The dunes

I haven't updated in a while. I've been busy and cheap. In another month, I'll update with stories from South Africa. Anyway, this week I'll be in Sossusvlei, Namibia. Be jealous. :)

On the South African road

It's been just over three weeks in South Africa. My travel buddy Sam and I started in Cape Town, then moved along the southern coast, eventually reaching Durban, then shot north to the Drakensburg Mountains and Lesotho, heading back east via Bloemfontein (SA's neglected third capital, after Pretoria and Cape Town) en route to Cape Town. We have slept in innumerable places: in hostels, on buses, in candle-lit villages, at an Anglican missionary center, and once, on the tile floor of a bus station (we had alas, ran out of money, though we're okay now).

The journey was haphazard and accidental, planned last-minute on our feet. We chose destinations more by the availability and timing of buses than by any pre-planned itinerary.

The bus had a “cabin attendant,” someone to take tickets and inform passengers that the coach had two exits and that smoking was strictly prohibited. The attendant at first made announcements in Xhosa and English, but the English disappeared as the night wore on. The buses are either double-deckers or seat five people per row, despite being just as wide as US buses. At first I thought that five-across was unconscionable. The ridiculous squeeze into decades-only minibuses gave me perspective. Just like the US, few whites take buses. Sam and I were the only ones. I had some fun asking the little kids – who always seemed to stare – where my skin color had gone.

Many international travelers take the "Baz Bus," an expensive comfortable little bus that picks up and drops off from hostels. Sam and I went for the more "authentic" public bus experience. We ended up meeting several locals, one of whom gave me a tour of Lesotho or offering crucial advice or favors. One, a baSotho medical student at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, ended up hanging out with us for the day. I couldn't pronounce her name (Mpoi) quite right, and she couldn't quite pronounce mine, but we had a wonderful time regardless.

I love observing South Africa's distinctive brand of road signs. Some beg drivers to “SLOW DOWN PLEASE.” Others remind drivers: “DON’T FOOL YOURSELF / SPEED KILLS.”

Other tidbits: In the US, beggars are beggars, clearly recognizable, usually sitting and jiggling a cup. It’s not so clear in South Africa. Any passing person is a potential beggar. “Got a few coins, man?” someone might ask me on his way to work. But the most disconcerting thing about public begging in South Africa is that much of it is done by children even below the age of 10, sometimes standing on the dotted lines of the streets - the small spaces that separate the lanes.

We spent a few days in Cintsa on the “wild coast” just north of East London. We strolled the beach, picking up shells from the Indian Ocean beach. We cliff-jumped, spoke with Xhosa people in their village, and observed the “white development” along the coast line. “Black Africans don’t build homes like that,” said our guide Denver, a cool 25 year-old white native of the area. “The whites are always trying to out-do each other – more porches and balconies and fences. The Xhosa distinguish themselves simply by painting their huts different colors.”

We spent an hour or two with a Xhosa matron named Mama Tofu, 88 years old, once active int he anti-apartheid struggle. She seemed to want us to declare, “that’s backward!” and took every opportunity to describe gender roles: men shepherd the animals, women mash corn, bake mud for building homes, carry babies, etc. If a woman has sex before marriage, she is “damaged.” She said nothing about men’s “damage.” I asked whether her whether times had changed, whether young Xhosa people agree. Well, if they don’t agree, they don’t know what’s best for them.

My guidebook says that the legal age of consent is 18 for straight sex and 19 for gay sex.

Sam was a solid travel buddy, confident what he liked and disliked. When we went cliff jumping, I leapt off the higher cliff. Sam declined. “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?”

We took the ferry across the river that separates two former racial “homelands” under the apartheid regime - Ciskei (formerly whites only) and Transkei (formerly blacks only, and Mandela's home). The contrast in housing development and quality of roads was obvious.

On the coast, the views is beyond gorgeous. The sun sets to the northwest, not to the south, as elsewhere in this hemisphere. And the big dipper and north star are absent from the night sky.

Sam left a few days ago. I have no idea what's next. The plan is to arrive at Victoria Falls in Zambia by about August 6, but that's still two weeks away. I think I may wander through Namibia or Botswana on the way up - best to save politically tumultous Zimbabwe for a future visit.

Apologies for the lack of photos. The internet cafes aren’t fast enough to upload them.

Tourist central

I went out last night to Long Street in Cape Town, the bar district, I guess you'd say. Sam and I had thought about celebrating U.S. Independence Day by grilling something and eating coleslaw and freedom fries. But with limited cooking options, Hannan and I opted instead to meet up with a few "internationals" we'd met - Brits, Australians, and Americans working for local NGOS. They wanted to eat at a restaurant called "Mama Africa." Not very American, we joked.

Except... eating at a restaurant called "Mama Africa" is totally American.

Rest assured that the soulless debachery of the bar scene seems steady around the world.

Across the Atlantic

Greetings from Cape Town! My afternoon plans fizzled when we (Sam and I) discovered we need to book a day in advance to visit the Parliament. So here I am at an internet cafe. I've been craving the internet all week. In the states, I used to refresh the news websites obsessively.

I had a ten-hour layover in London on the way to Cape Town and raced around the city: Shakespeare's Globe Theater, St. Paul's Cathedral, Big Ben, the Millenium Bridge, the Tower Bridge, Clink Prison (medieval torture chambers), Whitehall, 10 Downing Street, Buckingham Palace, and Westminster Abbey. I met up with my friend Jen, visiting from Syracuse. For the Abbey, we arrived after the tourist viewing hours and I had to pretend to be a Christian to get inside. I'll have less luck pretending to be a native in South Africa. I bought a one-day pass on the London Underground, so I could jump on and off the tube and the double-decker buses.

Cape Town. I've seen a ton, often with Sam or my brother Hannan who's working here for a HIV activist organization that's currently helping refugees who have fled the recent xenophobic violence against people from other African nations. One evening this week, I went to a refugee housing center to help people register for assylum passes. But there was confusion at the gate and though we spoke to a few very upset refugees (no food! poor sanitation!), we were denied entry. Mostly, though, I've been a tourist. Sam and I walked around the City Bowl town center, saw the distinctive archetecture of the Malay Bo-Kapp area, visited the Castle of Good Hope (built between 1666 and 1679), and spent time in the Company Gardens, a beautiful city park that was once a vegetable patch for the Dutch East India Company. A statue of Cecil Rhodes stands at the center of the gardens above the quotation, "Your hinterlands are there" - which is weird. North American squirrels, apparently brought by Rhodes, scamper through the park.

Later we walked through small Victorian Simonstown to see the penguins at Boulder Beach. Though the exotic-looking postcards said "AFRICAN PENGUINS!," the sailing ships at Simonstown made the place look like Martha's Vineyard. It's also the base of the South African Navy. What else? Sam and I saw the rock art exhibit at the South African Museum and stopped by the Irma Stern Art Museum. We saw the stunning national botanical gardens at Kirstenbosch (where in addition to the entry fee, we had to pay an additional two rands, or 25 cents, for a one page pamphlet - very nutty). The Kirstenbosch gardens, located at the base of Table Mountain, features 9000 plant species from across South Africa - lots funky trees I had never seen before. We smelled the smells and tasted the fruits (no one was looking) and sat down under a gorgeous tree - until, at least, a bird pooped on my head. I jumped up so quickly that I cluncked my head on a branch. I suppose that's funny - in hindsight - or will be once the bump fades away.

I spent an evening at a youth detention facility in Wynland, south of Cape Town, through an organization here that works with youth in South African prisons. We played a few games with the boys, aged 13-16, then did a few word-finds and had them form sentences. English literacy is crucial for education here and these boys are far behind. I had the sense that without some serious intervention, they'll grow up to become real punks, terrorizing the cities. Either that, or boys will be boys, pantsing each other and getting in play-fights to protect their egos.

We've traveled by bus, train, cab, and rikki (sorta like group cabs that cram in as many people as possible). We've so far purchased first-class tickets on the train - they're only fifty cents more, a little more comfortable, and supposedly safer. The security guards hang out on the first-class cars, sometimes as many as six guards at a time, sometimes being louder than the passengers. The security walk through the first-class cars, kicking out people who don't have the right ticket. But they never asked to see ours - we're so clearly tourists, it's disconcerting.

Yesterday Sam and I hiked to the lighthouse at Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. It was stunning, even though it later rained. The wind was intense. I spent the forty-minute rikki ride discussing the "black consciousness movement" in South Africa with the (black) driver. Black empowerment is a very good idea, he said, but because of apartheid, not enough blacks are educated for black empowerment to succeed. In another generation, maybe. I told him about affirmative action in the US. Anyway, here's a photo of Cape Point that I obviously didn't take.


It seems like an Afrikaans thing to say "yea" at the end of sentences, e.g., "This blog post is really boring and way too long, yea." I'm not sure when I'll write again, but hopefully not soon. :)