David's adventures: Part II

After a number of rich experiences (including several typical David misadventures), I moved on from the Wild Coast, eager to arrive in Durban, a major milestone I had been anticipating since beginning this trip (and in another sense, since I first began to learn about South Africa). As the 3rd largest city in South Africa, I hadn’t seen anything remotely like Durban since I left Cape Town, and yet Cape Town is nothing like this city. Durban bustles, with Indian influences rubbing shoulders with Zulu culture and Xhosa influences, all on top of crumbling British colonial architecture lined with palm trees and creeping vines. The Golden Mile Beachfront and Sun Coast Casino are kitsch as hell, like a theme park version of Miami Beach’s Art Deco style. I was told crocodiles live in the river that cuts through the city, and to avoid Mahatma Gandhi Road at all times- especially after dark. I went on a tour of the city’s sprawling Berea market- a vast accumulation of market spaces winding under, above, within, beside, and between the tracks and highway overpasses of the Berea transport interchange. This was a place where you could buy Indian spices by the kilo, eat cooked meat off a cow’s face, buy bags of muti(traditional medicines), marvel at dried animal carcasses and skulls, buy pirated DVDs of children’s shows, bushels of dried herbs (imphepho) to burn in ceremonies, and just about anything else one could want. It was sunny and beautiful at the beach on Saturday (and I watched a bunch of fully dressed Zulu women roll around in the surf, it must have been a religious thing), the aquarium was stocked with ridiculous looking fish, morays, and ferocious crabs (Japanese Spider Crab, anyone?), and the food, Indian and otherwise, was damn good. I can’t wait to go back.

Herb/Muti Market, Durban (Sourced from internet)

Totally convincing smile as I prepare to descend a 25m chain ladder
off a sheer cliff face while wearing size 14 US hiking boots
that are too big for me to consistently fit my feet onto each ladder rung.

I left Durban after a week and headed to Pietermaritzburg, where I took a typically crowded minibus taxi to a town called Underberg, not far from the Drakensberg Mountains and the Sani Pass. From here I took a 4x4 trip up the Sani Pass into Lesotho, the highest country in the world, and also one of the poorest. This trip was by turns beautiful, surprising, and humbling. Also, the hike we undertook to Hodgson’s Peak South (AKA the Giant’s Cup), at an elevation of over 3,200 meters, was my first experience in high-altitude hiking. The highlands of Lesotho and the Drakensberg put the Appalachian to shame. I spent the next few days in the Berg as well, gradually heading north towards the Amphitheatre, stopping to hike and see San rock art, beautifully preserved for as many as 5,000 years. From a backpackers in the Northern Drakensberg we hiked along the top of the Ampitheatre and visited the top of Tugela falls, the 2nd highest waterfall in the world. We also descended down a sheer cliff face on a series of ladders that were over 100 feet long, one of the tensest experiences of my life. I also visited Lesotho again, this time the northeast of the country, and spent a day exploring Royal Natal Park.

Visiting a village in Eastern Lesotho, near the Sani Pass

From the Drakensberg, it was only a short jaunt to Johannesburg, the big city at the end of my journey. Johannesburg has reputation in spades, more so than any other African city I can name. It took a few days, but once I got used to Jozi and got over my fears, I was seeing silver linings all over and feeling the vibe that infuses this city. If Durban makes Cape Town look like a European outpost, Joburg makes Cape Town look like a playground.  After a night or two my traveling mate and I decided to relocate from the staid northern suburbs to the heart of dangerous, deadly, downtown Jozi; we ended up in a hilariously sketchy hostel in Braamfontein, an emerging area within Joburg’s CBD. While in Joburg I revisited the Apartheid Museum and Constitution Hill, and found even more to savor and discover in these rich historical sites. I took a daytrip to Pretoria and discovered the inspirational Freedom Park museum complex, and then trekked up the largest hill in town to visit the imposing and intimidating Voortrekker Monument. My other favorite experiences in Joburg included a visit to the Origins Centre museum at Wits University, and an adventure into the depths of Johannesburg’s massive Park Station as my traveling companion sought to find a guy about a minibus taxi to Zimbabwe. Ever get that uneasy sense that you’re being looked at? You should try visiting the Johannesburg minibus taxi ranks (sarcasm).

A view of Johannesburg, City of Gold, from Carlton Centre.

The end of my trip came surprisingly fast. I was able to find a dirt-cheap rate for a flight back to Cape Town, and booked it only 1 day in advance. Like that, I had my ticket “home”. I had entertained ideas about traveling beyond South Africa to Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana or Namibia, but my visa problems wouldn’t allow this. And the fact of the matter is, that although I had taken over five weeks to make this journey, there were still many places I passed up on visiting, entire areas I had not yet been able to explore within South Africa, and that a trip out to South Africa’s neighboring countries would require time, resources, and money that I simply didn’t have to do the right way. And so, my trip came to an end. It amazed me how it only took a two-hour plan ride to return me to the place I had spent five weeks traveling from. I returned to a Cape Town that was very differently from the one I had left, not just because of the passing of seasons and the changing of people, but because of how I myself had changed, and how my perceptions had changed.

Cape Town has been my home for the past two and a half weeks, and it will be my home until I return to the states, possibly in as few as ten or so days. It seems strange that such a long journey is coming to an end now. This trip, my entire experience in South Africa has completely and thoroughly trumped and tricked my expectations at all stages. This is what the future holds in spades, and I look forward to it excitedly.

David's post study abroad experiences

Catching up with David

Part 1

Hello everyone! It’s been almost two months now since UConn in Cape Town 2014 ended. Already I find it difficult to look back on the experiences I’ve had since that time, because I feel like I’ve moved through so many phases of feeling and thought. As I sit writing this in a café on Main Road in Sea Point, watching people pass by on a early winter day in Cape Town, I feel so far removed from the David who wandered in a surreal daze around the eerily quiet and empty interior of the house, minutes after my peers had all packed into vans and left for the airport.  In that moment, I was overcome by these thoughts: It’s over. UConn in Cape Town 2014 is over. Now something else begins. How am I going to finish packing? I am not prepared. What am I doing? It’s so quiet. Where do I start? I should jump in the pool! It’s too cold. And the house is empty.

That afternoon was so strange. As Ben and Liz went through the house with Diane and Harry and did inventory and surveyed the damages, I called my sister and talked to her on the phone for the first time since I left Connecticut. I packed away almost all my belongings into two large suitcases and stored them in Liz’s room, leaving behind only a tiny pile of supplies and clothing that filled my traveling backpack. I wandered upstairs and was caught by the sight of a gorgeous sunset, my last in Cape Town for now, but not ever. Sarah and Ben joined me on the roof patio, and I took a moment to register the feeling of change, of one thing ending and another beginning. And with that, I tossed my things in the car and we left.

The next morning I left on an open-ended backpacking trip across the vastness of South Africa. I had never embarked on anything remotely like this before, and my anxiety and nervousness in the days leading up to that first day were testament to my inexperience. Did I have everything that I needed? Was I adequately prepared with back-up plans and resources should I run into trouble? How will I communicate? How will I arrange travel off the beaten path? How will I manage to procure the necessary supplies and food for a multi-day hiking trip when my bag was already stuffed beyond capacity? Will I meet people? Will I be able to be outgoing enough? Every one of these questions resolved themselves along the way, and I ended up having a phenomenal experience traveling. Despite my passion for exploration and well-established pattern of risk-disregarding decision-making that I practiced in Cape Town, I never found myself in a situation where the challenges of the moment or the environment exceeded my ability to handle them confidently, to a greater or lesser degree. This is not to fail to mention that I (in most cases) judiciously took decisions to not place myself in high-risk situations, or that in many cases I was helped or saved by the kindness of strangers.

But back to the meat of the action: my trip! I left Cape Town and traveled along the Garden Route, visiting Wilderness, Knysna, Plettenberg Bay, The Crags, and Storm’s River. I found beautiful nature and verdant, rocky coastline in Wilderness; high-class living and working-class hardscrabble on a placid lagoon in Knysna; stunning views and cosmopolitan vibes in Plettenberg Bay; and monkeys, hippies and vast lightning storms that stretched across the sky in The Crags. From Tsitsitkamma National Park in Storm’s River I embarked on the 5-day Otter Trail hike, one of the top backpacking trips in South Africa. I spent days trekking along rugged coastline fringed with massive rocks and huge crashing waves, across river mouths and through native forests and fields, sighting baboons and birds and otters and more, passing waterfalls, caves, and freezing mountain pools, and watching the sun rise over the vast and Indian Ocean, here at the foot of Africa. I felt a powerful sense of accomplishment for completing this hike, for reasons that extend far beyond the significance of the physical accomplishment.

After nearly two weeks on the Garden Route (despite my sense that the time sped by), I felt the drive to move on to new things. 30 hours after completing the Otter Trail, I arrived in Port Elizabeth. The best thing I can say about Port Elizabeth is that there was a Nandos within walking distance of my backpackers, and it was open when I arrived at 10:45pm. This is not an insignificant compliment, as I was in withdrawal. Port Elizabeth also marked the first and only time I did laundry on this 5+ week trip, and just at the two week mark as well. Granted, I had just hiked for five days in those clothes, so they were essentially toxic.

I left Port Elizabeth and began the journey into the rural Eastern Cape, into the area of the country that used to be called the Transkei. I had commented in a status update upon leaving the Garden Route that I was ready to find something a little more “African”, but I had no idea how right I was. This part of the country remains very rural and often very poor, with little economic activity, poor services, and measly infrastructure. The Transkei remains the homeland (used here not in the politically charged Apartheid sense, if possible) of the Xhosa people, and it is here that they live according to traditional cultural practices. It was in this part of the country, while visiting the coastal communities of Cintsa, Nqileni (Bulungula), and Coffee Bay, that I had my most rewarding and fulfilling experiences while traveling. I could write an entire blog post on my experiences at Bulungula, a community-owned lodge in one of the most rural, isolated, and impoverished municipalities in the whole of South Africa. Suffice it to say, my experience there was more than just a vacation- but rather an opportunity to gain insight into traditional culture, to be the recipient of Xhosa hospitality, to meet and interact with members of a tight-knit community, to marvel at the village’s successes, to appreciate their challenges, and to go to bed each night feeling challenged, humbled, uncertain, and grateful.

May 14th, 2014. Walking over hills in Nqileni Village, Eastern Cape

David's reflections on safety

On Safety

David & Ryan rock climbing

Safety is complex topic here. I believe that as a person in Cape Town, I experience safety in different shades, in different places, at different times, in different ways. There are an infinite number of ways to be exposed to danger or risk in Cape Town: by walking down the street, by climbing Lion’s Head, by taking the train, or by eating a sandwich. I will share my impressions about safety as it relates to a recent experience.

Lauren waiting on minibus taxi

On Tuesday, TAC was going to host a public meeting at a hall in Site B for the launch of the Western Cape Health Manifesto for 2014. The event was scheduled for 4pm to 6pm, after usual internship hours (which are usually about 9am-3pm). Lauren and I discussed the possibility of staying behind in Khayelitsha after hours for this event, and after developing a plan we agreed to stay. We would send our bags home with Emily Kaufmann on the bus with the other students, stay for the event, and then negotiate our way out of the township using public transportation around 6pm.

This decision took a certain amount of deliberation and discussion because of the risk associated with deviating from our usual routine of secure, safe transport. Though we had taken minibuses around Khaya before, it was always with TAC members and during the day. For Lauren and I, this would be our first time traveling around the township unaccompanied, and our first time staying in the township past 3:30pm or so.

The public gathering at Site B, Khayelitsha

There is no place in Cape Town that is perfectly immune from crime or violence, including my own home. Even here in Rondebosch we’ve had two occasions where alarms have been tripped, confusion has occurred, and SAPS officers have ended up inside the house, walking down the hallways (I slept through both occasions). I’ve heard stories of people being mugged in broad daylight downtown, while climbing Lion’s Head, and while riding minibus taxis or on train platforms. In Khayelitsha particularly, there is a high level of violent crime, including gang warfare and territorial disputes. As whites (and Americans), Lauren and I are highly conspicuous in this community that is something like 97% black (and almost totally Xhosa). In general, I feel like my race is a factor that at times contributes to and also endangers my safety. In certain environments, like shops or public places with security presence, I feel like my safety and well-being is being looked after particularly well, because no-one wants something bad to happen to a foreigner or white person in their shop or outside their hotel or in some public area downtown. At the same time, it can identify me as a target for robbery, as someone who is likely carrying around money or an expensive phone, or someone who is gullible and can be taken advantage of. In Khayelitsha, it means that I stick out. As for the rest, I can only speculate.

The minibus ride to Site C was entirely uneventful, and everyone else on the taxi was exceedingly friendly when I demonstrated I was incompetent at making change and needed help remembering what was what. I think someone even chatted us up. When we pulled into Site C, the folks on the taxi made sure we knew where we were going to get to the taxi rank. Lauren and I were relieved to find the taxi rank very easy to understand and relatively well populated, even as we kept an eye on the darkening horizon. We jumped on a minibus to Claremont there, after receiving some help from another cab driver. The dudes at the taxi ranks are generally pretty helpful, as they want you to get in a taxi (preferably theirs) and will direct you faithfully. From Site C, it was another uneventful ride to the Southern Suburbs, and from there home.

At no time did I feel like I was particularly in danger, though I’m also glad I’m a big dude and we didn’t have any bags with us. We were also wearing our HIV Positive t-shirts, which may have meant something to the people who saw us. I came away feeling like the endeavor was not particularly risky. But that’s also the thing with risk- just because it works out well once, doesn’t mean it’ll always be that way. I relayed part of this story to an acquaintance at a bar a few nights later, and he was incredulous that I would take such a chance. His father worked in Khayelitsha and was mugged and beaten, he said, and that he would never return there in his life.

I could have decided to study abroad in Copenhagen or London or Florence, some country where I could probably take public transit after nightfall or walk through the city at night without getting heckled, accosted or mugged based only on the color of my skin. And I could have interned plenty of places where HIV isn’t epidemic, or public health and medical care is sufficient, or sexual assault of women and children isn’t omnipresent. And I could have lived somewhere where youths aren’t getting swept into gangsterism at age 11, killing other children in schools, and getting hooked on crystal meth by pimps and gang leaders. I decided to come here, to learn. And the truth remains that the majority of risk I experience is that which I decide to put myself in contact with. Unlike a shack dweller or someone who lives in a township, I can go to bed in my home and reasonably expect not to be the victim of a crime or violence. In that way, I am nowhere close to being vulnerable like so many people here.

Other students’ experiences on this trip have demonstrated that there is no such thing as absolute certainty or safety. Whether you’re standing outside a bar in a safe neighborhood, or walking home through leafy Rondebosch, or running out on the Common, there are no guarantees. It’s a good idea not to do stupid things, and I have come a long way in that regard. However, besides that, my plan is to travel light, look confident, memorize the right phone numbers, and reduce risk where I can. And remember to count my blessings, because they make all the difference. Cheers.

City Lights of Cape Town from Lion's Head

David Explores an Informal Settlement

Lauren, David & Emily K at TAC march

In my time in Cape Town so far, I have had the opportunity to enter the informal settlements on two distinct occasions. Usually seen from the road or highway as I drive by, on both these occasions I was able to navigate the settlements on foot and enter people’s homes. The first time was when Isaac from Africa Unite brought a group of us to his home in Europe before we had lunch at Mzoli’s. The minibus trundled down the narrow dirt road, barely passing shacks and fences and children by inches on either side, and Isaac showed us his home and his immediate community. I have detailed this experience in a prior blog post.

           

The second time I entered the informal settlements was with TAC, when we were canvassing and mobilizing people for the mass action march on Parliament. Lauren, Emily, Rachel, Sarah Joe, myself and several mobilizers from the Khayelitsha district office were driven to an informal settlement within Khayelitsha, at the southern edge of the township by False Bay. Once out of the van, we received a quick briefing from Mike and I paired myself up with Nonqaba, one of the mobilizers. As a group, we set off into the settlement to go from shack to shack.

           

I feel like I have not adequately described the informal settlements, and will do so here. Khayelitsha itself is a massive township, with somewhere between 450,000 and 800,000 inhabitants, almost all of whom are Xhosa. It’s important to realize that Khayelitsha is not a city of shacks- there are many neighborhoods and areas with government built homes on foundations that are suitable for habitation. Khayelitsha is famous, however, for its massive swaths of informal settlements, where impoverished people and families have set up housing using any materials they can purchase or scavenge.

           

Khayelitsha itself only dates back to the 1980s; these informal settlements are of more recent origin, and are continuously growing. The Western Cape has experienced a massive influx of migrants from the Eastern Cape since the fall of Apartheid, as people and families leave the rural and impoverished Eastern Cape in search of work in Cape Town and the surrounding areas. The massive influx of immigrants has not been matched by the construction of housing, so many of these immigrants were forced to construct their own homes.

           

The informal settlements in Khayelitsha seem to have developed organically; a shack is built there, then five more there the next day, then three more the next. Roads are few and far between, and by roads I merely refer to stretches of sand or dirt that are wide enough to negotiate by car. Travel through the informal settlement is by foot, along sandy and trash-laden footpaths that wind among shacks, yards, public toilets and taps. Khayelitsha itself was built on a massive stretch of sand dune that was pulverized and flattened to allow for development. In Khayelitsha and much of the Cape Flats in general, there are few trees or grass, but rather sand, bush, and trash.

           

As I mentioned before, we entered the informal settlement as a group, and went door to door, calling out to those inside and introducing ourselves. Nonqaba and I would enter yards and knock on doors, calling “Molweni” and even letting ourselves in to see who was home. Nonqaba would always politely greet each home’s inhabitants and introduce the two of us in the traditional Xhosa manner. I was listening and several times attempted to produce the necessary phrases to perform this introduction and describe our purpose. My Xhosa is getting better, but it’s still terrible, make no mistake.

           

We wound down a hillside, negotiating down sandy and rocky paths, squeezing past metal walls, fences, and barbed wire. On the ground, tires and food slats are used to prop up land, to make fences, to designate walkways. Trash and the bones of animals litter the sand. I specifically recall coming upon multiple jawbones, with the teeth still embedded in bone.

           

Upon our entry into the first few shacks, I was shocked by home hospitable they seemed. Like Isaac’s home in Europe, these first few shacks had sturdy foundations and walls, with solid roofs and windows and doors that had glass and even sealed shut. All homes had electricity, and many had small entertainment centers and a couch or two, photos of family on the walls and handmade blankets and pillows, and many were clean and well taken care of. These were people’s homes, it struck me. And these first few, despite the lack of running water and many other resources and amenities, didn’t repel me. Was it strange to not be horrified, I wondered?

           

That impression did not last. The quality of housing varied widely, and we soon came upon homes that left me with a completely opposite impression. We came upon a house where two toddlers were sitting in the yard, among piles of discarded trash and refuse, sitting there blankly, a mangy dog laying out next to them. The next home was filled with flies. There were at least four or five children and toddlers within and one woman, cleaning in her rudimentary kitchen. The place was oppressively hot and smelled musty, the floor dirty, the roof barely attached to the walls, with light shafting through the cracks and exposed nails twisting out of the ceiling beams. The roof was hardly tall enough for me to stand, and the door was a piece of metal on a hinge. The flies buzzed through the air and stopped to land on the children’s faces and bodies, and they stood there the whole time, staring at us blankly. A baby lay on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and sleeping. Black flies crawled on the crouch around her and across her face, clustering around her mouth. I reached over and waved my hands to disperse them, but only a few flew away. As a guest in this woman’s home, I was unsure of how to behave, and worked to keep my revulsion hidden while Nonqaba educated the woman on health resources in the community and the availability of ART therapy for pregnant women. I was relieved when we stepped out at last.

           

Another home consisted of a small fenced-in yard bordered by three shacks, a seemingly communal area for a large family. Just within the gate of this yard, a female dog nursed a litter of newborn puppies, greedily sucking her milk. What fate awaits these puppies, so new and innocent of the world? They will grow up to be like the other mutts in the townships that wander about in search of a bone to gnaw on or water to drink, that are kicked and thrown about by men, who die and decompose and leave their bones in the sand of the footpaths. For the children of this community, how will their lives be? What about the humans who live there? Is there any escape? Is there hope for a decent life?

TAC activists at the health manifesto rally at Khayelitsha Site B