and more

People, as a group, want more. In the informal settlements of Nyanga, Soweto, Googletho and Khayelitsha families live in shacks. Not solid shacks – sketchy ones where you would question housing a new rake. You know what they want? More.

So they steal electricity by tapping a light pole from a slightly better neighborhood and the government will sooner or later provide a water spicket within a reasonable distance. Surely a huge stride forward. And then you know what they want? More.

It’s rare but some people start in poverty – but get more and more and more until at some point they may have living conditions, employment and even tolerable health care – just like other middle class people in the modern world. But it’s not enough. They want more.

We gather piles of shiny things and scramble over the less fortunate. I love logoed t-shirts. I own a minor ocean of them and have great difficulty parting with them. I lust after them. I consider stealing them from friends (I scored one from Chet’s collection, but it didn’t require much trickery). Only one thing could make me happier. More.

Of course that wouldn’t make me happy. Neither would the lottery winnings or trophy bride my mother ordered for me. To be happy I’d have to get to a higher plain. Think more and worry less. My life would require some streamlining – a simplification overhaul. Or a quality infusion. I would be most motivated in the company of people who were regularly imagining, planning and pursuing that higher plain. If I could be part of a group with similar goals…

To do that I would need to reduce my responsibilities and curb my capitalist consumption. I think I’d have to move into a shack. But not a rickety one, I want more than that.

Soweto, pictures and more

Vilakazi Street in Soweto is the only street in the world to produce two Nobel Peace Prize winners.

(unrelated picture)

Soweto has many faces. You can bungi jump off of the nuclear cooling towers, talk with the children in the informal settlements, see Winnie Mandela's home and Nelson's castle.

Modern African history was made in Soweto. Yes, Mandela and Tutu were born in Soweto, but Hector Pieterson died in Soweto. At twelve years old, he was shot by police at a student demonstration. Hector and his fellow students wanted school instruction to be offered in languages other than the Afrikaans of the apartheid government. Bang.

Expectations

We all have preconceived notions of how things will go. After a few years on the planet, you get the hang of things, right? You know that if you show up at your B&B and the scattered woman who answers the door seems surprised to see anyone at the outside of the answered door, she is not the owner, but more likely a sister from out of town who has come to stay for a few days and get herself together. If the same woman says she knows where your room is, but doesn't have any keys, she only confirms what you have already assessed. The fact that said woman then tells you to open her bottle of wine because she does have some recollection of a bunch of keys somewhere solidifies it. She clearly is not the art collector and prolific author that has advocated for the rights of all South Africans for decades and then opened her home as a B&B.

If you haven't already guessed, this is yet another example of why we don't assume. Yes, meaning that it was indeed the owner and author. It was also she who put brothers-in-law in a petite room without any separation between bedroom and bathroom. I'm not a staunch advocate for privacy, but I have limits. Maybe not limits, but my nose is easily offended.

(I know- although I'm not magazine quality, I could work in postcards. The photo was captured using my new self-imaging technique. Click, click, click. I can't seem to depress the shutter button and keep my mouth closed.)
We have expectations of museums, too. At the Apartheid Museum up in Johannesburg, I had expectations of greatness. This is living history. The people of South Africa today were at each other's throats less than twenty years ago. People, who would have been mortal enemies then, live and work together every day now. Imagine the documentation and global media available to a museum dedicated to the toppling of a pro-apartheid goverment at the end of the millennium! Imagine what the Met would do to set the stage for that exhibit. Keep imagining because you'll have to check your expectations at the door of the Apartheid Museum. And bring your reading glasses.

Of course I say this having skipped the theater experience, unable to watch one more white club to the head, the back, the knee of another protesting student.

The tour through apartheid was a moving and troubling experience. The sensational aspects of the museum were shaped in my head, not on the countless plackards and monitors - maybe that was the point. People defy expectations of cruelty and bravery. But what do we expect?

Penguins

There are penguins on the southern coast of the African mainland. They don't have a long history on the continent but sometimes we make a random turn and it feels right- apparently penguins share this experience. We make a haphazard decision and end up in a place that fits well. A professor I know here in Cape Town says - "the universe unfolds as it should."


Alexis had to fly back to Sweden Thursday night, so we decided to accompany her and Betsy on the flight to Johannesburg... more to come, but we have to get to the winelands.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

We woke up early and found a rainbow of anemones, a herd of bontebock, and a pool of micro-starfish. I don’t think I know the word for a group of starfish. I think "herd" is only for animals with legs. A collection of starfish? A galaxy? That would be funny. A stew? Again you had to be there.

On the way out of the park we saw a troop of baboons. At first it looked like two – but then the babies started dashing around and climbing off and on the adults. Fascinating watching them stop to eat, play, or give us an exploratory grunt. Ironically we worried about them. There were some people that were obviously stalking them – maybe from some rinkydink circus. Maybe trying to catch the babies as pets. Maybe they taste like chicken.

We continued down the cape all the way out to the southern tip. Surrounded by the ocean, the sky, perfect as the ocean always is. We parked way up by the Cape Point Light House. Lots of people do it – the parking lot is huge. Young men help you park and guard the car while you parade around like all the other tourists – eating ice cream and soda from the snack shop, taking the funicular up the mountain, taking in the view. There are car guards everywhere in Africa. It is a little sketchy and I don’t have convictions that most car guards do anything other than collect tips. However, here at the southwestern tip of Africa the car guards earn every rand. They carry sticks and ward off the lecherous gangs of baboons. The same fuzzy private animals that we saw rolling their babies in the grass.

Ok, they don’t earn every rand. The baboons have nothing better to do that wait for some unsuspecting eight-year-old to get her extra large strawberry milkshake from the concession stand. Baboon one will march out as a decoy. The car guard runs back and forth as the ape dodges in and out between the cars, watching the guard’s feet under the car and anticipating the next strike of the stick. Baboon two runs through the milling crowd, snatches the target’s drink, dashes through the brush and up into the trees where he drinks from the straw and scowls angrily at the awestruck tourists. Really. The crazy monster is angry – not into strawberry, I guess.

The robberies are generally successful. The victims are always panicked. The car guards are always miffed. The non-victim tourists gape and take photos.

Cape of Good Hope

We spent last night at a cabin in the Table Mountain National Park. The cabin was way out in the park the rangers drove us a few miles from the park entry, unlocked the gate that led to our cabin, escorted us on to our incredibly secluded outpost, gave one more reminder about the baboons, and left. It was incredible. You had to be there so I will minimize my commentary...

The road in, moon behind the cabin, sunset


There was something else. Let me think...

Tuesday

Monday did finally end despite rumors to the contrary. At 11 (23 o'clock africa time) we went out to 021 Lounge - a jazz club that features locals in all different collections along with internaitonal gigs. As the international jazz fest is in South Africa this month, we went in knowing we might see some exceptionally talented people. The feature was "Funkist" from Japan. I can't believe it has only been a day, a big day in retrospect - I've been looking to see who is colored, black, white, African, Afrikaan, or other. I couldn't tell one group from another and the difference seems to be more about language and self-identity than outward appearances. In the confusion, we arrive at the smoky jazz club where race is significantly less important than it is in the rest of Cape Town life- and the group at center stage is a bunch of Japanese kids. I'm trying to think and watch life and wrap my mind around a bigger world and now Bunny adds Japanese jazz artists. Enough to say it was a good time aside from the smoke - and this entry is supposed to be about Tuesday...





Tuesday started with Robben Island. We caught the ferry from Cape Town across Table Bay to Robben Island. Robben Island was a leper colony and prison camps of various sorts prior to housing Nelson Mandela. The wind was whipping through the cape - so I don't have any idea how long it takes or what the on-ferry video touched on. Dramamine.














Our tour was hosted by a former MK member imprisoned in 1983. His talk was somewhat programmed. It was a bad place and working in a lime mine or dragging seaweed from the ocean and hacking it up to be barged to the mainland and dumped as fertilizer can't be fun when you are forced to do it for 12 hours a day.


Invited Guest (Pink): Just letting you know that Andrew has invited me to add my own perspective here on this stage of the trip. While I’m glad that we took the Robben Island tour, my personal feeling was that it was hard to get a sense of the conditions. If I hadn’t read read NM’s Long Walk to Freedom, I don’t think I would have gotten the true picture (discrimination in dress, food, privileges); what solitary confinement is like; what the hardships were for people who had to travel sometimes days to get to Robben Island at great expense to visit their loved ones for a half hour with a warder standing over them the whole time, interrupting their conversation to make sure they weren’t saying anything subversive or coded; what it was like to be a political prisoner, thrown in among the general hardened criminals. It’s hard to communicate these things as a tour guide with a language barrier, as you walk through an empty freshly painted testament to apartheid’s past. Definitely glad we read LWTF before we left.

We went to Robben Island with Bunny’s son Kevin, his wife, Betsy, their "surrogate" daughter Alexis (Kevin and Betsy were frequent babysitters for Alexis and have maintained strong ties though Alexis and her mom have made a new life in Sweden) and Bunny’s young friend Nolyanda (sp.) (who Betsy and Kevin are now friendly with) and her son Lanawbo (sp.). For me, one of the highlights of the trip was watching and listening to Lanawbo playing with the toy car Kevin and Betsy gave him in the corridor outside of Mandela’s cell. To me it signaled that life goes on and that there’s a human spirit that’s present and it’s this that can help overcome even the most repressive places and regimes.

On the ferry ride back, And and I stood outside on the starboard side. It was windy but sunny, and well worth it to watch Signal Hill, Lion’s Head, The Twelve Apostles, Devil’s Peak, and—of course—Table Mountain come into focus. Bittersweet because I know these beautiful mountains mocked the prisoners there and their captivity, but I know from the book that they also gave Mandela hope and strength.

We had lunch at a placed called Rooti’s on the waterfront while an African band played in the shadow of a red clock tower building. A little rest and sustenance helped us gear up for our ride out to Cape Point, but that’s a story for another blog post.