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Published: March 19th 2006
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Oscar Comes Home
The cast of Tsotsi addressing their fans. Look closely to see Oscar. Howzit. That's how they say "hi, how are you" here in South Africa. The first couple of weeks we thought people were speaking Afrikaans to us, and once we deciphered "howzit" we began to wait (in vain) for "howzit.....going?". Finally, in despair, we began to reply "howzit" back and this seemed to make people happy, so we stuck with it.
Last Wednesday, while staying downtown, we finally managed to see the movie "Tsotsi" which is based in Soweto (a township outside of Johannesburg), and which recently won an Oscar for best foreign film. What an amazing movie - it really shows how many people actually live in the townships here in South Africa (though Allison says the houses in the movie are actually better than many). Having had no idea about the townships before we arrived here, we think the portrayal of township life in the movie is a real eye-opener for the folks back home. Yes, it IS a different world here. Go see the movie yourself, it's worth it. Strangely enough, the following day we were walking around the downtown area (Nick was desperately hoping to get a photo of the phenomenon called "the tablecloth", in which the
Project Kill Me in action
Carrying large wooden objects for no reason at all. clouds spill over the top of Table Mountain like a tablecloth)....we heard a huge commotion, sirens going off and people shouting - we nearly thought a riot was developing. Upon walking TOWARDS all the commotion (as you do) we saw that the actors from Tsotsi had commandeered a double-decker tourist bus and were showing off the Oscar award to all the fans by the side of the road!! No wonder there was such a commotion.
We hooked back up with Allison the following day and packed up for a camping weekend with her and her friends Trevor and Wiebke. Trevor is from Cape Town and is an experienced and avid climber who has climbed Kilimanjaro and climbed to the final camp at Everest; Wiebke is from Dusseldorf, Germany (Nick calls it "the 'dorf") and has moved to South Africa to work and live - they both work at Educo. Trevor and Wiebke are two of the team that accompanied Allison up Kilimanjaro. If you remember two blogs ago we mentioned that they gave a slide show about their trip to Tanzania, up Kilimanjaro and their community project in Arusha (the whole trip was called "Project Kili" and the theme
was "Reaching Higher Ground"). If you would like some more information they have a website at www.projectkili.org. So the three (Allison, Trevor and Wiebke) had decided that we would go camping in the town of Montagu, a couple of hours northeast of Cape Town and at the edge of the Little Karoo semi-desert region. On our driving trip down towards Cape Town we had actually driven through Montagu and marvelled at the beauty of the scenery around the town, thinking that if we had only known beforehand we would have planned a stop here. Such is our luck that we got to backtrack to Montagu for the weekend.
Allison made chocolate chip cookies in advance (with REAL chocolate chips specially imported from Vancouver with love, as opposed to the FAKE "choklit chips" that are available here) and brought them up with us. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. We went grocery shopping on the way up to Montagu and Sarah could barely put up with Nick and Allison's antics...let's just call it "impulse shopping for Sagittarians". Needless to say there wasn't a heck of a lot of nutritional value at the cashier. Nick began to worry when
The Climbers
Allison, Wiebke and Trevor caught standing still. we had just arrived at the campsite, and everyone was diving into the chocolate chip cookies while talking about how many kilometres they were planning on hiking the next day. And so Nick deemed the trip "Project Kill Me: One Cookie at a Time". The theme for the weekend quickly became "Reaching Wider Ground" for obvious reasons.
Project Kill Me took on a different twist when the Educo Three got militant and devised evil stunts for our wearied travellers, including "moving large wooden tables from one site to another" and "no you can't sleep on a Therma Rest, you only get this wimpy Crazy Creek chair". Nevertheless, for travellers who had been in hostels of many different qualities, camping was a breeze. The next day we all walked from the campground to a nearby Nature Reserve (similar to a Provincial Park for you Canadians) - the Educo Three had planned a day of rock-climbing along a beautiful rocky gorge while the two of us decided to take a nearby hike for some panoramic views of Montagu. Being on the edge of the Little Karoo, midday was a scorcher and after a wonderful hike we joined the three rock-climbers for
Montagu View
Sarah rehydrating under the Little Karoo sun. their final climb of the day. Nick took up an offer to try a climb and subsequently completed his first outdoor rock climb (yay).....after completing this latest trial from the "Project Kill Me" team, we all were rewarded with a swim at a nearby natural pool. Beautiful! What an end to a great day.
Today, we all went hiking together on part of the Bloupunt trail on a "waterfall mission". The trail follows an extremely rocky old riverbed, and so Nick thought the trail should be called "Brochenankels Kloof" (he's learning Afrikaans). There were two waterfalls within reach, and since the first waterfall had about a billion (give or take a couple) people waiting to swim, we backtracked a bit, diverged from the trail up some switchbacks and found one of the most beautiful lunch spots in the world. This second waterfall we had all to ourselves; sitting on the rocks beside a refreshing (and peaceful) freshwater pool, we enjoyed our picnic. No one could keep the Germans out of the water - Nick and Wiebke decided to dunk their heads....the rest of the group were just happy to have some CLEAN Germans.
We're back in Cape Town
Spot the Nick
Here's a hint: look at the top! once again, and on Tuesday we depart for Educo Base Camp to volunteer during a week-long staff training program. We mentioned Educo on one of our Cape Town blogs - we were supposed to volunteer earlier but due to scheduling changes (on their end, not ours) our work was postponed until this coming week. So the next blog should offer some more info about this outdoor education company, and will definitely feature some of its staff. Tuesday is Human Rights Day in South Africa. Hooray for Human Rights!
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lamlee
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Best Response
Best response to "Howzit?" is "Fine an you?" or "Fine an howzit with you?" (The d in and is usually silent.)