighborhood residents are given a key) to keep out "sangomas:" traditional healers who were stripping the bark from some of the trees near the entrance to use in their medicines.) If plastic bags used be referred to as the "national flower" of South Africa (a problem which has since been solved by charging a minimal amount for plastic bags in stores), then razor wire is the "national plant." Never have we seen so much anywhere: at a gas station, the sidewalk fence between the pumps and the store entrance was looped with razor wire, presumably to deter would be robbers looking to make a quick getaway. The schools around Manyeding village were fenced with razor wire; they, like many of the houses with razor or electric wire fences and bars on the windows, looked more like prisons. One German told us about his friend who lived in a gated community outside of Pretoria. I almost had to laugh when he said that she's been robbed there several times, wondering if _anyone_ in the U.S. would live in a "gated community" that despite that status still has regular robberies.
Although we had many interactions with people around the issue of race, two of them stand out. The first was in Nature's Valley, talking at the pub with a white couple (an Afrikaaner man and an American woman) who owned a contracting business that employed about 40 workers. They spoke about the problems they have with all (whites included) workers, and their disagreements with Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), the South African version of affirmative action. While genuinely reflecting the realities of their situation, they also used the phrase "I'm not a racist but..." several times, as well as the half-joke, "What's the difference between a tourist and a racist? Two weeks." While we certainly disagreed with some of what they said, it was an interesting conversation in terms of giving us a glimpse of some of the issues from a very different perspective than our own: that of small business owners trying to make their company work in a new political and economic climate. Their attitudes were not just a simple as "black and white."
The second interaction occurred poolside in the Drakensberg mountains. A group of Colored (again, the South African term for people of mixed race: not as far as we can tell considered inappropriate by anyone but still difficult for us to write/say because of its history as a derogatory term in the U.S.) people about our age were starting their weekend, drinking and talking loudly. A white man who was sitting nearby came and condescendingly yelled at them, playing the race card from the start by first of all saying "I don't know whether you're staying here," and then justifying his own rights there by saying that although he lived in England now, he was born in South Africa. When he returned to his seat, the Colored people grumbled loudly "Go back to England" before eventually one of them offered him a glass of wine and some kind of reconciliation took place. This interaction was notable for its boring predictability, and the fact that while race wasn't really at issue (people being loud), that's what came to the forefront. In some small way maybe it represents the difficulty, the understandable wariness that all racial categories of people have in trying to live together in the "new" South Africa, which despite massive amounts of crime and violence has also experienced incredible change (our Servas hosts in Durban telling us that the downtown has basically gone from being 95% white to 95% black since Apartheid, and that this has happened peacefully).
In closing with a few thoughs on similarities to race in the U.S., one large factor in the perception of both is the media. In South Africa, the media seemed to relish the bloody headlines in a sensational, tabloid way. While it's clear that there is a reality to the crime and problems around race, it's also clear to us that, like our walking tour of Soweto demonstrated, crime and the perception of race as a type of fear is far from the only reality.
But crime does exist in South Africa, and because it's a part of daily life, it's how most whites experience the category of race and Apartheid inequalities directly. Living in a poor area of Hartford, we were also victims of crime: in some way, the statistics say it's almost bound to happen, if not to you directly than at least to someone you know closely. Fear and crime are the individual experiences, which understandably obscure the structural, the historical inequalities. Like in the U.S., those who are able flee these areas in their self-interest of avoiding crime--we heard time and time again about white relatives who were urging family still in South Africa to leave the country.
We felt that while talking with the white business owners in Nature's Valley gave us valid angles on social and economic questions of the present, it did not give possible answers to the sometimes insurmountable-seeming question of how to work to redress past wrongs. Some of the more extreme attempts at doing this (at least in Africa) seem like complete failures, for example president/dictator Mugabe's seizure of white farms in Zimbabwe (although these have the additonal problem in our view of not being done with sincere intentions but rather for Mugabe's own political preservation).
One white resident who, coming back from a hike, gave us a lift back to our lodge in the Drakensberg expressed surprise that the U.S hasn't been able to solve our race "problem," given that the demographic numbers are reversed (with blacks being 12% and whites over half of the U.S. population; and a much higher ratio of blacks to the white minority in South Africa). Maybe these numbers are part of the reason that the U.S. doesn't have quite the same fear--whites are more able to exist in the suburbs, away from inner cities and nonwhite populations, whereas, even with the hyper-segregation of Apartheid, it seems much more difficult for whites to live apart in South Africa. The numbers are not in their favor.
Despite this difference in numbers, what does feel very similar to the U.S. is the vast inequality between people, with much of this based in racial categories. While we don't believe that inequality is the only cause of crime, it certainly seems to be one of the main factors. In South Africa, people committing crimes don't just target whites, they target people who have something attractive to steal, and the majority of these are still white. Although the U.S. has the history of slavery to overcome, even its evils seem less in comparison to the acts of Apartheid. One example of this difference of degree, and still the strongest visual example of inequality in South Africa, is the housing. Blacks and other nonwhites were housed in "townships" under Apartheid, and today structures ranging from flimsy shacks to more solid small houses still stand, usually still completely separated from a nearby town or white residential area. Taking Hartford as an example, the housing of the poorest (and nonwhite) residents is certainly unequal, but even the worst public housing project does not resemble the total segregation of Apartheid townships. Most of the U.S. non-project housing differs from wealthier housing not necessarily in terms of the type of structure, but in terms of upkeep. Again despite its inequality and inadequacy, in comparison the housing for the nonwhite poor in U.S. cities seems like something which developed because of neglect mixed with racism but still in a slightly more organic process, compared to the stark, completely unnatural, hyper-racialized construction of the Apartheid townships. We write this not to excoriate the conditions of race in the U.S., but in attempt to demonstrate the degree of difference in South Africa.
One positive way in which South Africa differs from the U.S. on race is the willingness to confront some of these issues, and the belief that a way can be found to live together peacefully. These beliefs have a long history: in the African National Congress's 1955 Freedom Charter, it rejects the contemporary Pan-African Congress claim of Africa for the Africans and instead resolves that all residents of South Africa can live together. In comparison to leaders like Mugabe, whose attempts to overcome racial wrongs of the past seem to lead only to more problems, leaders like Mandela and now Mbeki have not blamed all the problems of the nation on its history or its white residents. On the Soweto tour, the Colored brother (who also told us that he didn't think blacks should be leaders of a nation!) of an ANC member who hosted secret meetings with Mandela remarked that he was very impressed by a speech Mandela made recently saying that blacks have a lot to learn from the successes of whites. The ANC goes to seemingly great distances to support its rhetoric of forgiveness, to build on some of the successes of the post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Committee: it even offered a state funeral to P.W. Botha, the last hardline Apartheid leader in the 1980s, when he recently died.
South Africa is a place of extremes, simultaneously extreme hope and extreme despair. It has experienced some successes in overcoming Apartheid, and in these we think may provide a model for working to achieve harmony among different peoples and overcome the categories of race by working towards greater economic and social equality.
Urban Experiences: Durban, Johannesberg, and Soweto
Our stint in backpackerland took a welcome break when we arrived in Durban, South Africa's third-largest city and the southern hemisphere's busiest port. Although the Baz Bus didn't drop us off there until close to midnight, our SERVAS hosts, Alex and Tracey, picked us up and brought us home for a curry dinner with their two cats, Candy and Gidgy. Alec is a lifelong Durban resident; Tracey grew up in rural KwaZulu-Natal (Zululand), and has lived in Durban for many years. (Tracey now runs a Zulu crafts cooperative, working closely with local women and taking regular trips to various parts of the world to sell the goods.) They are enthusiasts of both their city and their region, and provided us with a wonderful introduction to the area. This included sampling Durban's iconic food, bunny chow-- an Indian curry served inside a hollowed-out quarter loaf of bread. Durban has the world's largest Indian population outside of India, and much of the food of the city is reflective of that, but the particular story of bunny chow is that it was used in past days (when servants were the rule and styrofoam didn't exist) as a way for servants to carry hot lunches to their bosses. The word for boss sounded, to English ears, something like "bunny", and so what had been called "boss chow" got its new name.
We spent some of our first day in Durban hanging out downtown, after successfully visiting the U.S. Consulate to get additional visa pages added to our passports. We visited an impressive art museum in the City Hall, which also has a natural history museum and a library branch, and walked around the surrounding streets a bit. We really liked the feel of the city-- vibrant was the main word that kept coming to mind, with the streets full of people walking, shopping, eating, and working. There was a dense concentration of small businesses, and a swarming outdoor market with long lines at the bunny chow stand. Alec estimates that, since the end of apartheid, when the restrictions on which "race" could live in the city finally ended, the population of Durban has shifted from about 95% white to 95% non-white. It felt a bit like walking around Park Street in Hartford. Also like Hartford, Durban has been busily developing its waterfront, although we must admit that the scale of their projects certainly dwarfs ours. Durban's municipal budget runs in the black, even as they build new stadiums for World Cup 2010 and keep the city beachfront in beautiful shape. We spent a thoroughly unintellectual but very fun day at the largest waterfront development, an aquarium and water-park where we oggled unlikely-looking fish, watched a dolphin show, and scooted down water slides.
Arriving in Johannesburg had quite a different feel, as the Baz Bus drove from one extensively-secured suburban hostel to another. Our hostel ran regular shuttles to a couple different places in the city-- the museum, a mall-- but strongly discouraged walking anywhere, and did not offer any opportunities to go out at night, such as for a jazz show as we'd been hoping. We felt pretty stuck, between the fear that the hostel worked to instill in us and, moreso, the high cost of getting around by taxi, given the dismal state of public transportation in the city. Every house in the suburbs had a solid fence topped with razor-wire, a gated driveway, a sign warning passers-by of armed guards on call. Is this how Canadians look at Americans, with our alarm systems and locked doors?
The first of our two days in Jo'burg was spent at the Apartheid Museum, an extensive, moving collection. I was very impressed with the museum both from a historiographic perspective and from a tourist's perspective. The museum was chock full of well-presented artifacts-- video footage of speeches and police beatings, photos, decrees, etc.-- and, through a smart counterpuntal exhibit, analyzed the factors behind the rise of apartheid, the effects of apartheid on life in South Africa, and the resistance to apartheid thoughtfully and simultaneously. The explanation, for instance, of how race and class were manipulated by the nationalist leaders to leverage the support of poor Afrikaaners was nuanced without being exculpating; the presentation of resistance movements and leaders was similarly complex, not idolatrous. We spent hours reading the texts and examining the photos, and could have spent much longer. But the museum was also well set up for the large portion of visitors who don't have or want to spend so much time; just walking through the exhibits, as we saw many people doing, one could still get a strong sense of the horrors of apartheid and the power of resistance. In our view, they missed a lot, but at least they got something.
We did have a rather unpleasant experience leaving the museum: the taxi we were in broke down on the highway, and we had to sit in it for 45 minutes waiting for another taxi from the same company to retrieve us. And then they wanted to be paid the full (and very high) fare! We disagreed.
Our second day in Jo'burg, and last day in South Africa, was spent in Soweto. Until we actually spent time there, Soweto loomed in somewhat mythic proportions in our heads: the center of the great student resistance movement that started in 1976, the one-time home to leaders like Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, and Desmond Tutu-- and also one of the world's most notorious ghettoes, a word synonomous with poverty and despair. So we thought. The Soweto we were introduced to, in a day of walking and taking local minibuses with a local guide, Eunice, was immeasurably more multilayered, more alive, and more spirited than anything we had ever read or heard about it had led us to believe.
We spent time in three neighborhoods-- the first surprise for us being that Soweto HAD neighborhoods. What we had pictured as a monolithic area of shacks was actually a whole metropolis in itself, home to 4 million people (a Kiwi we met that morning said that was equal to the whole country of New Zealand). We started in Orlando East, a working-class area composed almost entirely of the brick homes that every family is entitled to apply for once. Many of these one-room houses had been added onto (at the owner's expense); many also had one or more shacks in the backyard, lived in sometimes by family members in Soweto seeking work, sometimes by renters who were on the waiting list for a government house. Our first stop was in the shack where one of the guides lived, where we spent some time talking to her sister-in-law, who is a local activist focusing on issues of violence against women. As we left the shack and walked along the streets, we were struck by the absence of security fences, and the presence of children playing and people walking-- streetlife that was absent from the suburban area where the hostel was. We were also shown the house where Mpanza, known as "the father of Soweto" for his fight to get housing built there, had lived.
Leaving Orlando East, we took a minibus to Kliptown, a severely neglected area that fit more closely to our prior image of Soweto. This neighborhood has neither electricity nore plumbing, garbage pick-up nor schools: the government wants people to leave the area, has wanted this for decades, and therefore does not provide any services to it. But of course the fact is that people do live there, lots of people, and the government's refusal to acknowledge this has only exacerbated the situation. On the outskirts of Kliptown, we visited the homes of two interesting people. The first, Porto Lollan, was a 75 year old "coloured" man whose house, under the initiation of his late brother, had hosted secret meetings of Mandela and other leaders in the years before they were imprisoned. He had an interesting collection of photos and newspaper articles, but we were quite put-off actually talking to him, as he said something like "Black people aren't fit to be president." After him, though, we met an extremely inspiring man, Bob, who ran an NGO called Soweto-Kliptown Youth. He himself had been an abandoned child, taken in by a local activist and, in his words, told that he mattered and given a chance at life. He has used that chance to work tirelessly and effectively to improve the lives of Kliptown children, running a variety of programs and initiatives. He now has links with a charitable fund of the NBA, and photos of giant basketball players sitting in too-small plastic chairs in Kliptown, watching children performs gumboots dances, line his walls. In his work, he has also deeply touched the lives of some American children; he runs an exhange program with the exclusive Nobles School in Boston, and has received emails from the parents of the privileged students who have spent time in Soweto saying they don't know what he did, but they thank him for the effects that time had on their children.
Our final stop of the day was Orlando West, now Soweto's wealthiest neighborhood (referred to as Beverly Hills), and the location of the main sights that tourists usually see. (We saw several groups of tourists, in vans and buses, stopping off for a few minutes at these places, on the "Soweto tours" offered by every travel agency-- we were so thankful that a man we'd met at Inkosana had told us about the walking tour instead!) These sights were certainly powerful: the corner where a 13 year old boy, Hector Pieterson, was shot by police in 1976, the first casualty of the Soweto student uprising; the memorial museum for Hector Pieterson, overseen by his sister; Vilakazi Street, where Tutu and Mandela lived and where Pieterson was shot. But what will stick with us even more is the feeling of walking around the Soweto streets, of spending time in a neighborhood in the full sense of the word-- a real place, with problems certainly, but also with pride, with spirit, with identity.
We spent some of our first day in Durban hanging out downtown, after successfully visiting the U.S. Consulate to get additional visa pages added to our passports. We visited an impressive art museum in the City Hall, which also has a natural history museum and a library branch, and walked around the surrounding streets a bit. We really liked the feel of the city-- vibrant was the main word that kept coming to mind, with the streets full of people walking, shopping, eating, and working. There was a dense concentration of small businesses, and a swarming outdoor market with long lines at the bunny chow stand. Alec estimates that, since the end of apartheid, when the restrictions on which "race" could live in the city finally ended, the population of Durban has shifted from about 95% white to 95% non-white. It felt a bit like walking around Park Street in Hartford. Also like Hartford, Durban has been busily developing its waterfront, although we must admit that the scale of their projects certainly dwarfs ours. Durban's municipal budget runs in the black, even as they build new stadiums for World Cup 2010 and keep the city beachfront in beautiful shape. We spent a thoroughly unintellectual but very fun day at the largest waterfront development, an aquarium and water-park where we oggled unlikely-looking fish, watched a dolphin show, and scooted down water slides.
Arriving in Johannesburg had quite a different feel, as the Baz Bus drove from one extensively-secured suburban hostel to another. Our hostel ran regular shuttles to a couple different places in the city-- the museum, a mall-- but strongly discouraged walking anywhere, and did not offer any opportunities to go out at night, such as for a jazz show as we'd been hoping. We felt pretty stuck, between the fear that the hostel worked to instill in us and, moreso, the high cost of getting around by taxi, given the dismal state of public transportation in the city. Every house in the suburbs had a solid fence topped with razor-wire, a gated driveway, a sign warning passers-by of armed guards on call. Is this how Canadians look at Americans, with our alarm systems and locked doors?
The first of our two days in Jo'burg was spent at the Apartheid Museum, an extensive, moving collection. I was very impressed with the museum both from a historiographic perspective and from a tourist's perspective. The museum was chock full of well-presented artifacts-- video footage of speeches and police beatings, photos, decrees, etc.-- and, through a smart counterpuntal exhibit, analyzed the factors behind the rise of apartheid, the effects of apartheid on life in South Africa, and the resistance to apartheid thoughtfully and simultaneously. The explanation, for instance, of how race and class were manipulated by the nationalist leaders to leverage the support of poor Afrikaaners was nuanced without being exculpating; the presentation of resistance movements and leaders was similarly complex, not idolatrous. We spent hours reading the texts and examining the photos, and could have spent much longer. But the museum was also well set up for the large portion of visitors who don't have or want to spend so much time; just walking through the exhibits, as we saw many people doing, one could still get a strong sense of the horrors of apartheid and the power of resistance. In our view, they missed a lot, but at least they got something.
We did have a rather unpleasant experience leaving the museum: the taxi we were in broke down on the highway, and we had to sit in it for 45 minutes waiting for another taxi from the same company to retrieve us. And then they wanted to be paid the full (and very high) fare! We disagreed.
Our second day in Jo'burg, and last day in South Africa, was spent in Soweto. Until we actually spent time there, Soweto loomed in somewhat mythic proportions in our heads: the center of the great student resistance movement that started in 1976, the one-time home to leaders like Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, and Desmond Tutu-- and also one of the world's most notorious ghettoes, a word synonomous with poverty and despair. So we thought. The Soweto we were introduced to, in a day of walking and taking local minibuses with a local guide, Eunice, was immeasurably more multilayered, more alive, and more spirited than anything we had ever read or heard about it had led us to believe.
We spent time in three neighborhoods-- the first surprise for us being that Soweto HAD neighborhoods. What we had pictured as a monolithic area of shacks was actually a whole metropolis in itself, home to 4 million people (a Kiwi we met that morning said that was equal to the whole country of New Zealand). We started in Orlando East, a working-class area composed almost entirely of the brick homes that every family is entitled to apply for once. Many of these one-room houses had been added onto (at the owner's expense); many also had one or more shacks in the backyard, lived in sometimes by family members in Soweto seeking work, sometimes by renters who were on the waiting list for a government house. Our first stop was in the shack where one of the guides lived, where we spent some time talking to her sister-in-law, who is a local activist focusing on issues of violence against women. As we left the shack and walked along the streets, we were struck by the absence of security fences, and the presence of children playing and people walking-- streetlife that was absent from the suburban area where the hostel was. We were also shown the house where Mpanza, known as "the father of Soweto" for his fight to get housing built there, had lived.
Leaving Orlando East, we took a minibus to Kliptown, a severely neglected area that fit more closely to our prior image of Soweto. This neighborhood has neither electricity nore plumbing, garbage pick-up nor schools: the government wants people to leave the area, has wanted this for decades, and therefore does not provide any services to it. But of course the fact is that people do live there, lots of people, and the government's refusal to acknowledge this has only exacerbated the situation. On the outskirts of Kliptown, we visited the homes of two interesting people. The first, Porto Lollan, was a 75 year old "coloured" man whose house, under the initiation of his late brother, had hosted secret meetings of Mandela and other leaders in the years before they were imprisoned. He had an interesting collection of photos and newspaper articles, but we were quite put-off actually talking to him, as he said something like "Black people aren't fit to be president." After him, though, we met an extremely inspiring man, Bob, who ran an NGO called Soweto-Kliptown Youth. He himself had been an abandoned child, taken in by a local activist and, in his words, told that he mattered and given a chance at life. He has used that chance to work tirelessly and effectively to improve the lives of Kliptown children, running a variety of programs and initiatives. He now has links with a charitable fund of the NBA, and photos of giant basketball players sitting in too-small plastic chairs in Kliptown, watching children performs gumboots dances, line his walls. In his work, he has also deeply touched the lives of some American children; he runs an exhange program with the exclusive Nobles School in Boston, and has received emails from the parents of the privileged students who have spent time in Soweto saying they don't know what he did, but they thank him for the effects that time had on their children.
Our final stop of the day was Orlando West, now Soweto's wealthiest neighborhood (referred to as Beverly Hills), and the location of the main sights that tourists usually see. (We saw several groups of tourists, in vans and buses, stopping off for a few minutes at these places, on the "Soweto tours" offered by every travel agency-- we were so thankful that a man we'd met at Inkosana had told us about the walking tour instead!) These sights were certainly powerful: the corner where a 13 year old boy, Hector Pieterson, was shot by police in 1976, the first casualty of the Soweto student uprising; the memorial museum for Hector Pieterson, overseen by his sister; Vilakazi Street, where Tutu and Mandela lived and where Pieterson was shot. But what will stick with us even more is the feeling of walking around the Soweto streets, of spending time in a neighborhood in the full sense of the word-- a real place, with problems certainly, but also with pride, with spirit, with identity.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Sweet Mountain Retreat
We spent part of last week at the Inkosana Lodge in the central Drakensberg range, and can officially say it was the nicest place we've paid to stay at any point on this trip. Composed of one airy, low-roofed but high-ceilinged main building, and a series of thatched-roof huts all set within a multi-level yard and garden area, almost every window, path, and seating area at the lodge had views of the tufted green mountains a short distance away. Our hut had autumnal batik curtains with elephat motifs, and a traveler-suited design in addition to the fine aesthetics, with lots of tucked-away shelf space and a wooden clothes rack. (More and more, we are finding that things like having lots of hooks, a large sink for hand-washing, and good knives in the kitchen make the big difference between feeling thrilled or frustrated by the places we stay.) The kitchen at Inkosana also definitively topped our "best" list, with castiron kettles and ant-free brown sugar available for use. And in addition, there was the pool, a spring-fed, cast-cement version of a fancy suburban infinity pool, where we could soak in the cool and the view.
We had three main activities during our time at Inkosana: hiking, lounging, and eating. In the former category, we started out, the afternoon of our arrival, with just a walk along the roads near the lodge, which contained the delicious finger-staining surprise of a whole row of blackberry bushes laden with a first crop of ripe berries. Erik braved the brambles to pick them, while I supportively held out the bag to fill and tried not to eat them as soon as they came off the branch. The following day we just got our legs a little warmer, hiking in the morning from a meadow, down through a damp and (to me) claustrophobic forest, to a waterfall. The highlight of the hike was coming upon a troop of baboons, who sent out a couple of guards to bark angrily at us while the rest of the group ran away. The best hike, though, came the next day. We set out on a cloudy morning with a friendly, interesting Canadian couple we'd met at breakfast and headed up through forest into a long, gently climbing stretch of meadow (where Erik got in touch with his Swiss roots by attempting a little yodeling, with some measure of success). Once we reached the end of that trail, at the point where a final peak ascent would start, we turned and began to traverse the grassy ridgeline. On our way to the shallow pool that was our goal and picnic spot, we spotted a white-tailed antelope and watched as lightning flashed and crackled on other parts of the mountains, bringing with it thunder that lasted for a Beethoven-length timpani roll. When we reached the pool, the sun was bright and hot, although the wind tormening the grasses suggested another storm ahead. As we headed back along the ridge, that storm hit, bringing not just thunder and lightning (not too close) but also hail, which we waited out under some trees. The storm subsided for the rest of our descent-- then, just as we reached the parking lot, opened up full force, pouring down sheets of rain that continued for a couple hours. But by that point, we were back at the lodge, luxuriating in the comfort of a good day of activity. We did one more hike the next day, going back up to the end of the trail but skipping the ridge walk this time, and rounded out our time with another blackberry picking mission before going back to our regular backpacker life on the bus.
But what of those other two categories, lounging and eating? A joy in their own right, the hikes also provided pleasant justification for those activities. The windowledge in our little hut made a perfect table for afternoon tea and cookies (a habit I am completely ready to take up when we get home!) Ed, the owner of Inkosana, made wonderful hard, biscotti-like cookies called rusks which were perfectly suited for tea-dipping, and which I now have the recipe for (although I may need to find a way to modify the pound of butter called for in the original...). We would sit in our room reading and drinking tea, as afternoon thunderstorms invariably pounded and danced outside. The showers were walled but open-roofed; as the cold water of the rain mixed with the hot water of the faucet, we could watch the lightning touching down on the hills and illuminating the sky. Most nights the rain would quiet before dinner, allowing us to get to the main lodge or the kitchen unsoaked. Along with being a baker, Ed was an excellent cook, preparing huge, heavy dinners for many guests each night. We enjoyed eating his food once, but also enjoyed the opportunity it gave us to splurge on more gourmet groceries than we usually get-- since the only choices were Ed's restaurant (pricey, for us) or groceries, spending a little more than usual still meant spending less than the alternative. So we grilled (or braied, in South African) steak, lunched on smoked salmon, and ate strawberries and peaches with fresh cream so thick it needed to be scooped with a spoon. We were completely spoiled for four days, and enjoyed every moment of it.
We had three main activities during our time at Inkosana: hiking, lounging, and eating. In the former category, we started out, the afternoon of our arrival, with just a walk along the roads near the lodge, which contained the delicious finger-staining surprise of a whole row of blackberry bushes laden with a first crop of ripe berries. Erik braved the brambles to pick them, while I supportively held out the bag to fill and tried not to eat them as soon as they came off the branch. The following day we just got our legs a little warmer, hiking in the morning from a meadow, down through a damp and (to me) claustrophobic forest, to a waterfall. The highlight of the hike was coming upon a troop of baboons, who sent out a couple of guards to bark angrily at us while the rest of the group ran away. The best hike, though, came the next day. We set out on a cloudy morning with a friendly, interesting Canadian couple we'd met at breakfast and headed up through forest into a long, gently climbing stretch of meadow (where Erik got in touch with his Swiss roots by attempting a little yodeling, with some measure of success). Once we reached the end of that trail, at the point where a final peak ascent would start, we turned and began to traverse the grassy ridgeline. On our way to the shallow pool that was our goal and picnic spot, we spotted a white-tailed antelope and watched as lightning flashed and crackled on other parts of the mountains, bringing with it thunder that lasted for a Beethoven-length timpani roll. When we reached the pool, the sun was bright and hot, although the wind tormening the grasses suggested another storm ahead. As we headed back along the ridge, that storm hit, bringing not just thunder and lightning (not too close) but also hail, which we waited out under some trees. The storm subsided for the rest of our descent-- then, just as we reached the parking lot, opened up full force, pouring down sheets of rain that continued for a couple hours. But by that point, we were back at the lodge, luxuriating in the comfort of a good day of activity. We did one more hike the next day, going back up to the end of the trail but skipping the ridge walk this time, and rounded out our time with another blackberry picking mission before going back to our regular backpacker life on the bus.
But what of those other two categories, lounging and eating? A joy in their own right, the hikes also provided pleasant justification for those activities. The windowledge in our little hut made a perfect table for afternoon tea and cookies (a habit I am completely ready to take up when we get home!) Ed, the owner of Inkosana, made wonderful hard, biscotti-like cookies called rusks which were perfectly suited for tea-dipping, and which I now have the recipe for (although I may need to find a way to modify the pound of butter called for in the original...). We would sit in our room reading and drinking tea, as afternoon thunderstorms invariably pounded and danced outside. The showers were walled but open-roofed; as the cold water of the rain mixed with the hot water of the faucet, we could watch the lightning touching down on the hills and illuminating the sky. Most nights the rain would quiet before dinner, allowing us to get to the main lodge or the kitchen unsoaked. Along with being a baker, Ed was an excellent cook, preparing huge, heavy dinners for many guests each night. We enjoyed eating his food once, but also enjoyed the opportunity it gave us to splurge on more gourmet groceries than we usually get-- since the only choices were Ed's restaurant (pricey, for us) or groceries, spending a little more than usual still meant spending less than the alternative. So we grilled (or braied, in South African) steak, lunched on smoked salmon, and ate strawberries and peaches with fresh cream so thick it needed to be scooped with a spoon. We were completely spoiled for four days, and enjoyed every moment of it.
Babes (and Dudes) in Backpackerland
Leaving Andrea and Adam, we caught a ride with the bride and groom to Kimberley, with another man in the front seat so Rachel, the bride and I sat in the back seat of the small car, us holding our luggage and she holding wedding presents on our laps. Our train wasn't scheduled to depart until later that night, so we walked to The Big Hole. No surprises here--it is a very big hole, the largest open pit diamond mine in the world. We went through the museum, which did an ok job of telling the story of how the discovery of diamonds in 1867 helped shape South Africa's history. Eventually the English imperialist Cecil Rhodes won out in the struggle to control the diamond mines.
We didn't have the best feeling waiting at the Kimberley train station, after hearing so many stories about crime in South Africa, and with the circumstances being similar to the night in Palenque (Mexico) when we had to sit on the floor for a long time at night in an overcrowded station, and then our camera ended up being stolen on the ride. But, while the train ride certainly wasn't the most comfortable, fortunately that's where the similarities to our Palenque experience ended. We'd booked third class tickets (the first class was full), and the waiting area was packed with families: kids first playing/sliding across, and then sleeping on blankets spread out on the floor. After about an hour's delay we finally boarded the train, uncomfortably trying to sleep on top of our big packs in order to decrease the possibilities of having something stolen. When we tried to squeeze ourselves into the seat a man said it was no problem to put the bags on the luggage racks, and he was probably right: it seemed to be what everyone else did, and, with babies and kids all around us, the family atmosphere continued for the entire trip. Creeping along the tracks through the barren Karoo desert, the train was extremely cold at night and then very hot during the day. The trip was scheduled to take 18 hours; fortunately we were able to get off before Cape Town and catch a commuter train to our destination, Stellenbosch, arriving there about 5pm.
From Stellenbosch until Durban (in between staying with Servas hosts and Manyeding village), we were a part of the "backpacker scene" (hostels, as well as the individuals carrying the backpacks, are called "Backpackers" in South Africa). Although some of the Backpackers made us feel a little older, for the most part they were well set up for budget travel: more amenities like kitchens, swimming pools, and bars than we were used to, as well as being nicer overall than Egypt and Ghana's budget offerings, and of course more social.
Stellenbosch is the second oldest town in South Africa, in the heart of the wine region. There is a university but the term had just ended and students gone home, so the town felt quiet and relaxed. After settling in to the "Stumble Inn," we sat around their backyard fire pit, went out to a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant, and were happy to catch up on some sleep. The next day we took a wine tour: 4 vineyards with 5 tastings at each, in addition to one cheese tasting and lunch. A beautiful sunny day, it was a fun tour--we learned a little about wine and enjoyed hanging out with everyone on the tour.
Trying to rest and prepare dinner back at the backpackers, we were a little annoyed by loud music and voices. While we were eating we were glad to talk with Betty and Carla, professors from a small college in Nebraska (whose students we had been annoyed at earlier) who were leading a semester in Africa for 15 students. The students read several books, traveled together on public transport through multiple countries, and did a one week apprenticeship in Malawi. It was really inspiring to talk with them, one of those conversations that happened at the perfect time to lift our spirits. Betty actually has a book coming out in Feb. about her experiences called "Africa on Six Wheels: A Semester on Safari" (BettyLevitov, check out www.doane.edu for more info).
Leaving Stellenbosch, we boarded the hop on/hop off Baz Bus for the first time. South Africa has pretty terrible public transport (probably the worst we've seen actually, maybe rivalled by Egypt), so although the Baz Bus was expensive and had some restrictions on what days we could travel (and was sometimes late etc.), the fact that it not only got us from place to place, but also took us door to door to the Backpackers was a definite plus. It was also a nice way to socialize with people, and to see them again during different legs of our trip. On this day we spent the entire day on the bus, made a little more tolerable by watching "Shrek" and the scenery of the Western Cape coast: first rolling farmland and then beautiful coastline. Around 8pm we finally arrived at our destination, Hikers Haven in Nature's Valley.
Hiker's Haven is a converted vacation home, and with the owners' old books and decorations around it still had that feel--a very nice place. Nature'sValley is a small community (no bank but one all purpose grocery/restaurant/pub) in Tsitsikama National Park, a gorgeous location.The next day we went for a hike with an English and a German woman. The variety of scenery was incredible: we started along the coast, first on sand and then on jagged black rocks, then climbed up through the trees to the mouth of Salt River. From there we ascended again until we reached an open meadow plateau, and finally descended into the valley, following a stream through rain forest. Rachel (barely) overcame her fear of snakes to trail blaze off the path to the road, where we hitched a ride back to town to get out of the rain. As we were making dinner and planning an early bedtime, we got a call from the pub from the people who drove us back to town: Kathy, originally from Minnesota, and her husband Henny, an Afrikaaner. We had a very interesting conversation with them on race (more on that in an upcoming blog).
The next day we walked a little more along the beach, before catching the Baz Bus that evening and making a required stop in Port Elizabeth. Crossing into the Eastern Cape, we moved from the tourism-designated Garden Route to the Wild Coast, and also into the former Ciskei (one of the segregated "Homelands" for Blacks). Back on the road next morning, we arrived around midday at Buccaneers Backpackers in Cintsa, dubbed by the travel guide as the best in South Africa. As the clouds cleared and the sun came out, we tried our luck with a free canoe on a shallow lagoon, before participating in the daily "free activity" and more importantly, the free boxed wine that accompanied it. After a little rag-tag ping-pong and a lot of boxed wine, I was ready to call it a night (at 6:30) but Rachel was up for more socializing and a game of "Killer Pool" (billiards where everyone takes turns).
Buccaneers was really well set up: what started with a grassy hillside back in the '80s now has trees everywhere, with the main building on the hill and accomodations stretching down to the pool and the beach. We had bunk beads in the dorm with a fantastic view over the water. The next day of lounging on the beach unfortunately didn't prepare me for that day's activity, where instead of the wine doing me in, this time it was the sumo wrestling competition that left me with what seems to be a bruised rib muscle that is gradually healing (let the record show that I did win the match). After dinner we hung out a little, and I was only barely able to outlast Rachel, staying up to the late hour of about 10:30.
The next day we enjoyed a little more time by the pool before getting on the Baz Bus around noon for the long ride to Durban. They usually have a trailer for the big backpacks, but today it was broken so for a stretch of the ride we had to cram our packs into the aisle of the bus, which feels ok when taking the local minibuses (like from Kimberley to Kuruman), but not when we're paying what we are for Baz. Arriving in Durban at 11:30 p.m., our Servas host Alec picked us up, and Tracey had dinner waiting for us. Back with the adult crowd, we stayed up talking until around 2 a.m.--later than any night during our adventures in Backpackerland!
We didn't have the best feeling waiting at the Kimberley train station, after hearing so many stories about crime in South Africa, and with the circumstances being similar to the night in Palenque (Mexico) when we had to sit on the floor for a long time at night in an overcrowded station, and then our camera ended up being stolen on the ride. But, while the train ride certainly wasn't the most comfortable, fortunately that's where the similarities to our Palenque experience ended. We'd booked third class tickets (the first class was full), and the waiting area was packed with families: kids first playing/sliding across, and then sleeping on blankets spread out on the floor. After about an hour's delay we finally boarded the train, uncomfortably trying to sleep on top of our big packs in order to decrease the possibilities of having something stolen. When we tried to squeeze ourselves into the seat a man said it was no problem to put the bags on the luggage racks, and he was probably right: it seemed to be what everyone else did, and, with babies and kids all around us, the family atmosphere continued for the entire trip. Creeping along the tracks through the barren Karoo desert, the train was extremely cold at night and then very hot during the day. The trip was scheduled to take 18 hours; fortunately we were able to get off before Cape Town and catch a commuter train to our destination, Stellenbosch, arriving there about 5pm.
From Stellenbosch until Durban (in between staying with Servas hosts and Manyeding village), we were a part of the "backpacker scene" (hostels, as well as the individuals carrying the backpacks, are called "Backpackers" in South Africa). Although some of the Backpackers made us feel a little older, for the most part they were well set up for budget travel: more amenities like kitchens, swimming pools, and bars than we were used to, as well as being nicer overall than Egypt and Ghana's budget offerings, and of course more social.
Stellenbosch is the second oldest town in South Africa, in the heart of the wine region. There is a university but the term had just ended and students gone home, so the town felt quiet and relaxed. After settling in to the "Stumble Inn," we sat around their backyard fire pit, went out to a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant, and were happy to catch up on some sleep. The next day we took a wine tour: 4 vineyards with 5 tastings at each, in addition to one cheese tasting and lunch. A beautiful sunny day, it was a fun tour--we learned a little about wine and enjoyed hanging out with everyone on the tour.
Trying to rest and prepare dinner back at the backpackers, we were a little annoyed by loud music and voices. While we were eating we were glad to talk with Betty and Carla, professors from a small college in Nebraska (whose students we had been annoyed at earlier) who were leading a semester in Africa for 15 students. The students read several books, traveled together on public transport through multiple countries, and did a one week apprenticeship in Malawi. It was really inspiring to talk with them, one of those conversations that happened at the perfect time to lift our spirits. Betty actually has a book coming out in Feb. about her experiences called "Africa on Six Wheels: A Semester on Safari" (BettyLevitov, check out www.doane.edu for more info).
Leaving Stellenbosch, we boarded the hop on/hop off Baz Bus for the first time. South Africa has pretty terrible public transport (probably the worst we've seen actually, maybe rivalled by Egypt), so although the Baz Bus was expensive and had some restrictions on what days we could travel (and was sometimes late etc.), the fact that it not only got us from place to place, but also took us door to door to the Backpackers was a definite plus. It was also a nice way to socialize with people, and to see them again during different legs of our trip. On this day we spent the entire day on the bus, made a little more tolerable by watching "Shrek" and the scenery of the Western Cape coast: first rolling farmland and then beautiful coastline. Around 8pm we finally arrived at our destination, Hikers Haven in Nature's Valley.
Hiker's Haven is a converted vacation home, and with the owners' old books and decorations around it still had that feel--a very nice place. Nature'sValley is a small community (no bank but one all purpose grocery/restaurant/pub) in Tsitsikama National Park, a gorgeous location.The next day we went for a hike with an English and a German woman. The variety of scenery was incredible: we started along the coast, first on sand and then on jagged black rocks, then climbed up through the trees to the mouth of Salt River. From there we ascended again until we reached an open meadow plateau, and finally descended into the valley, following a stream through rain forest. Rachel (barely) overcame her fear of snakes to trail blaze off the path to the road, where we hitched a ride back to town to get out of the rain. As we were making dinner and planning an early bedtime, we got a call from the pub from the people who drove us back to town: Kathy, originally from Minnesota, and her husband Henny, an Afrikaaner. We had a very interesting conversation with them on race (more on that in an upcoming blog).
The next day we walked a little more along the beach, before catching the Baz Bus that evening and making a required stop in Port Elizabeth. Crossing into the Eastern Cape, we moved from the tourism-designated Garden Route to the Wild Coast, and also into the former Ciskei (one of the segregated "Homelands" for Blacks). Back on the road next morning, we arrived around midday at Buccaneers Backpackers in Cintsa, dubbed by the travel guide as the best in South Africa. As the clouds cleared and the sun came out, we tried our luck with a free canoe on a shallow lagoon, before participating in the daily "free activity" and more importantly, the free boxed wine that accompanied it. After a little rag-tag ping-pong and a lot of boxed wine, I was ready to call it a night (at 6:30) but Rachel was up for more socializing and a game of "Killer Pool" (billiards where everyone takes turns).
Buccaneers was really well set up: what started with a grassy hillside back in the '80s now has trees everywhere, with the main building on the hill and accomodations stretching down to the pool and the beach. We had bunk beads in the dorm with a fantastic view over the water. The next day of lounging on the beach unfortunately didn't prepare me for that day's activity, where instead of the wine doing me in, this time it was the sumo wrestling competition that left me with what seems to be a bruised rib muscle that is gradually healing (let the record show that I did win the match). After dinner we hung out a little, and I was only barely able to outlast Rachel, staying up to the late hour of about 10:30.
The next day we enjoyed a little more time by the pool before getting on the Baz Bus around noon for the long ride to Durban. They usually have a trailer for the big backpacks, but today it was broken so for a stretch of the ride we had to cram our packs into the aisle of the bus, which feels ok when taking the local minibuses (like from Kimberley to Kuruman), but not when we're paying what we are for Baz. Arriving in Durban at 11:30 p.m., our Servas host Alec picked us up, and Tracey had dinner waiting for us. Back with the adult crowd, we stayed up talking until around 2 a.m.--later than any night during our adventures in Backpackerland!
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Wedding Crashers 2: Manyeding Village
There aren't too many situations I can think of when 60 hours of being in a place would be worth 40+ hours of travel to get there and away. I wouldn't be too keen to fly from Hartford to Australia for a weekend, for example, although if somehow I could get home from here for one day with friends and family I would certainly do that. Anyway, I digress. The point is, this weekend we had the happy experience of several ridiculously long travel days being fully worthwhile for the couple days we got to spend in between. We visited a friend of Erik's from high school, Andrea, and her husband Adam in the village of Manyeding--four hours north of the diamond city of Kimberley-- where they have been in the Peace Corps for the last 15 months. The particular timing of the visit was centered on their host brother's wedding, which we were generously invited to attend.
Following the local tradition, this was actually the second wedding for the couple-- the first was held a few month's ago in the bride's hometown. However, the fact that it wasn't the first or only celebration did nothing to lessen the scale of the party preparations on the part of the groom's family. When we arrived, a large tent had been set up in the family's front yard, and was full of men hanging decorations and children cleaning tables and chairs. Meanwhile, in the back yard, the groom's mother, sister, aunts, and female cousins were chopping vegetables, stirring massive fire-black kettles, cutting meat, and washing endless cycles of dishes-- activities that Andrea said had been going on all week, and which would continue throughout the weekend. Innards of the two cows and one sheep the family had slaughtered for the celebration were hanging out to dry on the fence post (they make up the traditional night-before-the-wedding dinner, although we chose to eat pasta with Andrea and Adam instead...).
Saturday morning, the dawn was broken by the joyful ululations of the women of the groom's family: the bride and her family, having driven all night in a red minibus, picking people up along the way, had arrived. As out-of-town guests continued to show up throughout the morning, the ululations continued as well, as they did throughout the ceremony itself. A bit after 10, we heard clapping and singing, and went outside to find two groups slowly, rhythmically, melodically making their way toward each other: the women of the groom's family, with him in the center, moving from their yard outward on the village road, and the women of the bride's family, with her in the center, moving from the village road in toward the house. Eventually the two groups met, with ululations and song resounding; then they all turned together to walk to the tent the bride and groom in front of the group, and a couple women symbolically sweeping the path before them with brooms made of brush.
For the first wedding, the bride and groom had worn American-style clothes, but for this one they wore variations on traditional attire, to stunning effect. His shirt and the top layer of her dress were mocha-colored matte silk, while his pants and the under layer of her dress were the same material in a clear sky blue. She had a head wrap of the same fabrics, and also wore a double strand of ping pong ball-sized dark wooden beads around her neck, and matching (but smaller) earrings. Both his shirt and her dress were embroidered with almond-sized, cream colored shells. They sat at the front, at a table on a raised platform decorated with miniature cooking pots, impala skins, and gourds, some of which also graced the tables where the guests sat down. The ceremony was conducted entirely in Tsetswana, the local language, but thanks to a program made by Adam, and some translation by Andrea, we could follow what was going on. An Anglican priest performed a length religious ceremony, interrupted at times by songs when one woman would sing out a first line, and then other people would join in, singing in several-part harmony and dancing at their places. Twice the bride and groom were brought out to dance, led around by their cousins. When the priest was through, there were speeches by two of the older aunts, and some of the couples' friends, followed by toasts and prayers. And then... lunch. The women brought out the bucketfuls of food they had been preparing, dishing up groaning plates of pap (a heavy maize porridge), rice, mutton, and beef, with dottings of vegetables as accompaniment. While the tent had not been completely full when the wedding started, by lunch people were packed in and spilling out into the yard; invitations are not issued, so much of the population of the village comes out for the meal. Indeed, people continued showing up, sitting around, and eating well into the night, and the families stuck around throughout the following day as well-- all of this with no catering, just home cooking! Eek.
On Sunday we were able to see more of the village and hear more from Andrea and Adam about some of the issues they have faced there. They have four schools, one in Manyeding and three in other villages, on their circuit, and have found that the quality of the schools varies massively, according to the will of the teachers and principals-- unfortunately, there is basically no accountability from above. The government has provided some decent resources-- we were particularly impressed by sets of books on AIDS and anti-Apartheid leaders-- but the utilization of these resources is weak. Andrea and Adam have painted world maps, with every country labeled, on a wall of each of their schools, and are putting together lesson plans to try to avoid a similar fate for that initiative. Some of the other main challenges they talked about in the village are AIDS, alcoholism, and unemployment; general health and brain drain are also on the list.
The combination of sometimes feeling total despair at problems that seem insurmountable, and sometimes feeling inspired and moved by the strengths that exist despite so many problems, is something we empathize with from our own work in Hartford. More than once, though, Andrea and Adam told us that although they will not be able to have the largescale impact they dreamed of when they signed up for Peace Corps, the positive effects of their time in the village on both their host family and other villagers, and, especially, on them, have been great. It is stereotypical, but true: knowing people changes your perceptions of them; knowing other lifestyles changes your perceptions of your own life. It is a great threat to prejudice; it could stop war. If only everyone could have an experience like that.
Want to read more? Adam and Andrea's blog is www.thaboandlerato.blogspot.com.
Glimpses of Apartheid
In Cape Town, we visited the District 6 Museum and Robben Island, giving us small glimpses into the history of apartheid in South Africa. (We've been overwhelmed by the prominence of race here as the defining issue, and plan to write a post specifically on this topic at the end of our time here--for now we'll stick to the specific sights.)
District 6 is a neighborhood of Cape Town near the water which was a poor but very mixed area; inhabited by Blacks, "Coloreds" (the South African term for a mix of black and white), Jews, Indians, and "Malays" (the term for Muslims). The first forced removals from the neighborhood happened in 1901, when local officials declared it a sanitation hazard. In the 1960s, all nonwhite residents of District 6 were forced to relocate: Blacks into nearby ghetto areas called "townships," other groups into their own separate areas. The museum houses a huge amount of personal photos and artifacts from the people who were forced out. Begun as a temporary exhibit in the early 90s, it was so popular that the museum found permanent housing in a former neighborhood church. According to Lonely Planet, the museum remains as popular with former residents as it does with tourists.
It was interesting to read about the interaction of the Garden City/Le Corbusier ideas of urban planning within this particular hyper-racialized context. After the residents were removed and the area cleared, several projects were built but most of the land remains vacant today, the object of ongoing claims by former residents and potential developers. The wealth of objects and information presented in the museum showed how the removal affected people's lives, but sometimes it seemed to understate the historical responsibility of the people and government for what occurred, displaying it as a tragedy but one which is safely behind us. Rachel noticed that one visitor had written in the guestbook "I'm ashamed to be white." That feeling is important for the past, but there also needs to be responsibility for the present.
We also visited Robben Island, which had been used as a prison since the Dutch arrival in the 1600s (the only successful escape happened in one of those early years) until it was recently converted to a museum. Taking the ferry from Cape Town's wealthy waterfront, we could look back and see the city framed by the awesome Table Mountain, a view that African National Congress (ANC) prisoners took as inspiration for the land they would one day return to. The visit was a contrast between the comfort (and of course freedom) that we experienced as tourists in a landscape that could have been any coastal vacation spot, and the awful conditions and degradation that prisoners experienced here. Arriving at the island, we saw photos of the ANC prisoners arriving in the 1960s, and when we were loaded onto our bus passed under the original sign: recalling the "Arbeit Macht Frei," of a Nazi concentration camp (which were first employed by the British against the white Afrikaaners in the Boer War), this sign read "We Serve with Pride." On the bus, we passed through the village, where some former prisoners who work as tour guides now live. The highlight was the limestone quarry where Mandela and ANC leaders were isolated and sentenced to hard labor, going blind from the sun on the limestone and getting TB from the limestone dust. During their lunch break, they would go to their "classroom": the tunnel in the limestone used as a latrine, telling the guards they were looking for shade but actually teaching each other from the chapters of the books they had read.
In the prison itself, our guide was Sparks, who was imprisoned in 1983-1990 for being a member of the military wing of the ANC, the MK or "Spear of the Nation." Everything about the prison life was based on segregating by race: Coloreds could wear long sleeves, pants and shoes while Blacks had to wear short sleeves, shorts and no shoes during the cold, windy and rainy winters. Food rations were also different by race. We saw Mandela's cell where he was imprisoned for 18 years, and the courtyard where he hid his autobiography, eventually transported out by the man who would one day become the Minsiter of Transportation!
At the end of the tour, our guide Sparks announced that we were privileged to have with us on the tour a former warden at the prison, who hesitantly, briefly raised his hand when Sparks requested, and said only that he had worked on Robben Island from 1976 to 1983, and at another prison after that. One Black tour member asked the warden if there were any Black wardens, to which of course he replied that there weren't. Sparks went on to speak of the reconciliation that has occurred, how he wasn't personally angry and how people need to live together now. However, as the group filed past him to reboard the ferry and journey back to Cape Town, we noticed that, unlike most tour members, the warden did not shake Sparks's hand. From the history of apartheid, some reconciliation does seem to have occurred, but much also seems to remain.
District 6 is a neighborhood of Cape Town near the water which was a poor but very mixed area; inhabited by Blacks, "Coloreds" (the South African term for a mix of black and white), Jews, Indians, and "Malays" (the term for Muslims). The first forced removals from the neighborhood happened in 1901, when local officials declared it a sanitation hazard. In the 1960s, all nonwhite residents of District 6 were forced to relocate: Blacks into nearby ghetto areas called "townships," other groups into their own separate areas. The museum houses a huge amount of personal photos and artifacts from the people who were forced out. Begun as a temporary exhibit in the early 90s, it was so popular that the museum found permanent housing in a former neighborhood church. According to Lonely Planet, the museum remains as popular with former residents as it does with tourists.
It was interesting to read about the interaction of the Garden City/Le Corbusier ideas of urban planning within this particular hyper-racialized context. After the residents were removed and the area cleared, several projects were built but most of the land remains vacant today, the object of ongoing claims by former residents and potential developers. The wealth of objects and information presented in the museum showed how the removal affected people's lives, but sometimes it seemed to understate the historical responsibility of the people and government for what occurred, displaying it as a tragedy but one which is safely behind us. Rachel noticed that one visitor had written in the guestbook "I'm ashamed to be white." That feeling is important for the past, but there also needs to be responsibility for the present.
We also visited Robben Island, which had been used as a prison since the Dutch arrival in the 1600s (the only successful escape happened in one of those early years) until it was recently converted to a museum. Taking the ferry from Cape Town's wealthy waterfront, we could look back and see the city framed by the awesome Table Mountain, a view that African National Congress (ANC) prisoners took as inspiration for the land they would one day return to. The visit was a contrast between the comfort (and of course freedom) that we experienced as tourists in a landscape that could have been any coastal vacation spot, and the awful conditions and degradation that prisoners experienced here. Arriving at the island, we saw photos of the ANC prisoners arriving in the 1960s, and when we were loaded onto our bus passed under the original sign: recalling the "Arbeit Macht Frei," of a Nazi concentration camp (which were first employed by the British against the white Afrikaaners in the Boer War), this sign read "We Serve with Pride." On the bus, we passed through the village, where some former prisoners who work as tour guides now live. The highlight was the limestone quarry where Mandela and ANC leaders were isolated and sentenced to hard labor, going blind from the sun on the limestone and getting TB from the limestone dust. During their lunch break, they would go to their "classroom": the tunnel in the limestone used as a latrine, telling the guards they were looking for shade but actually teaching each other from the chapters of the books they had read.
In the prison itself, our guide was Sparks, who was imprisoned in 1983-1990 for being a member of the military wing of the ANC, the MK or "Spear of the Nation." Everything about the prison life was based on segregating by race: Coloreds could wear long sleeves, pants and shoes while Blacks had to wear short sleeves, shorts and no shoes during the cold, windy and rainy winters. Food rations were also different by race. We saw Mandela's cell where he was imprisoned for 18 years, and the courtyard where he hid his autobiography, eventually transported out by the man who would one day become the Minsiter of Transportation!
At the end of the tour, our guide Sparks announced that we were privileged to have with us on the tour a former warden at the prison, who hesitantly, briefly raised his hand when Sparks requested, and said only that he had worked on Robben Island from 1976 to 1983, and at another prison after that. One Black tour member asked the warden if there were any Black wardens, to which of course he replied that there weren't. Sparks went on to speak of the reconciliation that has occurred, how he wasn't personally angry and how people need to live together now. However, as the group filed past him to reboard the ferry and journey back to Cape Town, we noticed that, unlike most tour members, the warden did not shake Sparks's hand. From the history of apartheid, some reconciliation does seem to have occurred, but much also seems to remain.
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