Nothing much today, but I will try to catch up from last weekend, when we had no internet.
Saturday was a "free" day, and I started with a massage at a spa downtown. The massage was wonderful (and the price was right), but there is a distinct lack of modesty here that took me by surprise. The massage room was right off the main salon, and after the massage therapist had explained the process to me, she left. I figured this meant she'd be back when I was safe under the covers, and she'd knock quietly (in the US, the knock is just barely audible over the New Age music) before coming back in.
But no. I was about half undressed when she just burst in, opening the door and giving God and Everyone a good look at my middle-aged self. She kind of said "sorry," and then proceeded to putter around while I finished undressing and plopping myself on the table. The process was reversed when the massage was over. A whole new clientele got a good glimpse of Moi. I hope there weren't any kids in there, because they may never recover.
After that, I headed to the market and wandered a bit. I noticed a place nearby that served pancakes all day, so I stopped in. Alas, this branch doesn't serve pancakes. If I want pancakes, I need to go to one of their other stores, where the pancakes are delish, but the kitchen area isn't large enough here to accommodate even the occasional flapjack. I ate a hamburger. Not the best choice. I also used their bathroom and managed to mess up the flushing mechanism. That'll teach them not to have pancakes.
It occurred to me that I needed to do something productive, so I decided to check my map and find the Cultural History Museum. Of course I got lost, but strange luck was the call of the day.
Cape Town has a police force, but most neighborhoods and business districts hire private security forces. In our neighborhood, for example, there is a security guard on almost every corner. You can tell the difference, I think, from the police by the color of the uniforms and, of course, the color of their skin. I can't remember if the police are Black and the guards Colored, but it's something like that. Anyway, the central business district also has security guards posted all over the place, and I just went ahead and asked one of them where the museum was.
Of course, I couldn't remember the name of the museum, just that it had been a slave lodge at some point. Still, he radioed a colleague and figured out the route, and then he pointed me in the right direction and waved me off.
Now, being me, I took a wrong turn and started looking around at all the official-looking buildings, not finding the slave museum at all. I heard a little voice behind me and turned to see the security guard, who escorted me from my wrong turn to the door of the museum. He was so helpful and very nice, and I couldn't have been happier for the help.
The museum is no longer called the Cultural History Museum. It is now called the Slave Lodge, and the audio tour gives a good description of what each room was used for back in the day. The building has undergone many changes since the Dutch East India Company owned it--in fact, just before it was a museum, it was the Supreme Court building. Still, the audio guide and some simple but effective displays give you a feel for the place and what it must have been like.
First, the audio guide has been put together from historical records and the journal of a VOC (that's the official acronym for Dutch East India Company) official in charge of the slave lodge. Second, it's done as if the VOC official were giving a tour to a visitor from somewhere more civilized than SA. It's a little cheesy when you put it on paper, but it really makes it interesting and helps to bring it alive--especially since so much has changed since the slave era. (There is, for example, a two-story building in the courtyard that has only been there since the 19th C.)
The museum staff were a stitch. I wandered in, still kind of greasy from my massage, and asked about the audio tour. and then we got to talking about how the museum wasn't on my map (they gave me several maps to replace mine). Then I started the tour, but the audio guide wasn't working right. We tested out 4 or 5 before we found one that was loud and clear, and I set out on my way. And, of course, I was thrilled to learn that photographs were allowed.
I took a terrifically arty shot of the screen between the room where they showed the short documentary about the Lodge and the next room, but then my camera shut down and gave me that "sad Mac" face that means, of course, no battery. I have still not gotten to the store, so I'm still photo free. However, I will need one or two or many before I get to Vic Falls this weekend.
Anyhow, I was down one device as I wandered through the museum. The slave part is only the first floor, and right now they have a temporary exhibit about the Women's March against Apartheid, so you have to kind of backtrack and restart the tour. BUT, it was wonderful. Upstairs, they still have some cultural history stuff--including some impressive armor and a couple of cases of pocket watches. There is a small room devoted to children's toys, too, with some absolutely beautiful dolls. Man was I ticked to realize there's no gift shop.
So, I finished up the tour in a few hours, wandered back to the market, and came across another South Africa Museums symbol.
The Michaelis Collection is in the second oldest building in Cape Town (second to the Castle), and it is a small and puzzling art collection. They seem to be Dutch Renaissance stuff--maybe even into the 17th C (which would make sense)--but maybe only 5 of the paintings had plaques to tell you what you were looking at.
I'm embarrassed to say it took about 15 minutes to go through, top to bottom. It is a bee-yoo-tee-full building, even without the art, and I spent a good deal of time looking at the lovely parquet floors and the incredible woodwork throughout. There was some modern piece that I didn't get at all, but the little room that it was in was really cool.
I really must have gone through quickly, because the guy at the door practically fell over when I came back downstairs and looked ready to leave. He started talking, and I learned a little more about the plight of national monuments.
There used to be 3 plaques, made of iron, attached to the exterior of the building. Two were on the right side of the door, one on the left. The one on the left had recently been pried off the wall by vandals, and the guy showed me the pry-bar marks.
The museum promptly removed the other two plaques from the other side of the door, and the guy took me behind the desk, into the cloak room, to show me those. My lord they were heavy. He was just distraught over the whole thing, too, as anyone would be. He reckoned someone took the plaque to sell it for scrap.
And then it came out: "This is the new South Africa," he said. "It's all changed since the '80s." The man must have been in his 60's, and he was clearly old school Afrikaner, but I just didn't know what to say. "Uh, yeah, universal suffrage will do that...." Or, "Man, if we could just have Apartheid back!" All I could think of was, "Yes, I think it's the new world these days." It seemed lame.
He was also the fifth person to ask me if I was cold. It was about 60 degrees out, with a little wind. He was wearing long pants and a turtleneck and, yes, a polar fleece vest. Tsk tsk tsk.
I left and wandered back through the market (the Michaelis Collection is right on the square) and figured I'd do some browsing before I headed home. I had already discerned that most shops downtown--except Woolworth's and the drug store--are closed on Saturday, so I steeled myself for the "Hello, Lady! Very special price today!" gauntlet.
I was crossing the street, and I heard someone yelling, "Excuse me! Excuse me!" somewhere nearby. I looked around and a well-dressed young Black man was waving at me. "It's me! Hello!" he said. I asked if there was a problem. "No, it's me! I took you to the Castle!" Excuse me? "This morning! Didn't you go to the Castle?" No, I'm sorry, that wasn't me. "I thought for sure it was you. I thought maybe you'd changed clothes, but it was you!" You mean, really, that there's someone out there who looks like me? Hair and all? "Yes!"
Before I realized what I was saying, I blurted, "Be afraid, my friend! Be very afraid! If there are two of me, then we are all in trouble!" At least he laughed. He is a taxi driver, and he swore that someone who looked exactly like me, but in different clothes, was in his cab earlier that day. Well, huh.
Then he asked if I was cold.
I decided to call it day and walked home.
Monday, June 30, 2008
The Internet
I have much to report, but I am posting this quickly before I lose my connection. We have not had internet at the house since yesterday, and when we didn't have it after school today, I wandered off in search of an internet cafe. I could not connect at the first place, but I only discovered that after I had used their bathroom to deal with a Sudden Onset Nosebleed and ordered a full meal and a beer. Fab. So I sat and ate my meal, all by myself, and then came to the next place, where I felt compelled to order dessert and coffee. Fortunately, they didn' have ice cream, so I have been denied my bananas foster. I am having sorbet and a cuppa decaf.
Anyway, it's Monday night, all is well-ish, and I'll be back to blogging all my adventures in a few minutes.
Anyway, it's Monday night, all is well-ish, and I'll be back to blogging all my adventures in a few minutes.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Robben Island II
Our very good guide dropped us at the gate to the prison, and we walked down to the front door, where a large Black man greeted us. His last name means "King," he said, so he would be our king for the next part of the tour.
For the tour of the prison, the museum has hired ex-prisoners as guides. This man never told us what he'd been in for, but we were all so in thrall to the whole place that we didn't think to ask.
He took us on a tour of the prison, which looks much like other prisons.
This is the "front hall," and the stairs on the right lead up to an office called the "Censors Office," where letters in and out were read and objectionable material was excised. Our guide told us about the restrictions on mail for each level of prisoner (D level, for example, could have one letter and one visitor a month). And he told us about how prisoners are given numbers and never called by name.
There are common rooms and recreational areas and different sections for the different levels of prisoners. Very prison-y.
We walked down a hall of single cells, including Mandela's.
The tour ends at the door where prisoners were released, and visitors make that "long walk to freedom" to get back to the quay to meet the boat. The penguins hang on a beach near the walk, but I didn't stop by. We only had a few minutes before the boat left, and I wanted to get to the gift shop.
Some of the criticisms of the museum and tour are the focus on Mandela. There were lots of other prisoners there, many of whom are now or have been national leaders (and good ones). The picture displays and the commentary at the prison did tend to focus on Mandela, though. And in hindsight, it bothers me that we didn't know what our guide was in for--the implication was that Robben Island was full of unofficial political prisoners. I may be wrong, and I don't have any idea if anyone else got that idea, but I just thought, you know, that not everyone could be a Mandela. Many of the ANC leaders were there, and there's no question that there were people who'd had charges trumped up against them so the government could put them away. But, still, my experiences this past year with the Department of Corrections reminded me that some guys really deserve to be in prison. So I just don't know the current approach is the best for a unified South Africa. I'll ask the professors, though, and maybe I'll do some research.
After a fast stop at the gift shop, I got back to the boat, and I decided to go upstairs and stand next to the pilot's cabin. I figured I'd be cold, but the weather had cleared up enough that it sounded like a good idea. I got some pictures of the island as we left.
And the gulls on the breakwater. I could just hear them saying, "Mine." "Mine." "Mine."
There was some problem with a group of people trying to get on the boat. Something about the boat being full, and they ended up staying behind. I have no idea how often the boats run. But one guy was really ticked. The upshot was that we were late, but the clouds were clearing by the time we got to Cape Town.
Because we were late, though, they really hustled us off the boat. I could not help but laugh when I heard one crew member say, in a very German accent, "Ve are late! Ve must hurry! HURRY!" All the while, of course, we have the Black crew member saying, "Thankyouforcoming, byebye!" at a rate of about 3/second.
As we were walking up the steps to meet the bus, Ryan (the guy who met Leonard) looked up and said, "Rainbow!" I couldn't see it at first, and I didn't get it on film. I was looking too high. It was very low on the horizon, and it was huge. Very wide bands of color and a really shallow arc. I wish I'd gotten it on film. It was way cool.
After that, Janice and I headed downtown to take care of some errands. I made arrangements to go to Cape Agulhas on my last day here. My guide will drop me at the airport that evening so I can wing it back to Minnesota. It felt odd planning so far ahead, but I really wanted to get it taken care of. The next two weekends will be spent traveling, first to Victoria Falls, then to Kruger. I'm looking forward to it, but the school work will certainly be intense when I'm in town. I'll try hard to keep up with the posts!
Oh, and I'll bring the continuing saga of The House of the Perpetual Party up to date, too.
Right now, though, I need to read and to take a quick nap. If that's possible.
For the tour of the prison, the museum has hired ex-prisoners as guides. This man never told us what he'd been in for, but we were all so in thrall to the whole place that we didn't think to ask.
He took us on a tour of the prison, which looks much like other prisons.
This is the "front hall," and the stairs on the right lead up to an office called the "Censors Office," where letters in and out were read and objectionable material was excised. Our guide told us about the restrictions on mail for each level of prisoner (D level, for example, could have one letter and one visitor a month). And he told us about how prisoners are given numbers and never called by name.
There are common rooms and recreational areas and different sections for the different levels of prisoners. Very prison-y.
We walked down a hall of single cells, including Mandela's.
The tour ends at the door where prisoners were released, and visitors make that "long walk to freedom" to get back to the quay to meet the boat. The penguins hang on a beach near the walk, but I didn't stop by. We only had a few minutes before the boat left, and I wanted to get to the gift shop.
Some of the criticisms of the museum and tour are the focus on Mandela. There were lots of other prisoners there, many of whom are now or have been national leaders (and good ones). The picture displays and the commentary at the prison did tend to focus on Mandela, though. And in hindsight, it bothers me that we didn't know what our guide was in for--the implication was that Robben Island was full of unofficial political prisoners. I may be wrong, and I don't have any idea if anyone else got that idea, but I just thought, you know, that not everyone could be a Mandela. Many of the ANC leaders were there, and there's no question that there were people who'd had charges trumped up against them so the government could put them away. But, still, my experiences this past year with the Department of Corrections reminded me that some guys really deserve to be in prison. So I just don't know the current approach is the best for a unified South Africa. I'll ask the professors, though, and maybe I'll do some research.
After a fast stop at the gift shop, I got back to the boat, and I decided to go upstairs and stand next to the pilot's cabin. I figured I'd be cold, but the weather had cleared up enough that it sounded like a good idea. I got some pictures of the island as we left.
And the gulls on the breakwater. I could just hear them saying, "Mine." "Mine." "Mine."
There was some problem with a group of people trying to get on the boat. Something about the boat being full, and they ended up staying behind. I have no idea how often the boats run. But one guy was really ticked. The upshot was that we were late, but the clouds were clearing by the time we got to Cape Town.
Because we were late, though, they really hustled us off the boat. I could not help but laugh when I heard one crew member say, in a very German accent, "Ve are late! Ve must hurry! HURRY!" All the while, of course, we have the Black crew member saying, "Thankyouforcoming, byebye!" at a rate of about 3/second.
As we were walking up the steps to meet the bus, Ryan (the guy who met Leonard) looked up and said, "Rainbow!" I couldn't see it at first, and I didn't get it on film. I was looking too high. It was very low on the horizon, and it was huge. Very wide bands of color and a really shallow arc. I wish I'd gotten it on film. It was way cool.
After that, Janice and I headed downtown to take care of some errands. I made arrangements to go to Cape Agulhas on my last day here. My guide will drop me at the airport that evening so I can wing it back to Minnesota. It felt odd planning so far ahead, but I really wanted to get it taken care of. The next two weekends will be spent traveling, first to Victoria Falls, then to Kruger. I'm looking forward to it, but the school work will certainly be intense when I'm in town. I'll try hard to keep up with the posts!
Oh, and I'll bring the continuing saga of The House of the Perpetual Party up to date, too.
Right now, though, I need to read and to take a quick nap. If that's possible.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Robben Island I
Oh, another early call, with a little uncertainty. We planned to go to Robben Island last week, but there was too much wind, and the boats weren't going. We planned it for this morning at 9, which meant we had to get to the cafe (where we meet the bus) by 8.
Now, this is the only thing that Professor Price has been absolutely positively undoubtedly unwaveringly sure of the entire time we've been here: The bus will leave at 8. We need to be at the boat by 8:45. 8. 8:00.
We're sitting at the cafe having our coffee this morning at about 10 to 8, and Drunken Girl slides in and says, "Are we going? Because I thought the bus left at 8:30, and I was planning to have breakfast at 7:45. And now it's raining." Mornin to you, too, sunshine. Prof Price just looked up and said, "We're going--the rain won't stop us, and it's not windy. But the bus leaves at 8. It's always been 8." Exit DrunkenGirl, slouching alongside her JackassBoyfriend.
Prof Rush and her sister come in, and they say that they just heard that the girls in the Big House think the bus leaves at 8:30. "No," says Prof Price, "it's always been 8. I don't know why they think that."
The Big House, it turns out, is where I live--the House of the Perpetual Party. It occurred to me that this is the first time I've gotten to stay in The Big House. In Door County and in New Orleans, we got stuck "out back" and had to go up to the Big House for meals.
So there's confusion about when we're supposed to meet, but it's entirely the fault of the students this time, because they just weren't listening. A couple of people get there late, but that turns out to be okay, because the bus is late.
All of this gets us to the waterfront at about 8:25, in time to grab a cuppa and a croissant from a great little place right next to the Nelson Mandela Gateway, where we catch the boat. I offer to pay, in order to make the process go more quickly. We are in a hurry, after all.
Coffee and croissant for me, coffee for one guy, then Janice, lord love her, decided she had to have a butter-sugar-banana crepe, and Robert decided he needed one, so coffee guy decided he wanted a ham and cheese croissant. The guy behind the counter, making the coffee, is in a major snit. The manager takes our orders, and I pay, all the while watching the guy make the cappuccinos very, very slowly. Time's a'wastin', bub, I'm thinking. His coworker asks him to put the sugar dish on the counter, and coffee guy snaps, "I can't do like a thousand things at one time!"
Oooooooookay. I walked to the other end of the counter. The food didn't come and didn't come, and I kept looking at my watch, and I finally asked the manager to check on it. I saw him put some styrofoam containers into a plastic bag, oh so slowly. He brought them out, I tiptoed carefully past the coffee guy, and we rushed to get in line. It was 8:44. We were the last people on the boat.
Robben Island is about 7 miles off the coast of Cape Town. It's about the size of Lake Calhoun, I think--a little under 2 miles long and a little under 1 mile at the widest. I should probably see how big Lake Calhoun is before I start spouting off about this, though.
So, it's this lovely island with a little village in the middle, with a church
and a schoolhouse
the governor's mansion
(which our guide said reminded him of a big Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant),
a lighthouse
and a maximum security prison.
The prison was built in 1961 (I think), but the island had been used as a prison since the mid-17th Century. At one point, there was a leper colony, and the graveyard is on the main tour.
You find all this out on the first part of the tour. When you debark, you head up the quay to some rickety old tour buses with very dirty windows. We had our own bus, with a few very rude French tourists thrown in for good measure. The French tourists were chatting while the guide was talking, prompting DrunkenGirl, who was sitting behind me, to snarl, "Why don't they shut the f*** up?" Nice.
Each bus has a guide, and ours seemed to be especially articulate.
Prof Price had explained to him that we are law students, so his explanation of everything was a little more "high brow" than I would have expected. The whole talk, of course, has to do with the deep divisions in South African history. The lepers, for example. Men and women weren't allowed to mix, because the authorities were afraid they'd have children. So a man and woman who had been married for 50 years and were in their 70's were kept apart. The wife died a few hours after her husband, without knowing that he had died. To make it up to them, the authorities buried them together.
He told us a lot about the special challenges they've faced since it's designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. One issue they have, Miss Kay, is the bunnies. The bunnies are eating the tender bits off the indigenous plants, and the other wild animules don't have enough to eat. They can clear the trees they planted in the 19th Century, but they'll need to get special permission to do that, and it could take years. So they got permission to, um, harvest the bunnies, and then the animal rights people stepped in. They still don't know what to do.
We saw a deer wandering down the street, too. Originally, deer and other game were introduced to the island for hunting. Now, of course, there's no hunting, and the deer are overrunning the place, and starving. (Sound familiar?)
Most of the infrastructure of the island was built by the prisoners. I don't know if I believe it, but the story goes that they had to build the quay leading up to the prison. Then they built the prison. Then they paved roads. And so on.
The bus passes a small compound, and the guide explains that this is the cell for the only political prisoner Robben Island has ever "hosted." Robert Sobukwe was a political leader in the 1950s and led a protest of the Pass Law in 1960 that, I think, led up to the Sharpeville Massacre. (Wiki helps a lot with this stuff.) The Pass Law required Blacks to carry passes with them at all times.
(Our guide also told us about three other tests to determine who was Black: the pencil test (similar to the comb test), measuring the thickness of the top lip, and measuring the size of a person's nostrils.)
At any rate, he was tried and convicted of incitement, and he was sent to prison. But when his sentence was up, the Powers That Be thought it would be imprudent if he hit the streets again. (Remember what's happening all over the world in the '60s.) So Parliament met, and they passed a series of laws that would keep him in prison, renewable annually. The guide pointed out that the government thought he was so dangerous that 400 of them sat down and made laws to deal with one man. Only one woman dissented, but she was easily overruled.
Sobukwe was kept in solitary confinement in a part of the island separate from everything else. He had books and newspapers and daily exercise, but he did not have any contact with anyone until his release in 1969.
He stayed here:
The building was on its own, but they added dog kennels later.
Another challenge from the restoration side is whether to keep the kennels, because they were part of the prison complex (dogs! they must be such a comfort), or to remove them to show more accurately what the Sobukwe site was like.
In the middle of our guide's very moving story, these guys showed up.
Surprisingly, no one made a "Looks like they're making a break for it!" joke.
We then passed a rock quarry. Now, the thing about the rock quarry was that it was the workplace for the "A list" convicts, including Nelson Mandela. These guys weren't considered political prisoners because they'd been convicted of crimes. Sobukwe was the only one kept on the island just because the government was afraid of him.
So, when you think about it, if you put all the leaders of the opposition in one place, even if they're working in a quarry, don't you think they'll talk? They did, and they planned everything they would do when they were free. And a lot of it actually happened. And they didn't focus on getting even--they focused on building a new South Africa, on a day when the races would be reconciled.
Here's the quarry. The cave on the left provided some shade on hot days and also served as a restroom.
The important part of the picture is the pile of stones. When the prison closed, Mandela and his fellow former prisoners (one of whom is now a justice) went back. They walked around the place, and they visited the quarry, "where so many plans were made," said our guide. As he left, Mandela picked up a stone and laid it on the ground. Each man leaving did the same. The small pyramid of rocks in the middle of the picture is from that day.
He ended his tour with the question, "Will there ever be peace in our time?" Then he let us off the bus to walk down to the prison.
That's got to be it for tonight. I'll add the part about the prison tomorrow.
Now, this is the only thing that Professor Price has been absolutely positively undoubtedly unwaveringly sure of the entire time we've been here: The bus will leave at 8. We need to be at the boat by 8:45. 8. 8:00.
We're sitting at the cafe having our coffee this morning at about 10 to 8, and Drunken Girl slides in and says, "Are we going? Because I thought the bus left at 8:30, and I was planning to have breakfast at 7:45. And now it's raining." Mornin to you, too, sunshine. Prof Price just looked up and said, "We're going--the rain won't stop us, and it's not windy. But the bus leaves at 8. It's always been 8." Exit DrunkenGirl, slouching alongside her JackassBoyfriend.
Prof Rush and her sister come in, and they say that they just heard that the girls in the Big House think the bus leaves at 8:30. "No," says Prof Price, "it's always been 8. I don't know why they think that."
The Big House, it turns out, is where I live--the House of the Perpetual Party. It occurred to me that this is the first time I've gotten to stay in The Big House. In Door County and in New Orleans, we got stuck "out back" and had to go up to the Big House for meals.
So there's confusion about when we're supposed to meet, but it's entirely the fault of the students this time, because they just weren't listening. A couple of people get there late, but that turns out to be okay, because the bus is late.
All of this gets us to the waterfront at about 8:25, in time to grab a cuppa and a croissant from a great little place right next to the Nelson Mandela Gateway, where we catch the boat. I offer to pay, in order to make the process go more quickly. We are in a hurry, after all.
Coffee and croissant for me, coffee for one guy, then Janice, lord love her, decided she had to have a butter-sugar-banana crepe, and Robert decided he needed one, so coffee guy decided he wanted a ham and cheese croissant. The guy behind the counter, making the coffee, is in a major snit. The manager takes our orders, and I pay, all the while watching the guy make the cappuccinos very, very slowly. Time's a'wastin', bub, I'm thinking. His coworker asks him to put the sugar dish on the counter, and coffee guy snaps, "I can't do like a thousand things at one time!"
Oooooooookay. I walked to the other end of the counter. The food didn't come and didn't come, and I kept looking at my watch, and I finally asked the manager to check on it. I saw him put some styrofoam containers into a plastic bag, oh so slowly. He brought them out, I tiptoed carefully past the coffee guy, and we rushed to get in line. It was 8:44. We were the last people on the boat.
Robben Island is about 7 miles off the coast of Cape Town. It's about the size of Lake Calhoun, I think--a little under 2 miles long and a little under 1 mile at the widest. I should probably see how big Lake Calhoun is before I start spouting off about this, though.
So, it's this lovely island with a little village in the middle, with a church
and a schoolhouse
the governor's mansion
(which our guide said reminded him of a big Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant),
a lighthouse
and a maximum security prison.
The prison was built in 1961 (I think), but the island had been used as a prison since the mid-17th Century. At one point, there was a leper colony, and the graveyard is on the main tour.
You find all this out on the first part of the tour. When you debark, you head up the quay to some rickety old tour buses with very dirty windows. We had our own bus, with a few very rude French tourists thrown in for good measure. The French tourists were chatting while the guide was talking, prompting DrunkenGirl, who was sitting behind me, to snarl, "Why don't they shut the f*** up?" Nice.
Each bus has a guide, and ours seemed to be especially articulate.
Prof Price had explained to him that we are law students, so his explanation of everything was a little more "high brow" than I would have expected. The whole talk, of course, has to do with the deep divisions in South African history. The lepers, for example. Men and women weren't allowed to mix, because the authorities were afraid they'd have children. So a man and woman who had been married for 50 years and were in their 70's were kept apart. The wife died a few hours after her husband, without knowing that he had died. To make it up to them, the authorities buried them together.
He told us a lot about the special challenges they've faced since it's designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. One issue they have, Miss Kay, is the bunnies. The bunnies are eating the tender bits off the indigenous plants, and the other wild animules don't have enough to eat. They can clear the trees they planted in the 19th Century, but they'll need to get special permission to do that, and it could take years. So they got permission to, um, harvest the bunnies, and then the animal rights people stepped in. They still don't know what to do.
We saw a deer wandering down the street, too. Originally, deer and other game were introduced to the island for hunting. Now, of course, there's no hunting, and the deer are overrunning the place, and starving. (Sound familiar?)
Most of the infrastructure of the island was built by the prisoners. I don't know if I believe it, but the story goes that they had to build the quay leading up to the prison. Then they built the prison. Then they paved roads. And so on.
The bus passes a small compound, and the guide explains that this is the cell for the only political prisoner Robben Island has ever "hosted." Robert Sobukwe was a political leader in the 1950s and led a protest of the Pass Law in 1960 that, I think, led up to the Sharpeville Massacre. (Wiki helps a lot with this stuff.) The Pass Law required Blacks to carry passes with them at all times.
(Our guide also told us about three other tests to determine who was Black: the pencil test (similar to the comb test), measuring the thickness of the top lip, and measuring the size of a person's nostrils.)
At any rate, he was tried and convicted of incitement, and he was sent to prison. But when his sentence was up, the Powers That Be thought it would be imprudent if he hit the streets again. (Remember what's happening all over the world in the '60s.) So Parliament met, and they passed a series of laws that would keep him in prison, renewable annually. The guide pointed out that the government thought he was so dangerous that 400 of them sat down and made laws to deal with one man. Only one woman dissented, but she was easily overruled.
Sobukwe was kept in solitary confinement in a part of the island separate from everything else. He had books and newspapers and daily exercise, but he did not have any contact with anyone until his release in 1969.
He stayed here:
The building was on its own, but they added dog kennels later.
Another challenge from the restoration side is whether to keep the kennels, because they were part of the prison complex (dogs! they must be such a comfort), or to remove them to show more accurately what the Sobukwe site was like.
In the middle of our guide's very moving story, these guys showed up.
Surprisingly, no one made a "Looks like they're making a break for it!" joke.
We then passed a rock quarry. Now, the thing about the rock quarry was that it was the workplace for the "A list" convicts, including Nelson Mandela. These guys weren't considered political prisoners because they'd been convicted of crimes. Sobukwe was the only one kept on the island just because the government was afraid of him.
So, when you think about it, if you put all the leaders of the opposition in one place, even if they're working in a quarry, don't you think they'll talk? They did, and they planned everything they would do when they were free. And a lot of it actually happened. And they didn't focus on getting even--they focused on building a new South Africa, on a day when the races would be reconciled.
Here's the quarry. The cave on the left provided some shade on hot days and also served as a restroom.
The important part of the picture is the pile of stones. When the prison closed, Mandela and his fellow former prisoners (one of whom is now a justice) went back. They walked around the place, and they visited the quarry, "where so many plans were made," said our guide. As he left, Mandela picked up a stone and laid it on the ground. Each man leaving did the same. The small pyramid of rocks in the middle of the picture is from that day.
He ended his tour with the question, "Will there ever be peace in our time?" Then he let us off the bus to walk down to the prison.
That's got to be it for tonight. I'll add the part about the prison tomorrow.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Township
First, I need to correct something I said about District 6: It was a Coloured district; there were no Blacks there. It's also important to note that I'm just not sure if I should capitalize Blacks and Coloureds (is the "u" important?) and Whites. They were official designations, and you call someone a Democrat or a Minnesotan, so....
Anyway, on with the story. Our UCT professor tried to explain that there was, back in the day, a government office dedicated to determining the race of South Africans. This all came about after the Group Areas Act was passed, and the government had to figure out where to relocate everyone. The most famous example of the arbitrariness of determining if someone was Black, Coloured, or White, was the comb test.
Because the races had intermixed so much, and because there were so many different heritages, it was important to make sure what category someone fell into; Blacks, after all, were not citizens of South Africa as much as they were citizens of the homelands. It's all very confusing, but the point was to make sure Blacks, the indigenous Africans, were not mingling with Coloureds or Whites.
So, when a person's race was not apparent to the naked eye, an official would put a comb in his hair, and if it stuck, he was Black. If it took a little time to fall out, he was Coloured, and if it fell out without any resistance, he was White.
In the hierarchy, Black is the lowest, Coloured is the middle, and White, of course, is the most privileged. Nowadays, racial and ethnic groups are scrambling to be reclassified as Black. The Chinese just had their status changed from, I think, Coloured to Black, because there are distinct advantages to being Black when it comes to certain government programs.
Anyway, District 6 was Coloured. This is why families were torn apart when the area was declared White--some members of the family could be categorized as White, some as Coloured, and, if someone had, for example, nappier hair, as Black.
Most of the residents were moved to the suburbs, Cape Flats. There are neighborhoods in Cape Flats, but I honestly don't know how you tell them apart. And while all are bad, some are worse.
The University of Florida has some kind of program going with a school in Cape Flats, the Kalksteenfontein Primary School. As a non-UF-er, I have never been sure of what the relationship is, but part of it has been sponsoring a Flat Stanley project with a school in Gainesville. Don't even get me started on what I don't know about this whole program. All I know is that I was told to donate 100 Rand for supplies and to wear my green UF t-shirt (oops--I gave it away the day I got it) when we visited the school.
So the visit was this morning, and it meant an early call--7:45 am, which really comes fast when your roommates have had their loutish SA boyfriends over the night before (they showed up at 11:30 and stayed until who knows--in the living room, where there is nothing to absorb the sound of their bellowing).
But I digress.
One of the issues I may have mentioned with the relocation from District 6 was that the new location, Cape Flats, was so far from the city that it made it very difficult for people to get to their jobs in the city (for the people whose local businesses hadn't been bulldozed). It is a ways away, and it is the ugliest part of South Africa I've seen yet.
I didn't take many pictures of the neighborhood, because it seemed disrespectful. Even though it was chilly and early, there were plenty of people standing around as the bus pulled around the corner into the neighborhood proper. The school is right near the main, busy road, and it is surrounded by a high chicken-wire fence with barbed wire coiled at the top. They had to open a very substantial gate to let us in.
We first met with the principal, who talked about the challenges of the school and the neighborhood. It's very hard to keep kids in school. Their families either cannot pay the modest annual fee (I was just not sure about how this worked, but I didn't ask) or they drop out because they are pregnant or are needed at home. Very few families are intact. Most families are single parent (mostly mom), with only one or two of the household members working. One way the men earn money is to scavenge for tin and other metals that can be sold for cash.
Other problems include, of course, violence, HIV/AIDS, drugs, and all those wonderful byproducts of teenage peer pressure. Some of what he said reminded me of Mom's stories of the families whose 12 year olds would get pregnant, and the only thing the mom would say was, "Well, what's another mouth to feed."
The fact that it was cloudy and brisk and winter didn't help to improve the general ambiance of the place.
Anyway, he chatted for a while, put his t-shirt on, and escorted us to the classrooms.
The classrooms are in two cinderblock bunkers. Honestly, from the outside, it looks like a prison camp. I didn't get a picture, maybe because I was trying so hard to smile and be pleased to be there.
We were broken up into groups of 4 and deposited in classrooms. I was in a third grade room, accompanied by Leslie, Amrita, and Jane, who is a UCT student from Zimbabwe. There were about 18 kids between the ages of 8 and 11 (I'm guessing) and one teacher.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. Then I tripped over the space heater (one of those portable radiator models that gives out enough heat to dry a sock--if you leave it there for 2 days). Then I was mobbed by kids.
I have no idea what it is about me, but if I could just attract straight, single men the way I do kids and dogs, I'd be a busy girl. There seemed to be more girls than boys, but it may have been because the boys were in constant motion. This is a very bad picture of the entire class.
The teacher is in the upper right hand corner.
So I played with the kids. This really meant taking their picture with some of their treasures, then showing them the picture, then taking another picture, showing them that picture, and so on. Some of them were real hams. Some were a little shyer. Some were budding Rita Hayworths.
One girl became my particular friend, and I think it was destiny, really. Here's why, the long way around: One of my favorite places is Ieper. The town square is amazingly beautiful, but the museum, In Flanders Fields, is very, very moving. When we went the first time, I was caught completely off guard by the museum, and I was especially moved by the exhibit that includes a recitation of the poem, In Flanders Fields. The first line is "In Flanders Fields the poppies blow..." and it goes one from there. The Menin Gate steps are lined with poppy wreaths. And when we were visiting trenches nearby, I found a wild poppy and pressed it in (natch) my Michelin guide. I love poppies.
So the little girl's name is Denlize, and her nickname is Poppie. I couldn't believe it. Here's my new friend Poppie.
At one point, she said something about Leslie's hair not being braided, and then she pointed to me and said, "You cut yours off!" Yes, I did, I explained. And I leaned over so she could touch it. "I like it," she said. Thank goodness--the hair cut was worth it!
The kids are going on vacation tomorrow or Monday, it was never clear which, for two weeks, so they were pretty hyper. They played catch and colored all in the same space all at the same time. The girls wanted to be doctors or teachers. The boys wanted, to the last one, to be professional soccer players.
One of the boys read me the rules of the classroom from a poster on the wall. (Classes are taught in Afrikaans, so I needed a translator.) The first rule is "No fighting." I asked the boy if he followed the rules as school. Yes. And at home? No. Another was "Listen to other people." He assured me that he did that. We went through most of the other rules, and I told him I thought they were very good rules for school and home. He just said he wants to be a soccer player.
All the boys, it turns out, want to be professional soccer players. At least all the boys in this class. Not a single doctor, policeman, teacher...lawyer. And beneath all that professional soccer player stuff was what can only be characterized as a settled hopelessness.
I had a true Aunt Chris: The Aunt Who Says No moment. Toward the end of our visit, the teacher was calling the kids over for the class picture, I think. The boy who'd read the rules to me and another boy started to argue about the soccer ball one was holding. Before I realized what I was doing, I did the full-voiced "Hey! Stop it! You told me no fighting, so no fighting!" They stopped as soon as they heard my tone (I had them at "hey"). I thanked them for listening to me. Yes, that's me--always happy to discipline other people's kids.
The next part of the visit was going with a student to his or her home. I got paired with a different student for this one--a 12-year-old girl in 8th grade. She wants to be a doctor and to move far away.
We left the school yard and made our way to her house. The roads are paved, but there are no sidewalks and no driveways. There seems to be a parking lot or just a field where cars are parked at the end of one of the roads. The houses are all one story (plaster, maybe? cinderblock again? hard to say, but not tarpaper shacks), and they are, for the most part, just a few feet away from each other. Most are set back a bit from the road, with small garden patches out front. In winter it's hard to see any beauty here, but I think, when flowers and trees are in bloom, it's probably not quite so bleak.
Most yards are fenced in, and the fences are made with planks nailed together. The porch on my hostess's house was made of those planks. I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't get her name. She was so soft-spoken that I couldn't ask more than 3 times and not feel like a total idiot.
Anyway, there was a little gate and a yard, and a little portico thing made of planks--and there was part of a window in the front, now that I think about it. I remember that because someone had been writing in the dust on the window. The house was very dark. It's a square, broken into 4 rooms. The doors are pretty much in the middle of the 4 square, if that makes sense. Walk into the sitting room, which is fairly well-appointed and full of family heirlooms. Then to the left is a bedroom, where there are two full-sized beds, one with someone sleeping on it, blankets pulled over her head, the other with a sweet-looking baby, being minded by a large, loud TV.
Directly behind the sitting room is the kitchen, and to the left of the kitchen is a bedroom with one double bed and a desk. And, I think, another TV. This is clearly the nicest room in the house. My hostess pokes her head in there and calls her grandmother out.
Her grandmother is named Rachel. I hope she's named Rachel, because that's what I called her when I left. Rachel gave me the tour. In her nightgown, by the way. It was 10:30.
In the room with the double bed, it was my student's mother who was sleeping and one of her baby brothers who was watching TV. My student had scooped up her brother almost as soon as she came in the house and didn't put him down until we left.
That room is where Rachel (who is 60) and 8 other people sleep. The other bedroom is her mother-in-law's room. It is her mother-in-law's house, so she gets the nice room. Her mother-in-law was out at something that sounded remarkably like the Red Hats, so Rachel was giving me the tour instead.
She told me that the outlets don't all work, and that she needs to pay the electric bill. The TV was on the whole time I was there. They have a stove and a refrigerator in the kitchen, but the stove doesn't work, so they use an electric hot plate.
There is a room at the back that Rachel's late husband (lung cancer) had added on. This is where one of Rachel's other daughters stays with her 5 kids. Rachel is hoping the daughter will move away, and she'll move in to that back room so she can have some privacy.
There was a dog there, but they didn't seem too interested in it. There were, in fact, a couple of dogs in the neighborhood, and, God help me, I thought of those Booth cartoons with the scraggly mutts coughing stuff up in the corner of the living room.
We talked some about the yard (great soil in Cape Town--you can drop a potato peel and have a whole plant in no time), and then I just had to get out of there, so I said my thank yous and goodbyes and my student and I walked back to school.
I took only one picture at the house, because it just felt rude to snap away with abandon.
From left to right: an aunt (generation uncertain), my student, her baby brother, and Rachel. They are in the kitchen, with the door to the mother-in-law's room behind them. Come to think of it, I don't remember seeing a door. I don't remember seeing anywhere for a bathroom, either.
On the walk back, my student gave me a bead bangle she'd made for me the day before. It's a treasure. She also told me that she goes to Cape Town with her grandmother sometimes to buy rosaries. And we passed a group of men breaking up what looked like an old refrigerator, for scrap, I guess.
She also told me how dangerous her neighborhood has gotten, with stabbings and shootings. I told her to be very careful and to stay in school and to work hard. We got back to school, and she kind of peeled off and joined her friends.
We compared visit stories as our group reassembled. One guy was being shown around the house, and they got to one room where a man was lying in bed, clearly in the end stages of AIDS, and the host said, "That's Leonard. He stays here." No other explanation. Janice went to a more middle-class home and got tea. Her roommate was late getting back because her hostess was telling the story of how the student's mother was murdered, and Camie just couldn't find a convenient breaking point. Leslie said she had a hard time knowing what to ask. We decided, "So, you live in abject poverty!" was not a good conversation opener.
I am ashamed to admit that I just wanted to get out of there. Poppie and her friends were so dear, and I love my bracelet, but the weight of the place is just overwhelming.
But everyone had a TV.
Anyway, on with the story. Our UCT professor tried to explain that there was, back in the day, a government office dedicated to determining the race of South Africans. This all came about after the Group Areas Act was passed, and the government had to figure out where to relocate everyone. The most famous example of the arbitrariness of determining if someone was Black, Coloured, or White, was the comb test.
Because the races had intermixed so much, and because there were so many different heritages, it was important to make sure what category someone fell into; Blacks, after all, were not citizens of South Africa as much as they were citizens of the homelands. It's all very confusing, but the point was to make sure Blacks, the indigenous Africans, were not mingling with Coloureds or Whites.
So, when a person's race was not apparent to the naked eye, an official would put a comb in his hair, and if it stuck, he was Black. If it took a little time to fall out, he was Coloured, and if it fell out without any resistance, he was White.
In the hierarchy, Black is the lowest, Coloured is the middle, and White, of course, is the most privileged. Nowadays, racial and ethnic groups are scrambling to be reclassified as Black. The Chinese just had their status changed from, I think, Coloured to Black, because there are distinct advantages to being Black when it comes to certain government programs.
Anyway, District 6 was Coloured. This is why families were torn apart when the area was declared White--some members of the family could be categorized as White, some as Coloured, and, if someone had, for example, nappier hair, as Black.
Most of the residents were moved to the suburbs, Cape Flats. There are neighborhoods in Cape Flats, but I honestly don't know how you tell them apart. And while all are bad, some are worse.
The University of Florida has some kind of program going with a school in Cape Flats, the Kalksteenfontein Primary School. As a non-UF-er, I have never been sure of what the relationship is, but part of it has been sponsoring a Flat Stanley project with a school in Gainesville. Don't even get me started on what I don't know about this whole program. All I know is that I was told to donate 100 Rand for supplies and to wear my green UF t-shirt (oops--I gave it away the day I got it) when we visited the school.
So the visit was this morning, and it meant an early call--7:45 am, which really comes fast when your roommates have had their loutish SA boyfriends over the night before (they showed up at 11:30 and stayed until who knows--in the living room, where there is nothing to absorb the sound of their bellowing).
But I digress.
One of the issues I may have mentioned with the relocation from District 6 was that the new location, Cape Flats, was so far from the city that it made it very difficult for people to get to their jobs in the city (for the people whose local businesses hadn't been bulldozed). It is a ways away, and it is the ugliest part of South Africa I've seen yet.
I didn't take many pictures of the neighborhood, because it seemed disrespectful. Even though it was chilly and early, there were plenty of people standing around as the bus pulled around the corner into the neighborhood proper. The school is right near the main, busy road, and it is surrounded by a high chicken-wire fence with barbed wire coiled at the top. They had to open a very substantial gate to let us in.
We first met with the principal, who talked about the challenges of the school and the neighborhood. It's very hard to keep kids in school. Their families either cannot pay the modest annual fee (I was just not sure about how this worked, but I didn't ask) or they drop out because they are pregnant or are needed at home. Very few families are intact. Most families are single parent (mostly mom), with only one or two of the household members working. One way the men earn money is to scavenge for tin and other metals that can be sold for cash.
Other problems include, of course, violence, HIV/AIDS, drugs, and all those wonderful byproducts of teenage peer pressure. Some of what he said reminded me of Mom's stories of the families whose 12 year olds would get pregnant, and the only thing the mom would say was, "Well, what's another mouth to feed."
The fact that it was cloudy and brisk and winter didn't help to improve the general ambiance of the place.
Anyway, he chatted for a while, put his t-shirt on, and escorted us to the classrooms.
The classrooms are in two cinderblock bunkers. Honestly, from the outside, it looks like a prison camp. I didn't get a picture, maybe because I was trying so hard to smile and be pleased to be there.
We were broken up into groups of 4 and deposited in classrooms. I was in a third grade room, accompanied by Leslie, Amrita, and Jane, who is a UCT student from Zimbabwe. There were about 18 kids between the ages of 8 and 11 (I'm guessing) and one teacher.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. Then I tripped over the space heater (one of those portable radiator models that gives out enough heat to dry a sock--if you leave it there for 2 days). Then I was mobbed by kids.
I have no idea what it is about me, but if I could just attract straight, single men the way I do kids and dogs, I'd be a busy girl. There seemed to be more girls than boys, but it may have been because the boys were in constant motion. This is a very bad picture of the entire class.
The teacher is in the upper right hand corner.
So I played with the kids. This really meant taking their picture with some of their treasures, then showing them the picture, then taking another picture, showing them that picture, and so on. Some of them were real hams. Some were a little shyer. Some were budding Rita Hayworths.
One girl became my particular friend, and I think it was destiny, really. Here's why, the long way around: One of my favorite places is Ieper. The town square is amazingly beautiful, but the museum, In Flanders Fields, is very, very moving. When we went the first time, I was caught completely off guard by the museum, and I was especially moved by the exhibit that includes a recitation of the poem, In Flanders Fields. The first line is "In Flanders Fields the poppies blow..." and it goes one from there. The Menin Gate steps are lined with poppy wreaths. And when we were visiting trenches nearby, I found a wild poppy and pressed it in (natch) my Michelin guide. I love poppies.
So the little girl's name is Denlize, and her nickname is Poppie. I couldn't believe it. Here's my new friend Poppie.
At one point, she said something about Leslie's hair not being braided, and then she pointed to me and said, "You cut yours off!" Yes, I did, I explained. And I leaned over so she could touch it. "I like it," she said. Thank goodness--the hair cut was worth it!
The kids are going on vacation tomorrow or Monday, it was never clear which, for two weeks, so they were pretty hyper. They played catch and colored all in the same space all at the same time. The girls wanted to be doctors or teachers. The boys wanted, to the last one, to be professional soccer players.
One of the boys read me the rules of the classroom from a poster on the wall. (Classes are taught in Afrikaans, so I needed a translator.) The first rule is "No fighting." I asked the boy if he followed the rules as school. Yes. And at home? No. Another was "Listen to other people." He assured me that he did that. We went through most of the other rules, and I told him I thought they were very good rules for school and home. He just said he wants to be a soccer player.
All the boys, it turns out, want to be professional soccer players. At least all the boys in this class. Not a single doctor, policeman, teacher...lawyer. And beneath all that professional soccer player stuff was what can only be characterized as a settled hopelessness.
I had a true Aunt Chris: The Aunt Who Says No moment. Toward the end of our visit, the teacher was calling the kids over for the class picture, I think. The boy who'd read the rules to me and another boy started to argue about the soccer ball one was holding. Before I realized what I was doing, I did the full-voiced "Hey! Stop it! You told me no fighting, so no fighting!" They stopped as soon as they heard my tone (I had them at "hey"). I thanked them for listening to me. Yes, that's me--always happy to discipline other people's kids.
The next part of the visit was going with a student to his or her home. I got paired with a different student for this one--a 12-year-old girl in 8th grade. She wants to be a doctor and to move far away.
We left the school yard and made our way to her house. The roads are paved, but there are no sidewalks and no driveways. There seems to be a parking lot or just a field where cars are parked at the end of one of the roads. The houses are all one story (plaster, maybe? cinderblock again? hard to say, but not tarpaper shacks), and they are, for the most part, just a few feet away from each other. Most are set back a bit from the road, with small garden patches out front. In winter it's hard to see any beauty here, but I think, when flowers and trees are in bloom, it's probably not quite so bleak.
Most yards are fenced in, and the fences are made with planks nailed together. The porch on my hostess's house was made of those planks. I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't get her name. She was so soft-spoken that I couldn't ask more than 3 times and not feel like a total idiot.
Anyway, there was a little gate and a yard, and a little portico thing made of planks--and there was part of a window in the front, now that I think about it. I remember that because someone had been writing in the dust on the window. The house was very dark. It's a square, broken into 4 rooms. The doors are pretty much in the middle of the 4 square, if that makes sense. Walk into the sitting room, which is fairly well-appointed and full of family heirlooms. Then to the left is a bedroom, where there are two full-sized beds, one with someone sleeping on it, blankets pulled over her head, the other with a sweet-looking baby, being minded by a large, loud TV.
Directly behind the sitting room is the kitchen, and to the left of the kitchen is a bedroom with one double bed and a desk. And, I think, another TV. This is clearly the nicest room in the house. My hostess pokes her head in there and calls her grandmother out.
Her grandmother is named Rachel. I hope she's named Rachel, because that's what I called her when I left. Rachel gave me the tour. In her nightgown, by the way. It was 10:30.
In the room with the double bed, it was my student's mother who was sleeping and one of her baby brothers who was watching TV. My student had scooped up her brother almost as soon as she came in the house and didn't put him down until we left.
That room is where Rachel (who is 60) and 8 other people sleep. The other bedroom is her mother-in-law's room. It is her mother-in-law's house, so she gets the nice room. Her mother-in-law was out at something that sounded remarkably like the Red Hats, so Rachel was giving me the tour instead.
She told me that the outlets don't all work, and that she needs to pay the electric bill. The TV was on the whole time I was there. They have a stove and a refrigerator in the kitchen, but the stove doesn't work, so they use an electric hot plate.
There is a room at the back that Rachel's late husband (lung cancer) had added on. This is where one of Rachel's other daughters stays with her 5 kids. Rachel is hoping the daughter will move away, and she'll move in to that back room so she can have some privacy.
There was a dog there, but they didn't seem too interested in it. There were, in fact, a couple of dogs in the neighborhood, and, God help me, I thought of those Booth cartoons with the scraggly mutts coughing stuff up in the corner of the living room.
We talked some about the yard (great soil in Cape Town--you can drop a potato peel and have a whole plant in no time), and then I just had to get out of there, so I said my thank yous and goodbyes and my student and I walked back to school.
I took only one picture at the house, because it just felt rude to snap away with abandon.
From left to right: an aunt (generation uncertain), my student, her baby brother, and Rachel. They are in the kitchen, with the door to the mother-in-law's room behind them. Come to think of it, I don't remember seeing a door. I don't remember seeing anywhere for a bathroom, either.
On the walk back, my student gave me a bead bangle she'd made for me the day before. It's a treasure. She also told me that she goes to Cape Town with her grandmother sometimes to buy rosaries. And we passed a group of men breaking up what looked like an old refrigerator, for scrap, I guess.
She also told me how dangerous her neighborhood has gotten, with stabbings and shootings. I told her to be very careful and to stay in school and to work hard. We got back to school, and she kind of peeled off and joined her friends.
We compared visit stories as our group reassembled. One guy was being shown around the house, and they got to one room where a man was lying in bed, clearly in the end stages of AIDS, and the host said, "That's Leonard. He stays here." No other explanation. Janice went to a more middle-class home and got tea. Her roommate was late getting back because her hostess was telling the story of how the student's mother was murdered, and Camie just couldn't find a convenient breaking point. Leslie said she had a hard time knowing what to ask. We decided, "So, you live in abject poverty!" was not a good conversation opener.
I am ashamed to admit that I just wanted to get out of there. Poppie and her friends were so dear, and I love my bracelet, but the weight of the place is just overwhelming.
But everyone had a TV.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Table Mountain
Just a quick nod to my visit to Table Mountain. We went up around 4:30, wandered around (I, of course, got separated from the Clan), stood and watched the sunset, and got the gondola back down. The operator was nice enough to turn the lights off on the way back down, so we got to see the lights of Cape Town come on. It was just fabulous. Here are the pictures, sort of in order (ascent to descent). The island is the elusive Robben Island.
Tomorrow (Thursday), we spend the morning with kids from a township school. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, and no one I've asked really knows either. We all donated 100 rand (about $12) to buy paper and soccer balls and jump ropes. I just hope they don't expect me to play soccer or jump rope with them. My classmates won't let me, I think--they would be worried that I'd break a hip or something. We'll see. Classes are interesting, but that'll have to wait for another day.....
And, now, back to our story....
After we left the Cape, we drove north to Simons Town and Boulders Beach, the home of a small but highly entertaining African Penguin colony.
The bus had to park miles away from the visitors center, and, as we hiked the typically uneven path, my friend Leslie (one of the Clan, but not a roommate) and I had visions of walking among the penguins, avoiding the dung, getting sand in our shoes, and so forth. Prof Price had described her last visit to us, and we were both a tad nervous ("the smell was overwhelming") and just jumping up and down with anticipation.
Ahh, but the visitors center has changed in the years since Prof Price's last visit--much for the better of the penguins. On arrival, the smell was, indeed, overwhelming--but that was the men's room, which we had to pass on the way down to the beach.
They have very wisely installed a boardwalk, so we humans don't interfere with or contribute to the degradation of the penguins' habitat. We walked and walked and walked, and, finally, came across a penguin sleeping under a bush. "I can't take a picture of that," said Leslie. "I'll traumatize my sister for life!" Yes, the poor thing was completely immobile, and it just didn't look good. But, not to be outdone by the tens of tourists around me, I snapped away.
A few turns of the boardwalk, though, and voila! There's another. Not exactly the "colony" we'd been promised, but snap snap snap went the cameras.
This guy was a little more animated and mugged a bit for the camera. I am the first to admit that watching penguins groom is way more fun than watching baboons groom.
A few more steps along the boardwalk, and WOW! Two penguins!
They gave us that "what are you lookin at" look, and we felt absolutely de trop. We finally looked up and saw how beautiful the place is.
Well, we finally got to the beach, and there they were. It was lovely--the little guys (and gals) were just having a lovely time on the beach and out on the rocks, and all was right with my world.
They have very funny feet, little flappy fins, and extremely flexible necks. I just loved them. My first penguins in the wild!
The absolute best moment was something no one but an obnoxious kid from Newark was expecting. There were a bunch of penguins out on a rock, and they all kind of jumped in the water at once. The kid called our attention to them, and we got to see them all body surf in to the beach. They hit the beach in a bunch, and then, one by one, they got to their feet, shook their tails, and wandered off. It was maybe the cutest thing I've seen since we were at the Central Park Zoo and got to see all the penguins jump into the water at once (you could practically hear one guy shouting, "Everybody, on three! One, two....")
Of course no one got video of it, and we all stood there muttering, "Come on, do it again!" But they did not.
I did get some video (no sound) of them wandering up the beach. It's a shame I don't have sound, really, because these penguins have a call that sounds a lot like a donkey braying. (M&D, visited here in lieu of Crazy About Donkeys!, I guess!) You wouldn't expect such a big noise out of such little things.
Well, much as we'd have liked to stay, we had to head back to the bus (via the gift shop) and back on to Cape Town. The views were spectacular.
All in all, a very good day.
The bus had to park miles away from the visitors center, and, as we hiked the typically uneven path, my friend Leslie (one of the Clan, but not a roommate) and I had visions of walking among the penguins, avoiding the dung, getting sand in our shoes, and so forth. Prof Price had described her last visit to us, and we were both a tad nervous ("the smell was overwhelming") and just jumping up and down with anticipation.
Ahh, but the visitors center has changed in the years since Prof Price's last visit--much for the better of the penguins. On arrival, the smell was, indeed, overwhelming--but that was the men's room, which we had to pass on the way down to the beach.
They have very wisely installed a boardwalk, so we humans don't interfere with or contribute to the degradation of the penguins' habitat. We walked and walked and walked, and, finally, came across a penguin sleeping under a bush. "I can't take a picture of that," said Leslie. "I'll traumatize my sister for life!" Yes, the poor thing was completely immobile, and it just didn't look good. But, not to be outdone by the tens of tourists around me, I snapped away.
A few turns of the boardwalk, though, and voila! There's another. Not exactly the "colony" we'd been promised, but snap snap snap went the cameras.
This guy was a little more animated and mugged a bit for the camera. I am the first to admit that watching penguins groom is way more fun than watching baboons groom.
A few more steps along the boardwalk, and WOW! Two penguins!
They gave us that "what are you lookin at" look, and we felt absolutely de trop. We finally looked up and saw how beautiful the place is.
Well, we finally got to the beach, and there they were. It was lovely--the little guys (and gals) were just having a lovely time on the beach and out on the rocks, and all was right with my world.
They have very funny feet, little flappy fins, and extremely flexible necks. I just loved them. My first penguins in the wild!
The absolute best moment was something no one but an obnoxious kid from Newark was expecting. There were a bunch of penguins out on a rock, and they all kind of jumped in the water at once. The kid called our attention to them, and we got to see them all body surf in to the beach. They hit the beach in a bunch, and then, one by one, they got to their feet, shook their tails, and wandered off. It was maybe the cutest thing I've seen since we were at the Central Park Zoo and got to see all the penguins jump into the water at once (you could practically hear one guy shouting, "Everybody, on three! One, two....")
Of course no one got video of it, and we all stood there muttering, "Come on, do it again!" But they did not.
I did get some video (no sound) of them wandering up the beach. It's a shame I don't have sound, really, because these penguins have a call that sounds a lot like a donkey braying. (M&D, visited here in lieu of Crazy About Donkeys!, I guess!) You wouldn't expect such a big noise out of such little things.
Well, much as we'd have liked to stay, we had to head back to the bus (via the gift shop) and back on to Cape Town. The views were spectacular.
All in all, a very good day.
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