Robben Island

Robben Island.
Scott, our friend, Mzukizi, and I visited Robben Island about two weeks before PResident Obama and Michelle did. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years or the crime of being a member of the ANC (African National Congress) and protesting against the system of Apartheid. 18 of those years were spent at Robben Island, working in the stone quarry and in this cell.

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Now, at 95 years of age, he has become an international icon of peace, hope, and the fight against oppression everywhere. 

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Here is Scott in the stone quarry where the inmates worked. Note the small cave in front of Scott and the group? In that cave, Nelson Mandela and other imprisoned ANC members would meet or leave each other messages.  I guess you can say that small cave is partly responsible for the overthrow of the Apartheid government!

Here are some more pictures. I tried and tried to include photos of the Obamas in the same places, or at least links, and this blog crashed every time. So I guess if you want to see the Preisdent and Michelle in the same places we were (only two weeks later), you'll have to google Obama in South Africa or Obama at Robben Island.


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 This is the view of the the view of the bay from Robben Island.

 Mzukizi contemplating the cells, where names, pictures, and statements from the inmates were posted.

 Mzukizi and me on the boatride from the island. He was not a big fan of the rough-water ride.

 Scott and Mzukizi outside Robert Sobukwe's house. Sobukwe died in solitary confinement. He was considered one of the most dangerous brilliant minds of the resistance to Apartheid, so died in prison without ever having contact with any of his compatriots. He is immortalized in the book, How Can Man Die Better, by Benjamin Pogrund. This one has moved high on my list of "To reads."

Mzukizi and Scott as we prepare to leave the island.

 

A last view from the bay, looking back at Robben island.

Last reflection: Scott and I work amazingly well together. Maybe we're too much alike (on Africa time even when we're in Minnesota, not exactly the most organized folks in the world, etc.), but we made very compatible group leaders and research-fellow travelers. 

Students, take note: do as we say, not as we DO. We were admonished on the big-group tour of the prison to STAY together. Um, suffice it to say that we did not follow directions. The group exited the building where Mandela's cell was, and Scott looked at me and said, "Come on!" We ran back into the building or we would never have gotten any photos of Mandela's cell. We had the place to ourselves...for a bit. We finally got to "feel" the place and take some pictures. When we went back outside, we had lost our group. Another group joined us, however, and the new tour guide took us INTO the stone quarry (ours hadn't, and Scott had never been there on his four previous tours), and also took us into Robert Sobukwe's house. Nether of us had heard of Sobukwe before. 

Serendipity. All of our trip was laced with happy serendipity. Things would go wrong, and every single bad thing led to something better than we could have planned or anticipated. Getting lost and joining a new group was only one tiny example of that on this trip. And did I mention that Mzukizi, who has lived in the Cape Town Area his whole life had never been to Robben Island? It was one more magical picece of an unbelievable month in South Africa.

"We are not African because we live in Africa. We are African because Africa lives in us." --AfroVibe

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.

District 6

Today we went to District Six Museum.

I didn't have a clear idea of what District Six actually was until today. It was a Municipal District of Cape Town that was actually integrated and full of color and life. It was considered a "slum" but only because it was a lower-income area. It was a happy place where races coexisted as friends, peacefully. 

The apartheid government couldn't allow such a thing to exist. Apartheid means separation ("apartness") and the Nationalist Party government that instituted it could NOT allow such mixing of races, especially in light of the fact that it was a SUCCESSFUL area--living TOGETHER happily and peacefully. Such success flew in the face of all that apartheid stood for. SO....though Black resettlement had been in place for awhile, the blow came in 1966.

From the Museum website:

"In 1966 [District Six] was declared a white area under the Group Areas Act of 1950, and by 1982, the life of the community was over. 60 000 people were forcibly removed to barren outlying areas aptly known as the Cape Flats, and their houses in District Six were flattened by bulldozers.

The District Six Museum, established in December 1994, works with the memories of these experiences and with the history of forced removals more generally."

We had the privilege of walking through along with a tour guide for part of the time. She was taking a group of five eager twelve-ish-year-old girls and her talk was so inspiring, it moved everyone within earshot to tears.  I felt tears running down my cheeks before I realized I was crying. I looked up to see Marti Benson in the same state. 

If I can at some point post the video of her talk, I will, but the point where I started crying was something like this:

"You can write poetry. You can say whatever you want. You can sue Zuma [President] if you want, because you are free. Under apartheid, we couldn't criticize the government. If you wrote a poem against apartheid, you would go to jail. I did. I went to jail." 

Reminders are everywhere, but as the girls responded to this talk, they said "We can't ever let that happen again." 

World, are you listening? 

 

Shark Diving and other South Africa thoughts

So...shark diving. Yesterday.
Internet has been entirely sketchy, intermittent, and unreliable. This is the first chance I've had to write a blog post of any length.

Biology is not my strength, but Africa wildlife could inspire anyone to become a naturalist, biologist, or other related ologist.  Watching animal life is one of the sheer delights of traveling here.

I didn't realize, though I should have understood the idea, that this was not diving with caged sharks in a staged environment. This was a good-sized boat that carried us perhaps two miles out into the ocean (Atlantic since, as you saw in the pictures if you looked on Flickr, we are now east of the confluence of the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic).

Shark Lady company hauled along a six foot by three foot by maybe twelve to fifteen foot  steel cage. We donned wet suits, and were allowed to enter this cage five at a time, with instructions where and how to hang on, so as not to allow fingers and toes outside the cage. We had just enough room for our heads above the water line, wore weighted belts, and held our breath (wearing goggles), pulled ourselves under water, hooked our toes under a rope to keep from floating to the surface, and watched from under water.

We could float or bob up and down until the dive master yelled something like "shark down left!" Or "shark high right" land. At that. we dropped down into the tank, hooked our toes, and breathed slowly out or held our collective breath to watch a shark swim within touching distance (and that was oh, so tempting, but strictly forbidden upon threat of being removed from the cage instantly). It took me a few tries to calm my breathing. At first, I hated having my nose shut off and nearly hyperventilated, but I calmed myself down, got the hang of it, and could have stayed there all day were it not for a slowly lowering body temperature.

The dive master guys had tuna heads at the end of a forty-foot rope, which they used to lure in the sharks. That, of course, also attracted masses of sea gulls. We saw a very rare Oyster Cracker-- all black bird with a brilliant, nearly neon orange-red beak on the shore when we pulled closer.

The shark cage was only a small percentage of the joy. We sat on the deck or roof of the vessel while others took their turns. The waves smashing against a rocky island nearby rose and fell dozens of feet.
The swells that carried us gave us a view of a small mountain (I exaggerate but only slightly). Exactly eight of the sixteen of us got seasick. I seem to have a stomach for the sea, and have always, always loved any excursion on the ocean. I loved every second, and soaked it in. I did spend the last hour in our anchored spot basically cuddling three very seasick girls (who will remain nameless unless they want to fess up here in the comments:) and thoroughly enjoying the sights and sounds.

The island where all the waves were crashing was is called Geyser Island if I am hearing the accent correctly, and it is fitting, based on the way the waves smash into the rocks and explode dozens of feet in the air.  Most amazing, however, was that the island is inhabited by some 20,000 sea lions! We could hear them clearly from time to time. I asked if any of the crew had binoculars, which they supplied. I thought the island was capped with all black rocks, but every rock turned out to grayish in color, topped with a sea lion!  They cavorted in the water, and traipsed around the rocks. Spectacular.

A kid who had just graduated from University of Connecticut was on board-- the resident researcher and marine biology expert named Chris Perkins (Sorry to call you a kid, Chris)--who had just told me about the Oyster Cracker and how lucky he had been able to see some on his excursions, and then we spotted one! Very exciting and satisfying. Stranger still, when he said he graduated from UConn, I said I had a friend who taught physics there; he asked who; he started laughing because he was a physics tutor for many of Moshe Gai's students during his time at UConn. Moshe's wife Helen Hart-Gai was a dear friend of mine for years but we lost touch. Now I must reconnect somehow.
What a small world.

The research Chris is doing, by the way, concerns dorsal fin recognition of the sharks. He said that the fins are as unique as our faces, and photographs put into an immense international database can track sharks' migratory travels without ever touching a shark. The software recognizes a fin that has already been entered into the database, and if you do this, you can get all sorts of information about where the animal has been in the world! And if we as simply interested citizens of the world ever snap a Photo of a shark, we can put on this organization 's website and be privy to all the sightings of said shark. I found that fascinating...and I vow to be on the lookout anytime I am on any ocean!

On our way home, we were privy to the most spectacular sunset I think I have ever seen in my life. The photo on flickr is sunset over Hawston Township. For those of you who aren't familiar with the lingo, a Township in South Africa is a shantytown where blacks were herded and forced to live during apartheid. The legacy goes on, with poverty and huge townships connected to most cities.

The juxtaposition of the sunset beauty over the abject poverty is heartbreaking. I hope this link works. I'll get it on flicker as soon as the iPad is recharged.

Much of this country is heartbreaking...heartbreaking beauty, heartbreaking stories and tragedies, heartbreaking resilience, strength, love, and hope.

Cape Town! And we have internet...

We have internet!
We are in Cape Town!

We went today to the most southern point of Africa, where the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic meet.
The coast there is rocky-rugged, and the waves crash and pound cracks in the rocks. We walked around the rocks, took pictures, and marveled that the closest landmass beyond us was Antarctica. Since my internet crashes whenever I try to load a picture here, go to Flickr.

May 28

I have internet as the eveing progresses at Afro Vibe, Myoli Beach, Sedgefield, ZA (South Africa).

I wanted to catch up the blog from the first day onward, but today was too important, so I am starting here.

We met Genevieve Keene from TSiBA Education, Eden Campus this morning. She and Clifford, a student from  TSiBA,  met us at a bus stop, and then we ventured into a township called Smutsville. At first, we were all a tad bit leary. Then, we picked up on the vibe of the place. It was welcoming, very much a community, and safe. We all felt at home.

We were invited to visit Clifford's home. His mother Sophie is a community activist and artist in her own right. From her home, she  sold scarves and jewelry.  I brought home a beautiful beaded necklace and matching bracelet. Other students bough scarves. She was thrilled.

Masathabane is an non-profit  (NGO--non-governmental organization) artist cooperative in Sedgefield. An amazing woman named Patricia heads up this enterprise to fund people too sick to re-enter the workplace due to TB or AIDS or other disabling diseases.

Each person expresses his or her own experience in art.

Patricia has a dream to make Sedgefield into Africa's Barcelona! The Mosaic capital of Africa, and it is fast becoming known as such. Check out some of the photos of this phenom on flicker.flickr page

This in itself would be enough emotional interaction with the universe, but that was only the beginning.

Then...we went to Sedgefield Primer School, where the students sang and danced for us (also see the flicker page), and fed us lunch. The harmony and tone these little kids attained move many of us to tears.

At the end of their program, they mobbed us after lunch. You can also see this on flickr. 
After that, we went to TSiBA Eden campus, where we had spent the dday before

THEN, we went back to TSiBA Eden Campus, the school Scott Fee helped found. Check Flickr for more pictures. The students and our students bonded so deeply that nobody wanted to part. We sang the Star Spangled Banner, which amazingly sound pretty good. Then the TSiBA students sang the South African national anthem, which of course, blew us out of the water. We are humbled and thrilled.

We arrived in Cape Town!

Internet has been sketchy and none have my posts have worked, but we are inSouth Africa!
This is out breakfast, view in Somerset West.