March 23, 2007 (Happy 15th Birthday, little brother!)
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Hellooo all! Once again, sorry for my tardiness, things tend to come up when you’re circumnavigating the globe—I’m going to hit two ports with one post, so read on!
Mauritius May be Mark Twain’s Heaven, but It’s not Mine…
We are two days back from Mauritius and on our way to Chennai, India (some one thousand miles to go!) Mauritius was scheduled to be a short stay—three days and two nights—and was particularly brief after having arrived late due to rough seas. I didn’t care for the island...when we docked it was next to a molasses plant which filled the air with an odor that smelled like spilt sugar on the hot coil of a stove. To get to the main part of the city we had to take a water-ferry but the shops and restaurants seemed eerily odd and business slow. What isn’t a beach or a city seems to be a sugar cane field.
We roamed around Port Louis’ marketplace, which was close and hot. Most of the things being sold—aside from produce—seemed to have come from India. The fruits and vegetables were abundant, though, and provided an interesting backdrop to the social interactions that were happening everywhere. The buildings seemed unkempt and the sidewalks were narrow and dirty. Everything being sold on them seemed to be counterfeit. I didn’t feel welcome; I felt like I stood out and was being followed by seedy and skeptical eyes.
For one night we rented a villa on the beach at Grand Bay, and getting away from the hustle and bustle of Port Louis was much needed. The beach was beautiful, the Indian Ocean a clear green color. Our dinner and breakfast were included in the price of the villa—a cheap sixty dollars—and were served on a bamboo-curtain enclosed porch. The food was colorful and spicy, exposing the Indian influence in Mauritius’ Creole culture. We lounged at the beach for a full day; I even ate a whole pineapple, its skin artfully and decoratively cut off in front of me to reveal a pattern in the flesh of the fruit. That night a group of us went out and I was painfully aware of my surroundings; while I didn’t have a hard time cutting loose in South Africa and Brazil when we went out, I felt strangely in Mauritius.
It was good to just take some time to relax, I didn’t do any SAS sponsored trips—which I felt guilty about skipping out on some service opportunities—but I figured it didn’t hurt to relax a little before the final and most strenuous leg of the voyage. Hopefully my senses will be a little more relaxed and my mind more open for our arrival in India. Chennai is the port I was most excited for, although now I think I am really looking forward to Vietnam, China and Japan.
“Till you get there yourself you never really know…the drone of ship engines is a song so wild and blue it scrambles time and seasons if it gets through to you… and your life becomes a travelogue full of picture postcard shrines…people will tell you where they’ve gone, they’ll tell you where to go, and while some have found their paradise….till you get there yourself you never really know.”
The Sun Shines in Khayelitsha…
South Africa was marvelous. As I sit here writing to you, with Joni Mitchell crooning in the background, it seems at the same time like years ago and yet just yesterday I was on that continent. After a turbulent night at sea we arrived on March 2nd—and pulled into port while the sun was rising over Table Mountain. The black outline of the mountains in the foreground, with a lavender-orange glow sunrise behind them was a great way to come into the idea of being in AFRICA! We docked at the Victoria and Alfred waterfront, which is disgustingly ritzy and obviously forged, with its five star hotels, restaurants and shopping malls and even a few photo-shoots happening here and there. Though, I did catch some good live South African Jazz there…
1600
Hellooo all! Once again, sorry for my tardiness, things tend to come up when you’re circumnavigating the globe—I’m going to hit two ports with one post, so read on!
Mauritius May be Mark Twain’s Heaven, but It’s not Mine…
We are two days back from Mauritius and on our way to Chennai, India (some one thousand miles to go!) Mauritius was scheduled to be a short stay—three days and two nights—and was particularly brief after having arrived late due to rough seas. I didn’t care for the island...when we docked it was next to a molasses plant which filled the air with an odor that smelled like spilt sugar on the hot coil of a stove. To get to the main part of the city we had to take a water-ferry but the shops and restaurants seemed eerily odd and business slow. What isn’t a beach or a city seems to be a sugar cane field.
We roamed around Port Louis’ marketplace, which was close and hot. Most of the things being sold—aside from produce—seemed to have come from India. The fruits and vegetables were abundant, though, and provided an interesting backdrop to the social interactions that were happening everywhere. The buildings seemed unkempt and the sidewalks were narrow and dirty. Everything being sold on them seemed to be counterfeit. I didn’t feel welcome; I felt like I stood out and was being followed by seedy and skeptical eyes.
For one night we rented a villa on the beach at Grand Bay, and getting away from the hustle and bustle of Port Louis was much needed. The beach was beautiful, the Indian Ocean a clear green color. Our dinner and breakfast were included in the price of the villa—a cheap sixty dollars—and were served on a bamboo-curtain enclosed porch. The food was colorful and spicy, exposing the Indian influence in Mauritius’ Creole culture. We lounged at the beach for a full day; I even ate a whole pineapple, its skin artfully and decoratively cut off in front of me to reveal a pattern in the flesh of the fruit. That night a group of us went out and I was painfully aware of my surroundings; while I didn’t have a hard time cutting loose in South Africa and Brazil when we went out, I felt strangely in Mauritius.
It was good to just take some time to relax, I didn’t do any SAS sponsored trips—which I felt guilty about skipping out on some service opportunities—but I figured it didn’t hurt to relax a little before the final and most strenuous leg of the voyage. Hopefully my senses will be a little more relaxed and my mind more open for our arrival in India. Chennai is the port I was most excited for, although now I think I am really looking forward to Vietnam, China and Japan.
“Till you get there yourself you never really know…the drone of ship engines is a song so wild and blue it scrambles time and seasons if it gets through to you… and your life becomes a travelogue full of picture postcard shrines…people will tell you where they’ve gone, they’ll tell you where to go, and while some have found their paradise….till you get there yourself you never really know.”
The Sun Shines in Khayelitsha…
South Africa was marvelous. As I sit here writing to you, with Joni Mitchell crooning in the background, it seems at the same time like years ago and yet just yesterday I was on that continent. After a turbulent night at sea we arrived on March 2nd—and pulled into port while the sun was rising over Table Mountain. The black outline of the mountains in the foreground, with a lavender-orange glow sunrise behind them was a great way to come into the idea of being in AFRICA! We docked at the Victoria and Alfred waterfront, which is disgustingly ritzy and obviously forged, with its five star hotels, restaurants and shopping malls and even a few photo-shoots happening here and there. Though, I did catch some good live South African Jazz there… That day I visited Khayelitsha—a well known township in South Africa. Juxtaposed to the waterfront or even downtown Cape Town, Khayelitsha is personable and warm. Along the highway kids play soccer and cricket. Literally driving just ten or fifteen minutes away from the waterfront or the well known convention center will offer you a glimpse into a hairdressers shanty business, with grease, combs and hairdryers reflected through the open doorway by the mirror in front of which stands a woman combing another’s hair. Driving into the township there are cash stores on every corner, women with babies tied to their backs and carrying water on their heads. Goats heads fly-covered and for sale at a market stand, corn being husked, tires and furniture for sale along the road, school children in uniforms.
Not all of the township homes are in shanty towns, there are government subsidized homes built from
cinderblocks with gates surrounding small front yards—the square buildings are painted coral pink, cornflower blue, sunshine yellow, and some an unobtrusive cream color. We stopped at the Khayelitsha Craft Market and were welcomed with Bill Withers “Ain’t No Sunshine” and Marley’s “No Woman No Cry,” performed by a group called Marimba. There were beads for sale, burnished pottery and miniature tin safari animals made from recycled cans—a worn Coca Cola Elephant, a Grape Lion, a 7-up Cape Buffalo. We had the chance to interact with some local kids, who surrounded us as we got off of our tour bus. It was overwhelming to have the statistic 4 out of 10 in the back of my mind. Never would I visit a neighborhood in
the States and be reminded of AIDS when I looked at the faces of the children. I had brought some stickers with me—a sheet of SAS stickers and a couple sheets of alligator stickers (go gators!)—and didn’t realize right away that they were so popular only because of the brand Lacoste. Most of the stickers the kids put on their hands or their foreheads, but as they pushed each other out of they way and shouted “lacoste” putting the gators on the left side of their shirt, just below the lapel, the irony of globalization was friendly. One little girl was particularly memorable—she had beautiful long braids which I was admiring when she came up to me and started playing with my blonde hair—which she must hav
e equally admired.
On the same visit I got to talk to some women at the Pilani Centre, which is a grassroots organization that trains mothers to work with other mothers against malnutrition and HIV/AIDS. It was a tidy complex of soft sunshine colored buildings, open windows with floral print curtains where women gather to become educated about issues that affect women and children within the community. The criterion for becoming an outreach worker for the organization is that you have to have successfully raised healthy and happy children. There was a playground for their children, a neatly trimmed courtyard, a garden and even a shop where they sold handcrafted goods, like tapestries with social awareness messages literally woven into the fabric.
The trip ended with tea and biscuits at a B&B—called Kopanong—in the township, where I got to try ginger beer (very spicy but cool and refreshing!) and learn about Bed and Breakfasts as vehicles for awareness and employment.
Early the next morning I had a trip to Cape Peninsula and Cape Point, which is marketed as the southern most tip of Africa, though I think the actual title goes to Cape Agulhas. Of course it rained the whole day, so I was soaked to my underwear, but the drive was beautiful. The road wound precariously up and around steep cliffs with either the Atlantic or Indian Ocean crashing below. I experienced the “floral kingdom” of fynbos, saw baboons and even penguins—supposedly one day four just showed up to the cape and a million penguins later, the rest is history. The trip was nice but not nearly far-out enough for my taste, and still intrigued by Khayelitsha I decided to return again the next day with an independent group of SAS students.
We met up with a non profit group called Africa Jam—an organization that arranges after school programs—two of the program leaders showed us around. Winston and Lloyd took us to a sandwich shop in the colored part of Cape Town, where we all shared a few Gatsby’s—a huge sub (which I thought was similar to a good old Primanti Bros.) with French fries in between the bun. We also tasted beer in the township, which was surreal—we were a group of eight uneasy Americans sitting shoulder to shoulder in a woman’s living room that was probably not as big as ten square feet. The Bold and the Beautiful was playing on her TV—go figure—and the bar she owns seemed more like an extension of her home. We didn’t go into it but despite the open door it looked dark and close. With yellow paint on her face, she poured some beer into a tin can (like economy tomato paste size) for us to taste. Once I got past the aftertaste from the metal, it really just tasted like sour water, not alcohol brewed from the corn garden in her side yard. However, the most important and mind shifting part of this second visit was going to the after school program that Winston and Lloyd led.
The building where the group met was a community building made of whatever could be found—sheets of corrugated metal, plywood, cardboard, held up in the middle by a single post, with a few milk crates providing seating. Light filtered in from the gaps between materials, making visible dust particles in the air. A group of maybe fifty school aged kids greeted us and we were partnered off for a tour of the township. As we congregated a girl my age slipped in the door late, and I turned to smile at her. When we were told to go she grabbed my arm and said she wanted me to be her partner.
This sounds like an okay situation to anyone reading this, but in the moment it was far more intense. We had been warned constantly about not going into the townships alone and after being in culture shock from the visual stimulation of Khayelitsha, it was frightening to just walk off through the streets with someone you didn’t really know. Still uneasy, even with Siphokazi’s arm wrapped cordially around mine, I saw where she lived, with her grandma and little sister, where they bought their groceries, where she went for a piece of candy, where her friends lived. She told me her favorite color, subject, music artist, and that she wanted to go to college but it was too expensive (2,000 American dollars). She told me her little sister was six and her mom lived away from them because of work. I met her grandma and sister, who was drawing on scrap paper. I gave her a drawing tablet, colored pencils and sharpener, which I had brought to give to the kids but had been too hesitant to pull out of my bag and hand out earlier. She taught me how to say “how are you Gran,” in Cosa, for when I met her grandmother: unjani mokulu. The way she clicked her tongue was foreign and intriguing.
the States and be reminded of AIDS when I looked at the faces of the children. I had brought some stickers with me—a sheet of SAS stickers and a couple sheets of alligator stickers (go gators!)—and didn’t realize right away that they were so popular only because of the brand Lacoste. Most of the stickers the kids put on their hands or their foreheads, but as they pushed each other out of they way and shouted “lacoste” putting the gators on the left side of their shirt, just below the lapel, the irony of globalization was friendly. One little girl was particularly memorable—she had beautiful long braids which I was admiring when she came up to me and started playing with my blonde hair—which she must hav
e equally admired.On the same visit I got to talk to some women at the Pilani Centre, which is a grassroots organization that trains mothers to work with other mothers against malnutrition and HIV/AIDS. It was a tidy complex of soft sunshine colored buildings, open windows with floral print curtains where women gather to become educated about issues that affect women and children within the community. The criterion for becoming an outreach worker for the organization is that you have to have successfully raised healthy and happy children. There was a playground for their children, a neatly trimmed courtyard, a garden and even a shop where they sold handcrafted goods, like tapestries with social awareness messages literally woven into the fabric.
The trip ended with tea and biscuits at a B&B—called Kopanong—in the township, where I got to try ginger beer (very spicy but cool and refreshing!) and learn about Bed and Breakfasts as vehicles for awareness and employment.
Early the next morning I had a trip to Cape Peninsula and Cape Point, which is marketed as the southern most tip of Africa, though I think the actual title goes to Cape Agulhas. Of course it rained the whole day, so I was soaked to my underwear, but the drive was beautiful. The road wound precariously up and around steep cliffs with either the Atlantic or Indian Ocean crashing below. I experienced the “floral kingdom” of fynbos, saw baboons and even penguins—supposedly one day four just showed up to the cape and a million penguins later, the rest is history. The trip was nice but not nearly far-out enough for my taste, and still intrigued by Khayelitsha I decided to return again the next day with an independent group of SAS students.
We met up with a non profit group called Africa Jam—an organization that arranges after school programs—two of the program leaders showed us around. Winston and Lloyd took us to a sandwich shop in the colored part of Cape Town, where we all shared a few Gatsby’s—a huge sub (which I thought was similar to a good old Primanti Bros.) with French fries in between the bun. We also tasted beer in the township, which was surreal—we were a group of eight uneasy Americans sitting shoulder to shoulder in a woman’s living room that was probably not as big as ten square feet. The Bold and the Beautiful was playing on her TV—go figure—and the bar she owns seemed more like an extension of her home. We didn’t go into it but despite the open door it looked dark and close. With yellow paint on her face, she poured some beer into a tin can (like economy tomato paste size) for us to taste. Once I got past the aftertaste from the metal, it really just tasted like sour water, not alcohol brewed from the corn garden in her side yard. However, the most important and mind shifting part of this second visit was going to the after school program that Winston and Lloyd led.
The building where the group met was a community building made of whatever could be found—sheets of corrugated metal, plywood, cardboard, held up in the middle by a single post, with a few milk crates providing seating. Light filtered in from the gaps between materials, making visible dust particles in the air. A group of maybe fifty school aged kids greeted us and we were partnered off for a tour of the township. As we congregated a girl my age slipped in the door late, and I turned to smile at her. When we were told to go she grabbed my arm and said she wanted me to be her partner.
This sounds like an okay situation to anyone reading this, but in the moment it was far more intense. We had been warned constantly about not going into the townships alone and after being in culture shock from the visual stimulation of Khayelitsha, it was frightening to just walk off through the streets with someone you didn’t really know. Still uneasy, even with Siphokazi’s arm wrapped cordially around mine, I saw where she lived, with her grandma and little sister, where they bought their groceries, where she went for a piece of candy, where her friends lived. She told me her favorite color, subject, music artist, and that she wanted to go to college but it was too expensive (2,000 American dollars). She told me her little sister was six and her mom lived away from them because of work. I met her grandma and sister, who was drawing on scrap paper. I gave her a drawing tablet, colored pencils and sharpener, which I had brought to give to the kids but had been too hesitant to pull out of my bag and hand out earlier. She taught me how to say “how are you Gran,” in Cosa, for when I met her grandmother: unjani mokulu. The way she clicked her tongue was foreign and intriguing.
She bought me a lollypop and continued to wrap her arm around mine as we strolled back to the rest of the group. We played games in a circle—mind stimulating, shyness slaughtering games. I didn’t realize how completely uncomfortable I was, despite being warmly welcomed, until we were called on to participate in the singing, dancing and acting. I was shy but they were fearless. Topics came up in improve such as alcoholism, family issues and AIDS. As they danced for us I took in the sound of feet stomping on the ground, bodies moving, laughing, Cosa clicking. Smaller children gathered outside the door and peeked in. We ended holding each others hands in prayer, and being next to the doorway I took the hand of a little boy from outside, closing my eyes to solidify forever what I had just experienced as part of my minds memory.
The next morning, bright and early I was scheduled to climb Table Mountain with the former Mayor of Cape Town. Thank God the Cape Doctor was too strong and wind advisories had shut down the cable cars that run up and down the mountain, so our trip was revised and we hiked Devils Peak, instead. Not that this was easy, either, the former Mayor almost had to carry me up the peak. When it was all over my legs were shaking so badly I could hardly stand. Nothing like some refreshing physical activity! Luckily I got to nap on the boat ride to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and countless others were held as political prisoners since Dutch Colonial rule (and through apartheid). We took a tour of the Island, which was led by a former prisoner.
That evening our friends from Khayelitsha met us at the waterfront and we took them out to dinner before returning to Khayelitsha for a sleepover. The taxi back was expensive because no one wanted to drive through the township at night. The woman finally agreed to drive us took the taxi sign off the top of her old Mercedes and charged five times what it normally would have cost during the day. It was good to sleep in a real house and be off of the ship. We visited with Siphokazi’s friends and family and watched tv before going to bed. All of our friends from before were happy to see us again and it was nice to come back, too. The next morning we walked to the cash store and bought eggs, milk and bread. Gran made us scrambled eggs for breakfast and we got to experience the township in the early morning, when the sun was new in the sky, the air still cool and the streets still quiet.
On our walk to the store neighbors were scrubbing the street, which I didn’t think anything of at first. A few minutes later my mind returned to the thought and I asked Siphokazi what they were doing. Someone was stabbed the night before, the night we arrived. They were scrubbing the blood off of the street. We hung out that day and showed up to the after school program again, to the surprise of Winston and Lloyd, who were also happy to see us again. They had brought another group of students back that day and it was interesting to be part of the group, and not new to the situation. This time I wasn’t uncomfortable singing and playing games—things weren’t so foreign or scary. A tangled web of taxis and crowded fifteen passenger vans blasting pulsating techno/rap and swerving down the highway got us back just in time for on ship time. We told our new friends goodbye and were soon on the open sea again, with Table Mountain once again in the distance.We'll be to India in just two days, where I'll be doing a homestay in Erode for three days as well as some service work in dalit villages. My secret (not so secret, now) ambition is to buy myself the ultimate souvenir--a ruby!
Until next time....
Peace Love
