Kobus van Wyk

Today--well, Thursday in South Africa--marks the funeral for one of the most amazing people I have had the privilege to know personally.

This is the last photo taken of a gentle giant of a man who changed his world, and changed our world.


Kobus van Wyk, we will NEVER forget you.

This was Kobus van Wyk, talking to our American students from SCC and MSU, explaining the need for a change in housing development to end the legacy of apartheid in South African Townships. In spite of the chair blocking the view, I like this picture because his passion shows so clearly. He spoke quietly but with a gentle force you couldn't ignore. We all fell in love with him.

Kobus had spent the last twenty years building the Human Settlement Development Management Degree program at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. This week, the program launches its first group of students.  His dream is becoming reality.

His legacy will live on.

The famous TABLE, the famous house

I took an illegal photo (cameras forbidden!) of this picture (imagine that--me?) in the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, just so I'd have it to compare with the photo below. SEE? It's the SAME TABLE.

This is the table where Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk sat to hammer out the terms of Nelson Mandela's release from prison, and the eventual end of Apartheid!

T

These two pictures probably depict the serendipitous nature of our entire trip to South Africa better than any other pictures could.

Because of winter storms, Table Bay at Cape Town was kicking up twenty-foot swells, and all boat excursions to Robben Island were canceled. As a result, we scrambled for activities to replace that long-awaited trip (and the cable car trip to the top of Table Mountain, also canceled). Our most spectacular bus driver, William, asked Scott and me if we wanted him to call his cousin, a warder at Drakenstein Prison in the Stellenbasch region.

Most people have heard of Robben Island, and Nelson Mandela's 18-year imprisonment there (the largest portion of the 27 years he spent in prison) for leading the African National Congress, and trying to undermine the system of Apartheid. Few, however, unless they are students of South African history, know that Mandela was moved from Robben Island for the last 18 months of his prison term to the prison now known as Drakenstein. There, he was imprisoned in a four-bedroom house with room to move around and a big dining room table where President de Klerk and he could sit and negotiate.

De Klerk would be spirited into the prison by an little-known back road. He was wise enough to realize Apartheid had to end. Sanctions by the United Nations and many parts of the free world were making the legalized racial oppression impossible to maintain.

Here, Edgar is pointing out the route used by the President's car coming to visit Mandela in prison.

And here in the living room of the Mandela house in Drakenstein Prison, Tyler and Logan reenact the famous de Klerk-Mandela handshake.

The amazing thing about this whole situation is that this prison is NOT open to the public. This is not a place that tourists EVER get to go. It has been maintained, but out of honor to the man, not as a public place.  The fact that we got to go inside, sit in Mandela's chairs, touch his countertops, and be in the place this great man lived inspired awe in all of us. In fact, we all decided that if he had to choose between Robben Island, that all tourists see, and this nearly hallowed place, we would do the same again.

Edgar, the warder who has been at Drakenstein since before Mandela was imprisoned here with his cousin William, our wonderful busdriver who became our dear friend. Their faces depict the way we all felt here. And we owe this amazing experience to the willingness of these two men to stick their necks out and allow a group of American college students an intimate look at the significance of South African history.

Kandi, Danielle, Taylor, and Caroline...

Flower bed outside. Thanks for this pic, Caroline K!

Edgar told us that Mandela had been in prison so long that he had never seen a microwave oven. When we walked into the kitchen in this house, he asked why there was a TV in the kitchen.

Edgar was a "coloured" warder. The coloured warders were NOT allowed to watch the day that Mandela was released.They were secured in one of the prison's other buildings, even though 10,000 people lined the streets to witness the event. How did they know about it? F.W. de Klerk said that Mandela could be released on a Friday. Mandela wanted to be in charge of his own destiny of release, and declared that instead, he would wait until Sunday. In actuality, it gave him two days to contact his underground communication system so the word spread around the world in the two days before he walked free--11 February, 1990. This day in history: Mandela walks free

As we left the home, I asked Edgar to read the poem "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley ( the poem that supposedly buoyed Mandela's spirits during his 27-year incarceration.
Morgan Freeman reads "Invictus"

This statue, on the Boulevard leading into (or away from) Drakenstein commemorates Nelson Rohilala Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom.

Did you know: Rohilala was given the name Nelson on his first day of school, by his teacher?

Can you see why I believe the stories of South Africa can inspire us all to be better human beings?

The Lion Farm, a post from June in South Africa (when I had no internet)

June 15,  Glen Garriff Lion Farm near Harrisburg on the way to Barberton.

We drove through four locked gates, and in the first lion pen, we were this close...see this big guy reflected in the car?

The next day began with the pleasant sound of lions roaring at about 4 a.m. it was certainly loud enough to wake us all, and let me tell you, lying on a snug bed in Africa with the sound of lions roaring in close proximity to the guesthouse where you are staying is an experience.

I drifted back to sleep and was wakened by my alarm at 7.

One of the interesting tidbits of traveling off the beaten path is not knowing protocol and plunging ahead anyway. The bathroom which had been assigned as mine had a taxidermied  blesbok  (I think it was...it might have been a springbok or an bontebok, but it as something very small with horns), a bathtub with a spray shower that shot water every direction except straight through the nozzle, a toilet back in a corner, and louvered glass doors through which anyone outside can see in-- and see everything but the tiniest details that goes on within.

Hence was my confusion about protocol. Should I hang a towel over the door and window? Rush through the fastest shower in history and hope nobody happens past the door? Rising at seven and heading straight to the shower seemed like the best plan. As it turned out, investigating while nobody else was awake, I discovered an exterior door that closed off the entire end of the house where my taxidermic bathroom was located. Case solved. If anyone watched me, I was blissfully unaware. It was awkward anyway, trying to steer the water over my head and body instead of all over the room, so the sooner I was finished, the better.

After breakfast and coffee, Scott, Ann, and I walked with Andi Rive, the lion farm manager, on a walking tour to see eight-week old cubs with their mom Sabrina, and on out farther to see the 860 hectares from a higher vantage point. The expanse of Glen Garriff reaches to the closest mountain.

There we saw, from a distance, a dazzle of zebras, a flock of ostriches (did you know that South African male ostriches are brilliant black and white, while the females are brownish gray?), a herd of wildebeest, and a herd of blesbok.
Also on the property, that we did not see, are meerkats, jackals, and bontebok.

Anton Leach, a South-Africa- born Australianfilm-maker, was also staying at Glen Garriff, making a documentary about the lions. Andi, along  with Traci Page Wood, whose father Patrick Shannon owns the farm, is fighting hard for the land and the lion reserve. Lions are a commodity in South Africa: for safari hunts, and for poachers who sell lion bone as a powerful aphrodisiac. How sad and ridiculous is that?

The lion farm has to provide meat for the lions, of course. There are lots of natural prey on the land, but it's illegal to let confined lions kill their food placed in the confinement for that purpose. So there are quite a few flying body parts (into the pens) when feeding time comes.

South Africans have a penchant for ending town names with "Fontein" which probably obviously, means fountain. 

When we saw a sign for a town called Blesbokfontein, we said, "That's where we just were. Blesbok fontein." Flying blesbok heads...a veritable Blesbokfontein!

 Some of the lions were very sweet and friendly. Sky, here, became my buddy. There are NO wild lions left in South Africa, by the way. All of them have been poached or hunted, as mentioned above. So a conscientious lion reserve, where lions are extremely well cared for and healthy, with room to play and run has become their ideal habitat.

From there, we got back into the car to put on some more miles.  It was tough to leave Glen Gariff. It was one of the many places in Africa where I felt like I belonged...and I felt as if I could just stay forever.
But once more, we piled in the car...
Then our drive to Barberton!

South Africa, NEH Grant, Townships, the power of stories, and other dreams...

I just realized I haven't blogged since June 1. That is partly due to the fact that I could NOT blog in South Africa. I barely had internet, and when I did, the blog clogged the airwaves and crashed, so after multiple attempts, I gave up.

Let it also be known that every night now, I dream of South Africa.

My only week in Minnesota since May 18 was a bit hectic. Now I am in North Carolina at Nikki, Tom, and Alec's house, but Alec is sleeping, so here goes.

Yesterday morning, Nikki, Alec, and I had a delightful short morning at Noelle, Tony, and Maren's house in Arlington, Virginia, before we headed to Pennsylvania Avenue.

There I met Julia Nguyen, Senior Program Officer, Division of Education Programs, at the National Endowment for the Humanities Office in the historic Old Post Office complex. (Nikki and Alec went to the National Museum of Natural History).


Julia was entirely helpful and supportive of the ideas Scott Fee (Construction Management, MSU,M, now newly appointed Interim Assistant Dean in the College of Science, Engineering, and Technology) have cooked up. We want to apply for a big NEH grant for "Bridging Cultures" at Community Colleges...which also requires a Community College to be in collaboration with another institution. Seems as if this might have been written for what we are working toward.

I won't belabor all our plans here, but they do include bringing Prof Kobus van Wyk (below) to Mankato to speak at a conference at South Central College. Kobus is the endowed chair of the brand-new department of Human Settlement Development Management at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. This department has a focus of somehow revamping the rebuilding the townships while giving full consideration to human needs (safety, education, health, transportation, etc., etc. which all relate to Humanities).

Our approach to this grant is that stories are the medium that move information from our head to our hearts and move us to action.  Stories are what the Humanities convey--through art, music, literature, film, history, architecture, etc., etc. Stories about South Africa all end up leading us to the townships. THERE, in the townships, the Humanities converge with the Built Environment.

If you don't know, townships exist in every urban area of South Africa, and a version exists in most rural areas, too. Townships are the legacy of apartheid. Apartheid means "separateness" in Afrikaans. When segregation was forced because the Afrikaner government under the Nationalist Party believed that races could only thrive while separated (I can't even begin to comment on this outrageously horrific idea), non-white citizens were forced into specified areas and couldn't leave without passbooks...similar to passports but necessary for traveling outside the neighborhood.

Now the townships still exist, with vast overpopulation and poverty. BUT look at the joy and sense of community. As we walked through Vlei ("Swamp") Township on the edge of Cape Town, these kids were dancing their hearts out. The oldest boy drummed with amazing skill on an old washtub. The mamas were busy cooking. Joy and hope and community have NOTHING to do with affluence.

We all know that the one thing that can break down prejudice is meeting a specific person from the group against which we hold a prejudice (Think about the movie American History X). Stories do the same thing. STORIES help us meet individual people, help us empathize,  force us to understand oppression and misfortune; stories change our attitudes about "others."

We believe that South Africa is a microcosm that is a metaphor for the world.  South Africa is the site of one (not unlike the Holocaust) of the worst legalized systems of oppression in the world. There is racism of every type, and not only black/white conflict but between the "White tribes" (Afrikaners/Boers and English) themselves, East Indians, many other Asian groups, "colored," and more. There is also some of the most joyful, colorful hope in the universe, despite oppression.

When "Madiba"--Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela retired from the South African presidency, President Clinton said the following:

"In every gnarly, knotted, distorted situation in the world where people are kept from becoming the best they can be, there is an apartheid of the heart. And if we really honor this stunning sacrifice of twenty-seven year, if we really rejoice in the infinite justice of seeing this man happily married in the autumn of his life, if we really are seeking some driven wisdom from the poser of his example, it will be to do whatever we can, however we can, wherever we can, to take the apartheid out of our own and others' hearts."



That's what we want to do with this grant. Present some opportunities to explore how learning about South Africa can help us all eliminate APARTHEID OF THE HEART.

South Africa or Bust!

It's almost four a.m. and what am  I doing up? I'm leaving for South Africa!  Our flight at 3:10  p.m. which means in twelve hours, we will in the air heading for Amsterdam, and then to Cape Town!  (Maybe I need a few more exclamation points there).
In case you're interested: the flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam is eight hours. After a three-hour layover in Amsterdam, our flight to Cape Town is twelve more hours.

I've received quite a few messages in the last twenty-four hours from excited students. After all this time, all this reading, all this discussion...we are FINALLY GOING! 

All the prep time, all the hours Scott Fee and I sat together at the Coffee Hag or Wine Cafe, hammering out details, transportation, lodging, budget, proposals, plans, writing emails, answering the phone, getting paperwork done....it all comes down to today. We are truly going to South Africa.

A year ago in the spring, I was at Joe Tougas's 50th birthday party when Scott (Construction Management, MSU,M, who has traveled to South Africa about ten times) asked me if I would ever consider taking SCC students to South Africa. Four days later, we were in my dean's office, sketching out possibilities and asking permission to pursue this interdisciplinary trip. Chris Black-Hughes from MSU,M Social Work program joined in, and we are doing this collaboratively.

I've wanted to see South Africa since I read The Power of One  nearly twenty years ago.

There have been so many added responsibilities and a few surprises this week, that my grading did NOT get done on time. I'm done now, though. I just have to enter grades. Good grief. Finally. Then I'm headed to bed for a few hours. We'll take some photos at the airport. In nine hours!

Big George Hincapie and South Africa to boot

Two weeks from TODAY we leave for South Africa. My stomach does funny things when I say that out loud. I am so excited. I'm not scared; it just makes me a little nervous to be responsible for a dozen people in a country I've never visited before.

After all we've studied this semester, I think we all feel it: we are just ready to BE THERE.

In the meantime, there are finals to write and grade, a few feet-high stacks of papers to grade, and I'd like to sqeeze in a bike ride here and there to stay sane.

Speaking of biking, my friend Danielle Mitchell is a sports medicine physician in Chattanooga, Tennessee (how many double letters can you get in one place? This even beats the Mississippi). The area is hosting a big pro bike race, and guess who showed up? My idol and yeah, okay, if I have a crush on a celebrity, it's on George Hincapie. So look what Danielle got for me.

Why South Africa? Why does this country matter in our study of Humanities?

Bill Clinton summed it up well. He said this after Mandela's marriage at age 80, and on the occasion of Mandela's retirement from the South African Presidency:

"In every gnarly, knotted, distorted situation in the world where people are kept from becoming the best they can be, there is an apartheid of the heart. And if we really honor this stunning sacrifice of twenty-seven year, if we really rejoice in the infinite justice of seeing this man happily married in the autumn of his life, if we really are seeking some driven wisdom from the poser of his example, it will be to do whatever we can, however we can, wherever we can, to take the apartheid out of our own and others' hearts."

April 10? What? And St. Peter 8th Grade

Had a terrific visit last week with the St. Peter 8th grade English classes. The students were wonderful listeners and had great questions. They had all read Chasing AllieCat, so it was much, much fun to get to talk with them! Thanks, Ms. Hughes!

Time is flying past!
It's April 10 already! And look at the ground! Freya's happy--she was crazy this morning, playing "Grab Mom's warm stuff and run." (Question of the day: How many exclamation marks can one writer use in one short blog post?)

 Time is flying! I'm not keeping up with my days...I put out fires at school, work on the details we need to iron out for our trip to South Africa, try to keep up grading and reading ahead of the students, and try to squeeze in a little writing and a little cycling.

South Africa approaches, and it's getting more and more exciting as it does. Will keep you posted...might have more news by the end of the week! (There--I had to end with another exclamation point, of course).

African Folk Tales

When Joseph Mbele visited our class last week, one of the things he talked about is how folk tales can be so very valuable in learning about a culture. He said that's a way to understand what's important and what a culture sees as valuable and moral.  It made me very happy that I had already planned to make (force?) each student in my Humanities of South Africa class to present a South African Folk Tale to the rest of the class.

Joseph Mbele has a book of folk tales himself, which I am purchasing as soon as I get my next paycheck: These folk tales are from Tanzania, and I can't wait to read this.

Since we're studying South Africa, however, I found this book:

 Each student will get one folktale to present to the class through any means they choose:
storytelling
a skit (collaboration is encouraged)
a video/film
a powerpoint with appropriate pictures while telling...maybe even reading in that case
anything else they can think of.
Some of the stories include the following (Aren't the pictures spectacular!!??)

Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales was published by W.W.Norton&Company in 2002.
I can't list all the contributors or artists, but the book is worth checking out.Everything is copyrighted, so I only gave you a little sampling here.
I can't wait to see what my students do with these stories! 

Joseph Mbele's book AFRICANS AND AMERICANS

Our class, "Culture and History of South Africa,"  read Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences last week. The author, Joseph Mbele came to visit us on Tuesday. It was unanimously considered a DELIGHT.

The book is a fast read, and Joseph Mbele writes in a converational, welcoming style that sucks you right in, keeps you laughing, and keeps you reading. 

In person, Joseph proved to be one of the most brilliant, funny, warm, and gentle human beings I've ever met. My students loved him; the two hours with him flew past.


Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences by Joseph L. Mbele
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was the most delightful read about the differences between Africans and Americans and how we relate to each other. My students loved it, found it fascinating, and flew through it.


If you have students, friends, neighbors, classmates, ANYBODY you know from Africa, this book is for you. If you are traveling to Africa, like my students and I are, it's a MUST.

Best part? Now whenever I am late (no, that never happens), I can say I'm on AFRICA TIME.

View all my reviews

Medusa, Historical fiction, South Africa, and other thoughts

Medusa!
I revised my Medusa book for Capstone press. It's Medusa's side of the story--with my Greek mythology obsession, it was a FUN book to write. It's moving fairly quickly through the editorial process, but I still don't know when it will be out on the market. I really like how the story turned out.

I think it will be in 2013, which means, at least, that I have had a publication in 2009, 2011, 2012, and maybe 2013. That also means I gotta get CRANKING on revising Slider's Son so there's a chance it come come out by the end of 2014!!!  I've also got some tips that this is not such a bad time for historical fiction as the last few years. Don't know if that's true or not, but I want to go with that thought! I have a three-day weekend. Maybe I can dig in and get something done. I've written so little this year since school started. It's easy to get disheartened, but at least I have great classes and students.

I'm teaching The Power of One in my South Africa Humanities class. I have been wondering for several years why the author Bryce Courtenay moved to Australia for the rest of his life. I JUST found out, doing some research, that it's because while he was a teenager, he started a school for Africans. Blacks were NOT supposed to learn to read under Apartheid, and he was labeled a communist as a result, and exiled from his country at age 17. Holy smoke. No wonder I love this guy. He just died three months ago. I'm sad I didn't make a pilgrimage to go meet the man. -->

Back to the grindstone. 

World Bicycle Relief

World Bicycle Relief

In Africa

I may have found my calling. I'm determined, somehow, to set up a fund-raising effort so my trip to South Africa with students in May can be paired with raising money and awareness for this cause.

I am not sure yet what I will write about this....I guess that remains to be seen as it all unfolds.