Touring SA

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It is May 2, four months since I took my holiday at the end of the school year 2013. Right now, it’s 5 days before national elections and 5 days after Freedom Day which celebrates the country’s first democratic elections twenty years ago when Nelson Mandela was elected president. Back in December, I was in Cape Town during the week following Nelson Mandela’s death. We went to the Robben Island Museum (not out to the island itself) and signed a commemorative book there. There were memorial events all around the country and people wearing T-shirts with Nelson Mandela on them. At our backpackers’ (hostel) dining area we watched the televising of the memorial held in Johannesberg..the one where President Zuma was booed when he got up to speak, where the sign language interpreter was having difficulties, and where people were distressed when President Obama shook hands with Fidel Castro’s brother....this is what happens when people come to honour one man...it becomes all about other things. I read Long Walk to Freedomwhen I returned to site, which helped me understand the man Mandela was. I think he would have just laughed at most of these shenanigans. He understood people pretty well. And the people loved him so much. People ask where in the US I’m from, and I say... “Most recently, Washington state”..and they ALWAYS say, “Oh, Washington, DC the capital.” “No, Washington is a state on the other side of the country..because our country has named many places, streets and buildings after our first president, just as you have named so many places after your first president. George Washington was the leader of our revolution as well.”

But things are certainly different here. I heard a part of a political debate on the radio this morning where they were discussing racism...a topic certain to get people talking in the US too.. but so different here. One speaker said that Capetown (Western Cape Province) is 50% coloured and that the ANC (African National Congress- the party in power (Nelson Mandela’s party) doesn’t like the coloured race. There are four races which were separated (with separate laws and representation in government) during apartheid. Whites, Indian, Coloured and Black. Black people had no representation but the Indian and Coloured had varying degrees of representation...and just enough power was given to them to make them less likely to work toward equal representation for all races. South Africa has a long way to go..but I can’t speak so much to how far they’ve come and their prospects. I’ve lived here almost two years now and know enough to say, “I don’t know nuttin’”

Being a tourist for two weeks with Susi and Greg Freed was wonderful. I got to take showers, drink milk shakes every day, speak English to friends and just be a different person than who I have been as a Peace Corps Volunteer. They were my first visitors since I arrived. Having 18 months with no visitors helped me do all the work for teaching maths classes that first year..but now this second year is easier, and it is good to think of going back home this November. Time is going fast, too, because I have had two more visits from friends and family and did more touring SA. (Next, I will post photos for More Touring SA. In January my daughters, Serena and Amanda, came for two weeks. And at the end of March, Molly Archer and her daughter, Hallie, came to visit.)

The itinerary for my first trip was:

I took Susi and Greg by public taxi to my site and they stayed overnight in my little house. They also got to take a bus back to Pretoria. This public transportation into the city (travel time about 1 ½ hour) is very busy and crowded. Many people use the buses to go to work or school in Pretoria. A daughter of another PCV who works in some type of city management said it is called “peri-urban”. A region which is not like suburbs around a city; this area is heavily populated and can seem rural with the shopping centers that people go to. But the buses start about 5 am taking people into the city and then return people to their homes from 6 to 8 at night. If all these people on the buses and public taxis had their own cars the traffic on the roads would be impossible.

Susi and Greg got to meet my host family and Jane, my friend who has invited me to so many functions. Jane loved eating all the Mike and Ike’s my friends brought me from the States.

Then we flew to CapeTown and stayed at a lovely backpackers (hostel) where we had an upstairs room with skylights that we could open up each morning to check out the weather on top of Table Mountain. Susi was the brave driver and Greg got to figure out the GPS in our rental car. We discovered that the Slip Street we kept looking for because the GPS lady said to, was not really called Slip Street, but was the name for on and off ramps from the freeway. We saw the sights around the city and then toured the peninsula on the east and west sides down to the Cape of Good Hope. CapeTown is a diverse modern city with historical landmarks, a very posh waterfront shopping area, and, of course, Table Mountain. We went down to the parade grounds, a big open area in front of the gov’t building where Mandela had given his first speech to the people of South Africa when he was released from prison. They were showing the televised memorial from Jo-Burg on big screens around this square. People were queuing up to sign commemmorative books there. We stayed there 2 hours...don’t know how long this went on that day. CapeTown had its own memorial 2 days later at their big stadium, as well.

We flew back to Jo-Burg and rented a car to drive to Madikwe Game Preserve which is on the border with Botswana. We stayed at Mosethla Bush Camp, an eco-lodge which is a 16 bed bush lodge with rustic features like oil lamps, solar lighting in our rooms and shower/toilet facilities where we carry heated water from the donkey boilers to wash up. Wonderful hospitality..very clean, great food, and two game drives a day. These are about 4 hours in the early morning and 4 hours in the afternoon/evening. The guide is on the radio with the other lodges out on game drives so that they can find out where lions and other animals have been sighted.

After 3 nights there we drove south of Jo-burg to the Drakensburg Mountains. We stayed at a lodge which looked out at the Amphitheatre, a big rock formation. The manager showed us pictures of the day hike they take customers out to climb to the top. Even though she said she knew people in their 70’s who did the hike, she couldn’t tempt me. It looked too steep, climbing over rocks. Eisch! as they say in SA. Susi wasn’t excited about it either..so Greg signed up to go the next day, while Susi and I drove to a ritzy hotel which had many short hikes in the region. We hiked to a waterfall and had a lovely time. (Though we got a little lost on the roads getting there!)

That was the end of our touring and Susi and Greg drove me back north of Pretoria-JoBurg to my shopping village, KwaMhlanga, where I took a taxi back to site. But South Africa had to leave us with one more experience. On the road between Pretoria and KwaMhlanga we were stopped for passing a car in a no-passing zone. We had been following a slow truck carrying bed mattresses and another car passed before us, so we did too. And at the top of the next hill, we were stopped...by a police officer...maybe...we really don’t know. He didn’t take out any paperwork..he was clearly angling for as much money as we would pay him. And we were worried how this would go, with Greg and Susi’s flight back home this afternoon and not wanting any delay. So we paid him R500 or $50 just to get out of there. There will be more about South Africa traffic police in the next blog...so stay tuned.

A week later, I had another experience to teach me that life here is so different from what I expect. After being an American tourist for 20 days...I had lost touch with the reality of life in small South African villages. It was the weekend after Christmas, and I was returning to my village by public taxi and another woman got off too. She was returning from Pretoria area, where she works in a suburban home looking after the children. She works from Mon-Friday..or more...because she hadn’t been home in over 2 weeks. She had been in CapeTown, because the family had gone there on holiday over Christmas. Now she was going home and said she was going to help her children get ready for school, cover their books and notebooks with brown paper. It turns out her son is one of my Sele learners. This is what I was describing as peri-urban...people who have jobs in the city but homes here. This woman spent Christmas away from her own family so she could look after children on holiday in CapeTown. So our experiences in CapeTown were different. Mine was a holiday and hers was working.

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Photos

Susi and Greg with my host family
Martha with daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters.
My house is in the far background.

CapeTown
Walk through Company Gardens

Table Mountain with tablecloth
Certain weather/wind conditions make the clouds appear like this on top of the mountain.

Lion's Head across from Table Mountain
looking over city on the bay

Atop Table Mountain
Model of the Cape Good Hope Peninsula

Mini Cairns
We did a 1-2 hour hike on Table Mountain. It was beautiful!

Bird Sanctuary
On the drive down the peninsula

Bird Sanctuary
Meerkats

Atlantic Ocean
They say the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic at Cape of Good Hope, even though this is not the true southernmost cape of Africa. The real one is just across the next bay to the east.

Comments

[judy bryant]

your newest blog
Carolyn, your pictures are so wonderful--I see a fantastic calendar. Your comments about the Mandela memorials were interesting and insightful, and your comment about the nanny who missed Christmas with her own family makes me think of the US and what many childcare workers are expected to do. We were just wondering about you at our April book club. Your ears must have been burning!