still in cape town

Robin & I took the cable car yesterday up to Table Mountain, the flat mountain in the photo here:

Lots of people hike up. We did not. We had cappuccinos on the waterfront, took the cable car up & down, and then had calamari for lunch in a lovely restaurant. And spent out the rest of our rand (the South African currency). Other people have adventurous stories to tell of hiking up the mountain, but we liked our way very much … We chatted about life & friendship & students (we think the ship might be much lovelier without them!) up on a mountaintop fronting the ocean. Pretty darn enjoyable.

Back to the safari. I’ve uploaded more photos to flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/-erin/sets/72157594578482167 Go there. The safari was at Mthethomusha Game Reserve and the lodge was called Bongani Mountain Lodge (http://www.bongani.co.za/). I highly recommend this place if you are planning a safari! It was much much smaller than Kruger and so they don’t have the animals in quantity that Kruger has. The folks who went to Kruger saw animals in herds, we only ever saw a handful at a time. But, it was much more personal and the accommodations were much lovelier. We were in open 4x4’s, for example, while the Kruger folks were in buses or minivans. We went off-road and all over the reserve in our cool little vehicles:

We learned how to track footprints in the dirt. We spent nearly one whole morning stalking an elephant – you wouldn’t believe how well elephants hide even though they are so big. And another morning stalking the leopard, which we never found. Here’s a lion print:

You can also stalk animals by following their dung, but I thought I’d spare you pictures. But, I now know what elephant dung looks like and what giraffe poop looks like. I also know that when you see antelopes running or when you don’t see zebras or giraffes where they are supposed to be or when you hear monkeys screaming, all those are signs that a lion is probably nearby. It was also really interesting to watch the ranger behavior. We had a ranger (Simeon), who drove and taught us things, and a tracker (Elliott) who sat on a funny jump-seat at the front of the vehicle & scanned the surroundings. At night, he had a huge flashlight that Dad would be so envious of. He used it, among things like protecting us from leopards & lions, to point out the stars in the sky. Often, vehicles would stop for the ranger to point out something. One day, we were driving through and there were two vehicles stopped in front of us. Simeon & Elliott got out and joined the other rangers/trackers on the road. They were looking at the prints in the dirt. They came back and Simeon said that there were lion tracks & pointed them out to us. And then he said it wasn’t “their” lion, it was a Kruger lion ... as if the prints had a giant K branded in the middle of them! But, Simeon said this lion wasn’t on the same part of the mountain where their lions hang out and that there were no zebras or leopards around and so they knew that the Kruger lion had come over and scared them all away. On our last day, on our way down to the bus, we saw the Kruger lion. It was immediately apparent upon looking at him that he wasn’t the same as “our” lions. He had different coloring and he was larger. When we stopped behind the other two vehicles, it was clear to all of us from the men’s behavior that this wasn’t a stop to point out something cool. This was a stop of some concern.

There was no time when I felt we were in any real danger. Simeon carried a gun and he & Elliott would always check out an area before they let us down from the vehicle. The rules were: no standing in the vehicle and no saying “pssst” or “hey, kitty kitty” to get the animals to turn for a photo (!). It was really hard to avoid doing that – you really want them to look at you! They say that when we’re all seated in the vehicle the animals are used to the jeeps and just think we are a large animal. As soon as we stand up, they realize we are human. So, no standing, even for a photo. You’d think the animals could smell us as humans. The lodge also had security folks who would escort us back to our chalets after dark. No walking alone. They had a leopard kill recently and so they were very strict about this. The security guys had giant flashlights but no guns. I asked one of my escorts what happens if we see something, since they are unarmed. He told me they call others and then they’ll scare the animal away. Well, ok ... The need for escorts after dark (along with the 5 am wakeup calls) definitely helped keep students from doing things that students might otherwise do in the late evening! It worked for me as trip leader ...

The other time of interest was a small encounter with a rhino. Several of us went on a trip to see rock art painted on caves – from about 1500 years ago. The shelter where the drawings were is millions of years old and the wall on which they were painted probably hasn’t seen water in that long as well. Which has allowed the paintings to survive. Here are a few photos, but they didn’t come all terribly well. You can see buffalo:

Coming down from the shelter (a short hike down), there was a rhino between us & the jeep. The ranger told us to stand there silently while he (with his dog & his gun) walked forward. He instructed us if he said “move”, we should all move quickly (without running) behind the nearest tree he pointed to. Somehow it didn’t seem like a little tree would protect us from a big giant rhino, but sure … In the end, he had us just walk past the rhino. No incidents ensued, though a few of us were longing for a slightly more adventurous tale. When I told this story back on the ship, several people commented that you don't need to all be behind the tree, you just need to be sure to beat at least one other person there!

The other side trip we went on was to the township where most of the lodge staff live. Our ranger showed us his home and we went to a school where tons of children wanted their photos taken:

They want us to take their pictures and then show them off from the screen on our digital cameras. Photo … photo … photo … I find this exercise interesting (it happens all over) because they know they don’t get to take the photos with them, they just want to see themselves on our screens. They don’t otherwise see photos of themselves. The kids were very cute and very friendly. Notably, most of the over-eager kids were boys. I had to seek out girls to take their pictures. We talked to the principal for a bit. The school has some permanent buildings, some trailers, and some mud huts. They have a media center with 2 computers and some books, but the principal said that building had been very poorly graded and it gets flooded. They have a termite problem that has eaten into the shelves and into the books. He said that the government is bringing IT people to set up more computers for the kids, but computer education is tricky because the community is so poor that it is not at all clear what kids would use computers for. There’s no clear educational or career path for which computer use would be immediately apparent or even useful. There was a women’s craft cooperative that was also very interesting and we all bought some stuff. I bought carved wooden crocodiles. We also didn’t see crocodiles, by the way, except from a very far distance (too small for me even with the binoculars). We did see hippos. They didn’t come out of the water, apparently they only do so at night, but we saw them lounging with their heads just above the water line. There are photos in the flickr set.

Speaking of lounging, did you know the male lion does pretty much nothing? He hangs out on a rock and looks over his universe. His job, technically, is to make sure no other lions trespass on his territory. Male lions will have at it for territorial control and, if the trespassing lion wins, he’ll mate with the female and take over the kingdom. But, mostly the male lion we saw just slept. The female lion was hunting & caring for her cubs and basically doing all the work. We all had the The Lion King music running through our heads throughout the safari, but especially when we were atop a beautiful rock overlooking the reserve watching the sleeping papa lion.

And the cubs were unbearably cute. I so wanted to go over & cuddle:

We’re still in Cape Town. We stayed in port last night due to high winds. We moved about 6:00 am this morning to a bunker to refuel. That was supposed to take 6 hours but here we continue to sit. They say we can make up the lost time on the way to Mauritius but we’ll have to use all engines which is very expensive in regards to fuel. We will no longer be considered fuel efficient. Tomorrow is a no-class day. The library will be open for most of the day, but we are looking forward to sleeping late!

Go check out my safari photos.

stalking leopards & rhinos & elephants & lions & buffalo

Too tired to post much tonight & it will take me a while to sort out my photos, but the safari was unbelievable. The lodge was beautiful, we stayed in thatched roof chalets, the beds were white & luxurious, the food was amazing (so so sad to return to ship food …), we saw all of the “big 5” – leopards, rhinos, elephants, lions, buffalo – minus only the leopard which we stalked on many occasions (following tracks in the dirt) to no avail. We saw lion cubs – literally -- less than 6 feet away. We saw giraffes and zebras and antelope and hippos and monkeys and baboons and owls and turtles and mongooses (mongeese?).

Each day started with a wake-up call at 5 am. Coffee at 5:30. Morning game drive at 6:00. The game drive was in a completely open four wheel drive vehicle led by our ranger (Simeon) and our tracker (Elliot). There were 8 of us in our jeep. The reserve has dirt roads but we also did a lot of off-road tracking, through the grass & trees and rocks. Very bumpy. My knees are all banged up from bouncing around & crashing them into the seat in front of me! The top of my knees are also sunburnt. The jeeps were amazing and we would climb high on rocks or crash through the thicket. We’d stop in a beautiful place for a coffee picnic around 8:30 and then return to the lodge for a beautiful breakfast around 9:30. We had the rest of the morning free although we took some fieldtrips (one to the township where most of the lodge’s staff live and a second to see rock art on cave walls). Lunch was at one and also amazingly delicious. Free until 4 when folks would nap a little after the early morning awakening, or I mostly sat on the porch of our chalet & read. Tea & biscuits at 4:00, which included the most amazing ice tea & ice coffee I’ve ever had. Another game drive from 4:30-7:30 during which we stopped for drinks in another gorgeous location to watch the sun set. Back to the lodge for yet another elaborate meal and then crashed to await the next 5 am wake-up call.

It was lovely & luxurious & my trip leadership experience went pretty well (and came with a hefty safari discount). Many of us didn’t want to come back to the ship! Mostly, now I just wanted to let you all know that I didn’t get eaten by a lion … here are a few quick photos, more later …

it's a rainy day in the neighborhood

i had a thousand things I wanted to do today and I woke up feeling miserable and the day was very very very rainy. So, I went back to sleep, walked around the waterfront a bit, tried to see if there was any chance, with the late start, I could get a reservation on the boat that goes out to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for most of his term (I couldn't, sold out), and so decided to go back to the ship and see if I could get on the bus that was going to the District 6 Museum and out to the townships. I did get on the bus.

District 6 was one of the largest forced removals of Blacks from Cape Town. In 1966, the government declared it a white area and moved out 66,000 people to outer townships. It took them 25 years to move everyone out.



On yesterday's tour, we were told that what is now the bay is largely reclaimed land. The waterfront was much further up and Cape Town was very susceptible to storms and ships were often damaged. So, they built up the waterfront and pushed it further out to sea. The guide yesterday neglected to mention that much of the rubble that they used to rebuild the land in the harbor came from the the bulldozing of District 6.

The foreman for the bulldozing company took all the street signs from District 6 and hid them in his house. When they were creating the museum in 1994, he gave them -- in secret -- to the museum's curator. He was afraid he would get in trouble for not having disposed of them. The original street signs are now in the museum.



We started the tour at the museum so that we could learn where the relocated people had lived and then where they were moved to. The curator spoke to us and, in her voice, you could hear the anger and the love and the community and the activism and her passionate commitment to preserving the community's memories and stories. The floor is a giant map of District 6 as it existed before 1966. Residents who had lived there have come to the museum and marked their homes and businesses on it.





And they have left their words:









We spent much too little time at the museum (which would have been fine if I were in Cape Town long enough to go back), but having the curator address us was really amazing. We then drove out (40 minutes or so) to one of the townships, passing several others on the highway out. I've put pictures below. There are more on the map. It was raining and several of these are from the bus, so you'll have to excuse the raindrops. Although, the wetness and blurriness almost makes it even harder to wrap your brain around. As if it were possible to get harder.

























As with Salvador, the density of the poverty is what struck me most. Shack next to shack next to shack for miles and miles around. As far as you can see. The favelas in Salvador, though, were built up on the mountain. This is very flat. And reminded me in many ways of walking through the 7th Ward in New Orleans last June. I kept having all those comparison thoughts one has: New Orleans was a natural disaster, this is a human-created one. In New Orleans, the houses where spray-painted with Xs, with the quadrants marked counting the number of dead and the number of rescued, the date the house was searched, and the government agency. Here, the spray-paint was the red ribbon of HIV/AIDS:



Some little boys we met:



Apartheid is often thought of as the separation between whites and blacks, but there were actually four government categories of race: race 1 was White, race 2 was Asian/Indian, race 3 was Colored (mixed race), and race 4 was Black (in that hierarchy of privilege). In the townships, the relocation of Colored and Blacks was separate. From the place high up where we got this view:



there is a four lane highway (2 in each direction), busy but small enough to run across. One side was the Colored township and the other the Black township. Our guide is Xhosa and lives in the township we visited. He said the saddest part of apartheid was not just the White-Black hatred but the divisions between the Black people and the Colored people. He said he still doesn't cross the street over the Colored township and no one there ever crosses the street to his. He said his son goes to an integrated school and that he has hope that his son's generation will find a way to heal, because his generation is still not able to. But, he went on to say the kids make friends in the context of school, but crossing the street into each other's homes is much much harder.

poverty & sadness & history & hatred & healing & community & love. All right there in front of us.

I'm off on safari tomorrow. No blogging for the next several days. Take care.

wow

is pretty much the only word that comes to mind. Look at my map ... omigod, we've crossed the ocean! Coming into the Cape Town harbor around 6:30 this morning:















they weren't kidding when they said the approach was beautiful. Table Mountain (the flat topped mountain in the photos above) often has cloud-cover over it which is referred to as a "tablecloth". This morning, though, the sky was clear. The city is nestled just in front to the left, between the mountains and the harbor.

After the (literally) awesome entrance into the harbor, I went back to my cabin and took a nap. I stayed up wayyyy too late last night in the faculty/staff lounge & I knew that the early awakening would be bad. Then breakfast, a shower, the diplomatic briefing, and an address by Ibrahim Rasool, the Premier of Cape Town. The diplomatic briefings (I'm told & proven by experience thus far) vary significantly in quality, but this morning was quite excellent. The Premier was really enjoyable and the event was of course enhanced by the presence of the Archbishop and his wife, Leah, who boarded this morning to meet up with her husband after about a month (I've been gone a month!). They were unbearably cute:









Then, Robin & I disembarked and walked around the waterfront a bit. Seals hangin' out by the ship:



for all the croc-loving folk out there:



and then there was an art & architectural tour. We first went to a stunningly colorful Muslim neighborhood. The residents of Bo-Kaap are mostly descended from slaves who were imported to the Cape by the Dutch during the the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (http://www.bokaap.co.za/attractions/history.html)







From there, we drove to St. Georges Cathedral, which is Gothic with Muslim influences.



There is a beautiful Rose stained glasses window:



and a labyrinth which a bunch of us walked:



and the seat of the Archbishop. Tutu led freedom marches from this site.



We walked from there up past the Dutch-East India Company gardens, the Parliament, the President's residence when he visits Cape Town, the Library, and the synagogue (both of which I hope to return to). The synagogue is closed to tourists today & tomorrow for Shabbat. I may (or more likely, may not) get up to go to services tomorrow morning.



Then we went to the South African Museum, where they had a great rock art exhibit going on:



and the Africa Gold Museum, which was kind of cool. Jewelry & ornaments and such.



These knives were used for circumcision:



And on the way back to the ship, the road to nowhere:



the guide said there are several stories. Among them, 1) they ran out of money, and 2) there was a construction error and it would cost too much to fix. She said advertising companies often do commercials up there because they can shoot a highway scene without having to pay to get roads closed. I thought this was all pretty funny!

And finally, Robin & Gloria & Sherri & I had a lovely dinner on the waterfront. Not at all an African restaurant, but very pleasant nonetheless. We sat outside and ate good seafood and, after a very full day, it was a very enjoyable ending. Certainly, South Africa has a complex and troubled history. Judyie and the Archbishop and the Premier and the other foreign service diplomats we heard this morning, they all have said: look for the miracle in this city ... listen for it ... feel the miracle .... We've been here less than 24 hours. I could totally live in Cape Town.