From Africa with Love: 2011

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Soak it In

This weird thing happens when you grow up: you start getting lots of different groups of people in your life and a lot of times, these groups never really overlap. I guess this is good sometimes: if you don’t think your work friends would get along with your high school friends, or your childhood friends are too childhood for your college friends or something like this. But sometimes, I still imagine how incredibly awesome it would be for all of my friends: from summer camp, to middle school to the friend of friend’s friend could all get together in one beautiful moment, and all the people you care about were in one area, and you wouldn’t have to miss anyone because everyone you cared about would be right there.

It’s a fun thing to daydream about, I suppose, despite being completely irrational. But as my mom, dad and sisters all made the long journey to Cape Town in order to visit the daughter on the other side of the world, there were a few less people that my heart was missing, and I was incredibly happy.

It was just really beautiful, I guess. My real life American family comes and gets to meet my African family. And everyone is a different color, and not everyone knows all of the same languages, and so many of us are from different places, but you can feel the love.

And there was something so awesome about seeing my baby sister’s laughing and cooking with my new African brothers. Or seeing my dad laugh and joke with my new found soul sisters. You get all the people you love and you put them in one place and you worry that the world might implode with greatness. But it doesn’t. It’s really just calms down and maybe spins a little slower and lets you soak it all in.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

For Realz...

I think the pictures from Mozambique look pretty sweet, if I do say so myself. It looks like some super tropical hyper colorful African island warm ocean blue ski coconut filled adventure. And yeah, I suppose it was that. But the pictures (intentionally, for the sake of my dear parent’s hearts) left out some of the reality of the trip. Well, now my wonderful parents and my beautiful sisters have managed to find their way to Cape Town, and I have been able to assure them, with reasonable certainty, that I am safe and healthy (although often lacking in food). And therefore, because my family and I are now on similar continents, I am able to tell the REAL story of what happened in Mozambique:

It all began on a rainy day (like most real stories about Mozambique do) in Johannesburg, South Africa, waiting for the plane to take off and fly us in to Inhambane, Mozambique. This is easier said than done in Africa, as someone had stolen the nose off of our plane (naturally). Now, I don’t speak from experience, but I feel like nose’s of planes would be heavy, heavier than a refrigerator even, so I am not sure how this thief was able to successfully take airplane parts, but he/she managed, causing the flight to be delayed a good four hours. While in most cases, a flight delay is nothing more than a hassle, for Gaby and me, it is more of a safety issue. We had specifically planned on not having to walk around a strange city when it was dark, but a few hours into the party on the runway, we realized the sun would have long been set by the time we would arrive.

But we are fearless, and we are warriors, and we stood in that line to receive a visa with a confidence that told us that as soon as we got out of this airport, we would find a cab that would take us straight to the hostel and no damages would have been done. But nearing the visa counter, we realized the confidence may have been premature. A good friend of ours (and also a travel agent) had said the last time she had been in Mozambique, the visa’s had cost around R90. (That’s about 11 dollars for the faithful American crowd.) However, this price had been changed, slightly, since she had been there, and we were looking at a R700 visa for a quick stay in Inhambane. Well, that is not usually the kind of cash folks like us carry around the Johannesburg airport, so when we got up to the counter, we asked the attendant, as calmly as possible, if he took credit cards?

He smiled, because we were so cute to ask that, and assured us that he didn’t take credit cards, but he would take our passports. So he did. Those precious blue books that anyone who has ever travelled will assure you that it is the one thing you don’t want to lose/leave behind/ get stolen/ leave with some guy at the two room airport in Mozambique when its night time. And I’m sure he is usually a friendly guy, but things just sound friendlier when someone hasn’t taken your identification from you and tells you to “Come back when you have money.”

Gaby and I were fairly stressed at this point and considered our options. We could go out on the streets of the city and try to find and ATM, but that wasn’t sounding too hot in the dark and rain of a new African city. We could sell Gaby’s iPod to someone in the airport and then use that money to get our passports back. We could trade Gaby’s iPod for our passports with the guy behind the counter. (I am not sure why my iPod got left out of this.) Or… we could check everything we have and maybe will come up with the money. And after thoroughly checking the pocket of every bag and jacket that we had with us… we had R1420. That was just over the R1400 we needed for two visas. God is good.

We got our visas, and we received our passports, and airports like this are too small to have a baggage claim, but they do have a hall where they will set your bag after you have landed. Still a little bit giddy from not having to be the next episode of “Locked up Abroad” we skipped to the baggage claim and the man their kindly told us that that the airlines had left our bags in Johannesburg, maybe. Mostly he was trying to reassure that the bags probably hadn’t disappeared completely, and that maybe they were in South Africa? And that if they somehow ended up in Mozambique at any point, he would take them to where we were staying. So I gave him my South African phone number, fully aware it wouldn’t work in this country, but at a loss at what else to do. Anyways, we had bigger problems, like how to get to Tofo, the place where the hostel was 20km away with just R20 (about 3 dollars).

Things were tense, let’s be real, but me and Gaby put on our game faces and sweet talked a cab driver into driving around to find ATMs before we headed to Tofo with our newly found cash. The long awaited ATM stop was fruitless. The bank was closed and the outdoor ATM only accepted Mozambique cards. We were officially in the middle of rural African country where we didn’t speak the language, with no phones, no luggage, no food, no money, and no real idea of what to do. In the words of one of our dear African friends, this was Michael Jackson super-bad.

Most of the time, when things go wrong, people have a plan B in mind. For example, if for some reason the prospect of graduating college falls through, then I could always fall back on my new found Contemporary African Dance skills to find a job. Or if class runs late and I can’t make it to the Mowbray Shoprite before it closes, then I could eat toast for dinner. Again. However, as me and Gaby stood on that street corner and tried to think of what plan B could be, nothing really came to mind. We needed money to get to a hostel. We needed money to stay at a hostel. We mostly wanted our moms.

Coming back to the cab driver, with no money and less hope, we explained the situation. And bless his heart, the cab driver laughed. And we drove around. And around. Until we found an ATM that would accept our South African cards. And while Gaby’s card still refused to give us any cash, the ATM managed to spit out a little money (an extremely minimal amount due to South African banking security policy) and we were officially able to pay the cab driver to take us to the hostel in Tofo and pay him for driving us about as we tested every ATM in Inhambane.

That night, I lay in my mosquito net bed and thought several things. First of all, I thought about Christmas. This could have been due to the fact that Gaby insisted that our mood would be greatly improved if we listened to The Polar Express soundtrack before bed. Second of all, I contemplated, for an extremely long time, why on earth I was so incredibly happy at that moment in time. I was impossibly hungry, the kind that can wake you up when your stomach growls. I was wearing the same yoga pants and t shirt I put on at 4:30 am the morning prior. I had no money, no plan, and no way to tell if the noise outside was a warthog or baboon. But I was so impossibly joyful. And only now can did I figure out why.

Because this was an adventure. Because I was exploring and I knew that my heart was free and that I was stretching my wings like they needed to be stretched. Because I was letting a restless soul run it all out. And because… well, this is how I knew I was growing.

Gaby and I, we had more gypsy journeys. We found ourselves hitchhiking around town and living solely on mangos and coconuts. Our bags eventually showed up in Inhambane and money was ultimately obtained. But at this point, it only barely touched our hearts. What filled us was the realization that we made friends while we had nothing to offer but our hearts, and the fact that we laughed just as hard when we were hungry.

I suppose this just confirmed what I had always suspected. People make me happy and experiences have me smile. But the clothes, the money, even the food, it’s not my joy: it’s my comfort. And sometimes you can feel that joy just a little deeper right there in the middle of uncomfortable.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Mozambique Memories...

Me and my lovely roommate Gaby decided that we wanted to take on Mozambique, just the two of us. Here are a few snapshots from the adventures of last week...

Monday, October 31, 2011

Better than Prom

There is something that I call “The Prom Effect” that will
hit you hard if you aren’t aware of it.
It happens where you get super excited for one big event, decide that it
is going to be the best day of your life, and then it turns out to be a little
(or a lot, depending on the size of your imagination) less than you
expected. Just like prom. At the time, you are certain it’s going to be
the best day of your life, but looking back, the best part was eating pie at
Village Inn after the dance.
And usually that’s what happens. It’s the seemingly insignificant things that
you remember: the stuff that we don’t plan or organize always seems to be times
where we were happiest or living the most.
I don’t know why that is, exactly, maybe because we get so preoccupied
thinking that we should be having fun
we forget to actually do it. I don’t know.
What I do know is that while I have had an incredible time
on my various adventures, it wasn’t bungee jumping, or riding an elephant, or
petting a cheetah that I am going to think about when my mind goes to
Africa. What I am going to think of is
all those beautifully random moments I experienced while finding a home worlds
away from what I know.
I’m going to think of superhero dinners, late night forts,
unscheduled mud fights, and fuzzy critters found on my bedroom floor. But most of all I am going to remember the
people that made these things happen.
Some friends on this journey were finding Africa just as new as me, and
for other friends, Africa has always been home.
I think if you asked any of them today, though, every last one would say
that at least one piece of their heart belongs to Cape Town: how big of piece
is up for them to decide.
I posted some pictures: maybe not as impressive as Victoria
Falls or the jungles of Botswana, but arguably just as beautiful. These pictures show the memories I will miss
most. Because Africa is nothing like prom.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Three Little Birds (and one minibus)

One of the most frustrating parts about seeing cool things is that it is not always appropriate to take a picture of the cool thing that you are seeing. I know you know what I am talking about. Like the woman on the bus who looks exactly like your high school physics teacher. Or the boy in your Sociology class who is wearing capris. Or the man with the misspelled poster who was probably trying to prevent global warming. But hey, I won’t put up a fight if this guy wants to “Stop global worming,” as well.
It’s in those instances that you realize that no matter how easy it would be to whip out the Nikon and take a super quick picture, it just wouldn’t be polite. People get offended by random photographs that they don’t understand. And this is why, my friends, I am unable to provide you with a picture of Bob Marley reincarnated.
He told me himself that he was. I was trying to get to downtown Cape Town on a Saturday and he was sitting in front of me on those oily minibus seats. He turned around when I sat down in the back and said, “You’re not from South Africa, are you?”
Well, that was true, so I told him that no, I was in fact not from South Africa, and as I anticipated the Saturday afternoon traffic, I decided at least I would have someone to talk to on the long bus ride.
“I’m American,” I offered. “And where are you from?”
“I am from all over, Sister. And I was here at the beginning of mankind.”
Not many people can say they were there at the beginning of mankind, so I sort of smiled, because sure, I was supposed to respect my elders and this guy had apparently been around for awhile. But he didn’t stop there. “You may have known me in some of my earlier years. Ever heard of Bob Marley?”
Now, if there is one thing I have heard of, it is Bob Marley. And my obsession with the reggae king has only deepened while spending time in Africa. “Yeah, sure, I know the guy. You good friends with Bob?” Why were the bus seats always sticky? I tried to readjust to hear what this man had to say.
He kind of chuckled. “Nah, nah Sister. I’m a Rastafarian, so we are brothers because of that, but I’m here on this earth now as him. I mean, because you know he is dead and everything. But not really. I was born from Bob again. I’m here on this earth now as Bob was here on the earth earlier. I came back as him. But I’m a different person. Don’t call me Bob.”
He turned back around on the plastic seats and looked out the window. Like the conversation was over. But you can’t tell someone that you are Bob Marley and end the conversation there. So I tapped him on the shoulder. “If I can’t call you Bob, what can I call you?”
He turned around and kind of smiled. “John Doe.” And as John was smiling something incredibly odd happened. His face kind of wrinkled at his eyebrows and his eyes got shiny and his dreadlocks were long and stuck to his arms because it was so incredibly hot in that bus and I for the first time since our conversation, it crossed my mind that maybe this dude was Bob Marley.
We fell silent for awhile longer. He messed with his Rasta hat and I tried to get my hair off of my neck. John turned around again. “What’s your dream?”
“My dream?” Minibuses are so weird. Everyone crammed in one tiny little place with not an inch or personal space. I guess this lack of personal space had crept into my aspirations, too. But I answered. I’m not sure why but I did, “I want to be a writer,” I told him.
John nodded, obviously pleased that I had told him my dream and hadn’t questioned why he had wanted to know. There was a long humid pause; he messed with a dreadlock. “I have to tell you something,” he said.
And I will never know why John decided that he wanted to help out the white girl on the minibus that day, but this is what he told me: “You probably write now and the stuff you get paid for is probably stuff with strict guidelines. Stuff with a lot of rules.” My mind flashed to the various pieces of writing that people had wanted written and how specifically I was supposed to construct certain ideas. John continued, “But when you get the chance to write what you choose, you know, when you aren’t so young and learning and when you want to be mature, don’t write what you think people want to read. Because the people, they don’t know what they want. Write what you need to say. And that’s what the people will need to hear.”
He pulled out his wallet, obviously made of hemp with red, green, yellow stripes down the front, and dug around for a folded newspaper clipping. He handed it to me. “If what you write does not leave you as happy as I was in this place, then you are writing the wrong thing.” I unfolded the paper and found a picture of Hout Bay, a little town on the outskirts of Cape Town.
“How will I know how happy you were here?” I asked, still a little confused at what had just happened, what had just been said, and why I felt like this was some awkward scene in a nineties movie.
“Oh, Sister! You will just know,” he smiled again. And with that, John Doe skipped out of the minibus still rolling to a stop. He walked out into the hot pavement and smell of gasoline.
And at that moment, all I wanted to do was bring out my camera and take a picture of “Bob Marley” walking out into the Cape Town dirt and heat, but I knew I couldn’t. It wouldn’t ever do justice to how I remembered the event. Seeing a picture of a Rasta man with ripped jeans laugh lines wasn’t what I wanted to remember anyway. What I wanted to remember was that maybe Africa still has more to teach me. And that I am not going home just yet.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Homeschooled.

As much as it amazes and pains me to type this, I have to begin to deal with the fact that I am on the home stretch of my African adventure. I feel sunshine when I wake up in the morning and walk home from dance class while it is still light out and while I smile, smile, smile at this approach of summer; it is also a soft reminder that at some point, I need to go home. And, as an attempt to be the incredibly mature homework-oriented-future -knowing-no -candy-for-breakfast-and-hair-brushing individual that I am not, I have compiled a list of just a few things that I have learned over the past couple months. You know, so I can tell people if they ask. Or remind myself if I forget. Because I guess that’s one of the things I am scared of when I think about leaving this place. Forgetting what I realized I came here to get.
1. Things are worse than they seem if you are cold or tired. This was something that I figured out when Africa was new and winter was a little colder than I anticipated. I realized that if I took a step back, took a mental survey and understood that this winter thing really wasn’t a joke, or that sleep hadn’t come so quickly the night before, then whatever I was thinking was so completely awful at that point, probably wasn’t so bad. Its displaced stress. Take a nap; get a sweatshirt and its good looking up.

2. A lot of times, you can laugh instead of cry. This seemed to be the mantra for me and my beautiful roommate these past few months. Those night where you turn your oven on and leave it open just to try and warm up the kitchen, or when you eat oatmeal for dinner again because you don’t really know how to cook anything else, or when the electricity runs out right when you need it because apparently leaving the oven on to warm up the house uses a lot of power, those were times where the laugh/cry choice was in order. And most of the time, we learned to laugh. Because most of the time, it really is kind of funny.

3. Differences get subtler the more you understand them. So when ‘pap’ is served for dinner, you start to realize it is kind of like mashed potatoes. And when some asks you “Wasswera sei?” it maybe could sound like “What’s there to say?” which is obviously a complex way of asking, “How are you?” And then there you go. African languages are figured out.
But in all honesty, the longer a talk I have with someone, the more their accent fades, and the more familiar their words seem and sometimes, I can forget that we are so different and from completely different worlds. And maybe my accent fades to them; too, as we both start to understand. Maybe things aren’t so different after all.

4. You never really regret the times you decide to dance. But you almost always regret the times you don’t. There is a lot of dancing going on in Africa. So if steps are clumsy the first time around, there is always a chance for round two. Most people aren’t looking to be impressed. Most just want someone to dance along with. In the mighty words of my fearless Xhosa dance teacher: “If you don’t get up, and dance together like a village, well, then that’s fine, but don’t come crying to me when you have your ancestors speak to you and say, “Why you weren’t up there dancing?” I must say, I can’t exactly picture my ancestors saying that, but I think they’d be proud. Confused, maybe, of how their lineage made it all the way to Africa. But proud. Because, o Cape Town, I danced.

5. And one final thing in this short list of what to remember when I return home. An old Zulu adage says something like this when it’s translated: “A path is made by walking.” So I’ll keep walking. Walking on back to my apartment for the night. Walking into my final weeks in South Africa. Walking into my old life back at home, but with a fuller heart and a bigger mind. And maybe one day, God willing, walking right back onto this African dust again.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Hungry.

If my calculations are correct, there are four types of hungry out there. The first type is the one I am most familiar with. I don’t know its technical name, but my roommate and I refer to it as something along the lines of the “It’s your own fault hungry.” It happens when you forget to go to the store, and the only food in the apartment is instant oatmeal and a potato that we found next to the refrigerator that is mostly there for decoration.
It’s in the midst of this type of hungry when you think, “I could go to Seven-Eleven and attempt to buy candy but they might as well change their name to “Seven-Whenever we feel like closing” because they are generally not open when the really, really big hungry sets in.” But it’s my own fault, really. Food would have been available if I had planned better.
The second type of hungry I like to call the “Sister Hungry,” because it’s the kind that Sister is always trying to explain to me. Sister is the homeless woman who lives outside my flat. She likes to sit on the curb of the side walk and argue with the man who sometimes claims to be her husband, and sometimes swears he’s just her brother. It usually depends on how sassy she is that particular day.
Sister is always hungry. And rightfully so: the woman is thin like a tree branch and stings like one when she lashes out at her husband/brother. Hers is the kind of hungry that is never really satisfied; the kind where there is just never quite enough food. “Sister Hungry” also results in me constantly carrying protein bars and potato chips in every purse and backpack I own so I can share some snacks on the way in and out of the flat. And it’s probably her sass, but Sister holds a place in my heart, and this can ultimately lead to “It’s your own fault hungry.” Because it’s when I pass her on the way out to a restaurant and sit down at those booths and stare at my food that my thoughts gravitate towards Sister. And I save half of the food to bring back to my girl faithfully on the pavement outside my home. Her toothless smile and a kiss on the cheek are generally worth it though.
Then there is the third type of hungry. It’s the “channel changing hungry” because that’s what everyone does when it comes on TV. Toddlers with knees and heads that aren’t quite in proportion with the rest of their tiny bodies. And I’m guilty as charged because when those ‘Save the Children’ commercials come on, I try and change the channel too, but that just isn’t really that possible or appropriate when we watch documentaries in my “Growing up in Africa” lecture. The ones where they show the Zimbabwean children crying in the dirt because there is no food today. Or tomorrow.
And when the man with the video camera (who everyone grows to hate) asks the little girl in her flower dress what she had eaten yesterday, she gets frustrated, throws her hands in the air and yells, “Upona!” Nothing. She didn’t get to eat anything yesterday.

And, that brings me to the fourth type of hungry. It’s the kind you get when Sister asks, “You got anything for a sister, sister?” and I don’t. Or when you watch those documentaries and you realize that you don’t have to go as far as Zimbabwe to find babies that have eaten “Upona” that day. Or that you were in that place you saw on TV and you saw those kids yelling in the dirt and you didn’t really do much more than smile about the little ones who tugged on your hands in those dusty streets. Because, I don’t really know what to do, you know? If I am supposed to bring candy bars around with me like I do for Sister, of if I just give them the money I have, or I just hold their brown little hands and say a prayer, or tell someone about it, or cry, because it breaks your heart if you think about it hard. Or if you think about it at all.
Then what I did was just take pictures of them because they love to see themselves on the screen afterwards, and then you have something to show everyone back home. A bright eyed, greedy souvenir, or something so you can say, “Hey, you know those beautiful hungry children on the TV? I saw them in real life. And they really do want food.” Or maybe you just don’t eat like they can’t eat and then ease that guilt because these days KFC plays more on my conscious than anything else out there. And this fourth type of hungry is awful and this hungry burns your soul and this hungry comes from the fact that I have enough and others don’t and I just don’t know what is supposed to be done about that.
Because you can’t feed this type of hungry.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

New Shoes

Above are my umnie (beautiful) functional English learners. Basically, we get together each week in their eighth grade classroom to try and make English a little easier to speak and understand.

But recently, especially after meeting with these young ladies, I have had an incredibly difficult time figuring out why I live in a house with running water, and they don’t. Or why I can buy everything I need and things that I want, but they don't get to.

Or why the sky is my limit and the world is my oyster, but to Sangeliswe and Nomzamo, the sky is the roof over their heads some nights, and the world barely exists beyond the barbed wire fences out the window.

And I just can't keep from wondering, why am I not the one in their worn out patent leather shoes?

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Jammin.

I walk to the bus stop every day to get to class. But in South Africa, it’s not called a bus, it’s called a jammie. And they are baby blue instead of gray or yellow and they don’t play Coldplay on the radio they play Marvin Gaye turned up really, really loud.

The walk isn’t too far: it’s up Liesbeek Road, left on Main, and right on Chapel and then you are basically there. The moment of truth on this walk is when you start round the curve on Chapel, though, because then you are able to see Tugwell Station: the jammie stop. Its then that you can see just how many people are standing in line for the jammie and approximate how long you are going to have to wait in queue in order to board.

Sometimes, if you plan it right, you will get on the first jammie that stops at Tugwell. But, more likely than not, two or three Marvin Gaye buses are going to pass you by before you ever even get the opportunity to cram your legs, backpack and hair through those jammie doors.
So I was prepared for the jammie struggle this morning. I had on my game face and had walked through a mental prep talk, as was extremely necessary for any jammie related journey. I turned down Chapel Road and there it was: Tugwell in all its glory of cigarettes and iPods, weaves, warm skin and converse. It was going to be a fight today.

But then, as I stood and contemplated my strategy (elbows out for bulk, no smiling, close toed shoes) I was struck into an insightful and pensive mindset. “I wonder,” I thought and lowered my elbows, “who has the greatest need to get on this bus?”

Being human and intermittently narcissistic, I considered my own position first. “If I don’t get on this bus,” I thought, “I won’t be on campus early. That means I won’t be able to check my email before class. Which ultimately results in waiting an extra forty five minutes before I find out if my sister found a homecoming dress or if anyone liked my status about Bob Dylan on facebook, because it was really clever.”

Then, I looked to the girl to the right and tried to determine how badly she needed to get to campus. She held her books tight in front of her, like a shield. It was a good strategy; I had used that technique before. She didn’t look ready for the battle, though, she looked nervous. “If she doesn’t get to class on time, she will have to walk in late. If she walks in late, everyone may stare at her and the professor may even make some sort of rude comment. If he makes that comment she may get embarrassed and drop all those books she is carrying like that and then she will be even more uncomfortable. Ok, this girl gets to get on the jammie before me.” The struggles of a hyperactive imagination.
But my deliberation continued: I determined hypothetical life situations for all these people around me. And you know what? Most people had a better reason to get on the bus before me. After about ten minutes, I was on a roll. I had situations for just about everybody. Except for that boy in front of me. He’s dressed in khaki, black polo shirt and All-Stars. Some people are easier to read than others and he was from the townships, I am fairly certain. His dress, his manner, that’s what told me this. I have held an incredible respect since early on for those who were able to climb up out of those townships and attend the University.

“If he doesn’t get on the jammie, he may miss an exam and fail a class,” I began my game again, “If he fails, then he could lose a scholarship to come to UCT. He loses that scholarship, then he can’t go to school anymore. That happens, and there is no strong career path in his future. He won’t be that doctor he wants to be. He won’t be that scientist like he told his grandma he would be since he was eight years old. And he could have researched cancer cells, HIV, figured out some sort of cure.” I was actually kind of anxious now. This kid needed to get to campus.

A jammie finally rolled up to Tugwell. People pushed and struggled and persuaded their way in the bus line and their next move in life. I hung back, with the sudden decision that my presence on campus maybe wasn’t as dire as my neighbors. Soon, as the rainbow of voices and book bags trickled onto the bus, it became clear that there would be one person who wasn’t going to fit onto this jammie. That they would have to make it on a later bus. Soon there were only two of us left on that sticky cement: me and the boy in black polo; the one I had convinced myself had struggled to get into university and who wanted to be doctor and a scientist. The kid who was the first of his family to go to college and who was trying to help his sisters and his mother out by going to class and learning new things, big things. The man who, I had hypothetically reasoned, needed to be on that jammie and head up to campus more than anyone else in all of Tugwell.
He looked at me and kind of grinned, well aware of the predicament we found ourselves in.

"Go ahead, Sister,” he motioned toward the stairs on the bus, “I’ll catch the next jammie.”

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Talk to Me

The tag on my Yogi tea bag this evening gave me some advice. It said: “the greatest tool you could have is to listen.” Now I like Yogi tea just fine but the main reason I drink it is 1.) as an attempt to lower my incredible and unrivaled coffee consumption and 2.) for the good advice the tea tags seem to give. So I have obliged, my less than adequately caffeinated tea bag, I have been listening and jotting notes of things I hear. The following are a few statements, sentences, quotes if you will that I have encountered while playing the listening game. Most are from friends, a few from professors, others are acquaintances. All of their words mean something a little more when placed in context. Read. Listen. Feel. Learn.

“I told you. I am not going to ask how many cows she thinks she’s worth.” G. South Africa. This was said in response to teasing about a friend’s new girlfriend. In many African cultures, it is traditional to purchase a set number of cows for the bride’s family before a wedding. Negotiating the number of livestock is serious business and requires intense bargaining and thorough investigation of what the bride is worth in terms of cattle. Ten cows if she graduated high school. Five more if she graduated college. Maybe seven additional if she is a virgin, and depending on the job she has lined up, this guy could ultimately find himself buying thirty or forty cows for the in laws.

“But what if you go home and you remember that you were born here, but this is not your home any longer? You come back to that place you were born and you realize that it isn’t ready for your voice quite yet. That you are standing and living ahead of home.” X. South Africa. Townships are a difficult place to grow up, and most would assume that they are also a living condition that people are anxious to escape. However, that’s simply not the case. Family, history, language and culture all mix and blend in those townships, and once you step outside of that bubble, it is extremely hard to work yourself back in. Leaving the township life in pursuit of new opportunities is not looked on favorably by township peers. If you leave the place you were born, then you turn your back on the people. And an open armed welcome home is not what is generally expected.

“No, we knew you were American because of your water bottle.” N. South Africa. I always thought it would be my accent that would give me away. But apparently Nalgene water bottles do a lot of talking on their own. N. told me once, “There was a point where everyone was convinced that Americans were required to have an obnoxiously large and colorful water bottle before they came to Africa. Like, they handed you one before you boarded the plane, or something like this.”

“My dad chose a new last name for my family after the war. He just came home from work one day, stepped into my grandfather’s house and said, ‘This is our name now.’” F. Zimbabwe. Civil war raged through Zimbabwe in the seventies. Rebels, nationalists and those loyal to the racist forms of government were in a constant battle. When independence was obtained in 1980, people decided they wanted to start anew: no longer hostage to previous political parties and beliefs, they sought new names. I guess it was just whatever name you felt your family could identify with. Whatever name you could be proud of.

“But I was walking to the market and my brother comes along because he wants to buy a monkey brain. A monkey brain. For food. So I am going to do what any normal person does in that situation. I tell him, “Fine. But I get to pick out the monkey.” M. South Africa. Being fairly adventurous in my taste of food, I have been moderately willing to try most anything that gets offered at dinners. Ostrich, alligator, warthog: didn’t even phase me. However, when we got to the point of caterpillars and chicken eyes, I realized that maybe I wasn’t as…open minded as I initially thought. No monkey brains in my life thus far.

“To us the world happened between a mountain and a sea. Somehow we were dislodged and we set ourselves free.” R. South Africa. I saw this poem written on the wall in the District Six Museum in Cape Town. District Six was a black neighborhood in central Cape Town that inhabitants were forced to evacuate during the apartheid era. The neighborhood was then demolished for “white use in the future.” But District Six was never used by anyone ever again: thousands of blacks were displaced and left homeless while whites never found any use for the neighborhood they destroyed. This poem was written by a woman from District Six who was displaced during apartheid.

“Yeah, at least your grandma doesn’t greet you by licking your forehead.” C. Zimbabwe. Traditional Shona culture places elders at high esteem. Children are expected to take their parents in when they are too old to care for themselves, and the elder’s opinion holds considerable weight in decision making. So, if grandma wants to lick your forehead in order to say hi, then grandma gets to.

“And I was alone in New York with five dollars to my name and all I wanted to do was fill out that job application inside that warm Starbucks. But my mama didn’t raise me like that: to take things that weren’t mine without paying for them. So I sat outside of Starbucks on the ground in the snow and I filled out that application.” M. Uganda. I have incredible respect for the high moral character this Muslim friend upholds, which he credits to his religious upbringing. He will not let a female walk on the side of the street closest to the cars, never once has asked to borrow or use something that was not his, and one time came over and watched me eat an entire dinner which he politely refused and it was not until the next day did I realize that I had eaten in front of a man who had been intently fasting for the past couple of days. Unpretentious dedication at its finest.

Yogi tea, your words of wisdom, they serve me well. Now, please, please give me some academic advice.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Big Dreamin

In almost all those small, second and third level college classes, there comes a time when the professor will make everyone go around the room and state their aspiration for the future. And there comes a point when everyone is awkwardly giving their answer that you realize that your answer isn’t quite like the other students. Being a dreaded and self proclaimed finance major, I hear a lot of responses that sound something like, “Start my own consulting firm!” or “Get hired by a major accounting company!” And after about ten students have gone, you realize that you probably shouldn’t let tell the class that your main goal for the future is to find a way to live in a tree house.

And the rest of the world likes to call aspirations like that ‘illogical dreams’ because, well, no one actually lives in a treehouse, probably because it is not practical and it’s hard to find a way to get a refrigerator up there and forest fires pose more of a threat then if you lived, say, on the ground. But you know, when I close my eyes at night or the bus ride gets long, its just not my style to daydream of high heels and gray skirts and office jobs. Those corporate job dreamers aren’t wrong. Power to them for being so logically minded. I just hope they aren’t ever too afraid to admit that they want to open a bakery or be an astronaut or a dolphin trainer. Because, I don’t know. Dreams don’t cost a thing. And sometimes, they come true.

Last week I had the opportunity to stay with Tswana people in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. (Pause here for a moment to recall that dreams sometimes do come true and my adventuresome heart had a spring break that could never be duplicated.) Anyways, the delta is a swamp, a freshwater marsh land where the only way to travel is to boat around in a small canoe (makoro) steered by a someone (poler) with a big stick (pole). Stewart was a poler, someone who was paid to take blonde Americans about on the makoros and make sure they got out of the water if there was a hippo sighting. Poling our way through the wetlands of Botswana, this is how nineteen year old Stewart and I met.

Polers quickly become friends. Because when you are in the middle of the delta with no electricity, no buildings and no roads, you need someone to tell you that there was an elephant outside the tent yesterday, so you probably shouldn’t go to the bathroom at night. And when you are in a country you don’t know, with a language and currency that doesn’t make much sense, it feels good when you can sing and dance and talk with someone who has this lifestyle figured out. Or at least more figured out then you do.

So, one night around that rancid smelling fire (unfortunately, elephant dung burns really well,) Stewart and I talked. And I asked him my favorite question: “What is your dream? If you could have or do or be anything in the whole world, what would that look like?”
His answer gave me the same feeling that I get when my fellow classmates back home in Colorado tell me that the craziest aspiration that they can dream up is to be a tax attorney with good insurance.

“I try not to really dream,” Stewart told me, eyes closed, voice low around that sticky fire. “Things like dreams don’t really happen here.”
I urged him on, though. I said, “Well, what if they could? What about… travelling. If you could go any place in the whole world where would you want to be?”

He thought for a few moments, threw some more dung on the fire. “I would go to Northern Botswana. I would be a miner. Miners make a lot of pula. But they die young, young. But that’s ok, I guess. I could send pula home.”
Now I was even more frustrated. He didn’t understand the point of my game, how he was supposed to play. He was supposed to dream big and tell me he wanted to meet Kanye West or buy a house in LA or direct a movie. I didn’t want him to want to be a miner.

“Stewart, I want to live in a treehouse. That’s my dream.” He laughed. Everyone always laughs. Then he asked how I would get a refrigerator up a tree. Everyone always seems to ask that, too.

“Ella!” he said, and he rolled the L’s like the Tswana greeting: Dumela, ma! “You don’t understand. It’s hard to dream. It makes a man sad to wake up in the morning with a want in his heart and know that he will never get that want. I am happy now. I have friends and I am strong and I know how to laugh and I am alive. What more dreams could I want?”

Oh, Stewart, he broke my heart with that speech. Someone without a thing but a boat and a tent wants nothing. Beautifully selfless, and perfectly content. But at the same time, stationary in this world that seems to be travelling a million kilometers per hour.

I felt so guilty then, for making him think about things he could never have, dreams he would never be able to hold. Maybe everyone back home was right, maybe those logical aspirations were the only thing that were going to keep your heart from getting broken. But oh! I had been such a firm believer in the idea of being slightly irrational. That if you wanted something then maybe one day it would happen. I mean I live in Africa! I have ridden an elephant and jumped down a waterfall! Was it so wrong for such farfetched dreams? My right brained self panicked.

There are a lot of stars in that Botswana sky and I went to sleep that night with a few more wishes then I had the night before. I hoped for some of Stewart’s content in my own restless heart. And I couldn’t help but still wishing for my treehouse. But most of all, I prayed that there would never be anything that Stewart would be too afraid to dream.

After a few nights in the Okavango, the time came to head back to main land: to find a road and see a car and buy some much needed food. The journey across the delta in a makoro is a long one, but eventually, mainland was spotted and we piled wet sleeping bags into the overland truck. We hugged polers good bye because now we were brothers and sisters. As I climbed into that truck, Stewart grabbed my arm. He said, "Big dreams don't hurt, right?" I shook my head no, a little confused to where this was going. He smiled really big at me, then laughed, “I want to date Avril Lavigne!”

Monday, September 12, 2011

Wanderings

In typical gypsy girl style, I ventured out into the great African unknown without properly informing the rest of the world that I would be adventuring for awhile with no phone and no computer. However, due to lack of food, lack of clean clothes, and the fact that I traded my sleeping bag for a super rad chess set, I have found myself back in Cape Town, alive and well and full of new stories and a couple unintentional dreds because, well I traded my hairbrush along with that sleeping bag. Unfortunately, school work beckons and gives me anxious looks because of the neglect it has been experiencing these past couple weeks. So, until my papers get written I leave you with a few snapshots of my journey. mambo.

Devils Pool: Victoria Falls, Zambia

Eating (or attempting to eat) the Mompani Worm, more commonly known as huge crunchy caterpillar. Boma, Zimbabwe

Victoria Falls, Highest in the World. Vic Falls, Zimbabwe

Learning to 'pole' a Makoro boat. Okavanga Delta, Botswana

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Home

Someone must have recently suggested to several of my new friends that they should be making me mix tapes filled with songs about home. In the past two weeks, the new music I have acquired has consisted of Michael Buble’s “Home,” Edward Sharpe’s “Home,” “Shelter” by The xx, “A Horse is Not a Home,” by Miike Snow and “Hey There, Delilah,” which is not about home per se, but is so thoroughly American that it might as well be. And this was one CD.This incredibly beautiful new life of no TV, no radio, and minimal internet has led to a lot of music listening. And, due to new mix tapes, thoughts of home.
It’s not homesickness, that’s not it. Sickness is how you feel a few months after you realize oatmeal is really the only thing you know how to cook. Or being on a boat for too long because whales are swimming right underneath. Or the anxiety before a first African Dance performance. And what I feel, it isn’t sick for home. It’s the desire for my home to be there with me to experience the bad oatmeal, the yellow kayaks in the ocean and my first recital. Because those experiences are, well, sick.
Michael Buble, he sang to me this evening and told me he’s been to Paris and Rome, and he just wants to go home. I feel for Michael, I do, but I can’t say my feelings agree. I just want home to have the chance to see what I see. To feel what I feel. To touch the same sand, run down the same streets, taste the same water and feel the same sunbeams at the same hours of the day. I want my sisters to sit on the same bus seats and try the same candy and feel the same warm in the afternoon. And I want my home friends to hear the same accents and learn the same slang words and look out at the same mountains every morning so that when I am back at home, I can call them up on the same area code and say, “Remember how the fog used to hang so low in the mornings when we walked to the Laundromat?”
So I’m trying, Home. I’m trying to bring back as many memories and stories and adventures as one body can hold. I’ll take pictures and I’ll write things down and I’ll collect phone numbers of interesting people I meet along the way. Just know that I wish you were here to see it too. Because my God, it is beautiful.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Of Feathers and Names

I turned in my first paper last week. It was supposed to be on “the significance of naming children in Africa.” And it was. Mostly. It was just that I spent most of my time attempting to figure out how to add the word “uBhekimpilo” to my Microsoft Word dictionary because I just can’t type when that red squiggly line keeps telling me that there are no spelling suggestions.
It was an interesting topic, though, because a lot more meaning goes into the traditional African naming practices than the average American baby name. They usually represent something: either the specific events occurring in the family’s life at that time, or what they hope that child grows into one day. Those traditional African names are more than just a label; it’s more like a prayer. That this child will grow up and fulfill their title, or wake up each morning as a living testament to the memory they represent. This naming process is a big deal.
For example, the name “uNduminseni” means ‘Progress’ in the Zulu culture. It’s a request for movement: a plea for growth. And when uNduminseni looks in the mirror, he no longer sees just brown eyes and Dad’s chin. He sees college graduate. Good father. Hard worker. And maybe, ancestors willing, that mirror will ultimately reflect ‘Progress. ‘
However, there are other names that are given in a less… optimistic environment. “uVelaphi” literally means “Who does he look like?” and is given to the illegitimate kids in the village. “uXolani” is the Zulu word for “Sorry.” I guess that’s pretty efficient, if you anticipate baby wild child.
And after reading through pages and pages of complex naming practices, I couldn’t help but wonder what my parents would have named me had they expected it to reflect on my future. Surely they didn’t call my grandma all excited and say, ‘We are going to call her Ella! That means, ‘good-at-climbing-things-but-not-so-good-at-brushing-her-hair.’ We really hope she can live up to that!”
However, I can see my dad holding my sister Remi in the air all Lion King Style and declaring, “We will call her ‘Good-at-fixing-anything-that’s-broken-without-an-instruction-manual-or-formal-training.’ Because that is just a really beautiful name.”
My sister Chessa would be “funnier-than-you” because, well, she probably is, and Amy, my beautiful friend from home would easily be called “laugh-that-makes-everyone-else-laugh-too.” People grow into their names and the Word usually represents them pretty well, even if at first there is no intended meaning behind it.
There is a saying in the uBuntu culture that goes something like this: “intake yakha ngoboya benye.” “A bird builds his nest from the feathers of other birds.” In other words: we build our own personal identity on what we see around us: the thoughts, ideas, beliefs of the people we encounter and the places we have seen or experiences we have felt. Each one of us takes a little sliver of that and adds it to our own nest until we have a beautifully unique and perfectly formed identity. This is a great thought for “uThukayizwe” (insult) and “uSiphipho” (cause for divorce), because despite your name, or the family you were born into or the outstanding, withstanding, in-the-rain-standing circumstances, you choose your own feathers and you build your own nest. Nobody else can do it for you. Not even your name.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Ya Mampela

It is an interesting time to be living in South Africa. I heard one man say, “Most people read about their history. South Africans today live in the history that has yet to be written.” This a unique thought, and I’m sure people would argue that any person is living in history in the making. Perhaps this post-apartheid South Africa is just in a critical point in its history making. Fascinating and a little terrifying.
Below is a link to a commercial on national television that is a hot topic for argument and debate. This advertisement was put out by SABC 1, a local South African TV station. Their slogan: “Ya Mampela,” or “The Real Thing.” It is currently banned from public TV, but the content is interesting: what if racial roles were reversed?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcWsTwvtyOI&feature=related

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Listen...

Public speaking is ranked as one of the top fears of adults in the whole world. I think something like heights or snakes is up there also, but talking in front of a bunch of people: that scares people. This concept is very funny to me. Because the majority of people I know love to talk. They are all about telling you where they’ve been or what they’re doing or why they are wearing brown shoes with black pants or the dream they had that Johnny Depp was in a taxi with them and they drove to the shoe store together. People do it, they talk. We are social creatures: it’s in our blood, through our diaphragm, on our chest, then out our lips.
And I think it is beautiful, completely and thoroughly incredible, that humans can communicate so effectively and so complexly. However, I think it is common to forget something with a mouth full of words. We forget to listen.
Starling’s Backpackers Lodge was the name of the hostel that some friends and I stayed at during this long weekend. And it was like most hostels that you picture when you close your eyes: wooden bunk beds and thin mattresses and an incessant dripping noise in a room with no sinks. But this place had something a little extra: a room with a fire and some couches and a place ideal for, well, for listening.
I sat and listened until late, late, late on those nights we stayed at Starling. I heard as a man told adventure stories of how he base jumped for fun and sky dived for a living. The waitress who lived nearby told me of her dream to find a way for the youth in her hometown to travel, and to experience the world. “Because,” she said, “if they see how awesome this world is, they will try harder to rise above their circumstances.” There are really, really interesting people out there. And I think they are more willing to be that kind of interesting when they know someone is willing to listen. Not just the quiet or the absence of my speech. But real live hearing: the kind you do when you think that what the person says is important.
So I came home from this excursion with my hair smelling like smoke and this idea in my head that I wanted to do just that: intentionally give off a listening vibe and see what happened. And I heard ideas. Good ideas.
Moses journeyed to America a few years ago with nothing more than $300 and a good attitude. Sometimes that’s not enough though, and he ended up living in the projects of New York, with no job, no money, and a new realization that maybe America has its problems, too.
Mr. T. wishes people were more like elephants. If one gets orphaned or left behind, another elephant family will help him out and adopt the lost elephant. They just accept the lost one and let him be part of the family. “Why can’t humans do that?” was his question to me.
Now, I usually go to class and I try and take notes, but my real learning hasn’t been sitting in those desks in a lecture hall, wondering if the teacher will count me off on my paper for not using the British spelling of “color.” My true learning has been through the thoughts and ideas of people around me. And all I have to do is listen.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Adventureland: Recap

It has been a hectic time around here the past week (hectic, I have learned, can be used to describe anything that isn't super mellow in Africa)butI wanted to share some of the adventures that this journey has taken me recently, through pictures:

Road trippin' with new friends, bungee jumping off the highest bungee in the world, elephant walks, tiger sightings, and cheetah love........

Wild, wild, world, and so blessed to be a part of it.