Sit Back In My Dream, Just Drifting Downstream

The world's only inland delta, the Okavango Delta is home to every species of wildlife you'd expect to find in Southern Africa. Unfortuantely for us, this year is the most flooded the Delta has been since 1921, and, as a result, a lot of the islands the animals normally walk around on were submerged beneath the surface. As a result, it was nearly impossible to find any animals, since the islands we visited didn't have many and the islands are hard to travel between since they're so far apart. That said, we still did see quite a few animals - elephants, buffalos, giraffes, hippos, and a few antelopes. However, most of these we saw from the air, and we didn't get a chance to experience the wildlife upclose. That said, the two and a half days we spent in the Okavango were among the most rugged shit I've ever done.

After one and a half LONG travel days from Cape Town to Maun (in Botswana), I was feeling really beat. Despite knowing I really should have taken a nap, there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to fly over the Delta in a helicopter. We were intially told it would be $60 USD to do the flight, which would last 45 minutes. However, when we arrived, the company told us it would be $65 - or, if we wanted to pay in Rand (which we did, of course, since no one brought US Dollars), it'd be 565 Rand, the equivalent of about $75. After feeling like I was nickel-and-dimed all over South Africa during my travels with my brother, I was furious to hear from the get-go that the same would continue. Yeah, I understand, "they need it more than I do", but when it happens every single place you go it gets really frustrating. That said, I wasn't going to not do the flight. Our flight lasted exactly 45 minutes and took us further than we would be able to travel in the coming days on our makoros (dugout canoes, more to be explained later), and gave us a sense of a. how vast the Delta was and b. that animals really did live there, even if we wouldn't have the chance to see any while we were on our makoros. We saw all the above animals I mentioned - elephants, buffalos, giraffes, hippos, and antelope. Watching the sun set from the helicopter / once we landed on the ground - wow. My first HUGE African sunset. They're not like that in Cape Town. You know those stereotypical Lion King sunsets? Yeah, it was one of those. And we had them every single night on the trip. Unbelievable.

An aerial view of the Okavango Delta from the helicopter

We woke early the next morning and traveled to the makoro station an hour and a half outside of Maun. We left our bags behind and brought only our day packs filled with our toiletries, sleeping bag, a 5 liter jug of water, and a bathing suit (no changes of clothes - we wore the same thing the whole time), and said goodbye to the real world: electricity, toilets, and unlimited water. I, of course, brought my Tempurpedic pillow - how could I go without it for two days? The makoro station was a bit of a clusterfuck - everyone seemed really confused, the makoro guides who were to push us through the Delta for the next two days, called pullers, barely spoke any English, and most of them were really stoned - you could smell the weed through the bushes and watch them come out from behind them giggling. What else would you expect them to do when they're floating down the river and pushing around loud Americans all day?

The makoros we boarded at the docking station

Riding in the mokoros was a pretty interesting experience. You sit two people in each one, plus one puller who stands in the back and pulls you through the river with their giant sticks. The mokoro barely sits on top of the water - your ass is below the water level and if you reach your arm out straight it is about a foot and a half above the water. The pullers push you through the water, but often times you couldn't even tell that you're traveling through water - reeds rise up to 6 feet above your head and you feel like you're traveling through a field of tall grass. Mad spiders live on these reeds, and pretty much every time you go through a patch of them at least one spider will get in the mokoro. The biggest one that jumped into ours had a body about an inch wide - freaking huge - but most of them are tiny spiders that you can just flick out.

More on the guides - they spoke very little English, which made the little amount of English they did speak hilarious. The main guide, named Pilot, had one of the most interesting English vocabularies I've ever heard. His favorite phrase, which he called the golden rule, was "More chances of talk, less chances of sight". Seems pretty self explanatory. We didn't get to "see" the animals, instead we would "meet" them. In the mornings, he told us to take a "nature walk" instead of going to the bathroom. When we would travel to a different island to go on a game walk, we were actually traveling to a different "planet". He told us not to wear bright colors like "green, yellow, and pinky". Pilot seemed very knowledgable, despite his lack of English, and I can only imagine how much of a baller guide he would be if I could speak Setswana.

We arrived at our campsite, if you can call it that, after two hours of being pulled downstream. We had to fit 30 people (including the pullers) in a space that was comfortable for about 8 people and no tents. We managed to fit everyone, barely, and as a result our campsite had a lot of character. Our toilet - a hole in the ground - was about 20 feet from the middle of the camp site, and sent beautiful fumes through the campsite always. Luckily we didn't spend too much time at the campsite ever - we were either out doing game walks, on makoros going to do the game walks, or chilling in the swimming hole. Which brings me to my next point - the swimming hole was grimy as hell. It was really muddy, full of lillypads and reeds, and was downright gross. I spent most of my time trying to learn how to pull the makoros, which, I promise, is a hell of a lot harder than it looks. After about 3 hours of makoro-ing around I finally started to get the hang of it, but lost it all the next day and needed to relearn.

Our game walks were pretty uneventful - we saw a few elephants and a few antelope, but nothing up very close. My favorite part of the walks was the makoro rides over to them - it's just so peaceful sitting in these things, being pushed around, and hearing the sounds of nature and nothing else around you. Sitting in the makoros, you can almost feel the curvature of the earth - probably due in part to there not being a single cloud in the sky. In fact, the sky was so blue that it was almost white on the horizons. The sun was huge - the setting sun even larger - and temperatures reached over 100 F by 11 am. In the summer months, temperatures go as high as 140 F with high humidity - it makes Washington DC seem like paradise. It's really impossible to capture the essence of the Okavango Delta in a picture, a description, or a Planet Earth video - it's something you just need to experience.

Our last night in the Delta, we were treated to a performance by our guides. They sang traditional Botswanan songs, along with dances, and it really was special to watch. Of course, we couldn't receive such a performance without showing them some of our own culture, and, as a group, we performed - a very loose interpretation of the word performed - such American staples as "Buttercup", "Lean on Me", "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", and ended with a freestyle by one of the kids on our trip, featuring a good old boots-n-skirts beatbox by yours truly. The guides seemed to love the beatboxing - I don't think they'd ever heard it before - and a few of them even tried to join and and started dancing around like clowns. It really was a special experience.

I'm not sure where I'm going at this point in this entry - I presume that my other two entries will be rambling quite like this one. It's really hard to put all my memories and experiences into a coherent flow, but I'll try my best. Hopefully you got somewhat of an idea of what the Okavango Delta was like - though, keep in mind, nothing you see or read will possibly do it justice. A lot of people (read: Jappy girls) on our trip bitched that it was too rugged for them and that we didn't see enough animals, but I thought it was a great start to our trip - very chilled, very authentic, and very not touristy. Everything I love. More to come on Chobe and Vic Falls later.

This photo is in no way, shape, or form doctored. I promise.

Have I Got A Little Story For You...

Twenty-four hours after arriving back in Cape Town, I’m still not even sure how to describe what I’ve experienced the past ten days. I’ve added three new stamps to my passport, argued exchange rates with border officials, seen the most beautiful sunsets imaginable, and done some of the most downright crazy shit I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve suffered two sprained ankles, gashes to my nose and elbow, and pink eye (don’t worry, mom and dad, I’m fine). For now, I’ll just post some pictures of my travels. Expect a full report sometime in the coming days, but know that I’m still alive – as alive as I’ve ever been.

I thought they said animals didn't actually walk around in the streets here...

Outro

In under 24 hours I will be on my way out of South Africa for spring break! We're heading to Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe for safari. Spending 3 days in the Okavango Delta doing safari on dugout canoe, 2 days in Chobe National Park, and 3 days at Victoria Falls, including white water rafting the grade 5 rapids of the Zambezi River. I will report back once I get back to the RSA, assuming and I don't get eaten by a lion.

Peace and Love.

Robbeneiland

Man, where to start on Robben Island. I don't even know. Yesterday was just such a...I'm not even sure what the word is. My impression of Robben Island was quite interesting and different from what I expected. Allow me to elaborate.

The boat to Robben Island is packed with tourists. Literally 300 of them. You see from the first time you enter the Nelson Mandela Gateway that the Robben Island Museum is a money-making machine. Which, when you think about it, is kind of fucked. Making money on the hardships through which people suffered under 20 years ago. It's expensive for a tour - R200, the equivalent of about $30. If the South African government really wanted people to understand what happened on Robben Island and to see it for themselves they should subsidize tours there. Make the day free, or, at the very most, R20 (about $3). Putting such a high price on a tour that everyone really should take for the historical and cultural aspect seems ludicrous. But wait - they clearly didn't make it a museum just for the money - just look at the quote you're greeted with when you enter the Nelson Mandela Gateway (the place where the ferry departs from):

"While we will not forget the brutalities of apartheid, we will not not Robben Island to be a monument of our hardship and suffering. We would want it to be a triumph of the human spirit against the forces of evil; a triumph of the wisdom and largeness of spirit against small minds and pettiness; a triumph of courage and determination over human frailty and weakness; a triumph of the new South Africa over the old." - Ahmed Kathrada

If Robben Island is to be as Kathrada described it, "a triumph of the new South Africa over the old", a visit should be an essential part to every single South African's life. A new South Africa should be inclusive of everyone. And, considering the steep price and the huge income inequality in this country (one of the highest Gini coefficients in thew world), many blacks won't go to the Robben Island Museum.

When you arrive on Robben Island you're shuttled onto a bus which drives you around the island. You see how expansive it is - 11 km in diameter - and get glimpses of many of the historic sites: the limestone quarry, the house where Robert Sobukwe (leader of the PAC) stayed in solitary confinement for 6 years, the leper graveyard, etc. A particular note about the limestone quarry: that place is haunting. It's totally empty now, but years ago was home to a huge limestone deposit. The first political prisoners on Robben Island arrived in 1964 and were forced to go to the quarry every single day to chizzle away at the rock, bring it back to a designated location, and build their own prison. Yes, they were building their own prison. Up until it was ready, the political prisoners were housed in the same prison as the criminal prisoners, but when political prisoners started arriving the guards feared that they would gain the support of the criminals and spread their ideas to them. So the political prisoners built their own prison. Doing manual labor in the limestone quarry - literally chipping away at limestone by hand - from 7:30 am until 4:30 pm every single day. The craftsmanship on the Maximum Security Prison, where they kept the political prisoners, is amazing - the rocks fit beautifull together and form something similar to a mosaic. It's erie to see.

After driving around the island for about an hour, you're dropped off in front of the Maximum Security Prison, where you meet your next tour guide - a former inmate who gives you a tour of the prison. You visit the different "blocks" of the prison where prisoners were housed. Most of the blocks were communal blocks - i.e. up to 40 prisoners lived together in the same room. There were no beds (until 1979) and prisoners slept on rugs on the ground, if they were lucky. Otherwise they slept straight on the concrete. The one block that didn't have communal space, but rather individual cells, was B-Section. This is where the most dangerous (read: influential) political prisoners were kept, including Nelson Mandela. We got to see Mandela's cell - so tiny it is almost a joke - and the things with which it was furnished: a blanket, a chair, and a chamber pot. Yes - they used chamber pots in B-Section since the bathroom wasn't located in the same building and prisoners weren't allowed out of their cells between 4:30 pm and 7:30 am, so they had to use chamber pots.

The condition of the Maximum Security Prison at Robben Island really bothered me. I felt like it was in such good condition that it could still be used today. They could decide tomorrow to start using it as a prison and it'd be ready. It reminds you that people were held captive here in our lifetimes. Not just in our parents' lifetimes - in our lifetimes. And it's kind of spooky and bothersome. I guess that's the point.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned yesterday was the practice of apartheid even carried over onto Robben Island. All white prisoners were kept in Pretoria, while all blacks, coloureds, and Indians were taken to Robben Island. There were no females on Robben Island, either. And, on the island, blacks were treated severly worse than the coloureds and Indians. Upon arrival, blacks were given a short sleeve t-shirt, shorts, and no shoes, while Indians and coloureds were given a long sleeve t-shirt, pants, and shoes. Furthermore, blacks received lesser rations of food than did the Indians and coloureds. This practice clearly wasn't a cost-saving measure; rather it was a way of creating a sense of inferiority amongst the blacks and a sense of superiority amongst the others. However, the prisoners were smart and realized what the guards were trying to do. As a result, the Indians and coloureds often shared their extra rations with the blacks. The guards' attempt to separate the prisoners and to pit them against one another backfired and actually resulted in an increased feeling of unity amongst the prisoners.

Despite all the rich history of Robben Island I learned yesterday, I still want to end on the same note as I started on above - the idea of the Robben Island Museum as a money-making machine and not much else. After our tour by the former inmate, my friend Nick and I stuck around to talk two-on-one with him. I asked him why he had decided to come back to the island, considering that spending time there must bring back horrible memories. I wondered if he came back to gain a sense of personal triumph over the place? "No", he replied, "I came back because I couldn't find a job anywhere else. I didn't want to come back here." This revealed something to me. The idea of turning Robben Island into a museum came as a result of former inmates wanting to do it. The former inmates who, as a result of spending so much time on Robben Island, didn't have the necessary skills to perform in the South African labor market. Considering the huge skills bias in the South African labor market (one of the largest skills biases of any country in the world), none of the former inmates could find work anywhere else. And so now many of them work at Robben Island. They're capitalizing on the demons of their past by facing them every day, even if they don't want to. That's some real shit.

What Could Possibly Be Better Than TNC?

Well, for starters, walking on burning hot coals. Or the feeling in your stomach the morning after Mix Bowl. I know it’s hard to believe, but last night was even better than both of those – I got to watch my African Instruments teacher, Dizu, put on the most amazing concert I’ve seen. And I even got to play on one song.

I’ve spoken of my African Instruments class before. It meets once a week for 45 minutes, and I play crazy instruments (so far we’ve only played the djembe and a beautiful Ugandan xylophone called the akadinda) with 5 other Americans and Dizu. I get a full Pomona credit for it, and there’s no outside of class work. Then there’s African Music Ensemble, in which we play what we learn in African Instruments in a larger group setting (15 – 20 people, including South Africans) – that, too, meets for 45 minutes a week, is taught by Dizu, and is worth a full Pomona credit. That’s half my semester’s credit for playing instruments for an hour and a half every week. With Dizu. I can’t even describe Dizu – he transcends the word chill. He’s also perhaps the most amazing musician I’ve ever seen – he will play any instrument you put in front of him and will amaze you with how cool it sounds. Dizu’s first band (I forget the name) is Nelson Mandela’s favorite band. Enough cred?

Last night, he was the centerpiece of this show. His new band, along with help from students from the UCT music school, put on an amazing concert. Our whole African Music Ensemble class played on one song (which you can see below), but the highlight was definitely hearing Dizu playing all these different instruments. He played something that looked like a skinny shofar and sounded like the most pure flute in the world. He played a mouth harp – creating vibrations of the strings with a bow and blowing into the top of it to produce different sounds. He played at least five different types of drums, all of them sounding totally different. He played something that looked like a cardboard box and sounded like waves rolling in along the coast. The best thing you could possibly do would be to youtube him (I haven’t watched his youtube videos because of the bandwidth issue here, but I bet they’re amazing). Just type in Dizu Plaatjie and see what you find. Your mind will be blown.

On a side note, this weekend CIEE is paying for us to straight ball: taking us to two soccer games tonight down at Greenpoint Stadium (the World Cup stadium), tomorrow to Mzoli’s (the craziest block party in the world, as I wrote about in an earlier entry), and Sunday to Robben Island. I was supposed to write a paper this weekend…oops, it’ll have to wait until next week.

Enjoy the video!

What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been

This past week in my Culture, Identity, and Globalisation class (yes, they spell it with an s. It’s really frustrating. I’m spelling labour with a u, too.) we learned about UCTs grim history. I can now say I now far more about UCT than about Pomona – kind of sad, but the history of this place is fascinating. I view the whole UCT campus in a totally different way after learning what I did this past week.

The South African College was founded in 1829, and accepted only whites. In 1916, a huge donation by two mining magnates, along with an act of Parliament, led to the official establishment of the University of Cape Town. The first president of the university, John Caruthers Beattie, wanted to “spread civilization” in Africa. He stressed the need to “unite the two races of South Africa – English and Afrikaans people”. Think about the absurdity of that statement for just a second.

(Still thinking…)

(Still in disbelief…)

Ok, moving on. Black South Africans simply didn’t exist in Beattie’s mind. He noted, “There is a strong colour prejudice in South Africa, and we have to pay attention to that.” In 1923, the UCT council, the governing board of the university, made an admission that said it was against the university’s interest to admit blacks at all. Despite this, a very small number of blacks were allowed in the university, but they weren’t allowed to take medicine or fine arts. The UCT council found the idea of a black person medically examining a white person repugnant.

UCT moved to it’s current location in 1929 as a result of a huge donation by Cecil Rhodes – then prime minister of the Cape. Rhodes envisioned UCT as an “Oxford in Africa”, and sent his architect, Solomon, on a tour of Europe and America to gather architectural ideas. The very center of upper campus, Jameson Hall, was meant to be an exact copy of the Jefferson Library at the University of Virginia, but the project ran out of money and thus they had to install a slanted roof instead of a huge dome.

Rhodes’ whole vision of UCT was for it to be a sight of prospect. The institution self-consciously exists apart from society and is placed on a hill overlooking Cape Town and the Cape Flats so people on UCT can look down on everyone else. It was almost as if Rhodes wanted people to think, “Here I am. And there you all are. And I can look down at you, like God. But here I am, in the sight of perfect prospect.” UCT may be in Africa, but it’s not quite Africa – it’s a carefully crafted site that deliberately exists apart from the rest of Africa. The world of the university is a make believe world of anywhere and nowhere. When you walk on UCT campus you’re supposed to feel entitled and aloof. You’re supposed to understand that you are in a place of prospect, a place for furthering education and looking down on those who can’t get that same education. The last truly Rhodesian site in the entire world that still is regularly used. The entirety of UCT is a sign of the power of the British empire and colonialism – a history of dominance over the native South Africans. Not just racial dominance, but mental dominance.

The university has existed as three “different” universities: the colonial university, the apartheid university, and the global university. Though it now exists as the global university, there is a simultaneous existence on some level of the two previous universities. You cannot walk on UCTs campus and simply ignore the past history of the institution, there is a co-presence of all three today.

The colonial university is pretty much described above, and was the dominant form of the university up until the Group Areas Act of 1949, which officially started apartheid. In 1937 there were only 40 black / Indian / coloured students at the university. The same year, there was a debate on campus about whether or not non-Europeans should be admitted conditionally to the university. Of 90 students voting, only 20 were for it – 30 abstained and 40 were against it. Over time, though, the university started allowing more blacks. Still, the numbers were always incredibly small and almost insignificant. Black students felt so out of place on campus that they ate in the basement of the zoology department instead of in the campus food court.

The campus became very politically active during the 1970s and 1980s, going in line with the student uprisings in Soweto (1976) and the township revolts around Cape Town (1985 and 1986). Protests were held on the steps to Jameson Hall (called the Jammy Steps) where both blacks and whites joined together. However, outside of these protests, blacks and whites pretty much had no interaction on campus. That was up until the end of apartheid, and starting after the democratic elections in 1994, the university started allowing more and more black students. The problem? Many of them were from foreign countries – hence the “global university”. Today, 20% of the student body is non-South African, with 10% of the student body coming from Southern African countries like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Rwanda, and Namibia. This signifies a problem with primary and secondary schooling in South Africa – but that’s for another post, in which I’ll talk about how the labour market here is so fucked because of poor education systems.

Two more notes, and then I’m done rambling. First, it’s important to note that the people who founded UCT and who the buildings are named after (Rhodes, Jameson, etc.) are WAR CRIMINALS in the mind of South Africans. Their colonialism was almost equivalent to slavery to the South Africans, and they’re universally hated amongst the black community. Jameson Hall and the Jammy Steps are equivalent to having Hitler Hall and the Hitler steps at the University of Berlin.

I’ll leave you with a story. In the late 1960s, a black man named Arthur Mafeje saw a position advertised in social anthropology at UCT. He had earned is PHD in London in social anthropology and was the strongest candidate for the job. In fact, the university offered him the job. He stood to be the first black lecturer at UCT, no doubt a huge deal, especially in the 1960s in the heart of apartheid. Upon hearing this, the Minister of Education contacted the UCT president and said something along the lines of “we view these developments with displeasure”. Needless to say, the Vice Chancellor rescinded Mafeje’s job offer.

This is the university I walk every day. What does it mean to inhabit apartheid spaces in a post-apartheid present? I’m not sure, but I’m starting to find out.

Or Am I Dreaming?

No, unfortunately I’m not. That is a fire alarm blaring at 3:06 am.

When we had our first dorm meeting we were informed that at some point “in the coming weeks” there would be a fire drill. No one would know what time it was coming since “a fire doesn’t care what time it is”. We all suspected the worst – a middle of the night two hour fiasco in which they would break into your rooms to wake you up if you weren’t accounted for outside. At least that’s what our RA told us to expect. Needless to say we were all extremely enthused at the prospect of this.

Well, Thursday night was finally the night. After a beautiful sunset hike up Lion’s Head (the smaller extension to the right of Table Mountain), I decided to be responsible and get some well-deserved sleep. I passed out by 11, and was happily dreaming until that god-damned fire alarm shattered my peaceful slumber. I begrudgingly walked downstairs, pretty much fell asleep standing up waiting to be accounted for, and walked up to my room an hour later after everyone had been accounted for.

Though it wasn’t as bad as expected, this fire drill was still horrible. I liked nothing about it. Except that the dorm warden warned us “in the case of a real fire you need to keep left so the fire marshals can go by you on the right.” Really? I’m pretty sure if there’s a real fire everyone is hauling ass out of that dorm without paying attention to which side they’re on. Or maybe trying to go back to sleep.