Okay guys this is it, www.paneurasianbiketrip.com, we are going!! There is no reasonable doubt now.
In March Levi Bridges and I are going to back to school to learn Russian for a couple of months in Vladivostok, Russia we will be living in the dorms one more time, training, packing and learning Russian. Then one day, hopefully in April, we will get on the bikes and start riding, not stopping until Portugal (I could give you the name, but there seems to be some discrepancy about whether it is Oporto or Porto, I guess we will figure that out when we hit the welcome sign). Along the way we will be using the website to write blogs (yes I will still email), posting pictures and videos (a new weapon in our arsenal) as often as possible (I hear the wireless connections in Siberia are primo).
Answers to some of the questions
"How Long"
-We don't know, it depends on the route we take but somewhere around 10,000 miles.
"What countries are you going to?"
-we want to stay flexible go with what sounds most amazing, so please send us your favorite town in Austria or your contact in Siberia we might use them.
"Can I go?"
-definitely, we want people to come and do a week here or there, perhaps you would like to do the Siberia leg
"where the hell did you guys come up with this idea?"
-I don't think Levi and I have ever had anything but this idea, I remember that when we met at Alfred, the first day we were talking about doing a semester in Alaska and by the end of the night (and the beer) we had the map out and were looking at Russia (I haven't been able to stop looking at that map since). And by that fall break I already had in my possession "Off the Map, Bicycling through Russia" By Mark Jenkins and we had already spent countless hours staring at the map and talking about routes (not realizing then that there is only one road through Russia, the rest we were looking at were railroads). Since then it has always been in the back of our minds, every time we got together, without fail the map came out and we would start the fantasy all over again. It was only after walking across Spain that we realized that we could do this trip and how amazing it could be. We have been "planning" this trip ever since, which usually involves one hour in an entire "planning weekend" devoted to actually doing research. Levi likes to bring up the time that he tried to do some research with me and I looked at the map said "Yep, no problem", slammed the atlas closed and went back to sleep.
Recently we have been a bit more productive, we managed to get discount bikes from a bike shop in Maine, and thanks almost entirely to Kylie Silva we now have a website, www.paneurasianbiketrip.com again shamelessly promoting. But mostly we just wind up getting together and talking incessently about the trip without getting a scrap on paper, last time we did a "business trip" we left Levi's house without bikes, laptops, maps, and no paper, but boy did we talk about the trip!!
The bike trip, like the planning, will be unconventional. We may spend days in a small village because the hospitality (and vodka) is so good, or I may force us well off the trail to find a Siberian Dostoevsky Museum or a historical Russian town. And Levi; god only knows where he may lead the trip, I wouldn't be surprised if a Russian truck driver was somehow involved. And my job as always will be to convey these stories and observations to you in the most amusing and straight forward manner. I look forward to it tremendously. I'll see you in Vladivostok!!
ellski
p.s. Spread the website, we are trying to get some sort of sponsorship and we figure the more popular the site is the more likely we are to get some discount socks.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
A Return To Bad Decision Making
I got off the plane and already things had changed. The air didn't bite, instead I was sweating, I got to the immigration line and got my landing card... I was stunned, they had taken to giving you the english translation on the landing card, saving me hours of digging through my shitty russian dictionary.
But some things never change.. We walked out of the airport and there was a man at 10 am just getting a little bit stumbly with his beer, swaying a bit from side to side.Then I looked over and there was a quite slim girl smoking an even slimmer cigarrette and drinking a huge can of beer. AHHH Mother Russia. Sue and I took a small bus into the center of the city, saving approximately 79.50 dollars as the ticket cost us about 50 cents and the taxi's wanted 80 dollars. of course sue is ecstatic, she saw her first passed out person, her first russian prostitute, neither of which would be her last. when we got out at saddovaya square she was bewildered by the bright neon lights of the casino's. I on the otherhand noticed another trashcan fire, I had always thought that was a winter thing, I guess not. We walked to the hotel where we were in for a moment that can only be described by remembering what south africa's dear president said after meeting with mugabe after the election earlier this year. a member of the press asked him about the crisis in zimbabwe and mbeki said "crisis? what crisis?" we walked into the hotel I put my reservation on the desk and the woman said "reservation? what reservation?" perfect. I land in st. petes in the busiest season and this woman has no record of my reservation. Sue is on the verge of panic. however after some work was done they found us a hotel for that night and promised to work something out by morning. So obviously after checking into the new hotel there was only one thing to do, we walked to the nearest kiosk and purchased a couple of warm baltika 7's and some wine and proceeded to forget our troubles. There is no lie when they say that the sun doesn't set in st. petes during the white nights, around 10 it felt like 330 and the only thing resembling night is a bit of dusk round 1.
By morning the hotel situation was resolved thank god and we began our sightseeing, going back to all my old haunts that i have described many a time, i took my mother to palace square where they were gearing up for a huge concert, we went to vasilly island to the street with no cars, we saw nevsky in all it's shopping glory. We went to the opera that evening, where i successfully retrieved my tickets that i had ordered online. Sue was very pleased, i was bored to tears but such is life. The first thing I was really feeling that was different here was that people were nicer, much much nicer and more helpful, not as amazing as SA but still noticeably nicer. The next day we went to the hermitage, and walked about, and later that night i went out on my own. now as i recall in the past i had had trouble really communicating and making friends in st. petes. Not this time, in a matter of moments i was taking shots with a group of men on the street while talking to the militsya, i don't know if i've ever met such friendly russians in my life, then i carried on my way to mars field or the Communist war memorial where unlike in the guide books where they tell you not to go on the grass out of respect for the dead revolutionaries buried there, there were thousands of teenagers and young people on the grass drinking and celebrating the white nights, needless to say i was quickly incorporated and spent a good part of the night with a group of young artists drinking, watching fireworks and watching the bridges rise. It was almost like russia had embraced kindness, they hadn't mastered it yet, but they were trying. The next day was my great triumph, everyone from the old days of st. petes will appreciate this, me, with my shitty russian flawlessly ordered tickets to moscow and back on the train, and the people behind me didn't even seem to want to kill me that badly, i didn't even see a weapon drawn after the first ten minutes.
The drinking hasn't changed here, in no way. you still see the bottle of vodka between two people on the street, you still seee the crazy casual day drinking by men, women, children, executives, taxi drivers, policemen, and anyone and everyone. you still don't hire a taxi, you just stick out your hand and a man stops and bargains a fare, and I still suck at bargaining and russian numbers. Sue was quite freaked out when i hired our first car, but since then she's really taken to it, likening it to her old days hitchhiking. our incidents haven't been to bad so far, except when it comes to ordering, where we are confined to shashlik (skewered meat) and solyanka (a delicious russian soup) because the pressure of trying to order anything else is too great and again my dictionary is so bad that it seems to have left out anything to do with food at all, so occasionally mistakes are made.
Our trip was not made just to st. petersburg we also went to russia, where needless to say mistakes were made. Namely the worst one was impatience, we got to our hotel after the night train from st. petersburg, there was no one there, in fact it was just a communist style building which we happened to have the key code for. we panicked, we had already had hotel trouble, we were tired and afraid of being caught out in the dark with the drunk moscovites. we walked for hours searching for a hotel or an internet cafe in vain (i knew i had the phone number online) screaming at each other as only my mother and i can do. then in a final act of desperation we went back to the building debating the merits of sleeping in the hallway, yeah of course they were there and waiting for us. well we spent 4 comfortable nights in moscow visiting lenin and his waxy complexion watching the russians go Euro 2008 crazy then have their hopes dashed by the spanish, like so many others. I also met up with one of my old friends from saint petersburg, erika, we rehashed our love of russia and how we thought the people were nicer now and more money was flowing through the country and just as much alcohol.
Then there was the return to st. petersburg where I met some guys who were just finishing a month at the same school that i studied at (IMOP!!!!!!!!!) And then something new happened, something that hadn't happened before to me... I got mugged. And not just mugged, mugged by the police (which has the convenience of being able to report the crime at the same time, for a small fee of course) yes I finally got mugged, complete with shoving and threats of use of a billy club. How else could i wrap up 5 and a half months of South Africa and 2 weeks of nightless travel. ellski
But some things never change.. We walked out of the airport and there was a man at 10 am just getting a little bit stumbly with his beer, swaying a bit from side to side.Then I looked over and there was a quite slim girl smoking an even slimmer cigarrette and drinking a huge can of beer. AHHH Mother Russia. Sue and I took a small bus into the center of the city, saving approximately 79.50 dollars as the ticket cost us about 50 cents and the taxi's wanted 80 dollars. of course sue is ecstatic, she saw her first passed out person, her first russian prostitute, neither of which would be her last. when we got out at saddovaya square she was bewildered by the bright neon lights of the casino's. I on the otherhand noticed another trashcan fire, I had always thought that was a winter thing, I guess not. We walked to the hotel where we were in for a moment that can only be described by remembering what south africa's dear president said after meeting with mugabe after the election earlier this year. a member of the press asked him about the crisis in zimbabwe and mbeki said "crisis? what crisis?" we walked into the hotel I put my reservation on the desk and the woman said "reservation? what reservation?" perfect. I land in st. petes in the busiest season and this woman has no record of my reservation. Sue is on the verge of panic. however after some work was done they found us a hotel for that night and promised to work something out by morning. So obviously after checking into the new hotel there was only one thing to do, we walked to the nearest kiosk and purchased a couple of warm baltika 7's and some wine and proceeded to forget our troubles. There is no lie when they say that the sun doesn't set in st. petes during the white nights, around 10 it felt like 330 and the only thing resembling night is a bit of dusk round 1.
By morning the hotel situation was resolved thank god and we began our sightseeing, going back to all my old haunts that i have described many a time, i took my mother to palace square where they were gearing up for a huge concert, we went to vasilly island to the street with no cars, we saw nevsky in all it's shopping glory. We went to the opera that evening, where i successfully retrieved my tickets that i had ordered online. Sue was very pleased, i was bored to tears but such is life. The first thing I was really feeling that was different here was that people were nicer, much much nicer and more helpful, not as amazing as SA but still noticeably nicer. The next day we went to the hermitage, and walked about, and later that night i went out on my own. now as i recall in the past i had had trouble really communicating and making friends in st. petes. Not this time, in a matter of moments i was taking shots with a group of men on the street while talking to the militsya, i don't know if i've ever met such friendly russians in my life, then i carried on my way to mars field or the Communist war memorial where unlike in the guide books where they tell you not to go on the grass out of respect for the dead revolutionaries buried there, there were thousands of teenagers and young people on the grass drinking and celebrating the white nights, needless to say i was quickly incorporated and spent a good part of the night with a group of young artists drinking, watching fireworks and watching the bridges rise. It was almost like russia had embraced kindness, they hadn't mastered it yet, but they were trying. The next day was my great triumph, everyone from the old days of st. petes will appreciate this, me, with my shitty russian flawlessly ordered tickets to moscow and back on the train, and the people behind me didn't even seem to want to kill me that badly, i didn't even see a weapon drawn after the first ten minutes.
The drinking hasn't changed here, in no way. you still see the bottle of vodka between two people on the street, you still seee the crazy casual day drinking by men, women, children, executives, taxi drivers, policemen, and anyone and everyone. you still don't hire a taxi, you just stick out your hand and a man stops and bargains a fare, and I still suck at bargaining and russian numbers. Sue was quite freaked out when i hired our first car, but since then she's really taken to it, likening it to her old days hitchhiking. our incidents haven't been to bad so far, except when it comes to ordering, where we are confined to shashlik (skewered meat) and solyanka (a delicious russian soup) because the pressure of trying to order anything else is too great and again my dictionary is so bad that it seems to have left out anything to do with food at all, so occasionally mistakes are made.
Our trip was not made just to st. petersburg we also went to russia, where needless to say mistakes were made. Namely the worst one was impatience, we got to our hotel after the night train from st. petersburg, there was no one there, in fact it was just a communist style building which we happened to have the key code for. we panicked, we had already had hotel trouble, we were tired and afraid of being caught out in the dark with the drunk moscovites. we walked for hours searching for a hotel or an internet cafe in vain (i knew i had the phone number online) screaming at each other as only my mother and i can do. then in a final act of desperation we went back to the building debating the merits of sleeping in the hallway, yeah of course they were there and waiting for us. well we spent 4 comfortable nights in moscow visiting lenin and his waxy complexion watching the russians go Euro 2008 crazy then have their hopes dashed by the spanish, like so many others. I also met up with one of my old friends from saint petersburg, erika, we rehashed our love of russia and how we thought the people were nicer now and more money was flowing through the country and just as much alcohol.
Then there was the return to st. petersburg where I met some guys who were just finishing a month at the same school that i studied at (IMOP!!!!!!!!!) And then something new happened, something that hadn't happened before to me... I got mugged. And not just mugged, mugged by the police (which has the convenience of being able to report the crime at the same time, for a small fee of course) yes I finally got mugged, complete with shoving and threats of use of a billy club. How else could i wrap up 5 and a half months of South Africa and 2 weeks of nightless travel. ellski
Goodbye South Africa
Well it's over. I am sitting here in London, on free internet, with the doors unlocked and the fences unbarbed. The academic decathalon is over, i took my last final over a week ago, how did i do??? how could anyone know, I wrote essays, long ones they seemed full of information that pertained to the course but that could mean nothing at uct, perhaps they grade entirely on grammer or expect full citations, or perhaps half of it is your handwriting, I have no idea.
One of the final things of any significance i did here was go to the district 6 museum, which like Sophiatown in Johannesburg was a Black district full of culture and life that was then forcefully closed by the apartheid government and moved to the townships at what was considered a much safer distance from the "good white folk" of South Africa. It wasn't that I was unfamiliar with the story, but the one thing that really shocked me was the shear stupidity of moving everyone out of an area, essentially downtown, and destroying every building in sight, they were never even able to rebuild it it still stands fairly desolate, mostly just empty lots. I guess racism won out over city planning.
anyway, the recap of the things i will miss about south Africa:
actually I just thought before I wrote this i would look back at the 10 things i wrote about st. petersburg, and i know it sounds rather strange but they are so similar that i think i will run them together in a comparison, and it will help you new guys to the email club, russia will be in bold:
well here is a final little round up of the things I
will miss:
10. Open potholes and the likes, I've been walking by
the same open pothole for 4 months, it's on the main
causeway to the metro stop, all they've ever had over
it is one 2 by 4. They still haven't cleaned up the
piles of trash they collected for spring cleaning, in
fact the piles have really just kind of spread out
again, they collected leaves a few weeks ago and
needless to say those aren't in piles any longer
10. What can I say, I walk by a goddamn open pothole on my way to the school shuttle stop every day here in africa too, in fact one of my roomates, never to be named of course, took a digger right into it, getting quite the bashed knee and sore hip. the only precaution i've seen them take is too put an egg crate over it, oh and actually I think they have been slowly depositing it with trash hoping that instead of having to cover it, it will become an underground trashcan, which seems to be what they have done with another one quite near by although it is smaller, it is now on level with the pavement, filled with beer bottles and biltong wrappers.
9. Trashcan fires: Never had seen one in my life, let
alone on a main thoroughfare, but often Nevsky will be
alight with 2 or 3 trashcans where people are too lazy
to put out their cigarettes and huge fires
erupt(apparently no one feels the need to put out the
blaze, indeed I saw a dumpster on fire the other day
and smoke billowing out, burning your eyes, eventually
it just burnt out, I guess that's the policy here
because I have never seen a fire truck, but plenty of
fires)
9. okay I can't say i've seen a trashcan fire here in south africa, they seem to have that under control. I can't put something comparable here either but i will put something more substantial. I will miss visits to the townships, where people living under the most cramped and uncomfortable conditions have the most amazing spirit of life, many of them love and enjoy life more than americans with the world at their feet driving porches and such. Certainly they have gripes with where life has put them but there is still hope, and they can still appreciate what little they have.
8. Water: well really this is something I can't wait
for, just to be able to drink from the tap like a
normal human being, and not have to plan ahead "okay
am I gonna be thirsty tomorrow morning?? Probably,
well I'd better go to the store now and get some
because if not, no joy
8.That one makes me laugh, remembering how awful it was to wake up with just a drop of water in the morning, and having to lug 2 5 gallon jugs up 3 flights every few days. well except for that time that cape town forgot to process it's water and everyone got ecoli, there haven't been any problems. But there is something that is just as annoying here electricity, it wasn't the paying as you go aspect of it that is so bad, but the lack of it when it counts, roaming black outs, unannounced extended power outages, our house in particular had it's own electricity problems. what do you do?? well call the electrician. "oh no I can't deal with that you have to call eskom (the power company)." eskom: "oh this isn't our department, you have to call the city planning board" city planning board: "what you need is an electrician" electrician: "yeah you should be fine now" twenty minutes later the power has some new affliction, eventually we just gave up an conceded that you had to turn on the hot water heater manually, wait for 3 hours for it to heat up and hope no one jumped in the shower, did the dishes, washed their hands or did a load of laundry before you got your shower.
7. doing things the hard way: boy do you guys have it
easy, you go to the store with a 20 dollar bill and
buy a candy bar no problem, I go and spend 300 out of
a 500 and they say "we can't change this do you have a
smaller bill?" then they have to go into the safe yell
at me some more and then the rest of the line starts
getting angry, I've never been shot down trying to
spend money in America, it's happened about a dozen
times here, they'd rather reject your business than
give you change.
7. I'm really begining to get used to harboring small bills, and breaking big bills every chance i get. But here I think doing things the hard way is more appropriate to UCT, where efficiency comes to die. My favorite is the printing on campus, it's positively genius, okay guys, most places in the world have all there computers on just a few networks, how about this for efficiency: we'll put the printers all on one network, that way if even the slightest thing goes wrong ALL the printers in EVERY building will be completely off. but don't worry the internet probably won't be working anyway.
6.The food, Bliny Borsch Solyanka (a form o Russian
hot dog stew) all of them even the fear of a
contaminated meal or the fairly standard bad meal (I
think the contemporary version of Russian roulette is
just going out to eat at a restaurant and seeing how
sick you get.
6. Ah the food. yep it will be missed, the random peices of dried meat on a string (presumably for small children to tie around their wrists so they don't drop them) coming in all varieties, beef, kudu, ostritch, whatever it is they will dry it and sell it. the boerwors, sausages grilled to perfection and served with onions just a hop skip and a jump from your favorite bar (one of my roomates (again not to be named) perhaps gives the greatest testament to the boerswors, dropping one on the ground on the way back to the bar, looking both directions, picking it up and eating it) the samosas or samoosas depending, particularly Buddy's at the Corner Bar, chicken are the best in my opinion, but many claim the cheesy ones rule supreme, the fish in mozambique. and of course the many many braais(bbqs). yeah i guess the food wasn't particularly healthy now was it. I personally heard little of food poisoning here in SA, certainly nothing like russia.
5. The dangerous streets of St. Petersburg: Jarrods
got broken legs, Richard had his knee broken by a
security guard, Antoine got the worse black eye I've
ever seen, Megan and Matt got robbed of their cell
phones and camera in a Russian dacha 3 hours out of
the city, Becky and Kendra had to run away from fake
police, Matt, Jarrod and Pavel got in a fight for
being American. This city is out of hand, that is just
among my friends, since I've been here (I'm sure
you've heard) one IMOP student was murdered, and there
has been a real rash of hate crime in St. Pete's (the
mafia influence in Moscow keeps that city more in line
and keeps the skinheads out)
5. Well there was probably a time when i thought st. petersburg was the most dangerous place a person could go, I think i've changed my perspective now. I live in a house guarded like a prison my neighbors have electric fences, about half of my friends have horror stories and the daily news is on the verge of terrifying, I laugh at the robbed cell phones of st. petes, who hasn't lost a cell phone here. When it comes to police it is tough to say who is worse? the st petes cops who are notoriously currupt and always hasseling you (80 percent of russians wouldn't go to the police in any circumstance) or the SA police who when called may take up to 2 hours to arrive?? which would you prefer.
4. The city itself: Just amazing that's all I can say
everywhere you turn is history, and everywhere you
look an amazing building, be it Stalinist architecture
or a tsarist palace
4. OBZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could have wound up anywhere, but boy am I happy I wound up in Observatory, it had a great vibe a great look, tremendous people. By the end of the semester you couldn't walk down the street without meeting someone you knew and having a convo. OBZ is the best I couldn't have asked for a better place.
3. The Babushkas: oh sure they're jaded, angry, pushy,
fearless but these crazy, short, old lady's are
somewhat endearing, they occasionally laugh at you in
a nice way, every once in a while they say excuse me
before sitting on you in the subway, once I even saw
one turn and smile at me when she cut me in the
grocery line. They are characters that's to be sure,
unlike any you might find in the states
3. This might be the greatest difference between Russia and SA those Babushkas so quick to cut you, heckle you, demand from you. here they are so ready (indeed everyone is) help you, let you go first, sing for you, make you take part in something (even if it is that awful beer). I don't think i've seen to many older ladies even get angry except maybe for one time at the wedding when i wasn't singing enough and she felt she was dissapointing me.
2. The war hero's: yesterday was victory day, (while
the rest of the world celebrates the end of WWII on
may 8th Russia decided to be different and celebrate
it as the 9th) there was something quite awe inspiring
watching the Blockade survivors walk down Nevsky in
their annual parade (a parade that gets shorter and
shorter each year mind you) and then in a show of
patriotism everyone follows behind so that most of St.
Petersburg is actually marching behind them (after a
wall of militsia)
2. Okay so this one I'm changing completely, because i can't talk about africa without mentioning all the amazing hiking biking and walking trips i've done and how spectacular each one was, or how for days afterward i thought to myself as I lay in a bath of ice how horribly mountainous South Africa really is. Caving with sean and nick (although caving is not really what it was, it was more of a race up the mountain, a quick stroll through the caves and then a jell-o legged race to the bottom, you guys don't have a slow speed do you? Or those long coastal bike rides i took, who would have thought that coast meant ungodly ride never going on flat road either crawling up or flying down.
1. The Alcohol: come on I mean really it's Russia,
what else could be number one, I'm in the country
where they invented alcoholism. There are babushkas
here who could out drink the most capable frat boys,
we might be buying beer for a party at the
supermarket, but all of a sudden a little old lady
cuts you with 3 liters of vodka in her basket, then
you turn around and there is a 12 year old with a pint
and a beer, you look across at the successful
businessman or woman and they couldn't actually wait
for the line and are drinking their beer in line. You
walk outside and on a sunny day there is no one
without a drink, you see the cop hanging out smoking a
cigarette and drinking a 9 percent beer, the guy at
the kiosk is drinking a beer you get on the metro and
everyone has a "travel drink" beer, canned gin and
tonic, "alco-energy" drink, this country is way beyond
anything you could imagine, trust me. Oh and did I
mention that all this is before 10 am??? So that's it,
that's all I got, I hope everyone enjoyed the emails,
I'll be home soon From Russia with love ellski
10. Yes i suppose that South Africa's drinking culture will be sorely missed. Passing the paint can full of chewy nasty beer, or walking around the townships beer in hand (it seems to be the only place such a thing is really done, the "travel beer" has no place in Obsevatory or cape town.) it makes a funny contrast here, sure you can't drink if you are walking down the street, but everytime you get in a car (the hitchhiking comes to mind) you are offered a beer, it seems to be a tradition, even if the driver isn't always drinking (although often is) you can't take a car ride beerless, it is taboo. Which country wins out on the ridiculousness of drinking? well it's tough to say I think South Africa is more ridiculous in its drinking because it is conscious drinking people notice that people are drunk, people notice that beer is being drank awfully early, whereas russia it can hardly be described so, only foreigners seem that it's ridiculous that children are drinking and the cab driver has a 2 liter beer in the front seat, they are so used to it they don't even notice.
While waiting in line at the jo'burg airport i met a guy, we started talking, wound up talking for quite a while and when i told him i'd studied in russia and south africa he said "it's funny you've done that, i was talking with some one the other day and they were telling me that of all the places that offer study abroad programs there are always the same two countries on the bottom of the list as the least attended South Africa and Russia. Now I know for a fact that I am sending this email to about 100 people that can confirm that this means 90 percent of the study abroad students are making a huge mistake.
Years it has taken to finish college: 7
In those 7 years:
Number of Schools attended: 5
Semesters Abroad: 3
Certificates from God: 2
Countries visited: 22
Continents: 4
Approximate hours on buses: 23 days or 552 hours
Friends for life made: countless
One Perfect College Experience
And just to warn you, this is not the last email. I am in London waiting for my mother to arrive and we head off to Russia for two weeks of more craziness, perhaps a second look will give a new perspective, and yes I am gonna drag my mom to the banya. e
One of the final things of any significance i did here was go to the district 6 museum, which like Sophiatown in Johannesburg was a Black district full of culture and life that was then forcefully closed by the apartheid government and moved to the townships at what was considered a much safer distance from the "good white folk" of South Africa. It wasn't that I was unfamiliar with the story, but the one thing that really shocked me was the shear stupidity of moving everyone out of an area, essentially downtown, and destroying every building in sight, they were never even able to rebuild it it still stands fairly desolate, mostly just empty lots. I guess racism won out over city planning.
anyway, the recap of the things i will miss about south Africa:
actually I just thought before I wrote this i would look back at the 10 things i wrote about st. petersburg, and i know it sounds rather strange but they are so similar that i think i will run them together in a comparison, and it will help you new guys to the email club, russia will be in bold:
well here is a final little round up of the things I
will miss:
10. Open potholes and the likes, I've been walking by
the same open pothole for 4 months, it's on the main
causeway to the metro stop, all they've ever had over
it is one 2 by 4. They still haven't cleaned up the
piles of trash they collected for spring cleaning, in
fact the piles have really just kind of spread out
again, they collected leaves a few weeks ago and
needless to say those aren't in piles any longer
10. What can I say, I walk by a goddamn open pothole on my way to the school shuttle stop every day here in africa too, in fact one of my roomates, never to be named of course, took a digger right into it, getting quite the bashed knee and sore hip. the only precaution i've seen them take is too put an egg crate over it, oh and actually I think they have been slowly depositing it with trash hoping that instead of having to cover it, it will become an underground trashcan, which seems to be what they have done with another one quite near by although it is smaller, it is now on level with the pavement, filled with beer bottles and biltong wrappers.
9. Trashcan fires: Never had seen one in my life, let
alone on a main thoroughfare, but often Nevsky will be
alight with 2 or 3 trashcans where people are too lazy
to put out their cigarettes and huge fires
erupt(apparently no one feels the need to put out the
blaze, indeed I saw a dumpster on fire the other day
and smoke billowing out, burning your eyes, eventually
it just burnt out, I guess that's the policy here
because I have never seen a fire truck, but plenty of
fires)
9. okay I can't say i've seen a trashcan fire here in south africa, they seem to have that under control. I can't put something comparable here either but i will put something more substantial. I will miss visits to the townships, where people living under the most cramped and uncomfortable conditions have the most amazing spirit of life, many of them love and enjoy life more than americans with the world at their feet driving porches and such. Certainly they have gripes with where life has put them but there is still hope, and they can still appreciate what little they have.
8. Water: well really this is something I can't wait
for, just to be able to drink from the tap like a
normal human being, and not have to plan ahead "okay
am I gonna be thirsty tomorrow morning?? Probably,
well I'd better go to the store now and get some
because if not, no joy
8.That one makes me laugh, remembering how awful it was to wake up with just a drop of water in the morning, and having to lug 2 5 gallon jugs up 3 flights every few days. well except for that time that cape town forgot to process it's water and everyone got ecoli, there haven't been any problems. But there is something that is just as annoying here electricity, it wasn't the paying as you go aspect of it that is so bad, but the lack of it when it counts, roaming black outs, unannounced extended power outages, our house in particular had it's own electricity problems. what do you do?? well call the electrician. "oh no I can't deal with that you have to call eskom (the power company)." eskom: "oh this isn't our department, you have to call the city planning board" city planning board: "what you need is an electrician" electrician: "yeah you should be fine now" twenty minutes later the power has some new affliction, eventually we just gave up an conceded that you had to turn on the hot water heater manually, wait for 3 hours for it to heat up and hope no one jumped in the shower, did the dishes, washed their hands or did a load of laundry before you got your shower.
7. doing things the hard way: boy do you guys have it
easy, you go to the store with a 20 dollar bill and
buy a candy bar no problem, I go and spend 300 out of
a 500 and they say "we can't change this do you have a
smaller bill?" then they have to go into the safe yell
at me some more and then the rest of the line starts
getting angry, I've never been shot down trying to
spend money in America, it's happened about a dozen
times here, they'd rather reject your business than
give you change.
7. I'm really begining to get used to harboring small bills, and breaking big bills every chance i get. But here I think doing things the hard way is more appropriate to UCT, where efficiency comes to die. My favorite is the printing on campus, it's positively genius, okay guys, most places in the world have all there computers on just a few networks, how about this for efficiency: we'll put the printers all on one network, that way if even the slightest thing goes wrong ALL the printers in EVERY building will be completely off. but don't worry the internet probably won't be working anyway.
6.The food, Bliny Borsch Solyanka (a form o Russian
hot dog stew) all of them even the fear of a
contaminated meal or the fairly standard bad meal (I
think the contemporary version of Russian roulette is
just going out to eat at a restaurant and seeing how
sick you get.
6. Ah the food. yep it will be missed, the random peices of dried meat on a string (presumably for small children to tie around their wrists so they don't drop them) coming in all varieties, beef, kudu, ostritch, whatever it is they will dry it and sell it. the boerwors, sausages grilled to perfection and served with onions just a hop skip and a jump from your favorite bar (one of my roomates (again not to be named) perhaps gives the greatest testament to the boerswors, dropping one on the ground on the way back to the bar, looking both directions, picking it up and eating it) the samosas or samoosas depending, particularly Buddy's at the Corner Bar, chicken are the best in my opinion, but many claim the cheesy ones rule supreme, the fish in mozambique. and of course the many many braais(bbqs). yeah i guess the food wasn't particularly healthy now was it. I personally heard little of food poisoning here in SA, certainly nothing like russia.
5. The dangerous streets of St. Petersburg: Jarrods
got broken legs, Richard had his knee broken by a
security guard, Antoine got the worse black eye I've
ever seen, Megan and Matt got robbed of their cell
phones and camera in a Russian dacha 3 hours out of
the city, Becky and Kendra had to run away from fake
police, Matt, Jarrod and Pavel got in a fight for
being American. This city is out of hand, that is just
among my friends, since I've been here (I'm sure
you've heard) one IMOP student was murdered, and there
has been a real rash of hate crime in St. Pete's (the
mafia influence in Moscow keeps that city more in line
and keeps the skinheads out)
5. Well there was probably a time when i thought st. petersburg was the most dangerous place a person could go, I think i've changed my perspective now. I live in a house guarded like a prison my neighbors have electric fences, about half of my friends have horror stories and the daily news is on the verge of terrifying, I laugh at the robbed cell phones of st. petes, who hasn't lost a cell phone here. When it comes to police it is tough to say who is worse? the st petes cops who are notoriously currupt and always hasseling you (80 percent of russians wouldn't go to the police in any circumstance) or the SA police who when called may take up to 2 hours to arrive?? which would you prefer.
4. The city itself: Just amazing that's all I can say
everywhere you turn is history, and everywhere you
look an amazing building, be it Stalinist architecture
or a tsarist palace
4. OBZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could have wound up anywhere, but boy am I happy I wound up in Observatory, it had a great vibe a great look, tremendous people. By the end of the semester you couldn't walk down the street without meeting someone you knew and having a convo. OBZ is the best I couldn't have asked for a better place.
3. The Babushkas: oh sure they're jaded, angry, pushy,
fearless but these crazy, short, old lady's are
somewhat endearing, they occasionally laugh at you in
a nice way, every once in a while they say excuse me
before sitting on you in the subway, once I even saw
one turn and smile at me when she cut me in the
grocery line. They are characters that's to be sure,
unlike any you might find in the states
3. This might be the greatest difference between Russia and SA those Babushkas so quick to cut you, heckle you, demand from you. here they are so ready (indeed everyone is) help you, let you go first, sing for you, make you take part in something (even if it is that awful beer). I don't think i've seen to many older ladies even get angry except maybe for one time at the wedding when i wasn't singing enough and she felt she was dissapointing me.
2. The war hero's: yesterday was victory day, (while
the rest of the world celebrates the end of WWII on
may 8th Russia decided to be different and celebrate
it as the 9th) there was something quite awe inspiring
watching the Blockade survivors walk down Nevsky in
their annual parade (a parade that gets shorter and
shorter each year mind you) and then in a show of
patriotism everyone follows behind so that most of St.
Petersburg is actually marching behind them (after a
wall of militsia)
2. Okay so this one I'm changing completely, because i can't talk about africa without mentioning all the amazing hiking biking and walking trips i've done and how spectacular each one was, or how for days afterward i thought to myself as I lay in a bath of ice how horribly mountainous South Africa really is. Caving with sean and nick (although caving is not really what it was, it was more of a race up the mountain, a quick stroll through the caves and then a jell-o legged race to the bottom, you guys don't have a slow speed do you? Or those long coastal bike rides i took, who would have thought that coast meant ungodly ride never going on flat road either crawling up or flying down.
1. The Alcohol: come on I mean really it's Russia,
what else could be number one, I'm in the country
where they invented alcoholism. There are babushkas
here who could out drink the most capable frat boys,
we might be buying beer for a party at the
supermarket, but all of a sudden a little old lady
cuts you with 3 liters of vodka in her basket, then
you turn around and there is a 12 year old with a pint
and a beer, you look across at the successful
businessman or woman and they couldn't actually wait
for the line and are drinking their beer in line. You
walk outside and on a sunny day there is no one
without a drink, you see the cop hanging out smoking a
cigarette and drinking a 9 percent beer, the guy at
the kiosk is drinking a beer you get on the metro and
everyone has a "travel drink" beer, canned gin and
tonic, "alco-energy" drink, this country is way beyond
anything you could imagine, trust me. Oh and did I
mention that all this is before 10 am??? So that's it,
that's all I got, I hope everyone enjoyed the emails,
I'll be home soon From Russia with love ellski
10. Yes i suppose that South Africa's drinking culture will be sorely missed. Passing the paint can full of chewy nasty beer, or walking around the townships beer in hand (it seems to be the only place such a thing is really done, the "travel beer" has no place in Obsevatory or cape town.) it makes a funny contrast here, sure you can't drink if you are walking down the street, but everytime you get in a car (the hitchhiking comes to mind) you are offered a beer, it seems to be a tradition, even if the driver isn't always drinking (although often is) you can't take a car ride beerless, it is taboo. Which country wins out on the ridiculousness of drinking? well it's tough to say I think South Africa is more ridiculous in its drinking because it is conscious drinking people notice that people are drunk, people notice that beer is being drank awfully early, whereas russia it can hardly be described so, only foreigners seem that it's ridiculous that children are drinking and the cab driver has a 2 liter beer in the front seat, they are so used to it they don't even notice.
While waiting in line at the jo'burg airport i met a guy, we started talking, wound up talking for quite a while and when i told him i'd studied in russia and south africa he said "it's funny you've done that, i was talking with some one the other day and they were telling me that of all the places that offer study abroad programs there are always the same two countries on the bottom of the list as the least attended South Africa and Russia. Now I know for a fact that I am sending this email to about 100 people that can confirm that this means 90 percent of the study abroad students are making a huge mistake.
Years it has taken to finish college: 7
In those 7 years:
Number of Schools attended: 5
Semesters Abroad: 3
Certificates from God: 2
Countries visited: 22
Continents: 4
Approximate hours on buses: 23 days or 552 hours
Friends for life made: countless
One Perfect College Experience
And just to warn you, this is not the last email. I am in London waiting for my mother to arrive and we head off to Russia for two weeks of more craziness, perhaps a second look will give a new perspective, and yes I am gonna drag my mom to the banya. e
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Welcome to South Africa...Duck Mother****er
That is the line from one of the best t-shirts i've seen here, the only picture on the t-shirt is that of an AK 47.
It seemed quite appropriate as I now seem to live in what can best be termed a slightly different conditions. The trouble started in Jo'burg where anti-immigrant violence broke, directed on Somali's Zimbabwe-ans and Mozambique-ans. Then slowly it traveled down the coast to cape town. The source of the violence is poverty- shocker- people frustrated that there are no jobs and focus there hate on the Somalis who often own the local grocery stores in the townships, and the others who compete for jobs. The church across the road is housing immigrants from the townships which is cool, although it is not to say that there isn't anti-immigrant sentiment here, I remember long before this a man approached me crying (at the time i thought he was a particularly adept beggar) claiming to be from kenya and saying how everyone here was so mean to him and he couldn't get a job, no one would give him a chance. I gave him some change and never thought more of it until this. then the other day a homeless guy came to our door complaining about the immigrants, saying they were taking all the jobs. actually one of the more interesting things recently that we discovered, we have a policy never to give money to anyone who comes to the door, sure that sounds kinda cruel, but it came after we did for the first few days and weeks and suddenly every 5 minutes there is someone at your door, it's too much. well there is this one really quite insane fellow who we gave food to once and he has never really stopped coming, he doesn't speak or shout he just holds his hand on the doorbell for about 10 minutes and then leaves, needless to say he is not a fan favorite, also he accused one of my roomates of stealing from him and he carries a knife. Now it's always been kind of a wonder as too why he keeps coming back. well the other day I was coming back from the store and saw him outside the house, not wanting to get involved with this guy i turned around and pretended I was going the other way, Shortly thereafter he passed by and i walked back to the house, on our wall there was a huge piss stain, it turns out he has been ringing the doorbell for 10 minutes at a time then in vengence he pisses on our wall, i guess he just has to use the bathroom.
Suddenly everything fell apart.
Some of our roomates went to the local restaurant which has free internet. It's a really nice restaurant, and it has always seemed out of place in observatory, even more so with so many people sitting there with their laptops. Sure enough two men enter and try and grab the laptops from two girls sitting next to my roomates, then when the girls refused they started hitting the girls, one of the laptops fell and broke, they panicked grabbed one of my roomates purses and the girls laptop and sprinted out of the restaurant. So that was interesting. Luckily no one was severly hurt or had much taken.
Then there was the one yesterday... this one was scary. Jess was on her way to a final around 430 in the afternoon (you should never take a minibus taxi a) alone as a woman b) after 4 c) one with just dudes. But jess was late for a final, didn't want to wait for her friends and went for it.
(just to clarify these are VW vans with a driver and man sitting in the back opening the door and collecting the money, oh and shouting CAAAAAAAAAAAPE TYYOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNN!!!! to anyone and everyone on the street, often getting out of the car to chase you down just to ask you if you are going to WWYYYYYYYYYYYYYYNNNNNNNNNNBEEEEEERRRRRG which is the other town they call out. but anyway)
jess gets in and immediately things get weird with the money collector
"ah miss we just have to take a detour here to pick up more passengers"
-they toured around the townships, the man collecting the money got sketchier and sketchier "you know dear there are some people who do good things and some who do bad"
- awkward
finally after gassing up the car they continue into a nice area "don't worry sweetie we just have to stop at this factory, don't worry you're safe, I'm not gonna rob and rape ya, ahahahaha"
finally it gets ugly.
he pulls out a knife and demands everything she has "gimme you bank card and pin NOW!!!"
"I don't have it I'm going to a final, why the fuck would I bring it there?" jess by the way is tough
she gives the man her backpack which has nothing, he is still shouting at her and pushing her, and the van is still moving, finally she throws her cell phone at him jumps up to the front seat, the driver stops and she gets out. the van drives off and she finds herself in a nice quiet suburb of capetown, oh and she still has a final to take.
So needless to say things have escalated here. But rest assured in reality these are just a few isolated incidents, on the whole I feel very safe here, alert but safe. Tomorrow marks a week left here before I go to London for a few days, pick up my mother and go to mother russia, I've taken 3 of my "finals", which i wouldn't know whether to classify as really easy or really hard, only grades will tell. Friday is my last final, then some hiking and i'm out of here... well maybe a beer or two.
e
It seemed quite appropriate as I now seem to live in what can best be termed a slightly different conditions. The trouble started in Jo'burg where anti-immigrant violence broke, directed on Somali's Zimbabwe-ans and Mozambique-ans. Then slowly it traveled down the coast to cape town. The source of the violence is poverty- shocker- people frustrated that there are no jobs and focus there hate on the Somalis who often own the local grocery stores in the townships, and the others who compete for jobs. The church across the road is housing immigrants from the townships which is cool, although it is not to say that there isn't anti-immigrant sentiment here, I remember long before this a man approached me crying (at the time i thought he was a particularly adept beggar) claiming to be from kenya and saying how everyone here was so mean to him and he couldn't get a job, no one would give him a chance. I gave him some change and never thought more of it until this. then the other day a homeless guy came to our door complaining about the immigrants, saying they were taking all the jobs. actually one of the more interesting things recently that we discovered, we have a policy never to give money to anyone who comes to the door, sure that sounds kinda cruel, but it came after we did for the first few days and weeks and suddenly every 5 minutes there is someone at your door, it's too much. well there is this one really quite insane fellow who we gave food to once and he has never really stopped coming, he doesn't speak or shout he just holds his hand on the doorbell for about 10 minutes and then leaves, needless to say he is not a fan favorite, also he accused one of my roomates of stealing from him and he carries a knife. Now it's always been kind of a wonder as too why he keeps coming back. well the other day I was coming back from the store and saw him outside the house, not wanting to get involved with this guy i turned around and pretended I was going the other way, Shortly thereafter he passed by and i walked back to the house, on our wall there was a huge piss stain, it turns out he has been ringing the doorbell for 10 minutes at a time then in vengence he pisses on our wall, i guess he just has to use the bathroom.
Suddenly everything fell apart.
Some of our roomates went to the local restaurant which has free internet. It's a really nice restaurant, and it has always seemed out of place in observatory, even more so with so many people sitting there with their laptops. Sure enough two men enter and try and grab the laptops from two girls sitting next to my roomates, then when the girls refused they started hitting the girls, one of the laptops fell and broke, they panicked grabbed one of my roomates purses and the girls laptop and sprinted out of the restaurant. So that was interesting. Luckily no one was severly hurt or had much taken.
Then there was the one yesterday... this one was scary. Jess was on her way to a final around 430 in the afternoon (you should never take a minibus taxi a) alone as a woman b) after 4 c) one with just dudes. But jess was late for a final, didn't want to wait for her friends and went for it.
(just to clarify these are VW vans with a driver and man sitting in the back opening the door and collecting the money, oh and shouting CAAAAAAAAAAAPE TYYOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNN!!!! to anyone and everyone on the street, often getting out of the car to chase you down just to ask you if you are going to WWYYYYYYYYYYYYYYNNNNNNNNNNBEEEEEERRRRRG which is the other town they call out. but anyway)
jess gets in and immediately things get weird with the money collector
"ah miss we just have to take a detour here to pick up more passengers"
-they toured around the townships, the man collecting the money got sketchier and sketchier "you know dear there are some people who do good things and some who do bad"
- awkward
finally after gassing up the car they continue into a nice area "don't worry sweetie we just have to stop at this factory, don't worry you're safe, I'm not gonna rob and rape ya, ahahahaha"
finally it gets ugly.
he pulls out a knife and demands everything she has "gimme you bank card and pin NOW!!!"
"I don't have it I'm going to a final, why the fuck would I bring it there?" jess by the way is tough
she gives the man her backpack which has nothing, he is still shouting at her and pushing her, and the van is still moving, finally she throws her cell phone at him jumps up to the front seat, the driver stops and she gets out. the van drives off and she finds herself in a nice quiet suburb of capetown, oh and she still has a final to take.
So needless to say things have escalated here. But rest assured in reality these are just a few isolated incidents, on the whole I feel very safe here, alert but safe. Tomorrow marks a week left here before I go to London for a few days, pick up my mother and go to mother russia, I've taken 3 of my "finals", which i wouldn't know whether to classify as really easy or really hard, only grades will tell. Friday is my last final, then some hiking and i'm out of here... well maybe a beer or two.
e
Friday, May 23, 2008
Paradise Park: The White Township
I have been really lucky this semester to have decided to take astronomy here. My teacher is a world renowned astronomer who should have been a comedian, every class is like stand-up. Actually he just delivered his last lecture at UCT after 30 years of teaching and the entire science faculty was in my astronomy 100 class, some of his old students even flew in to be at his last lecture, he's a legend. But the best part of the astronomy class was that last weekend he took us out on an overnight camping trip to the desert (Karoo) to visit one of the South hemisphere's largest telescopes (number 2 I think) and do some observing in the dark desert sky.
So dumb old me spent the friday night before the trip getting a good amount of sleep, then the next morning I got up packed a light bag including a light sleeping bag and headed to the meeting point. The first thing I noticed was the size of the bags everyone else had, large, "what could these people have for an overnight" after a five hour bus trip we arrived in the Karoo, my first trip to the desert. The first thing I realized was I was drastically underdressed, and the large bags were sleeping bags for the night. Now I assumed that this being a school trip, it would be pretty mellow. I guess that was when I noticed the people boozing and smoking weed, and this 70 year old man just chilling in the midst of it as if it wasn't happening or just didn't care. Now I had prepared myself for 40 degree temps and that was what it was, but I hadn't considered the wind, which was whipping at a cool 40 miles an hour, blowing our tents all over and getting the "feels like" temperature to about 0. I didn't sleep most of the night partially because the stars were amazing and mostly because i was afraid i would lose a digit in the evening.
That was my first "wholesome" weekend, this last weekend Arne and i decided to have another "wholesome" weekend by going out biking along the coast for two days. Of course our first obstacle was that we wanted to leave really early on saturday morning and of course our favorite band was playing on longstreet friday night, well needless to say we wound up staying up til 3 am jumping up and down and dancing until we were exausted.
we awoke exausted at 7:30 the next morning, sure 4 hours is plenty for a 80 kilometer day (sound familiar levi??) We started off strong, nice tailwind, fairly flat road couple of bumps but nothing too bad, and it was gorgeous out. Then we hit the first mountain, a good 25 minute climb followed by a 5 minute decent of equal distance, and then back into the climb. It was some sort of mental and physical torture, there were no flats, just long painful uphills followed by quick downhills and then more long painfull uphills. After each hill Arne and I would simply break into hysterics as we looked over at the next cliff which would include a huge uphill and a huge downhill. after 40 k we could barely move, but we had to make it to the town with the hostel, which was still 40 ka away. Sadly we had started a bit late (we had to drive to the start and only started at noon) so around 4 we were still a bit far away (somebody had to stop and take photos of the baboons too) so we decided that hitchhiking was safer than riding into the night, so we sat down on the side of the road and prepared some sandwiches for the wait. I hadn't even taken the first bite when a van drew up with 4 people on board all of whom seemed a little to giddy to pick us up. "hop on in guys, going to hermanus??" "yeah thanks" "no problem, here have a beer, we've been at a 4x4 rally all day. We'll give you a ride to hermanus but first i promised my girl here a game of pool." ( I think I actually heard Levi laughing at me for this situation) The first thing I noticed about these guys besides the fact that they had been drinking large quantities of alcohol was that they were pure afrikaaners, they had the real accent.
They brought us to this dive bar literally out in the middle of nowhere. I have never felt less comfortable in a bar, perhaps i'm just used to being in the minority now, but the bar was all white, and they all stared at us rather suspiciously. The guys we were with introduced us to everyone, which was even weirder, one of the guys had an addiction to tiger balm, which was a new one for me, he took it and stuck it up his nose, fair enough, the guy was a huge rugby fan, and looked like he could probably crumple arne and i, so when he insisted we try it I found myself sticking tiger balm up my nose and inhaling deeply, I don't know if I got high, but it certainly smelled like eucalyptus for quite some time. The next guy I met really brought out the true character of the bar to light "yeah Fish-haven used to be amazing until the ANC (African National Congress) moved all the kaffirs (derogatory term for Black peopple) oh wait i'm not supposed to use that term anymore- Blacks here to win the election" I was begining to get a little uncomfortable, needless to say. Eventually we headed out, only after the guys decided we were spending the night at their house (our guys were much more tolerant and nice than the rest of the bar crowd). We headed off towards their house, although not before cruising through the townships at about 60 hitting speed bumps sending those of us in the back a solid foot off the ground (just what you need after a long day of riding - to fall on your ass repeatedly). "Now you guys I know you think the van is very nice, but our house is rather plain, you see we live in a township, a white township" Now I've heard it all. we arrive at the house and honestly it was rather nice, i couldn't see the other houses, but this one was nice. well needless to say we stayed up way to late, watching one of the guys' dog do trick, which includes holding a cigarette in his mouth while walking around, and for some reason that I couldn't understand we kept listening to Guns n Roses, (no complaint for me) in particular "Paradise City" which everyone belted out in their drunken own way. eventually arne and I were able to excuse ourselves and crawl into bed. the next morning was rough, real rough, I couldn't move my neck at all from clenching my shoulders on the uphills my head hurt for some reason and my butt was really painful. Arne and I made a quick exit in the morning for fear of being forced back to the bar, we gingerly got on the bikes and I immediately realized what a "White Township" was: a trailer park. And then I realized why the emphasis on paradise city, the name of the park was Paradise Park.
We rode home the full 85k hungover and really unable to put our butts on the bike seats, but triumphant not only in the concept of an amazing ride, but also a ridiculous night with real Afrikaaners (hey it was uncomfortable but it was an interesting side to SA) and the glory of staying in a white township.
e
So dumb old me spent the friday night before the trip getting a good amount of sleep, then the next morning I got up packed a light bag including a light sleeping bag and headed to the meeting point. The first thing I noticed was the size of the bags everyone else had, large, "what could these people have for an overnight" after a five hour bus trip we arrived in the Karoo, my first trip to the desert. The first thing I realized was I was drastically underdressed, and the large bags were sleeping bags for the night. Now I assumed that this being a school trip, it would be pretty mellow. I guess that was when I noticed the people boozing and smoking weed, and this 70 year old man just chilling in the midst of it as if it wasn't happening or just didn't care. Now I had prepared myself for 40 degree temps and that was what it was, but I hadn't considered the wind, which was whipping at a cool 40 miles an hour, blowing our tents all over and getting the "feels like" temperature to about 0. I didn't sleep most of the night partially because the stars were amazing and mostly because i was afraid i would lose a digit in the evening.
That was my first "wholesome" weekend, this last weekend Arne and i decided to have another "wholesome" weekend by going out biking along the coast for two days. Of course our first obstacle was that we wanted to leave really early on saturday morning and of course our favorite band was playing on longstreet friday night, well needless to say we wound up staying up til 3 am jumping up and down and dancing until we were exausted.
we awoke exausted at 7:30 the next morning, sure 4 hours is plenty for a 80 kilometer day (sound familiar levi??) We started off strong, nice tailwind, fairly flat road couple of bumps but nothing too bad, and it was gorgeous out. Then we hit the first mountain, a good 25 minute climb followed by a 5 minute decent of equal distance, and then back into the climb. It was some sort of mental and physical torture, there were no flats, just long painful uphills followed by quick downhills and then more long painfull uphills. After each hill Arne and I would simply break into hysterics as we looked over at the next cliff which would include a huge uphill and a huge downhill. after 40 k we could barely move, but we had to make it to the town with the hostel, which was still 40 ka away. Sadly we had started a bit late (we had to drive to the start and only started at noon) so around 4 we were still a bit far away (somebody had to stop and take photos of the baboons too) so we decided that hitchhiking was safer than riding into the night, so we sat down on the side of the road and prepared some sandwiches for the wait. I hadn't even taken the first bite when a van drew up with 4 people on board all of whom seemed a little to giddy to pick us up. "hop on in guys, going to hermanus??" "yeah thanks" "no problem, here have a beer, we've been at a 4x4 rally all day. We'll give you a ride to hermanus but first i promised my girl here a game of pool." ( I think I actually heard Levi laughing at me for this situation) The first thing I noticed about these guys besides the fact that they had been drinking large quantities of alcohol was that they were pure afrikaaners, they had the real accent.
They brought us to this dive bar literally out in the middle of nowhere. I have never felt less comfortable in a bar, perhaps i'm just used to being in the minority now, but the bar was all white, and they all stared at us rather suspiciously. The guys we were with introduced us to everyone, which was even weirder, one of the guys had an addiction to tiger balm, which was a new one for me, he took it and stuck it up his nose, fair enough, the guy was a huge rugby fan, and looked like he could probably crumple arne and i, so when he insisted we try it I found myself sticking tiger balm up my nose and inhaling deeply, I don't know if I got high, but it certainly smelled like eucalyptus for quite some time. The next guy I met really brought out the true character of the bar to light "yeah Fish-haven used to be amazing until the ANC (African National Congress) moved all the kaffirs (derogatory term for Black peopple) oh wait i'm not supposed to use that term anymore- Blacks here to win the election" I was begining to get a little uncomfortable, needless to say. Eventually we headed out, only after the guys decided we were spending the night at their house (our guys were much more tolerant and nice than the rest of the bar crowd). We headed off towards their house, although not before cruising through the townships at about 60 hitting speed bumps sending those of us in the back a solid foot off the ground (just what you need after a long day of riding - to fall on your ass repeatedly). "Now you guys I know you think the van is very nice, but our house is rather plain, you see we live in a township, a white township" Now I've heard it all. we arrive at the house and honestly it was rather nice, i couldn't see the other houses, but this one was nice. well needless to say we stayed up way to late, watching one of the guys' dog do trick, which includes holding a cigarette in his mouth while walking around, and for some reason that I couldn't understand we kept listening to Guns n Roses, (no complaint for me) in particular "Paradise City" which everyone belted out in their drunken own way. eventually arne and I were able to excuse ourselves and crawl into bed. the next morning was rough, real rough, I couldn't move my neck at all from clenching my shoulders on the uphills my head hurt for some reason and my butt was really painful. Arne and I made a quick exit in the morning for fear of being forced back to the bar, we gingerly got on the bikes and I immediately realized what a "White Township" was: a trailer park. And then I realized why the emphasis on paradise city, the name of the park was Paradise Park.
We rode home the full 85k hungover and really unable to put our butts on the bike seats, but triumphant not only in the concept of an amazing ride, but also a ridiculous night with real Afrikaaners (hey it was uncomfortable but it was an interesting side to SA) and the glory of staying in a white township.
e
Kalle Trophy, Township Wedding: How Gangsta is That?
Well there had been a lot of build up to this past week and weekend. Arne one of my German roomates had recruited us into his Kalle Trophy months ago, We'd been anticipating the Township wedding for weeks and a 50 Cent concert in Cape Town was a must. Let's start with The Kalle Trophy, a time honored German tradition of drinking and walking on Fathers Day (sssshhhhhh no one tell the gemans that May first is actually Worker's Day). Apparently Arne has been running this tradition for 9 years and he was determined to bring it to cape town. We got quite a crew including Gary, the owner of the Corner Bar, we even did a cruise out to the site of the walk a week in advance with Gary (which involved going to pick him up in Mitchel's Plain on the Cape Flats, keep that in mind for later) We settled on Tocai Forest where i went riding earlier this trip.
The day finally arrived, we all gathered at our house (gary and his wife actually slept at the bar the night before so as to be ready- I don't really know why his wife did, but whatever) and one of our female roomates gave us a ride to the forest(for some reason this is an all male event). We had a trailer for our beer as is tradition, ours was our trash can. Needless to say seven guys with sharpie written t-shirts with necklaces of beer cans were a complete success. It was a national holiday, everyone was barbequeing or braai-ing and drinking heavily. We spent our time walking between campfires cooking our own meat and talking to people. It was perfect, the day was beautiful everyone thought that they had never seen anything so silly as a group of Americans Germans and South Africans towing a big trash can full of beer and meat. Then as usual, there was the dancing, you can't seem to go anywhere without a spontaneous dance party, this is why we always bring our german, Flo with us because he can outdance anyone under the sun and then we can just sit back and watch.
It's always a good day when you wake up and put on a pinstripe suit, and that saturday was one of those days. Arne and I decided to rent suits for the occasion, and if you are gonna rent suits you might as well go pinstripes. we show up at the meeting place painfully overdessed (or in our opinion, spectacular) and head to the township. This was an amazing experience, I can't stress enough how amazing the energy at this wedding was unbelievable. We arrived at her house and the singing and dancing was in full effect, dozens of women in full color african dress chanting and singing grabbing us and pulling us into the circles. After the bride came out of the house in a beautiful home made dress the procession sang their way to the church which if was in the US rather resembled a VFW hall. But this was more of a church than any I've ever been in, the wedding party danced down the aisle to Xhosa songs and the marriage was performed by a "fire and brimstone" priest who did more scolding and warnings about South African society (he at one point screamed that the devil was present during the ceremony, it got eerily creepy when he would switch into Xhosa) than commending the couple. Then Lindiwe (the bride and our house manager) was given a new name and they were pronounced man and wife. Then came the more unexpected aspect of the wedding, the reception. We were under the impression that there would be a braai at Lindiwe's house and there would be a party all night, but actually we went to a school gymnasium where there was an eloquent reception which you would all recognize as a belonging in a wedding, well except once again for the group songs and spontaneous dancing. The African touch?? we sat in two informal sittings where when you were done you got up and someone else took your seat, this created an really cool mix, we got to meet lots of people. I think the only way that I can explain the energy of this event was that in the initial trip to the church one of the few cars that were going accidentally ran over and killed the neighbors puppy, (gruesome I know) but there was no stopping of singing or anything there was too much excitement for the occasion, even the owner seemed not too mind.
We had to leave early though, we had a concert to go to, a fifty cent concert no less on the cape flats. Perfect. It was not as wild as we would have liked though, we thought for sure the scene would be really exciting even though none of us really like the music. Instead it was rather not full, but there were some rather amusing moments watching 50 cent try and act gangster in a city that certainly held some tougher men than him. My favorite moment was when he brought up a group of what appeared to be small children up on the stage made a couple of comments about children being the future or something then asked one of the girls how old she was. "22" she replied and fifty was rendered speechless. Then he tried to play a dangerous game, Guess-Where-That-Guy-In-The-Audience-Is_From. "I've been all over Africa and I can tell where guys are from, that guy is from Angola!!" Nope, South African care to try again fifty? "Well that guy in the grey definitely is" nope Mozambique. It got quite amusing, also at the end of every song he played a gunshot sound, the first few times you saw quite a few people jump, but eventually they realized what was going on.
Recently Gary burnt us two of his favorite movies, we had let them sit about for a while not thinking about them until the day after the fifty cent concert when we decided to put one in. It wasn't a movie it was a documentary about Polsmore Prison, the prison located just outside of town (right next to the US Consulate) and the gangs that call it home. Disturbing and scary. The first scene was of the inmates being strip searched on entry to the prison, each man was made to squat before entry so as to make sure that they aren't carrying drugs and according to the head warden "to prepare them for being raped" Then we met some of the "Numbers" most of whom had come in for just a few years but were now in for life "they prefer here to the outside". Then they travelled out to the Cape Flats where the majority of the gang members come from (indeed the gang is now also an outside of prison gang) They interviewed the Americans which is a gang on the flats complete with there own "White house" where they smoke Tik or Meth. They are the most powerful game on the Cape and have thousands of members, and they are aligned with the Numbers. Then the documentary went back into the prison where the warden discussed the way the prison was broken down, this was perhaps the most bizarre part, they label half the prison "for gangsters only" literally the signs on the walls say gangster section. They might as well say "numbers hangout". He then acknowledged that they don't attempt to stop drugs, rape or fighting/ murder, they just try to keep them from overpowering the guards who they outnumber 100 to 1. well I feel safe just a few k from the prison. Well at least I live in Obz, not near where these gangs hang out.
The next day Tom ran into Gary and told him how fascinated we were with his documentary. "Oh yeah isn't it crazy, there are so many of the Number's that hang out in Obz. They love to go out to the bars here." Perfect, stay away from the tatooed guys in the corners of bars. e
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Mustaches, Bikes and Books
so what has it been two weeks?? It has been an interesting 2 weeks I guess the place to start is the mustache party, i swear i'd never even been to a theme party until i came here, no every week i seem to have to do something to my hair or dress. I can't grow a mustache, lets just put that out there to begin with, luckily neither can most in only a weeks time, so i would say there were about 100 heavily mascara clad mustaches at this party. It was a great party, they even managed to get an American Classic, a keg. unfortunately there was no yard at this house so the party just slowly poured out onto the street until it was something of a block party, that is when the five cop cars came and broke up the party, thats right in one of the most dangerous countries in the world the police have nothing better to do than break up mustache parties (i love the thought of them getting back to the station and telling the others "you would not believe the party we just broke up!!") Luckily the house was just a stones through from The Corner Bar. Now I think i might have mentioned this place once or twice, but i can only say that i might have created a monster. It was the same bar we had the birthday party at where i baked the cat cake, and yeah i've become rather close with the owner (i currently have a tab there for making his 14 year old daughter a cake for her birthday, heart shaped for chris brown, who apparently is a musician). But now I can hardly go out without someone saying "ell we've got to go to the corner bar i've never been and i hear the samoosas are incredible (true this family run bar boasts some of the best food around)" so needless to say, when the party was busted we went to the corner bar. Anyway in the morning we got up for our group trip to Robben Island. We happened to go on one of the roughest days of the year, perfect after a mustache party. The whole tour I was just walking around in a group and i could never figure out why I felt so awkward, then after taking a couple of pictures around the island I realized I still had my handlebar mascara mustache. perfect. besides this the trip to Robben Island was excellent, they have an ingenious concept of giving you two tour guides one a former Pan African Congress prisoner and then a African National Congress prisoner, it was awesome, and the island itself was beautiful, the view of cape town was spectacular.
The next day Jorn my dear Norwegian friend borrowed some bikes from another group of our south African friends (this is becoming a habit) and went on an all day bike ride through cape town to cape point. well you can't win them all, about mid way out one of the bikes broke, so we're stuck about an hour from cape town with two rather large bicycles, luckily the ticket salesmen for the trains said for a mere dollar more we could take our bikes on the train, the only problem with this was that this information was not known to anyone else working in the station, so at every new entrance we were told that we couldn't take the bikes on the train, followed by that person going back to the ticket counter to find out, this happened about 4 times before we were allowed to get on the train. The best part was when we finally get the bikes on board and one of the passengers leans over and says "are you allowed to bring bikes on board?"
Now on a sad and disturbing note, there have been many violent crimes in and around campus lately, firstly there was an armed robbery on the campus last saturday, where the end result was a shootout with the campus security, however there was no injuries. Then much more tragically on monday one of the professors here was murdered outside his house as he was backing his car out to let his wife into the garage, two men tried to take his car and apparently there was a problem. This is the second such incident at UCT this year. Also one of our study abroad students was in an altercation the other night where he wound up stabbed by a screwdriver. He was fine luckily but this is one of many robberies that I know of, I've been lucky so far though.
But I won't end on such a sad note.
The other day I was thinking that perhaps I hadn't really set the scene of what it is like here at least academically. We've all been trying to really figure out how to describe what the school here is like. It's not really like school, you go to lectures you learn nothing, we've been going to the lectures for 3 months now and none of us can even come up with what kind of questions they might ask on the finals. No one has a clue in any of my classes, then someone the other day asked whether the lectures were really based around the finals and the teacher said "no, it's all just based on the packets, lectures are just to pull things together if you're confused" makes sense, why would you have classes that taught you anything. So we've taken to calling this semester abroad as an academic decathalon, here are the ten obstacles that you must overcome to pass this semester:
1. Classes that are in no way based around your 2 hour final worth 50 percent of your grade
2. Having only 250mb per month of internet at UCT after that you're cut off and must use an internet cafe
3. Blackouts twice a week on campus during school hours
4. blackouts twice a week at your home at night (really makes procrastinating a thing of the past you've never heard so many people say "oh I can't tonight I have to write a paper due 2 days from now in case there is a blackout")
5. You can't buy the books you need on campus or at any specific store in capetown, but the library only has one copy of each on 2 hour loan, tough luck come essay time, oh and amazon won't ship or sell to South Africa
6. The campus printing facilities often go out for weeks at a time (yes for some unknown reason an entire campus of printers is connected)
7. you can't bring coffee (or for that matter anything) into the library (this one might be my least favorite)
8. They have taken the top 25 points off the grade scale so passing is 50-75 so you never really know what you are getting in a class, I mean really what is a 67??
9. Every Thursday and friday there is either a concert, dance competition, drum session or some sort of school sanctioned event right in the middle of campus so that no class room is without noise pollution
10. and my favorite this coming long weekend before most everyones big papers are due and your tests are approaching they have decided to close the library for 6 days in a row followed by a monday with a power outage, luckily they have advertised this in a small corner of the library where i happened to pass on my way to take out a book for 2 hours.
e
The next day Jorn my dear Norwegian friend borrowed some bikes from another group of our south African friends (this is becoming a habit) and went on an all day bike ride through cape town to cape point. well you can't win them all, about mid way out one of the bikes broke, so we're stuck about an hour from cape town with two rather large bicycles, luckily the ticket salesmen for the trains said for a mere dollar more we could take our bikes on the train, the only problem with this was that this information was not known to anyone else working in the station, so at every new entrance we were told that we couldn't take the bikes on the train, followed by that person going back to the ticket counter to find out, this happened about 4 times before we were allowed to get on the train. The best part was when we finally get the bikes on board and one of the passengers leans over and says "are you allowed to bring bikes on board?"
Now on a sad and disturbing note, there have been many violent crimes in and around campus lately, firstly there was an armed robbery on the campus last saturday, where the end result was a shootout with the campus security, however there was no injuries. Then much more tragically on monday one of the professors here was murdered outside his house as he was backing his car out to let his wife into the garage, two men tried to take his car and apparently there was a problem. This is the second such incident at UCT this year. Also one of our study abroad students was in an altercation the other night where he wound up stabbed by a screwdriver. He was fine luckily but this is one of many robberies that I know of, I've been lucky so far though.
But I won't end on such a sad note.
The other day I was thinking that perhaps I hadn't really set the scene of what it is like here at least academically. We've all been trying to really figure out how to describe what the school here is like. It's not really like school, you go to lectures you learn nothing, we've been going to the lectures for 3 months now and none of us can even come up with what kind of questions they might ask on the finals. No one has a clue in any of my classes, then someone the other day asked whether the lectures were really based around the finals and the teacher said "no, it's all just based on the packets, lectures are just to pull things together if you're confused" makes sense, why would you have classes that taught you anything. So we've taken to calling this semester abroad as an academic decathalon, here are the ten obstacles that you must overcome to pass this semester:
1. Classes that are in no way based around your 2 hour final worth 50 percent of your grade
2. Having only 250mb per month of internet at UCT after that you're cut off and must use an internet cafe
3. Blackouts twice a week on campus during school hours
4. blackouts twice a week at your home at night (really makes procrastinating a thing of the past you've never heard so many people say "oh I can't tonight I have to write a paper due 2 days from now in case there is a blackout")
5. You can't buy the books you need on campus or at any specific store in capetown, but the library only has one copy of each on 2 hour loan, tough luck come essay time, oh and amazon won't ship or sell to South Africa
6. The campus printing facilities often go out for weeks at a time (yes for some unknown reason an entire campus of printers is connected)
7. you can't bring coffee (or for that matter anything) into the library (this one might be my least favorite)
8. They have taken the top 25 points off the grade scale so passing is 50-75 so you never really know what you are getting in a class, I mean really what is a 67??
9. Every Thursday and friday there is either a concert, dance competition, drum session or some sort of school sanctioned event right in the middle of campus so that no class room is without noise pollution
10. and my favorite this coming long weekend before most everyones big papers are due and your tests are approaching they have decided to close the library for 6 days in a row followed by a monday with a power outage, luckily they have advertised this in a small corner of the library where i happened to pass on my way to take out a book for 2 hours.
e
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
A Couple of bike rides my parents would disapprove of
So one of the best parts of our mozambique trip is that I now have a lot of new south african friends, in particular ones who like to hike and bike, perfect i'll get to check out some really cool places around here that aren't in the guidebooks. So one thursday I agreed to go with my friend nick mountain biking, he had a friend who could lend me a bike. we met at school, he had told me he could give me a ride to the trail, I niavely thought he meant that he had a car. we walk through the parking lot to of course... a 1970 motorcycle "ugh nick i'm not riding on the back of this" "com'on of course you are, why wouldn't you??" "ah because I've never ridden a motorbike before and i think they're crazy" "oh don't worry it's easy just keep your wait centered" "what happens if i don't keep my weight centered" "we crash silly" perfect. next thing i know i'm on the back of this thing flying through capetown with an iron grip on nicks shoulders begging to be allowed to walk. we were successful in getting to nicks house where there was of course his car. needless to say i insisted on taking the car after that.
We get to the trail head meet up with Nick's friend Rob, who had the bike for me, he pulls out this aging bike that looks well, rather fragile, but i am so excited to go biking that I hop right on, then the next bit of bad news hits "ugh dude we forgot your helmet, that's okay right" perfect, before i can really contemplate that ridiculous concept, i discover that the brakes are reversed meaning that the brake lever i am instinctively used to gripping in an emergency is no longer the rear brake but the first break. well no big deal we're just going to climb a mountain and then descend, on the way up i won't need brakes or a helmet and on the way down I would just go slow and cautious.
now it has been a while since i've mountain biked, and heading straight up a mountain is probably not the easiest way to "get back into it" but after 1 and a half torturous hours of climbing through the most amazing scenery overlooking cape town we finally made it to the down hill, at this point i could barely feel my legs and i was feeling like I might have sweated out every ounce of liquid out of my body, but i had made it. now the downhill, then i can go and rehydrate. well easier said than done, i guess it is obvious to anyone else that an hour and a half of climbing is not a quick descent. But i was up for the challenge, thinking it would be mainly fire roads, well that was silly, this is Africa after all. I quickly realize that it is a really tight singletrack (just think shoulder to shoulder) and that every fifty meters or so there is a rather large jump or drop. what more could i ask for if i had a helmet and functioning breaks that weren't reversed. my parents would have been rather proud seeing how cautiously I went down the mountain, i even got off and walked to the laughter of the others. But it was amazing can't wait to do it again, perhaps with a helmet though.
Besides that things here in SA have been rather quiet, we went to a jungle themed party which was an excuse to buy some traditional dress shirts, we've been in the middle of some really creepy minibus territory wars including one where our driver hit one of the rival minibus money collectors (they are always leaving the car running around the street trying to get you to go to a area called "wynberg" which I can only imagine what it is like) but instead of apologizing or even just moving on he gets out of the van and runs screaming after him, perhaps the funniest part of this was that as he got out of the drivers seat he dropped his bottle of booze on the ground in front of him. then the other day one of our housemates Perris was almost arrested while in a taxi that turned out to be smuggling drugs. oh and perhaps the best part of the week was when I got ready to make my triumphant return to the Russian empire. I go to the consulate at 2:30 knowing they close at 5 thinking to myself what perfect timing this was. I go up to the consulate and open the door, the receptionist behind the desk looks at me like i just slapped her in the face or something, I try to recover with a smile, "hi I'm here to apply for a visa" "no" "okay why not" "we're closed" of course "what time do you reopen?" naively thinking that it was lunch break "tomorrow" "okay could i just leave my application and everything here?" "no! you come back tomorrow" well that makes sense, should be a fun trip to russia! ellski
We get to the trail head meet up with Nick's friend Rob, who had the bike for me, he pulls out this aging bike that looks well, rather fragile, but i am so excited to go biking that I hop right on, then the next bit of bad news hits "ugh dude we forgot your helmet, that's okay right" perfect, before i can really contemplate that ridiculous concept, i discover that the brakes are reversed meaning that the brake lever i am instinctively used to gripping in an emergency is no longer the rear brake but the first break. well no big deal we're just going to climb a mountain and then descend, on the way up i won't need brakes or a helmet and on the way down I would just go slow and cautious.
now it has been a while since i've mountain biked, and heading straight up a mountain is probably not the easiest way to "get back into it" but after 1 and a half torturous hours of climbing through the most amazing scenery overlooking cape town we finally made it to the down hill, at this point i could barely feel my legs and i was feeling like I might have sweated out every ounce of liquid out of my body, but i had made it. now the downhill, then i can go and rehydrate. well easier said than done, i guess it is obvious to anyone else that an hour and a half of climbing is not a quick descent. But i was up for the challenge, thinking it would be mainly fire roads, well that was silly, this is Africa after all. I quickly realize that it is a really tight singletrack (just think shoulder to shoulder) and that every fifty meters or so there is a rather large jump or drop. what more could i ask for if i had a helmet and functioning breaks that weren't reversed. my parents would have been rather proud seeing how cautiously I went down the mountain, i even got off and walked to the laughter of the others. But it was amazing can't wait to do it again, perhaps with a helmet though.
Besides that things here in SA have been rather quiet, we went to a jungle themed party which was an excuse to buy some traditional dress shirts, we've been in the middle of some really creepy minibus territory wars including one where our driver hit one of the rival minibus money collectors (they are always leaving the car running around the street trying to get you to go to a area called "wynberg" which I can only imagine what it is like) but instead of apologizing or even just moving on he gets out of the van and runs screaming after him, perhaps the funniest part of this was that as he got out of the drivers seat he dropped his bottle of booze on the ground in front of him. then the other day one of our housemates Perris was almost arrested while in a taxi that turned out to be smuggling drugs. oh and perhaps the best part of the week was when I got ready to make my triumphant return to the Russian empire. I go to the consulate at 2:30 knowing they close at 5 thinking to myself what perfect timing this was. I go up to the consulate and open the door, the receptionist behind the desk looks at me like i just slapped her in the face or something, I try to recover with a smile, "hi I'm here to apply for a visa" "no" "okay why not" "we're closed" of course "what time do you reopen?" naively thinking that it was lunch break "tomorrow" "okay could i just leave my application and everything here?" "no! you come back tomorrow" well that makes sense, should be a fun trip to russia! ellski
Mozambique: Guns, Hoes, and Books
First things first let's set the scene for my fall break here in Africa:
The Legend of Sean
When we first arrived here in Cape Town in January, there were several people constantly in and out of our house who seemed to be working for the landlord, but one guy in particular caught our attention. this guy sean seemed to have absolutely no responsibilities, we really only saw him at social events (i.e. the bar), then one day we went with the landlords company to go hiking, perhaps you remember, the caves. Well we were all introducing ourselves, most people were going to UCT, but then one girl was just like "oh hi I'm kate, I'm sean's intern" This guy has an intern??? So then we begin to wonder even more about sean, eventually it comes out that he owns the houses we rent. fair enough, he's 28 a college dropout and owns 6 houses, good for him, then we later find out that he owns a scuba diving school and a company that provides Americans internships in cape town. fantastic, really cool guy, successful, good for him, but then one day we find out the real kicker: he lives with his parents!!! Perfect. so needless to say when we find out that he is running a trip to mozambique and swaziland in a big bus (and not one of those ridiculous overland oversized SUV's) with 50 american, german, norweigan, south african and french students and interns it was love at first sight tom and I were bound to go.
The Trip:
the first thing i can say about this trip was I should have looked more closely at the tickets that tom bought us for johannesburg, 1-Time Airlines is not something I would have gone for looking back on it. We get to the airport in Capetown, and we are supposed to be in jo'burg by 11 at night which means our flight needs to leave at 8:30 latest, luckily we booked one at 745, no biggie. well one thing that no one tells you about the cape town airport until you get there is that it works on a rotational basis, now i have absolutely no idea what that means but I rather imagine that all the pilots are in the back room somewhere playing cards and whoever wins each round gets to go and takeoff. well let me just say that the 1-time pilot doesn't have much of a poker face because we were a solid 2 and a half hours late taking off, watching other flights to jo'burg leave only slightly late because there pilots got better hands. we finally arrive and meet up with the group, let the vacation begin.
should have known from the start what kind of crazy ride this was going to be, an all night bus ride to maputo the capitol of mozambique?? we get on the bus and the first thing i notice is there is one thing definitely missing, a bathroom. "Okay everybody welcome to the moz trip 2008, now we don't have a bathroom on this bus, so everyone has one emergency piss stop for the trip, and other than that you must have a group of five guys or 3 girls to stop the bus." "the sean" has spoken and the rules are in place. we soon learn from the first stop what is meant by a pee stop, a pull over on the side of an african highway, peeing into the tall grass. it was about 4 in the morning when we came upon our first incident, ever seen one of those awnings for cars to pull under to keep cool??? well we accidentally backed into one of those (mind you we did have 2 professional drivers just to clarify) but that wasn't really a big deal, however when we drove forward it actually ripped the entire back window out. an interesting turn of events to say the least. we went with the quick fix option of putting about 4 surfboards against the hole to block most of the air coming in, but for the rest of the trip we had to fully unload the bus each stop as we had real trouble locking the doors after that.
That morning we arrived at the mozambique border, where we had been warned of having to wait for several hours at the border. what was not really described for us was what the mozambique border would be like, in fact i don't know if it is possible to describe it, I think one of the more interesting aspects about it was that whereas we had been on paved roads the entire time and indeed would be as soon as we got a bit past the border, the crossing itself was totally dirt, I had never seen so many interesting things crossing a border either, a man walking a cow across (actually there was quite a few of those), people pushing cars across, trucks chock full of fresh spices and herbs, what else. it was about this time that we were told we physically had to leave the bus and leave south Africa (i.e. paperwork) and walk to mozambique (i.e. paperwork) and that then we could reboard the bus. well after making our way through a maze of abandoned cars, alleyways between shacks and numerous trash heaps (funny enough there were no signs of any kind here) we arrived at a rather large shed, or perhaps garage is more appropriate, where we waited for about 2 hours for the visas to be filed (in a filing cabinet, don't think for a second about computers). finally we get back on pavement, pass the no-mans land between the official border between the two countries (I now being a connoisseur of razor wire and security must say they really do a fine job there, and the landmines are really a nice addition, they really tie the border together) AND WE ARE IN MOZAMBIQUE!!!!! just another short 6 hours on the bus and we're ... oh wait i nearly forgot there was another incident, someone i won't name names because it is rather embarrassingly dumb really had to pee, and boy when the next pee break come, he just hopped out of the bus and ran to relieve himself, he thought he felt some thing strange but his mind was rather on other pressing matters, when he finally looked to see why his foot rather hurt he realized he had cut it on a broken bottle grass. boy am i glad i'm not that guy, not only did he have to deal with the cut, but everyone kept coming up to him and saying "boy ell you'd better keep that cut clean, last year i had one on the trip and my foot swelled up to the size of a football." or "I think i'm gonna call you a doctor for that cut when we get to maputo, don't want to take any risks" just what i wanted to hear. so foot elevated (it really in the end was a very minor cut) we arrived in the capitol city, Maputo. The first thing I noticed about Maputo besides how sketchy and interesting it was, was that literally every single street was named after a communist socialist or at least far left ruler, president, revolutionary or dictator. Mao road intersected engels ave, frelimo (the leftist ruling party in Mozambique) drive with lenin lane etc. that night we went to a brazilian bar for dinner and drinks, the most interesting thing about this bar was that they were soccer freaks "ellery, there is nothing strange about a brazilian bar being really into soccer, it's there national pastime, if they weren't it would be weird" true, you are right about that, but what was weird was that they were huge ITALIAN soccer fans, everywhere were flags of Serie A and the national team. The next day we went around the city in our windowless bus, stopping in the market, where i was talked into buying many silly things i don't need by a lot of "friends" who gave me a "special price". then we went to the very famous Maputo fish market where you go through the market and buy a fish of your liking and then go to the restaurant where they cook it for you, it was amazing, so fresh and delicious, maybe the best fish i've ever eaten, but i was going to be saying that quite a bit on this trip.one thing that was new to me at these hostels we stayed at was the mosquito netting, i don't know if you've ever slept in mosquito netting but it is one of the most frustrating things, it's always caught somewhere, or a limb of yours has found it's way out and is eaten alive by morning, i think i'll be getting malaria anyday now. It was decided at some point that it would be much better to once again drive a midnight bus trip to get one more day in tofo (amusingly pronounced tofu) it was grueling but worth it we drove all night, where tom and i discovered the art of sleeping in the aisles of the bus, for maximum comfort, which tom very rightly described as "similar to when george costanza sleeps under his desk at work." when we got to tofo we checked into our thatched huts and headed to the bathwater that is the indian ocean, nothing quite as refreshing after an all day bus ride than a sunset dip.
About our hostel at tofo:
there were several amusing points about it, the saltwater was clearer than the rest of the water which was a rather gross brown color, the bar called bamboozi had literally no money the entire time we were there, even with 50 students giving them money all day and night they seemed to never have any change, so they created their own currency, bamboozi bucks, which was just a scrap of paper that had a number written on it, as in the amount owed to you and a signature, i think this is how currency actually started out isn't it? As I said they had disgusting brown water here, probably with cholera already mixed in (there had been a typhoon a few weeks ago which had flooded the place creating a bit of an outbreak) but the bar, the only food supply within 15 minute walk down the beach, had no water, the first day they had about 25 bottles, then 2 days later they got about 40 more, but these were both gone within a matter of hours. besides that small inconvenience it was heaven, a small town within walking distance on the beach where you could go to get amazing street food, like fresh fish, barracuda samosas, or to barter your shorts for some wood carvings. one of seans employees took me and a couple others to go get our hair braided outside of town, away from the common scene, into the real thatched huts, and we spent the day with these wonderful people who braided our hair for about 2 dollars apiece (they made custom pants for 6). by the fourth morning it had become apparent that I was either the worlds greatest mosquito attractor or I had bed bugs, genetically mutated unstoppable bedbugs, and judging from the mattress i was sleeping on it seemed the latter was the most logical. I'd never had bed bugs, so it was kind of a new and exciting if not disgusting experience.
After 5 days well spent on the beaches and village of tofo, we left again at 1am for Swaziland, which luckily was only a cool 12 hours away, did i mention that for all of these bus rides, there were no food stops, we might hit a convenience store if you were lucky but for the most part it was just pee stops on the side of the highway. now i did say it was just a cool 12 hours, but our bus was quickly dying, to get to tofo we had had to off road for about a half hour, which is not easy in a greyhound. in swazi we were simply crawling up hills slower than cyclists, and then when we finally got to the town 17 hours later we had to take the bus down a road which can only be described as not a road. but we made it to paradise number two. We were only in swaziland for a day and a half but it was possibly even more amazing than tofo, we went on a safari, we went off roading in something other than a bus, there were bonfires, and nick (sean's friend who had taken me for the braids) and myself snuck off and found a genuine swazi village, not like the one they offer you as a tour, and we hung out there with the people for quite a while, the food here was also some of the best of the trip, amazing beef stew, wonderful chicken, and traditional swazi gruel, which is the wrong word but the right one escapes me, for breakfast. finally it all came to an end as we cruised back to jo'burg in our windowless, squeaking, bathroomless bus and flew 1-time back to Cape Town. perfect. el
oh and the title??? the mozambique flag's crest is a cross of a hoe and a ak-47 with a book behind it. what could be more appropriate.
The Legend of Sean
When we first arrived here in Cape Town in January, there were several people constantly in and out of our house who seemed to be working for the landlord, but one guy in particular caught our attention. this guy sean seemed to have absolutely no responsibilities, we really only saw him at social events (i.e. the bar), then one day we went with the landlords company to go hiking, perhaps you remember, the caves. Well we were all introducing ourselves, most people were going to UCT, but then one girl was just like "oh hi I'm kate, I'm sean's intern" This guy has an intern??? So then we begin to wonder even more about sean, eventually it comes out that he owns the houses we rent. fair enough, he's 28 a college dropout and owns 6 houses, good for him, then we later find out that he owns a scuba diving school and a company that provides Americans internships in cape town. fantastic, really cool guy, successful, good for him, but then one day we find out the real kicker: he lives with his parents!!! Perfect. so needless to say when we find out that he is running a trip to mozambique and swaziland in a big bus (and not one of those ridiculous overland oversized SUV's) with 50 american, german, norweigan, south african and french students and interns it was love at first sight tom and I were bound to go.
The Trip:
the first thing i can say about this trip was I should have looked more closely at the tickets that tom bought us for johannesburg, 1-Time Airlines is not something I would have gone for looking back on it. We get to the airport in Capetown, and we are supposed to be in jo'burg by 11 at night which means our flight needs to leave at 8:30 latest, luckily we booked one at 745, no biggie. well one thing that no one tells you about the cape town airport until you get there is that it works on a rotational basis, now i have absolutely no idea what that means but I rather imagine that all the pilots are in the back room somewhere playing cards and whoever wins each round gets to go and takeoff. well let me just say that the 1-time pilot doesn't have much of a poker face because we were a solid 2 and a half hours late taking off, watching other flights to jo'burg leave only slightly late because there pilots got better hands. we finally arrive and meet up with the group, let the vacation begin.
should have known from the start what kind of crazy ride this was going to be, an all night bus ride to maputo the capitol of mozambique?? we get on the bus and the first thing i notice is there is one thing definitely missing, a bathroom. "Okay everybody welcome to the moz trip 2008, now we don't have a bathroom on this bus, so everyone has one emergency piss stop for the trip, and other than that you must have a group of five guys or 3 girls to stop the bus." "the sean" has spoken and the rules are in place. we soon learn from the first stop what is meant by a pee stop, a pull over on the side of an african highway, peeing into the tall grass. it was about 4 in the morning when we came upon our first incident, ever seen one of those awnings for cars to pull under to keep cool??? well we accidentally backed into one of those (mind you we did have 2 professional drivers just to clarify) but that wasn't really a big deal, however when we drove forward it actually ripped the entire back window out. an interesting turn of events to say the least. we went with the quick fix option of putting about 4 surfboards against the hole to block most of the air coming in, but for the rest of the trip we had to fully unload the bus each stop as we had real trouble locking the doors after that.
That morning we arrived at the mozambique border, where we had been warned of having to wait for several hours at the border. what was not really described for us was what the mozambique border would be like, in fact i don't know if it is possible to describe it, I think one of the more interesting aspects about it was that whereas we had been on paved roads the entire time and indeed would be as soon as we got a bit past the border, the crossing itself was totally dirt, I had never seen so many interesting things crossing a border either, a man walking a cow across (actually there was quite a few of those), people pushing cars across, trucks chock full of fresh spices and herbs, what else. it was about this time that we were told we physically had to leave the bus and leave south Africa (i.e. paperwork) and walk to mozambique (i.e. paperwork) and that then we could reboard the bus. well after making our way through a maze of abandoned cars, alleyways between shacks and numerous trash heaps (funny enough there were no signs of any kind here) we arrived at a rather large shed, or perhaps garage is more appropriate, where we waited for about 2 hours for the visas to be filed (in a filing cabinet, don't think for a second about computers). finally we get back on pavement, pass the no-mans land between the official border between the two countries (I now being a connoisseur of razor wire and security must say they really do a fine job there, and the landmines are really a nice addition, they really tie the border together) AND WE ARE IN MOZAMBIQUE!!!!! just another short 6 hours on the bus and we're ... oh wait i nearly forgot there was another incident, someone i won't name names because it is rather embarrassingly dumb really had to pee, and boy when the next pee break come, he just hopped out of the bus and ran to relieve himself, he thought he felt some thing strange but his mind was rather on other pressing matters, when he finally looked to see why his foot rather hurt he realized he had cut it on a broken bottle grass. boy am i glad i'm not that guy, not only did he have to deal with the cut, but everyone kept coming up to him and saying "boy ell you'd better keep that cut clean, last year i had one on the trip and my foot swelled up to the size of a football." or "I think i'm gonna call you a doctor for that cut when we get to maputo, don't want to take any risks" just what i wanted to hear. so foot elevated (it really in the end was a very minor cut) we arrived in the capitol city, Maputo. The first thing I noticed about Maputo besides how sketchy and interesting it was, was that literally every single street was named after a communist socialist or at least far left ruler, president, revolutionary or dictator. Mao road intersected engels ave, frelimo (the leftist ruling party in Mozambique) drive with lenin lane etc. that night we went to a brazilian bar for dinner and drinks, the most interesting thing about this bar was that they were soccer freaks "ellery, there is nothing strange about a brazilian bar being really into soccer, it's there national pastime, if they weren't it would be weird" true, you are right about that, but what was weird was that they were huge ITALIAN soccer fans, everywhere were flags of Serie A and the national team. The next day we went around the city in our windowless bus, stopping in the market, where i was talked into buying many silly things i don't need by a lot of "friends" who gave me a "special price". then we went to the very famous Maputo fish market where you go through the market and buy a fish of your liking and then go to the restaurant where they cook it for you, it was amazing, so fresh and delicious, maybe the best fish i've ever eaten, but i was going to be saying that quite a bit on this trip.one thing that was new to me at these hostels we stayed at was the mosquito netting, i don't know if you've ever slept in mosquito netting but it is one of the most frustrating things, it's always caught somewhere, or a limb of yours has found it's way out and is eaten alive by morning, i think i'll be getting malaria anyday now. It was decided at some point that it would be much better to once again drive a midnight bus trip to get one more day in tofo (amusingly pronounced tofu) it was grueling but worth it we drove all night, where tom and i discovered the art of sleeping in the aisles of the bus, for maximum comfort, which tom very rightly described as "similar to when george costanza sleeps under his desk at work." when we got to tofo we checked into our thatched huts and headed to the bathwater that is the indian ocean, nothing quite as refreshing after an all day bus ride than a sunset dip.
About our hostel at tofo:
there were several amusing points about it, the saltwater was clearer than the rest of the water which was a rather gross brown color, the bar called bamboozi had literally no money the entire time we were there, even with 50 students giving them money all day and night they seemed to never have any change, so they created their own currency, bamboozi bucks, which was just a scrap of paper that had a number written on it, as in the amount owed to you and a signature, i think this is how currency actually started out isn't it? As I said they had disgusting brown water here, probably with cholera already mixed in (there had been a typhoon a few weeks ago which had flooded the place creating a bit of an outbreak) but the bar, the only food supply within 15 minute walk down the beach, had no water, the first day they had about 25 bottles, then 2 days later they got about 40 more, but these were both gone within a matter of hours. besides that small inconvenience it was heaven, a small town within walking distance on the beach where you could go to get amazing street food, like fresh fish, barracuda samosas, or to barter your shorts for some wood carvings. one of seans employees took me and a couple others to go get our hair braided outside of town, away from the common scene, into the real thatched huts, and we spent the day with these wonderful people who braided our hair for about 2 dollars apiece (they made custom pants for 6). by the fourth morning it had become apparent that I was either the worlds greatest mosquito attractor or I had bed bugs, genetically mutated unstoppable bedbugs, and judging from the mattress i was sleeping on it seemed the latter was the most logical. I'd never had bed bugs, so it was kind of a new and exciting if not disgusting experience.
After 5 days well spent on the beaches and village of tofo, we left again at 1am for Swaziland, which luckily was only a cool 12 hours away, did i mention that for all of these bus rides, there were no food stops, we might hit a convenience store if you were lucky but for the most part it was just pee stops on the side of the highway. now i did say it was just a cool 12 hours, but our bus was quickly dying, to get to tofo we had had to off road for about a half hour, which is not easy in a greyhound. in swazi we were simply crawling up hills slower than cyclists, and then when we finally got to the town 17 hours later we had to take the bus down a road which can only be described as not a road. but we made it to paradise number two. We were only in swaziland for a day and a half but it was possibly even more amazing than tofo, we went on a safari, we went off roading in something other than a bus, there were bonfires, and nick (sean's friend who had taken me for the braids) and myself snuck off and found a genuine swazi village, not like the one they offer you as a tour, and we hung out there with the people for quite a while, the food here was also some of the best of the trip, amazing beef stew, wonderful chicken, and traditional swazi gruel, which is the wrong word but the right one escapes me, for breakfast. finally it all came to an end as we cruised back to jo'burg in our windowless, squeaking, bathroomless bus and flew 1-time back to Cape Town. perfect. el
oh and the title??? the mozambique flag's crest is a cross of a hoe and a ak-47 with a book behind it. what could be more appropriate.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Burning Afrika and The World's Largest Bike Race
Normally I would think it would be difficult to top our last weekend, renting out a bar, having a wonderful cookout with international students, but on friday Arne (one of the germans) and I had an incident that somehow gave us a feeling that the weekend would be even more interesting. We were simply stopping to ring our friends doorbell and see if they wanted to go to the grocery store (always travel in groups), when we suddenly heard what sounded like a bird being beheaded, suddenly a man came out of an alleyway with a huge crow writhing in his hands, he simply walked by and said "how's it going fellas". Needless to say we fell into hysterics, it was a sign of things to come. Friday was just a simple friday, and so was saturday to be, I had volunteered to get up at 5am to be worker at the world's largest bike race, over 35000 people race 109 km all day long. So the good money would be on going to bed early. That would be a really smart move, so I went to a pool party at one of our friends houses. Simple enough, I was actually on my way out, heading to bed like the responsible person I am. Suddenly one of our South Africans friends came in and said "hey guys you ever heard of burning man???"
"yeah of course, i've always wanted to see that"
"oh man well SA has it's own version, a little smaller but it is tonight!!!"
"no I can't I have to get up early for The cape Argus [the bike race]"
"you riding it??"
"no just have to volunteer"
"oh you'll be fine then"
this is where i should have inserted a really assertive "no" and walked out the door. I didn't so a few hours later I found myself on the way to a eco village i.e. where hippies go to die in the middle of no where outside cape town. Afrika Burning was the name of it and they hope to have it every year. It was of course just as silly as you could imagine, costumes, fire, bands, drunk people, people who seemed to be under the influence of something quite different, perhaps TIK- South Africa's equivilant of crack. We immediately found a room that looks like where the seances would later go down, but in the corner we found huge sheet costumes, now in the US we would probably just make sheet ghosts, these however were 3 huge zebras, which we proceeded to take out to the dance-lawn, we were but another animal on the range out there though. people with giraffe hats, leopard outfits, wild dogs running about, and of course what would a crazy party out in the woods be without a man doing an interpretive dance in a speedo. They burned 2 men that evening one at 1 and one at 3 both were seperated by fire twirlers (??? I don't know what else to call them) The burning itself was quite wild (who would have thought a 20 foot bonfire would get that hot) although we all felt it got a little uncomfortable at the end when the remains of the man burning seemed to take the shape of a burning cross. I got home at about 330 (interestingly enough i would say the hardest and most frustrating aspect of Cape Town is how difficult it is to get a cab, many a trip has been foiled by this.). perfect just an hour and a half before the car comes to pick me up.
Well at least I will be doing something the whole time, I'll be so busy that i won't even feel my tiredness. that was a mistaken notion. I was very lucky I was at the end of the 100k race so i had to sit in the dark until about 7:30 with nothing to do, but unable to sleep because I was a volunteer. But it was fun, especially for a bike geek like me, watching not only the first group to go by, the real racers, where you simply saw a blur, and then interestingly enough about 200 cars- the team cars and media almost outnumber the riders. Then though came the 34,900 slower riders who were much more entertaining. some were fast, some slow, some in costumes (apparently they came right from burning man too!). My job was simple wave a flag and warn the riders about the cliff upcoming and try not to lose too many over it. I was in heaven, well except for the no sleep thing, just checking out bikes and cheering people on, for which they would always say "Thank You Marshall" which is what I was, but somehow in a south African accent it sounds very cool. Well so eventually around 2 I was brought home. Perfect now i can take that nap, I was making a goodnight sandwich (for some reason there was no food available at a bike race) when the final insult hit me. We had been planning on going to another concert in the botanical gardens, which is about the coolest thing in the world, but this week the band was a really famous cape town band and sold out in 2 hours.
"hey ell, guess what? Goldie and Perris don't want to go to Goldfish tonight!! Now we can go"
[to finish this story with "no i think I am going to go to bed", stop reading here and close the email and just think of how nice that sleep was for me] or [to finish this story with "sure I'll go, when is the next time i'll be able to see goldfish a kirstenbosch gardens" continue reading]
Boy I am glad I went, one thing about the music here is it always suprises me at fitting into no catagory i could make up, this was 2 guys with a saxaphone and a dj booth, making a mix of techno and jazz and soul, and every few minutes a new person would be added for different vocals or to add percussion. Although it sounds gross, i can't think of one person right now reading this email right now after reading that description that is thinking "oh I think i'd like that" but you probably all would- keep in mind that the crowd at the kirstenbosch gardens is an amazing mix of ages. I'll bring it home for those of you interested. oh and i finally went to bed at 8pm that evening. goodnight. ell
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Mayo, Cat Cake and International Bonding
Okay I think I've finally got some interesting stories/observations for you. One of my favorite new facts i've learned about our area here is about the minibuses, the volkswagen vans that serve as public transportation. Apparently they are all run by organized crime, in fact when the University of Capetown decided to get their own shuttle service (after 5 minibus drivers were shot execution style, and they decided it might be a liability to have school kids riding the minis) they had to have a sit down with the minibus people and agree not to use the main road through town, because it would cut down on the revenue of the VW's. perfect right?? that is until one of the campus shuttles had to take a detour on the main road and one of the minibus drivers got on the bus and threatened the driver with a gun. so that's interesting. Another thing that might be reminiscent of my russia emails for you is... MORE GODDAMNED MAYO. I hate mayonaise (i can't even spell it) and it is on everything, chicken sandwich??? nope think more 2 parts mayo i part shredded chicken. But on the bright side, the school campus (apart from being covered in ivy, and therefore my first Ivy league school) is like street food heaven, everyday i have either Indian, Felafel, chinese, Mayo sandwich, fastfood or African. oh and everyone is barefoot all the time here, grocery store, classroom, restaurant, where ever whenever.
But on to my week, well it was as usual here pretty school based, lots of class, occasional moments of goofing off. It wasn't until friday that i got any real cultural experiences, when we were invited by our landlord to her house in Nyanga, the biggest township in Cape Town for a braai, it was once again just perfect, every trip out to the townships is a real eyeopener. It's not so much the poverty and the dirtyness, it is the happiness and friendliness of the people, everyone is genuine and ready to smile (as opposed to myself who as a waiter is fake and always ready to smile) We had an amazing time, my favorite occurence which keeps happening to me is that people ask me why I'm not doing shawco (a volunteer program to teach little kids) I always answer that a0 i'm doing habitat for humanity b) I'm not very good with kids and c) who would possibly want me being a role model to small children. And always without fail about 20 minutes after saying this I am in the middle of a group of kids with several of them hanging off me, or starting games of chicken with all the kids. This was no exception, and of course as the chairman of the South Africa for Barack Obama i got every kid (most of whom don't speak english) chanting "Yes we can". obviously, but to explain my blatant obnoxious american traits, I had been discussing this with some of the parents and they at least understood it and supported it, and the kids loved it- hey i figure for your first english phrase "yes we can" is pretty good.
Saturday was our big day though, we had been planning this 21st birthday party for 2 weeks, I even made another of my patented shaped cakes, actually this one might have been the best one yet, a huge cat, big enough to serve 35 people with some to spare. we rented out the corner bar (from Gary the South African Republican, who voted for the nationalists) had a huge braai (with 4 different kinds of salads all featuring my favorite condiment...MAYO) Lamb Chicken Sausage all of 3 dollars a head. it was amazing. we invited a whole bunch of kids from the orientation so it wasn't just americans, we had Tanzanians, Ugandans, South Africans, Norweigans, Germans, Denmark-ians and even a Frenchie. It was a really good mix, which is good because who wants to go 10,000 miles away and spend all their time with people from an hour down the road. Also I can now actually not walk across campus (barefoot) without wondering into about 10 people i know, who would have thought, I was popular all this time , I was just on the wrong continent. e
But on to my week, well it was as usual here pretty school based, lots of class, occasional moments of goofing off. It wasn't until friday that i got any real cultural experiences, when we were invited by our landlord to her house in Nyanga, the biggest township in Cape Town for a braai, it was once again just perfect, every trip out to the townships is a real eyeopener. It's not so much the poverty and the dirtyness, it is the happiness and friendliness of the people, everyone is genuine and ready to smile (as opposed to myself who as a waiter is fake and always ready to smile) We had an amazing time, my favorite occurence which keeps happening to me is that people ask me why I'm not doing shawco (a volunteer program to teach little kids) I always answer that a0 i'm doing habitat for humanity b) I'm not very good with kids and c) who would possibly want me being a role model to small children. And always without fail about 20 minutes after saying this I am in the middle of a group of kids with several of them hanging off me, or starting games of chicken with all the kids. This was no exception, and of course as the chairman of the South Africa for Barack Obama i got every kid (most of whom don't speak english) chanting "Yes we can". obviously, but to explain my blatant obnoxious american traits, I had been discussing this with some of the parents and they at least understood it and supported it, and the kids loved it- hey i figure for your first english phrase "yes we can" is pretty good.
Saturday was our big day though, we had been planning this 21st birthday party for 2 weeks, I even made another of my patented shaped cakes, actually this one might have been the best one yet, a huge cat, big enough to serve 35 people with some to spare. we rented out the corner bar (from Gary the South African Republican, who voted for the nationalists) had a huge braai (with 4 different kinds of salads all featuring my favorite condiment...MAYO) Lamb Chicken Sausage all of 3 dollars a head. it was amazing. we invited a whole bunch of kids from the orientation so it wasn't just americans, we had Tanzanians, Ugandans, South Africans, Norweigans, Germans, Denmark-ians and even a Frenchie. It was a really good mix, which is good because who wants to go 10,000 miles away and spend all their time with people from an hour down the road. Also I can now actually not walk across campus (barefoot) without wondering into about 10 people i know, who would have thought, I was popular all this time , I was just on the wrong continent. e
Security Breach or Another Window Story
Well it was bound to happen, in Florence it was a girl sleep walking her way out a third floor window, in St. Petersburg it was Jarrod having been overserved out a third story window, and nearly a month into my third semester abroad I once again have a window story. Thankfully not my own. In one of the houses
down the street full of Americans, a girl awoke during the night to find a robber trying to escape from her second floor window. Amazingly, instead of running screaming out the door as i think i would have, she actually got up and pushed the man out the window onto the ground. Needless to say it has caused quite a flustering of the Americans, nothing much was taken, just one guys camera, cellphone and some money- he had left his room unlocked and had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs. The robber apparently was fine, just landed in the grass dusted himself off and left. What i find to be the most interesting about all this is our own reaction when we went to there house a few days later, we couldn't believe how little security there was!! we kept saying things like "look how little razor wire there is" or "well of course they should never have left a window open at night that didn't have bars on it, even if it was the second floor!!" We've become like security junkies, the other day i found myself really admiring someones house for it's over the top razor-wiring, "just imagine how safe you would be in there!".
Another discovery i'm making here, quite slowly is that this country may not be quite as liberal as i believed. I have met quite a few coloured or black South Africans who a) did not vote for Nelson Mandela b) continue to not vote for the ANC c) really miss aparthied. all of which i find strange, now granted this country has become poorer since 1994, but I find it hard to believe that many black South Africans wouldn't vote for Mandela, but i guess that is just a preconcieved notion i brought here. There is also still a very big racial divide here, many of our orientation leaders talked about the fact that for the most part the only whites that hang out with the black Africans are international students. "everyone else, yes we go to class with them and go to discussions with them, maybe even the sports clubs, but besides that we don't hang out together, that's why we love the international students, they don't care, they want to meet everyone." I thought that was nice.
Saturday I tried to climb table mountain again (I like to hike, and boy is this a hike) however although the forecast was for 80 calm and clear in cape town, that in no way means that table mountain will follow those guidelines. The mountain was angry that day!! We got about 3/4 of the way up in approximately 110 km/hour winds and stinging rain before it became clear that the girl who i was climbing with was likely to be blown right off the mountain, or at least into the barbed wire guard rails (it was blowing me around pretty badly as well, we had to get shelter behind rocks). so we turned back vowing to go again this saturday.
Besides that not too much has been going on, I go to school, friday we are hoping to go to a rugby match and watch the Cape Town team play, the Stormers, then saturday we are renting out our local bar (and by renting out i mean he's just letting us have a room to our selves) for one of our roomates 21st birthday party, and we are going to braai- which is the SA version of barbequeing, except with all sorts of meats i've never heard of, but the salads are exactly the same, Gary the bartender was very pleased to offer us a variety of them "okay my wife will make 3 salads, a spaghetti salad, a bean salad and a green salad" something i took for being so American turns out is also very popular here.
Here's another food highlight for you, we've been introduced to the Chip Roll, what could that possibly be you ask?? how about french fies in a bun... nope thats it, just fries in a bun, sometimes if you're lucky they'll put some sort of sauce on it, but mostly it is just a chip sandwich. It's certainly not very atkins friendly, but it is rather popular. e
down the street full of Americans, a girl awoke during the night to find a robber trying to escape from her second floor window. Amazingly, instead of running screaming out the door as i think i would have, she actually got up and pushed the man out the window onto the ground. Needless to say it has caused quite a flustering of the Americans, nothing much was taken, just one guys camera, cellphone and some money- he had left his room unlocked and had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs. The robber apparently was fine, just landed in the grass dusted himself off and left. What i find to be the most interesting about all this is our own reaction when we went to there house a few days later, we couldn't believe how little security there was!! we kept saying things like "look how little razor wire there is" or "well of course they should never have left a window open at night that didn't have bars on it, even if it was the second floor!!" We've become like security junkies, the other day i found myself really admiring someones house for it's over the top razor-wiring, "just imagine how safe you would be in there!".
Another discovery i'm making here, quite slowly is that this country may not be quite as liberal as i believed. I have met quite a few coloured or black South Africans who a) did not vote for Nelson Mandela b) continue to not vote for the ANC c) really miss aparthied. all of which i find strange, now granted this country has become poorer since 1994, but I find it hard to believe that many black South Africans wouldn't vote for Mandela, but i guess that is just a preconcieved notion i brought here. There is also still a very big racial divide here, many of our orientation leaders talked about the fact that for the most part the only whites that hang out with the black Africans are international students. "everyone else, yes we go to class with them and go to discussions with them, maybe even the sports clubs, but besides that we don't hang out together, that's why we love the international students, they don't care, they want to meet everyone." I thought that was nice.
Saturday I tried to climb table mountain again (I like to hike, and boy is this a hike) however although the forecast was for 80 calm and clear in cape town, that in no way means that table mountain will follow those guidelines. The mountain was angry that day!! We got about 3/4 of the way up in approximately 110 km/hour winds and stinging rain before it became clear that the girl who i was climbing with was likely to be blown right off the mountain, or at least into the barbed wire guard rails (it was blowing me around pretty badly as well, we had to get shelter behind rocks). so we turned back vowing to go again this saturday.
Besides that not too much has been going on, I go to school, friday we are hoping to go to a rugby match and watch the Cape Town team play, the Stormers, then saturday we are renting out our local bar (and by renting out i mean he's just letting us have a room to our selves) for one of our roomates 21st birthday party, and we are going to braai- which is the SA version of barbequeing, except with all sorts of meats i've never heard of, but the salads are exactly the same, Gary the bartender was very pleased to offer us a variety of them "okay my wife will make 3 salads, a spaghetti salad, a bean salad and a green salad" something i took for being so American turns out is also very popular here.
Here's another food highlight for you, we've been introduced to the Chip Roll, what could that possibly be you ask?? how about french fies in a bun... nope thats it, just fries in a bun, sometimes if you're lucky they'll put some sort of sauce on it, but mostly it is just a chip sandwich. It's certainly not very atkins friendly, but it is rather popular. e
Monday, February 18, 2008
The Garden Route, German style!!!
I don't think i really need to tell you what a roadtrip with 8 college kids is like, but when you factor in a mercedes benz, a german at the helm (he kept saying things like "in my country we don't have speed limits" as an excuse for doing 120 in a 60) and when you keep in mind we're driving on the left hand side of the road, while trying to spot baboons... yeah it got wild. but we only drove into oncoming traffic once, and hit nothing. The Garden route is a very famous and picturesque road along the coast of south Africa, picture the amalfi drive but with wildlife parks and instead of crazy italian drivers honking at you for going to slow, it's laid back South Africans honking at you because the crazy german you put in charge keeps trying to pass 3 and 4 tractor trailers at a time. One of the first things we noticed about our adventure was that we gambled wrong, we didn't bring any music thinking that the SA radio was going to be the 8th wonder of the world, full of reggae, crazy drum driven world rock and perhaps some African Hip-hop. Why would anyone ever think that?!?! Soft rock, channel after channel of soft rock, current pop hits that even 6 21 year old college girls couldn't stand. "and here is another mariah carey hit, followed by celine dion and the newest diddy from gloria estefan" and that was when we heard music, most of the time I was just scrolling through static. But when that one Bob Marley song came on, boy did we blast it. It was awesome to be on the road in africa, even if it was a Pop Safari. our first destination was to a town that's claim to fame is that you can ride the ostritches, we pasted hundreds of these farms, offering ostritch rides tours, burgers and weddings (!?!?!?!!???). Unfortunately ostritch riding is a tempermental sport, it had rained one day in the last month and therefore the ground was too slippery to strap a human to a walking bird. So we piled in the bus and continued (soundtrack: softrock and romantic power ballads). We instead went to the zoo, i mean hey, it's no safari but we were desperate to do something, it was very fun, several people actually petted the cheetahs and tiger cubs (i had just eaten a rather large amount of biltong- or South African beef jerky- and thought it best to abstain from getting in a cage with man eating cubs). Then we got back in the car (soundtrack, yanni i think) and headed to the hostel in a town called Wilderness (judging from our night there you probably don't need the -er in the name wildness would be fine) The Hostel was awesome, right on the beach, bar on the hill, family run, there were only two bad things about it, totally disorganized (they overbooked two nights in a row, i slept on the floor twice) and run by a group of guys who seemed to like nothing more than antagonizing one of our travelling buddies (he had never dealt with anti-american sentiment, and he stayed up most of the night sitting round a fire of white South Africans getting lectured about our horrible government, he hates it two, but it gets old when you get tag teamed for several hours). The next day it was bungy jump, the world's highest, I refrained from doing it, something about hanging on my head for 15 minutes after being bounced on my head for 30 seconds. However if I had known that it was going to be 5 hour ordeal I would have, by the time we were out of there and back in the bus the sun was setting and the day was over (soundtrack: annoying techno) we returned to wilderness ate some more ostritch (i had ostritch alfredo... yep you read that right). the next day we had to head back, as bad as the music had been so far, we realized we had made an even bigger blunder it was valentines day, we spent the rest of the ride listening to the most excruciatingly bad music until we landed back in capetown where we all decided, NO MORE LYRICS and turned on the classical channel as we cruised into the townships by accident (that was rather surreal). The trip ended with the most amazing fish and chips on the shore (a staple here) and more classical as we highwayed back to the rent-a-car center.
And that essentially was the end of our vacation, we finally went to school for the first time on friday and today. The classes seem not overly challenging, but not overly easy. We are actually in the university (most of my previous experiences with study abroad have been with teachers piped in just for americans) and although if you happen to be taking a class with the word Africa in it it is most likely Americans, luckily i'm taking astronomy where i seem to be the only american. This weekend we went to two concerts, one of the bands reminded me of jethro tull (must have been the flute). Then yesterday me 1 german and the other American guy climbed Table Mountain, which had been touted as "a nice easy climb, with one tough and steep part at the end" so we decided to go around 9 in the morning, which would have been the perfect time, if the cabby who has been driving cabs for 20 years knew how to get to the number one tourist attraction in capetown, the mountain. Instead he just said "oh we'll just go into the center and ask someone" 1.5 hours later we made it to the base of the mountain. "!##$#$@!!! That's a steep mountain!" 2 hours of rock steps later we made it to the top, there was no joy, I'm a fairly good hiker, I mean hell I walked across spain, but all three of us and the three we met up with were crying by the top, and stopping every 3 minutes. our only joy was joking about the way Arne (the german) called the gorge a "george" and was constantly misinterpretting our talking about the Endorphin rush we would get at the top by asking "hey guys what is this Dolphin rush at the top?" We get to the top, have a meal, only to be informed via text that the group going to that nights concert at a Botanical gardens leaves in an hour and a half. Well only one thing to do as we see the table cloth set (the tablecloth is the cloud cover that naturally appears over the mountain, it really is incredible , a low level cloud flys over the mountain and disappears as it falls off the cliff into the warmer air- or at least it's something scientific like that) "time for us to run down the mountain while it is completely foggy!!" Safe, very safe. we made it though and we were relaxing at the kirstenbosch gardens just an hour later (it might have been the most sophisticated thing i've done to date, I felt that we even lacked one of those woven twig picnic baskets) listening to a Ska reggae band that was absolutely amazing. more when i get it e
And that essentially was the end of our vacation, we finally went to school for the first time on friday and today. The classes seem not overly challenging, but not overly easy. We are actually in the university (most of my previous experiences with study abroad have been with teachers piped in just for americans) and although if you happen to be taking a class with the word Africa in it it is most likely Americans, luckily i'm taking astronomy where i seem to be the only american. This weekend we went to two concerts, one of the bands reminded me of jethro tull (must have been the flute). Then yesterday me 1 german and the other American guy climbed Table Mountain, which had been touted as "a nice easy climb, with one tough and steep part at the end" so we decided to go around 9 in the morning, which would have been the perfect time, if the cabby who has been driving cabs for 20 years knew how to get to the number one tourist attraction in capetown, the mountain. Instead he just said "oh we'll just go into the center and ask someone" 1.5 hours later we made it to the base of the mountain. "!##$#$@!!! That's a steep mountain!" 2 hours of rock steps later we made it to the top, there was no joy, I'm a fairly good hiker, I mean hell I walked across spain, but all three of us and the three we met up with were crying by the top, and stopping every 3 minutes. our only joy was joking about the way Arne (the german) called the gorge a "george" and was constantly misinterpretting our talking about the Endorphin rush we would get at the top by asking "hey guys what is this Dolphin rush at the top?" We get to the top, have a meal, only to be informed via text that the group going to that nights concert at a Botanical gardens leaves in an hour and a half. Well only one thing to do as we see the table cloth set (the tablecloth is the cloud cover that naturally appears over the mountain, it really is incredible , a low level cloud flys over the mountain and disappears as it falls off the cliff into the warmer air- or at least it's something scientific like that) "time for us to run down the mountain while it is completely foggy!!" Safe, very safe. we made it though and we were relaxing at the kirstenbosch gardens just an hour later (it might have been the most sophisticated thing i've done to date, I felt that we even lacked one of those woven twig picnic baskets) listening to a Ska reggae band that was absolutely amazing. more when i get it e
It is going to fun!!
okay so where was I?? grilling ostritch and donkey for super bowl i believe. Well this week was mostly orientation and registration, which at the university of cape town is actually a form of torture comparable to water boarding, line waiting. they do not have a computer system here that can handle everyone registering online, so we do it all by hand, in 95 degree rooms, okay so that doesn't sound that bad, it's like they did it in the old days right?? no because they have this great concept of putting everything into the computer system, but only with 3 designated computer people, for a school of around 17000, I literally have spent 4 hours a day for the last week standing in lines. but hey, it's africa time. on friday I finally had finished the registration process, I get home to the compound and on our fridge is a note inviting us to go hiking, it said just a friendly hike, and then a little cave exploring and the last line is written "it is going to fun" which i thought pretty much sealed the deal. me and my roomate tom decided we would go, everyone else was to tired, or hadn't finished registering. we meet up with the group, organized by our landlord, and it's a pretty average group, which reassured tom and I that it wouldn't be a crazy mountain climbing adventure or anything. boy were we wrong, we get there and literally jog up this mountain, only stopping twice eachtime everyone had to much pride to ask for a slower pace, but you could see the pain and agony, then we finally reach the top, the caves. It's not like just walking into the caves, it is contorting your body to fit through crevasses in total darkness (the "guides" forgot flashlights, we were all using our cellphones) tom is clausttraphobic, and i think after that experience I am too. Although I did go on the super tight optional cave, with only about 4 of us willing to do it, but the guides gave us a treat, by singing the south african national anthem in complete darkness (i had suggested koombaiya, but apparently that wasn't appropriate). It was really amazing though, even if my knees were covered with a mix of my own blood and bat guano. when we reached the otherside we were rewarded with an incredible overlook of the ocean and the small fishing towns on the northern cape. there was something else though that should have registered that didn't, the way down was a straight cliff, as our "guides" took off like billy goats jumping down the mountain the rest of us kind of looked at eachother and said "shouldn't we have signed a waiver for this?" "do we need ropes and caribeeners for this" by the time we had scaled our way down to just a regular mountain, the guides were no where to be found. "great i'm lost in africa, !@##$@$%#$!!!!!!" but we did a little bushwhacking (just what you need for open wounds, strange plants that resemble poinson ivy in rubbing against you) and eventually found our way back to the cars. Actually i think that was the most fun i've had in a while, and after the guide took the beleagured americans to a pub on the water for an apology beer, which was nice. And since then "it is going to fun" has become the motto of the house.
Yesterday we hired the "boogie bus" which i'm not sure if i've mentioned is the reggae themed beat up volkswagen that we take around capetown (14 can fit inside, not including the boogie man himself, steve) this time we hired him to take us on a wine tasting tour. the vineyards were as you imagine very beautiful although the area is the heart of Aparthied, so one kind of feels out of place wearing a barak obama t-shirt. But we went to several different vineyards, tried all sorts of wines and cheeses (if we hadn't been travelling in a beat up volkswagen with old cd's covering it, i'd say it was a classy trip, but...) but the highlight was certainly when boogie took us to a lion sanctuary, sure it's no safari, but it was cool none the less (there was something disturbing about going to see the lions after tasting wine all day, especially after what happened in san francisco, but people managed to keep their limbs to themselves.
All this travelling with the boogie man gave us the great idea of renting a bus for ourselves, to drive around the garden route of SA, which is what we did today, we went to avis and rented a van, no problems whatsoever, until the woman looked at my address and said "you do have secure parking for the van right? Observatory is really dangerous" we said of course, and thought no more of it, there are tons of cars all over the streets and for just one night it will be fine. that was our thinking until we saw the van, a brand new mercedes benz 8 person van. horrifying, we can't park that in obs. it'll be gone before we're out of the car. luckily we had the brilliant idea of taking it too the neighboring garage (ironically a benz specialist) we gave them some beers and they agreed to keep the van overnight, not without however saying when they saw us pull up with it "oh man no wonder you want to get this thing off the street, with so much crime around here I always carry a gun" a reassuring start to an adventure. tomorrow we're off. ell
Countdown to Capetown
Well I'm off again this time to Capetown, South Africa. But on my way i decided to go back to florence where i studied before. Even before I left london i felt i was back in italy, I got cut in line by everyone while waiting for the plane, somehow i went from standing about third in line to dead last, and they managed to do it so politely i found myself often helping the older folks cut me, like helping an old lady cross the road. then when we reached italian customs and there was no cutting to be done, all the men started singing in line for the customs people to open another booth. Welcome Back to italia!!
One of the first things i noticed when i got back to florence, was of course my mother was right, she always talks about how when she returned to rome after studying there it was completely different. So was florence, my favorite bars were either empty or clothing stores (apparently the bars i used to frequent weren't as cool as i thought, if they can't make it 4 years), there were no men from senegal offering you fake luis vuitton bags and sunglasses every five feet (apparently the government has combated this by not fining or putting these men in jail, but fining the customer, thereby eliminating their customer base). But the biggest shock of all came when i went to light up that huge celebratory cigar at the one bar that is still there teatro and was told non fuimare!!!!!!!! No smoking?!? what!! que??? you can't smoke anywhere inside anymore! I don't even know how the italians can cope, i'm sitting in a internet cafe and there is no ashtray nearby, no cloud of smoke above me making me nauseaus, it's a very sad day.
it's good to be travelling again, although i'm beginning to think i'm not really any good at it, I've already had several incidents the first occured my first night out in florence, when i returned to the hostel, as i was walking back i was just thinking to myself how funny it would be if i had misread the hostel policy on returning late (i had intentionally booked a hostel that would let me in 24 hours a day, due to some of the incidents levi and i had on the Camino de Santiago, which resulted in street sleeping or angry proprietors) and sure enough when i got to the door, it was locked and said that everyone MUST be in by 2am. &%$&!! %£$"£!!! $%"$"/%!!!! "I'm not doing it again" I thought "I refuse to wake up the hotel, or get yelled at" so i did what was in my mind my only logical choice, took out my money and valuable cards and put them in the sole of my boots and took a seat at a nearby outdoor patio intending to wait for the next 3 hours, perhaps even catch a few winks. Luckily for me some guys were leaving the hostel only like a half hour later and the women on duty let me in, apparently when they say EVERYONE MUST BE IN BY 2AM!!! it only means that if you aren't just ring the bell and i'll let you in. the other incident was less idiotic, but certainly could have been worse, as my friend pickel (she's studying here) and I went to bologna yesterday and just as we were about to get on the train realized that there was a train strike starting at nine that evening, you know right around the time we had intended to come back. so we cut the trip a little short (we still almost missed the last train to florence, when they say 9 they actually mean 8:30, duh) but still had a great meal and I finally got to put a face to the name you hear so often, Mohammed (the bologna cathedral has a fresco in it depicting the prophet Mohammed, which is why the security is rather tight). that's all i have time for, i took the liberty of just adding some people's emails to this list, if you're one of them and you find this horribly boring and not interesting just let me know and i'll cut you from the list. the next one i promise will be sillier, more informative and from south Africa
-ell
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