Haraka Haraka Hakuna Baraka!

(translation: if you go too quickly, the gods will not bless you and you will not reach the top)

Sorry to have been out of touch for so long! I have been somewhat busy training, doing and recovering from one of the most challenging and incredible experiences of my life and certainly of my time in Africa. Last week I spent nine days traveling through East Africa and climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. I had been running through the smaller hills by Table Mountain to condition but the summit day was the single most grueling thing I have ever been through. We spent four days on the ascent and two on the descent with the summit attempt beginning at midnight of the fourth day. We have to start then for two reasons: one, on the more practical end, to climb through the cool of the evening when the snow and ice are still fully solid and two, on the more aesthetically focused side of things, to reach Uhuru, the summit of Kibo peak and the highest free standing mountain in the world, by sunrise. There were four of us on the trip but only three made the summit, as one girl got terrible altitude sickness about an hour in. The rest of us were okay until we hit the section leading up to the crater rim, where we were essentially scrambling blind over a vertical slope of ice and volcanic ash and gravel. It was at this point that I began to envy my friend her crippling altitude sickness. By the time we reach Gillman’s Point, at the edge of the crater, the remaining three were in less than top condition. Allie, a division one track runner at USC, had already thrown up once and would do so twice more before reaching the peak. Carrie was battling a head ache from dehydration and altitude while I had been nauseated since about moonrise at the halfway mark. BUT. I made it. Though not before literally tearing up from joy at the sight of the peak, which had to be one of the more embarrassingly uncontrolled emotional outbursts of my time here. We came to the somewhat melodramatic conclusion of “which is worse: childbirth or summit day?” “Summit day” (or I suppose I should say 19,000 ft) since at the end of child birth at least you get a baby.

 

That said, I hands down loved it. Travelling through East Africa was completely different from my experience in South Africa. I felt so little of the racial and class resentment so prevalent here, even though, in Nairobi for example, we saw no other white people on the streets or in the shops. There was instead a frankness about race and a kind-heartedness that all of us had felt missing in Cape Town. Moshi, the town at the base, was an incredible town. Vibrant, diverse and welcoming and in such a genuine way. This has all been rather heavy so I’ll end off with two of my funnier interactions:

 

1. At a roadside stop in Kenya, by the Kenyan-Tanzanian border

Shopekeeper: Where are you from?

Me: America

Shopkeeper: Did you vote?\

Me: Yep! For Barack Obama!

Shopkeeper: [Huge grin, huge high five]

 

2. With Solomon, our guide, at our day three camp side. We are on an acclimatization hike (“climb high, sleep low”) by Mawenzi peak and a small lake.

Us: Solomon, can we swim?

Solomon: Oh…no.

Us: Too cold?

Solomon: Too cold…also…maybe magical

Us: [Stunned silence]

Solomon: Maybe magical…don’t know what lives there…maybe hole all the way to Moshi town.

Happy Blackout Monday! (part II)

I forgot to add my favorite blackout related media coverage in the South African press. "Load shutting" may alternately be called "load shedding," the terms are used interchangeably. So the SA issue of Cosmo last month included this headline on the cover: "Shed HIS Load" and published a story on romance during the black outs. On a similar subject, the SA issue of Real Simple magazine had a story on how to artfully camouflage barbed wire under climbing plants.

Happy Blackout Monday!

From 8-10:30pm on the dot, one of the only things that runs on time in South Africa, the power goes off in my neighborhood. This is part of the "load shutting" plan enacted by Eskom, the national power monopoly, that attempts to ration electricity and stave off the impending and inevitable shortages. Even though household consumption accounts for only about 20% of all energy consumption in South Africa, these rolling blackouts sweep through the whole country in staggered sets about twice a week. (We also have one on Fridays from noon to 2) The whole situation is gigantic mess and just an example of shockingly near-sighted political and economic planning. In the townships, the blackouts, of course, last much longer sometimes, according to a friend who lives in Langa, stretching up to 7 hours. I have a good enough candle set up that I never have too many problems, but it just reminds me how far this country has to go in terms of infrastructure and how really Third World it is once you venture beyond the downtown tourist scene. I feel like so many people visit and never see beyond that.

mugging on main road

On saturday, I had what I would consider the archetypal Capetonian day: in the morning, I went with my friends to a weekly farmer's market in Woodstock, a neighborhood near mine, full of organic produce and beautiful dresses made from Nigerian linen and rooibos iced tea in mason jars. You come out of this charming market in a revamped mill thinking what a cool, cosmopolitan and uniquely charming city this is. Then off to a concert at Kirstenbosch, the botanical gardens, and again you are just overwhelmed by Cape Town's beauty and vibrancy. And then, naturally, on the way back from the video store you see someone being violently mugged across the street from you. It all happened very very quickly but the mugger was ultimately unsuccessful in his attempt to steal this young man's cell phone though there was a fairly scary tussle involving pepper spray where we think that after spraying his attacker, the victim had it pulled away and used on him. There were five of us on the other side of the street, me, two of my friends and a couple we didn't know. The male half of that couple ran across the street and as soon as the mugger realized there were people watching he took off. But the audacity of the crime really terrified me; there were cars everywhere and obviously people on the streets and it couldn't have been later than 8:30. Very unnerving.

Namibia I

I need to discuss break in segments since there is just too much to talk about all at once, but here is an exemplary moment. I went on an overlanding trip from Cape Town up through Namibia to the Skeleton Coast (so-called because of all the ship wrecks that the cloud formations caused) and then back again to SA. Everything was so overwhelming and different and desolate but here is one of my favorite experiences:

One morning we hiked up to the top of Dune 45 (all the dunes are numbered) and saw the sunrise and the way it made all the sand change color. It was so so beautiful. We then got in a bakkie (a flatbed truck) and drove out with a San guide for a walk through the desert. As expected he was incredibly knowledgeable about all of the flora and fauna but the most fascinating portion of his talk was also the most basic. He explained that theoretically, the river could flow all the way from its source in the mountains to the sea but over time the dunes merge with each other due to the wind patterns and block its path. As this occurs each blocked off area grows incredibly lush (at least for the desert) but then itself will die once the dunes behind it merge and cut off its water supply. The result is a kind of petrified forest in the middle of the red sand that feels like a Dali painting come to life. (The one we visited that you can see pictured here was 1000 years old. The wood is too hard for any animals to eat so it only decays very very slowly)

But I found his unwavering acceptance of death, of change and of the inevitability of both to be incredibly moving. There was no resentment in his explanation of what happened to this place, even though its existence would have made his and his family's life easier. The implication in all that he said was that this was simply the way nature intended it, we can only go on if we accept that it is far more powerful then we can ever hope to be.

hell on wheels

Here is a much belated posting on perhaps the defining feature of my life in Cape Town: the minibuses. Cape Town has no public transportation system save a complex and somehow (criminally) organized system of vans. Many have a nickname proudly displayed such as “Prison Break 3,” which seems to have no Prisons Break 1 or 2 hanging around, and two employees: the driver and the “door dj” whose job it is to yell out the destination in an accent and tone that you really never hear anyone else anywhere else use. I ride these fairly frequently in spite of their shoddiness since they only cost R5 (about 60 cents) but have had three exemplary rides:

 

1. On the way to the beach, our minibus gets pulled over by the cops. Since the police force is incredibly corrupt we get a little nervous but soon realize that there’s a fairly legitimate reason for pulling us over…we are all riding in a stolen vehicle. Our driver is subsequently maced, hand-cuffed and led off to the station while we all got our R5 back and proceeded, naturally, to the next available minibus.

 

2. On our way back from Stellenbosch (the wine country north of Cape Town) we had to take two minibuses and transfer in Belleville where fellow Hoya Meg Hathaway attends University of the Western Cape. Our first bus had 21 people in it. Just to give you an idea of exactly how overcrowded this was, we couldn’t get up a hill. People almost had to jump out and push. We also ran multiple red lights, probably because once we had enough momentum to get going we just couldn’t slow down lest we never start up again. But this was nothing compared to…

 

3. Our second bus. Which ran out of gas at a busy intersection.

(The photo is of me and my friend katie on the second minibus to the beach that day, post-brush with crime)

Token Americans

I have now been out of the country for a little over a month now, a somewhat awkward amount of time to be gone. For a while, I didn’t feel far away yet, nor did I feel settled in South Africa. It was an odd feeling of permanent transit that thankfully has just ended. I now really live here, do my grocery shopping, ride the minibuses, meet up with friends like a normal Capetonian.

 

I started classes about two weeks ago, which has been a fairly interesting experience. American students are much more inquisitive than South Africans who tend to not speak a whole lot in class unless they are asking a logistical question or making a forceful and often defensive statement about South African national identity or the aftermath of apatheid. There also seems to be much less respect for the authority of the professor in their questions, a combativeness that I think is rarer in American academia. My view is, however, somewhat skewed as I am often called upon to “give the American perspective” or explain the motivations of American economic policy. I completely expected this coming abroad, but often find myself more frustrated by my fellow Americans’ responses than at my questioners’ interrogations.

 

One classmate’s confident disownment of her fellow citizens’ responsibility for the war rested on the entirely false assertion that the majority of the population opposed the war from the start. I agreed with her that an overwhelming majority now do, but that the lead up to the 2003 invasion saw huge support for the president’s policies. Since her comments, I have made a conscious effort to not channel any defensiveness over American policies into a complete disownment of them. As a student abroad I think it is our job to do what our government refuses to, and accept responsibilities for the failure of our foreign policies. 

week one

I've now been in South Africa for almost exactly seven days and I have to say, it feels like much much more time has passed. My friend Katie who I've known since high school in New York and also happens to be on the trip caught me using the phrase "the other day" to describe something that had happened about 6 hours earlier on our first day in Cape Town. I would say such linguistic slips give a fairly accurate representation of my understanding of time since my arrival. 

Beyond the simple disorientation that comes from distance and time zone changes, Cape Town has completely altered my perception of Africa, disorienting me in a way I had not remotely expected. Africa, I think to most people, implies images of a savannah flecked with villages, poor but happy, and above all happy for you, happy for the Westerner's help and presence, happy and welcoming despite their hardship. Above all, this Platonic ideal of "Africa" is remote and rugged, a tabula rasa complete with big game. This view, I now realize is not only absurd  -- there is no "Africa" in a continent that could encompass Argentina, the US, Europe and then some -- but indeed very insulting. Underdevelopment is not charming or a way for privileged Americans or Europeans to "rough it" or "find themselves." We only think that because we stay for a week or a year and then go home, with no conception of the true problems facing a given society. I can only hope to understand these issues as a South African would, rather than a simple tourist.