'Cause this Africa!

Someone told me that I haven’t posted recently enough, and you know they might be right…so, here’s an update which is really long!

First, I want to give you a quick thought on Ghana because I just ran through the laundry list of all the things I did there in my last post.  Ghana has all of the elements necessary to improve its economic status quickly over the next decade.  The people I talked to in Accra seemed hopeful, but at the same time they were cautious in saying that things would inevitably improve.  Ghana’s democracy is only 20 years old and inequality could grow between the coastal, urban south and the landlocked, more rural north.  The general feeling was that with a little luck and decent government actions over next ten years Ghana will be safely on its way to prosperity!

Okay, now onto Cape Town and South Africa!  If you ever thought about vacationing in Africa then you need to put Cape Town at the top of your list (right next to Egypt and the pyramids actually).  The city is absolutely gorgeous because the scenery is some of the best in the world.  Table Mountain overlooks downtown and is part of a larger chain of peaks that extend several miles to Cape Point (aka The Cape of Good Hope), the most south westerly part of the African continent.  There’s also the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens and about a thousand other nature involved or extreme sports related activities at hand.  That doesn’t even count any of the attractions that a big historical city like Cape Town has or the estates of the nearby wine lands (which I didn’t get to see).  So yeah, that’s my marketing pitch for Cape Town!

Okay, so about things I actually did…the first day I walked through downtown for one of my classes and learned a little about the history of Cape Town.  My favorite stops included the Fort of Good Hope, City Hall (which is an arts center now), the Company Gardens, and St. George’s Cathedral.   Our guide made it pretty clear that Cape Town is a little different from most of South Africa.  There’s more mixed history, which includes a different ethnic makeup (a huge majority are colored, which is politically correct to say in South Africa) than the rest of the country.  Cape Town’s province, Western Cape, is also the only region of the country governed by a party other than the dominant African National Congress (from the little I learned I’d be a member of the opposition party, the Democratic Alliance).  The first day was good introduction to Cape Town.

The next morning I woke up and headed to Robben Island with an SAS trip.  Robben Island was the location of the prison that housed anti-apartheid leaders like Nelson Mandela or (can’t remember his first name) Sobukwe.  During the day we toured the island, the prison facility, saw penguins (oh yeah!), and talked to an ex-politcal prisoner who works at the museum now.  It was really cool to hear his perspective on South Africa today and what progress has or hasn’t been made since apartheid’s end.  Interestingly enough, even though freedoms have increased since the end of apartheid (and let me be clear, no one would go back), I was told several times during the week that the apartheid government was better at implementing its policies, better governed (at least for now), and better at keeping unemployment low.  It’s shocking to think that an inhumane system like apartheid had benefits.  Which is why the ex-political prisoner we talked to, Zozo, says thanks to all the foreigners he leads on tours through the prison.  I wasn’t alive, so, I never realized how influential foreign pressure and divestment was in ending apartheid until I talked to Zozo.  I’d always assumed apartheid was dysfunctional mess, but it partially worked when the international community turned a blind eye (which is sobering food for thought).

Okay, so, aside from those thoughtful comments I had a great time on Robben Island.  While we there, had meals cooked for us by a woman named Josey (which involved Malay and Indian food, a barbecue, and a solid breakfast), and we slept in the guesthouse of the house used by the warden when the island was still a prison.  I had hoped we might sleep in a prison cell or something cool like that, but I won’t complain.  That bed is probably the softest thing I’ll sleep on this entire voyage…ahh.

After I got back from Robben Island, I headed to Table Mountain with one of the girls from our group named Tommie.  Unfortunately, we were pressed for time and had to take the cable car up instead of hiking (which is the right way to do it according to the shipboard community).  The views from the top were still amazing!  Table Mountain is 1000 meters above the city and the ocean, and there were canyons and trails all across the top that you could explore (it really is like a table, a small city could fit up there).  Sometimes a cloud hangs over Table Mountain and locals call it the tablecloth.  The plants were also nifty and different.  Little known fact, Cape Town has a unique floral region that only extends 50 kilometers inland from the coast.  For those of us who aren’t botanists…there are only 6 floral regions in the world.  Cool, huh?  Oh, this from Table Mountain.

From the cable car station below Table Mountain, Tommie and I headed to Kistenbosch Botanical Gardens to attend the last day of Cape Town’s summer concert series.  Since they had just hosted an international music festival, we heard the Cape Philharmonic play underneath solos by several classically trained singers with European sounding names.  It was beautiful and romantic; too bad I don’t have a girlfriend…Tommie and I were joined by Jira, her boyfriend Nat (who flew to Cape Town for her birthday), Nat’s friend Antonio, and Sophia (who is another friend on the ship I might not have mentioned).  If you ever get the chance to hear the Cape Philharmonic or see Kirstenbosch then do it, preferably together.

Later that night we headed to dinner and met up with Stephen and some other friends to eat Thai for Jira’s birthday.  Stephen told us about his experiences bungee jumping and shark diving from the two days before, which sounded pretty awesome (to Stephen’s parents: the video of him jumping is pretty cool, you should watch it when we get back).

Okay, fast-forward one day and most of us who had been at dinner the night before headed out with a local tour company to see the highlights of the cape area.  We drove through the Clifton beach area, which I was told multiple times by different people is, “The place to see and be seen.”  Anyway, our first real stop was Hout’s Bay (I got a cool video of guys forming a fish passing relay J) and from there Chapman Road.  Chapman Road was built along the cliffs around the peninsula heading towards the Cape of Good Hope (it was an engineering marvel at the time it was built).  Most of the drive has sheer cliff face on one side and sheer drops on the other side.  It’s an extremely safe road, but every view is definitely movie worthy.

From there we visited Cape Point Park where we visited the Cape of Good Hope and got some cool pictures standing on the edge of the world.  No big deal.  We had to hike and then bike from there to reach our lunch stop on the tour.  The bike ride was exciting, but I wish it was a little longer just to take in more scenery.  Lunch was at the Park Visitor’s Center where we were joined by three hungry baboons.  It was interesting because you weren’t sure whether you should hide or stand five feet away and take pictures (I chose the latter before one baboon tried to chase me).  The baboons had me seriously nervous the whole time because apparently they have a nasty habit of attacking people with food.  You can imagine the feeling you have when you’re staring at a baboon on the roof above you that only seems to have eyes for your food…

Next we dealt with some more amicable animals: African penguins!  They were kind of cute, no doubt about it.  There might have been a couple hundred penguins on the beach, which was really cool. It was definitely not your normal day at a zoo, especially since one penguin was sitting under the stairs on the boardwalk waiting to bite anyone who walked down.  After fighting traffic heading back to Cape Town, we ended our tour and showered.  Our group headed to an Indian restaurant called Masala Dosa on Long Street (which is like Bourbon Street, only not quite as exciting I’ll bet).  It was fun to walk around and then I headed back to the ship for some shut eye before my class field trip the next day.

For my Politics of Development class we visited an NGO, Operation Hunger, which works to improve child nutrition in the outlying townships around Cape Town.  We visited Capricorn Township, which has had an influx of foreign refugees over the past ten years.  This has caused tensions with the local residents who have made money by renting out their backyards to let newcomers build shacks for shelter.  Capricorn is a relatively new project for Operation Hunger, so, I helped make plots for the new community garden they’re growing (in soil that is mostly sand, which I don’t quite understand, but apparently it works).  Another group helped local women cook that day’s lunch. In the afternoon we helped weigh kids and measure their arm circumferences and heights as reference points to see if Operation Hunger is having success.  Overall the experience was everything I had hoped it would be, and I’d love to go back and volunteer with them or work in a similar organization at some point.  Other than a visit to the V&A Waterfront (a really swanky mall near our ship that we had been going to in the evenings for dinner or groceries), that was it for the fifth day.

Finally, on our last day in Cape Town I went with a group to Mfuleni Township where we spent the day working with Habitat for Humanity.  The groups before working before us that week had been painting finished houses, so naturally, our group was tabbed to fill house foundations with sand and level it out before they poured concrete slabs (which I understood because of helping build the patios at home, thanks Mom and Dad!).  It was a ton of hard work (very possibly a literal statement), but we finished filling foundations for seven of the eight houses they were starting and we saved the subcontractors two days of work.  Our work leader, Rob, has been involved with Habitat for two years and he said they’d built 460 houses in that time in Mfuleni Township alone, with only 40 left on the waiting list.  That’s about 4 to 5 houses a week, which is awesome… I was planning on heading out for the last couple hours before the ship left, but I crashed hard after I showered.  South Africa (at least the Cape Town part) is amazing, and I’d love to come back someday.  I guess that’s why it’s an adventure, memories I’ll never forget…

P.S. It has come to my attention that WKU won the Indoor Sunbelt Track Title, congrats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!