28 October. 11°43’N, 83°40’E. Course: 113°. 14 knots, En route (thank you, Bob) to Vietnam
Where do I start to describe India? It is, indeed, a land of contrasts. Or perhaps a better way to put it is as the local tourist bureau characterizes the country: “Incredible India!” It is, indeed, hard to believe one country can be a place of such side-by-side abject poverty and tremendous luxury. Victorian palaces on streets canopied under huge shade trees and, also under those trees, piles of litter several feet high. Women carrying short straw brooms bent over to sweep to the side the endless dust and dirt that seems to cover everything. Captain Kingston told us he’d like to shrink-wrap the ship during our stay in Chennai. In fact, the day before we arrived, the crew covered all the stairs and hallway carpets with cardboard and plastic to help reduce the dirt carried back on our shoes from being ground into the fabric. I’m not sure if India is beautiful in an ugly way or ugly in a very beautiful way. It’s both.
On Friday, as the students and others were streaming off the ship to explore Chennai, buy saris, eat some curry . . . whatever . . . I stayed onboard catching up on a few loose grading ends and checking e-mail while the bandwidth was relatively wide open. At 2pm, then, I ventured forth into the sounds—and smells!—of Chennai.
I wanted to accomplish two things. First, I looked online and found a local JVC dealer. The camcorder I bought just before sailing has been behaving badly, sometimes turning on when I open the viewer screen, sometimes not. I think the internal computer keeps forgetting how to access the internal hard drive, resulting in the camera’s doing nothing besides making a slight whirring sound when I flip open the screen. After I open and close the screen many times, the camera suddenly comes to life and, for the rest of the shooting session, behaves as it should. In the meantime, I’ve lost the shot I was going after. Fortunately, I have my inexpensive Canon digital camera (“Thanks for 20 memorable years. Love, Hewitt Associates.”) that takes passable videos. But I bought the JVC to record this voyage, and I want it to work.
My second target, after the JVC service center, was the Taj Coromandel Hotel, part of a luxury-hotel chain that owns the Taj in Mumbai, where last year’s terrorist attack killed many people including a father and daughter from Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia. I wanted to check on equipment in the hotel’s rooms and, after confirming high-speed internet, CNN, and ESPN, make a reservation at their sister property, Fisherman’s Cove.
As soon as I got off the ship and showed my papers to Indian security guarding the port, I was accosted by rickshaw drivers. Chennai rickshaws are of two types. One is an open-air buggy, very much like the old Chinese rickshaws. The Indian rickshaw, however, is pulled by a rider on a bicycle. The other is called an auto-rickshaw. These are most similar to the covered motor scooters driven by meter maids (and meter men) in larger cities. The driver sits in the front seat and steers with a scooter-like yoke, controlling speed and brakes with foot pedals. Two customers—three if they’re very small—can sit behind the driver, preferably with little or no baggage. These rickshaws are everywhere in Chennai, operating like taxis in US cities. They’re metered, but the fares for foreign tourists are all negotiated before the ride. And even then they can change, as I later discovered.
A ride through the streets of Chennai, particularly in an open-air rickshaw, seems complete chaos. The lane stripes on the streets and highways serve only a decorative purpose. Cars, rickshaws, bicycles, busses, trucks, motor scooters, and pedestrians all vey for the same small space at the same time. They’re all very polite in their maneuvering, tapping constantly on their horns to say, “I’m coming up on your right,” or “please give me room to pass,” or, “excuse me but the light has turned green, and we can go now.” But they’re also unrelenting, passing others with barely inches—literally!—between vehicles, both the vehicles being passed and the ones coming toward in the opposite lane. And all this happening as the traffic flows at 40 to 60 kph, not yielding, certainly not stopping.
I was unsuccessful in getting my camera fixed. The folks at JVC—very polite and helpful—said they’d need 10 to 15 days to get the necessary parts. By then, I’ll be in Hong Kong, so I thanked them and climbed back into the rickshaw. Our next stop was the Taj Coromandel Hotel. Because of the Mumbai attacks, getting into a Taj property is much like passing through TSA security at a US airport. They search all bags, look at papers, pass visitors through a metal detector, even scan the underside of rickshaws and cars looking for explosives. Indians refer to the Mumbai attacks as “our 9/11,” and they take security very seriously. Armed guards also check papers at entrances to ports (as we found out), and they have occasional checkpoints on highways leading into and out of cities.
I learned what I needed to learn at the Taj, made my reservation at Fisherman’s Cove for Saturday night with a request for an extra-night’s extension, and returned to my rickshaw and driver for the return ride to the ship. My driver began trying to tell me something in his Tamil-very-broken-English language, and I finally figured that he wanted to take me to a craft shop. I said “no, just take me back to the ship,” but he was adamant that I at least stop off and look. It was clear that simply by taking me to the shop, he would get some form of kickback, so I agreed to a 5-minute stop. “I’ll buy nothing.” That’s all he wanted.
We stopped at a storefront on a clean, tree-lined street, and I wandered through the shop looking at old steamer trunks, carved wooden elephants, brightly colored saris, silk paintings, all the kitsch one could imagine in a shop of Indian handicrafts. True to my word, I bought nothing. But the driver didn’t care. He went into the shop as I sat in the rickshaw and returned a minute later smiling broadly and thanking me as if I had fed his family for a day. I may have.
When we made it back to the ship, the driver insisted I owed him double the INR500 (500 rupies, about US$10) price we had negotiated for our 2+-hour round trip. He claimed that the INR500 was “each way.” But I plopped down the 500 rupies plus a 100 rupie tip, and walked away. He had just received 5 times the average daily income for over half the population of India. And the “each-way” gimmick he had tried mirrored the same tale almost everyone from the ship experienced on his or her first rickshaw trip. A ship like ours arrives in Chennai, and a rickshaw driver can earn enough to feed his family for a month, probably longer. So the drivers pull out all stops.
On Saturday morning, I joined 40 others from the ship at a welcome reception hosted by a senior administrator at a Chennai women’s college. Our host is also an SAS alum who offered the event in celebration of the 100th voyage of Semester at Sea. The problem for us was that, by Saturday morning, most voyagers had dispersed to various destinations around India, leaving only a skeleton crew of a few students and passengers.
The college had orchestrated a 45-minute performance of dancers and singers, some performing traditional Indian steps, others performing that mixture of wild east-meets-west gyrations that are associated with the Bollywood musicals: hands flying, bodies leaping, boys and girls doing half somersaults, all to very, very loud music. And each number was announced with great enthusiasm and hyperbole: “Prepare to be amazed at the flashing colors and flaming torches as our dancers whirl and twist in astounding feats of physical agility.” As I said, it was Bollywood transported onto a small-college stage, and we all applauded with genuine appreciation despite the false starts, missed steps, and occasional wrong musical selections.
After the “grand finale,” the announcer surprised us with, “And now, we’ll be dazzled by wonderful dancing performed by our American guests.” This came as a complete surprise; no one had expected that we’d have to return the favor and entertain our hosts. Fortunately, one of my intercultural comm. students, Terrance Smith, was along on the trip. Terrance has a very outgoing personality—“flamboyant,” he calls it—combined with great self-confidence. In Paul Wagner’s documentary class, Terrance introduced himself by saying “I like to shock people,” and he has lived up to his self-billing, if not by shocking, at least by finding many ways to entertain. Among his talents: he’s a superb dancer.
So Terrance took his iPod to the folks running the audio system, and within a minute or two, he was on the stage going through the opening moves of a type of line dance I’ve seen students performing on the 7th deck. Soon, Terrance was joined by 10 to 15 other students. And, within another minute or so, several of the women’s college dancers joined in as well. At the peak of the dance, at least 30 kids were on the stage, maybe half SAS and half Indian. It was a true cross-cultural moment.
I returned to the ship a little after noon, and at 2pm, a taxi and driver picked me up for the drive to Fisherman’s Cove. The Taj Fisherman’s Cove is, in all respects, a luxury resort sitting on the beach about an hour south of Chennai—yet another in the endless string of Indian contrasts. It was here that I spent what I’ve described to my fellow travelers as “my first weekend in 2 months.” It’s true: there are no weekends on an SAS voyage. The pace is relentless, whether on the ship or in port. So, for 2 days and 2 nights, I vegetated at a 5-star resort, lounging by the beautiful pool, drinking a G&T at the swim-up bar, eating wonderfully delicious Indian food, catching up on US and world news on CNN, even watching the final Yankees-Angels ALCS game Monday morning (Sunday night, NYC time) on ESPN. I also spent some time uploading pictures and videos through the hotel’s very fast internet connection, and I even got some work done: clean-up lesson planning for the remaining classroom days. (We’re almost 2/3rds of the way through the classes.) It was a weekend of sloth and self-indulgence. And I’m completely unapologetic.
Yesterday, I escorted 30 of my business comm. and intercultural comm. students on an FTD to Perot Systems, a Chennai client of Hewitt that handles data processing and customer services for many US health-care systems: Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Tenet Healthcare, and others. Our hosts at Perot (as in Ross Perot) were, in what I now know as typical Indian fashion, exceptionally accommodating, gracious hosts.
Minish Jani, Perot’s director of corporate communication, briefed the students on what Perot does in India. Then we broke into 2 smaller groups for a tour of the offices. We saw what looked like several hundred Perot associates, each sitting at small cubicles, rapidly reviewing and coding medical procedures into the computer systems of their US clients. To be hired into one of these positions, an applicant must have at least a bachelor’s degree and, preferably, a master’s in a health-related field. The application and testing process for the positions is rigorous, and the training—including training in the arcane, convoluted US health care system—takes weeks. They have 50 applicants for each opening. Starting salary: $250 per month.
We also sat in for part of a class on American English for new employees working in the Perot Systems call center. At the moment, they were being taught how to pronounce the American “short-i” (“eh”) sound. They heard the sound, repeated it, saw how it’s formed by the mouth and tongue, then, to practice recognizing the sound, wrote various “i-sound” sentences they heard spoken by a recorded voice: “Is this his missing sister?” “Mister Smith is a persistent listener.” I haven’t yet seen the movie “Outsourcing,” but, from what I’ve heard, we were watching a scene. It was both funny and fascinating.
There’s little wonder India is starting to dominate the outsourcing and customer-service business. Americans certainly would have a hard time competing with the discipline, intelligence, and work ethic we saw in these people starting their $3,000-per-year jobs.
I returned to the ship at 1730, we turned in shore passes and duty declarations, and, at precisely 2000, the shore crew tossed the last line off the piling, and we headed, again, out to sea. Next: through the straits of Malacca, where Indonesian pirates wait to pounce, to Singapore for a brief refueling stop, then on to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and the stop that many of us children of the 60s are most looking forward to: Vietnam.
28 October 2009
23 October 2009
Day 59--In Port, Chennai, India
23 October, In port, Chennai, India
I woke this morning to the smell of India. We’d been told that Chennai, located in the state of Tamil Nadu on the southeast coast of the Bay of Bengal, isn’t exactly the garden spot of India. It was founded by the British only 350 years ago, named Madras (and is still called Madras by most residents), and has evolved as an economic and manufacturing hub of southern India. Tata Motors has a big R&D complex just outside the city, and the port, where we’re tied up, is teeming with cargo ships, cranes, trucks, trains, and dirt . . . lots of dirt. That smell I woke to reminded me of one I haven’t “enjoyed” in over 50 years when I would stay at my grandmother’s walk-up in Chicago. Until the activity was banned, burning was the way to get rid of most garbage back then. Residents would take their garbage to an incinerator in the alley—usually an open, rusted oil drum with a few holes punched into the bottom—and light it, filling the air with a sweet-acidic, very pungent, eye-watering stench. That same smell fills the air of Chennai.
The cruise here from Mauritius was very smooth and, from a sailing perspective, uneventful. I had classes to teach and papers to grade every day, finishing the grading only last night just in time to attend the logistical pre-port briefing we receive the night before arriving in each port. This briefing was filled with cautions about the hazards of eating, drinking, and traveling in India. Doc Dave wore the baseball cap he brought along to wear for these briefings, and this time, the red caution light on top of the cap was flashing rapidly. The list of diseases one can contract in India filled 2 columns of a small-type PowerPoint slide. And his cautions were simple: don’t drink the water, don’t use the ice, don’t eat anything that hasn’t been cooked—a lot!—and don’t open your mouth in the shower.
In spite of all the cautions, even from the Indian students who joined us for the voyage from Mauritius, the students are, even now, pouring off the ship to explore the dusty streets of Chennai. I’ll be following them soon.
As I said, the cruise over the past 5 days was very smooth. In fact, the sea on Monday, our second day out from Mauritius, was flat calm, the smoothest, most glassy I’ve seen since we left Norfolk over 2 months—2 months!—ago. And those doldrums continued to today, as sailed into warmer and warmer waters (the most recent water temp we heard was 86°F) and heavier and heavier air. “Doldrums” was the word sailors used back in the days when wind was the only propulsion method. When the doldrums—calm air—hit, the ship couldn’t move, sometimes, after many days, driving sailors to insanity. At least, that’s the story I heard from one particularly well-versed student as we stood on the 7th deck one day looking at water that was smooth as a glass-top table.
Having smooth water was especially opportune Wednesday morning when many of the ship community gathered on the 4th deck, aft, for a sunrise memorial service. One of our faculty members, Cathy Skokan, lost her 25-year-old son, Thomas, in March. He died of unknown causes after leaving work one day complaining of nausea. His fiancé found him dead in his apartment the next day. After a funeral in Golden, Colorado, where Cathy teaches at Colorado School of Mines, Thomas’s remains were cremated, and Cathy brought them onboard to spread at sea. Thomas was an SAS alum, having sailed around the world in ’02, and Cathy says she knows that’s what Thomas would have wanted since he always talked about the voyage as his “life-changing experience.”
So, at 6am, we gathered on deck, just about at the exact moment we crossed the equator for the second time, now heading north. About 15 of us, including prior Friars Chapel and Bangs singing tenor, had formed a choir for the event and had practiced several times two hymns: “Morning has Broken,” which most of us knew already, and an original piece, “Take Me In,” that had been written especially for the occasion by Robert Klimek, the sole music faculty at Mines. Yes, Colorado School of Mines has a music program.
At 6:30, the service began, presided over by a lifelong learner who is a retired Unitarian minister, a very appropriate choice. As it came time for Cathy to spread Thomas’s ashes, the ship slowed to a crawl and began a very gradual 360° turn in the still waters of the Indian Ocean. Cathy emptied the urn over the aft railing into the sea, then the minister—don’t know his name—called others up in groups of five, and, as he called out the name of the student, staff, or faculty member and the name of the deceased, the voyager tossed a flower or flowers into the water. It was all very well done, and very touching.
The only slip came when Steven and Janet Dickstein went to the rail. Steven is a business professor at Ohio State—the voyage brings all types together—and he and Janet were tossing a flower in memory of a friend, Jennifer. As they approached the rail, the minister began reading the names, but somehow got them mixed up. “Jennifer Jones, in memory of Steven and Janet Dickstein,” he said. “Shit!” I heard Chapel whisper next to me, and the two of us started laughing just as the Dicksteins turned away from the railing to walk back toward us. They were smiling and shaking their heads. The minister never knew. For the rest of the day, we were telling Steven and Janet how much they were missed.
Tuesday, a so-called “reading day,” was the date for Sea Olympics, a traditional mid-voyage event. For these games, which ranged from extreme musical chairs to a non-alcoholic version of beer pong and included trivial pursuit and the obligatory tug-of-war, the students form teams based on their room locations, with each major hall on the ship designated a “sea.” So we had the Mediterranean Sea vs. the Baltic Sea vs. the Andaman Sea vs. some sea names I had never heard of. Each team dressed in their own color tee shirt or costume, many of the students painted their faces and bodies in sea colors, and the atmosphere onboard for the entire day was like what I remember as high-school field day combined with a Big-Ten football Saturday.
I had papers to grade, so for much of the day, I sequestered myself in the faculty lounge. But every hour or so, Jim Cooper—captain of the adult team known as “the nearly dead sea”—rousted me to participate in one activity or another. I was a judge for musical chairs (a dangerous job as competitors can get very belligerent about whose cheek hit the chair first), a team member for the human knot (10 of us join hands across a circle, then try to untie the resulting knot without unclasping our hands), and a coach for a game that was like shuffleboard but played with soap pucks on a watered-down deck.
The nearly-dead-sea team didn’t fare well in the overall standings, placing second to last. But everyone was rewarded with a barbeque on the 7th deck in the evening. The sunset that evening was magnificent, especially with the blazing barbeque cauldron sitting on the deck silhouetted by the setting sun. Sorry I didn’t get any pictures, but I’m sure some will be popping up soon on Facebook and YouTube.
So now we’re in Chennai. My plans for India are very simple: visit the local Hewitt office to pre-plan my FDP (field trip) to the Perot Systems call center. That trip comes up Tuesday afternoon, our last day in Chennai. Beyond that planning and the trip itself, I’m declaring a long weekend for myself. I’ll be looking for a nice 3- or 4-star hotel where I can park myself for a day or two, sit in front of a TV watching CNN and ESPN—maybe even pick up a few late-night moments of the UM-Penn State game—do some internetting on a high-speed connection, and, generally, vegetate.
This voyage is a wonderful experience, but we get no weekends. Life while at sea is intensely fast-paced planning for class, teaching, grading, and conferring with students. Then we hit port, and the pace continues, off on this or that trip, off (in my case) to this or that golf course. I can hear the “poor baby!” reactions, but this baby will be 65 in a week or so and needs an occasional day of nothing to do. So baby is taking a break.
I woke this morning to the smell of India. We’d been told that Chennai, located in the state of Tamil Nadu on the southeast coast of the Bay of Bengal, isn’t exactly the garden spot of India. It was founded by the British only 350 years ago, named Madras (and is still called Madras by most residents), and has evolved as an economic and manufacturing hub of southern India. Tata Motors has a big R&D complex just outside the city, and the port, where we’re tied up, is teeming with cargo ships, cranes, trucks, trains, and dirt . . . lots of dirt. That smell I woke to reminded me of one I haven’t “enjoyed” in over 50 years when I would stay at my grandmother’s walk-up in Chicago. Until the activity was banned, burning was the way to get rid of most garbage back then. Residents would take their garbage to an incinerator in the alley—usually an open, rusted oil drum with a few holes punched into the bottom—and light it, filling the air with a sweet-acidic, very pungent, eye-watering stench. That same smell fills the air of Chennai.
The cruise here from Mauritius was very smooth and, from a sailing perspective, uneventful. I had classes to teach and papers to grade every day, finishing the grading only last night just in time to attend the logistical pre-port briefing we receive the night before arriving in each port. This briefing was filled with cautions about the hazards of eating, drinking, and traveling in India. Doc Dave wore the baseball cap he brought along to wear for these briefings, and this time, the red caution light on top of the cap was flashing rapidly. The list of diseases one can contract in India filled 2 columns of a small-type PowerPoint slide. And his cautions were simple: don’t drink the water, don’t use the ice, don’t eat anything that hasn’t been cooked—a lot!—and don’t open your mouth in the shower.
In spite of all the cautions, even from the Indian students who joined us for the voyage from Mauritius, the students are, even now, pouring off the ship to explore the dusty streets of Chennai. I’ll be following them soon.
As I said, the cruise over the past 5 days was very smooth. In fact, the sea on Monday, our second day out from Mauritius, was flat calm, the smoothest, most glassy I’ve seen since we left Norfolk over 2 months—2 months!—ago. And those doldrums continued to today, as sailed into warmer and warmer waters (the most recent water temp we heard was 86°F) and heavier and heavier air. “Doldrums” was the word sailors used back in the days when wind was the only propulsion method. When the doldrums—calm air—hit, the ship couldn’t move, sometimes, after many days, driving sailors to insanity. At least, that’s the story I heard from one particularly well-versed student as we stood on the 7th deck one day looking at water that was smooth as a glass-top table.
Having smooth water was especially opportune Wednesday morning when many of the ship community gathered on the 4th deck, aft, for a sunrise memorial service. One of our faculty members, Cathy Skokan, lost her 25-year-old son, Thomas, in March. He died of unknown causes after leaving work one day complaining of nausea. His fiancé found him dead in his apartment the next day. After a funeral in Golden, Colorado, where Cathy teaches at Colorado School of Mines, Thomas’s remains were cremated, and Cathy brought them onboard to spread at sea. Thomas was an SAS alum, having sailed around the world in ’02, and Cathy says she knows that’s what Thomas would have wanted since he always talked about the voyage as his “life-changing experience.”
So, at 6am, we gathered on deck, just about at the exact moment we crossed the equator for the second time, now heading north. About 15 of us, including prior Friars Chapel and Bangs singing tenor, had formed a choir for the event and had practiced several times two hymns: “Morning has Broken,” which most of us knew already, and an original piece, “Take Me In,” that had been written especially for the occasion by Robert Klimek, the sole music faculty at Mines. Yes, Colorado School of Mines has a music program.
At 6:30, the service began, presided over by a lifelong learner who is a retired Unitarian minister, a very appropriate choice. As it came time for Cathy to spread Thomas’s ashes, the ship slowed to a crawl and began a very gradual 360° turn in the still waters of the Indian Ocean. Cathy emptied the urn over the aft railing into the sea, then the minister—don’t know his name—called others up in groups of five, and, as he called out the name of the student, staff, or faculty member and the name of the deceased, the voyager tossed a flower or flowers into the water. It was all very well done, and very touching.
The only slip came when Steven and Janet Dickstein went to the rail. Steven is a business professor at Ohio State—the voyage brings all types together—and he and Janet were tossing a flower in memory of a friend, Jennifer. As they approached the rail, the minister began reading the names, but somehow got them mixed up. “Jennifer Jones, in memory of Steven and Janet Dickstein,” he said. “Shit!” I heard Chapel whisper next to me, and the two of us started laughing just as the Dicksteins turned away from the railing to walk back toward us. They were smiling and shaking their heads. The minister never knew. For the rest of the day, we were telling Steven and Janet how much they were missed.
Tuesday, a so-called “reading day,” was the date for Sea Olympics, a traditional mid-voyage event. For these games, which ranged from extreme musical chairs to a non-alcoholic version of beer pong and included trivial pursuit and the obligatory tug-of-war, the students form teams based on their room locations, with each major hall on the ship designated a “sea.” So we had the Mediterranean Sea vs. the Baltic Sea vs. the Andaman Sea vs. some sea names I had never heard of. Each team dressed in their own color tee shirt or costume, many of the students painted their faces and bodies in sea colors, and the atmosphere onboard for the entire day was like what I remember as high-school field day combined with a Big-Ten football Saturday.
I had papers to grade, so for much of the day, I sequestered myself in the faculty lounge. But every hour or so, Jim Cooper—captain of the adult team known as “the nearly dead sea”—rousted me to participate in one activity or another. I was a judge for musical chairs (a dangerous job as competitors can get very belligerent about whose cheek hit the chair first), a team member for the human knot (10 of us join hands across a circle, then try to untie the resulting knot without unclasping our hands), and a coach for a game that was like shuffleboard but played with soap pucks on a watered-down deck.
The nearly-dead-sea team didn’t fare well in the overall standings, placing second to last. But everyone was rewarded with a barbeque on the 7th deck in the evening. The sunset that evening was magnificent, especially with the blazing barbeque cauldron sitting on the deck silhouetted by the setting sun. Sorry I didn’t get any pictures, but I’m sure some will be popping up soon on Facebook and YouTube.
So now we’re in Chennai. My plans for India are very simple: visit the local Hewitt office to pre-plan my FDP (field trip) to the Perot Systems call center. That trip comes up Tuesday afternoon, our last day in Chennai. Beyond that planning and the trip itself, I’m declaring a long weekend for myself. I’ll be looking for a nice 3- or 4-star hotel where I can park myself for a day or two, sit in front of a TV watching CNN and ESPN—maybe even pick up a few late-night moments of the UM-Penn State game—do some internetting on a high-speed connection, and, generally, vegetate.
This voyage is a wonderful experience, but we get no weekends. Life while at sea is intensely fast-paced planning for class, teaching, grading, and conferring with students. Then we hit port, and the pace continues, off on this or that trip, off (in my case) to this or that golf course. I can hear the “poor baby!” reactions, but this baby will be 65 in a week or so and needs an occasional day of nothing to do. So baby is taking a break.
17 October 2009
Day 53--In port, Port Louis, Mauritius
17 October. In port, Port Louis, Mauritius
Lots to catch up on. Though, in another sense, not much. We sailed from Cape Town into the roughest seas we’ve encountered since leaving Norfolk. We were advised to batten down everything in our cabins that could be battened down, and this time, it was no false alarm.
Almost as soon as we cleared the harbor, the ship starting rolling what seemed like 15°-20° port to starboard as large swells came rolling in from the southwest. They continued all night as we rounded Cape Horn and turned back to the northeast around the coast of South Africa. Sleeping was like being in a crib, certainly a different experience but also rather soothing. I didn’t hear anybody complain the next morning about sleeplessness, even less about seasickness. I guess we all have our sea legs after 6 weeks or so aboard the boat.
The rolling swells continued for the next 3 days as we continued around and up the coast of southern Africa, hugging the coast the entire time to minimize, as much as possible, the effect of the waves. Meanwhile, classes went on as usual, an interesting experience. My three classes are conducted in two classrooms. One is adjacent to the piano bar, with windows that look out onto the tops of the 5th deck lifeboats, not an especially interesting view—reassuring perhaps, but not interesting. The other classroom, where I have my 8am public speaking class on “A” days and my 1500 (3pm) business communication class on “B” days, sits just off the garden lounge on the 6th deck and has a wall of windows looking out the port side onto an unobstructed view of the water. So a rolling ship is a distinct distraction.
What’s more, as we sailed along the coast of South Africa, we were joined by several pods of whales—either right whales or humpbacks, I couldn’t tell which. But whatever family they came from, they seemed to delight in putting on a show for us, and for two days, a glance out any window would almost certainly see a couple of whales either breeching or leaping to get a better view of the ship. Between the rolling swells and the leaping whales, concentration in class took a hit.
On the third day out of Cape Town, we turned away from the African coast and headed east northeast toward Madagascar and Mauritius. The whales stayed behind.
Besides prepping for and conducting classes, I spent the 6 days between Cape Town and Mauritius grading papers. First, I finished looking at the 28 good-news memos my business comm. students had submitted the day before we arrived in South Africa. I had to get them back quickly because they had another paper due on the day before arrival in Port Louis, so they needed feedback to build on. Then I tackled the 3- to 4-page papers of my intercultural comm. class—30 of them, minus a couple who, for whatever reason, decided not to turn in a paper.
The quality of the papers ranges from pretty good to dismal. The assignment for the business comm. students was to write “a memo for the boss” announcing construction of a new health club for employees. The papers weren’t bad, largely because, in the assignment sheet, I had given the students all the content they needed to write the memo. All they had to do was organize it, decide what to include and not to include, and put the memo into language that a human being could understand. They seem to be getting it.
The intercultural papers are another matter. The assignment was challenging: to defend or criticize the Hofstede approach to the study of cultures, an approach we’ve been examining since leaving Morocco. I gave the class several pieces of reading to draw on, including a criticism of Hofstede and a defense. So I thought, with the jump start, they’d be able to find something worthwhile to write about. A few hit the mark. But many just didn’t seem to get the idea of criticism much less what it takes to write a persuasive paper.
I’m concerned about the quality of writing I’m seeing and what it means for this generation of college students. I’m even more concerned about the quality of thought—or lack of it—that I’m seeing. The students from the top-tier colleges and universities (Stanford, Dartmouth, Miami U.) do noticeably better, as do those from some lesser-known schools that must emphasize writing. But many students clearly don’t have much experience putting together a college-level paper. I’ve asked a couple of them what kind of background they have in composition, and many—an alarming number—say, “not much.”
It seems that many colleges are offering “humanities” courses, where students are assigned oral reports, complete with PowerPoint slides. But they have few written assignments. I hate to think that faculty at these schools are backing off the writing assignments because they’re time-consuming to grade. But I don’t know what else they could be thinking. The other faculty members onboard who are reviewing student writing—including Jahan Ramazani, former head of the English department at UVA—are seeing the same stuff from the onboard students. “Dismal” is the word.
We arrived at Port Louis, Mauritius, Thursday morning. When I woke at 7am and looked out my window, I saw the coast of the island off the starboard side of the ship, shrouded in early-morning haze, and silhouetted by the rising sun. The mountains of Mauritius rise sharply to very jagged peaks, some coming almost to a point some 3,000-or-so feet above sea level. Looking at the island get closer, I was reminded of the song “Bali Hai” from “South Pacific.” Any production of the shown could use the picture I saw—and took—for backdrop as Bloody Mary sings “Bali Hai may call you, on the wind of the sea . . .”
Mauritius reminds me of the Big Island, Hawai’i. It’s volcanic, although the caldera that accounts for all its lava rock is long extinct. The mountains fall sharply from their peaks, then, about 1,000 feet above sea level, begin a gradual slope to the Indian Ocean. The island is ringed by one of the largest continuous coral reefs in the world, and the reef encircles an ultramarine-blue strip of ocean that looks just like the color of the Pacific off the Hawaiian Islands. Mauritius is a major vacation destination for Europeans, South Africans, and Australians, so the beaches, like Hawai’i’s are lined with luxury hotels and golf courses.
It was at those golf courses that I spent almost the entire 3 days on the island. Thursday afternoon, Jim Cooper, Bob Chapel, and I were joined by Doctor Dave Stonington at Le Paradis resort & golf club at the far southern tip of the island. Le Paradis is the oldest course on Mauritius and sits on a peninsula jutting out into the Indian Ocean. The course runs around that peninsula, with lava rocks, inlets, and beaches lining almost every hole. Very pretty—looked a little like the pictures I’ve seen of Pebble Beach, though not as rugged. We played 18 holes at Le Paradis Thursday afternoon, and my streak of lousy golf continued, though a lousy day on the golf course still beats a day at the office or in a shipboard classroom.
Friday, we played 36 holes at Tamarina Resort, a very new (3-years-old) course that is an interesting layout, spectacularly landscaped, and just plain fun to play—a place that required lots of strategy, not just power and putts. We—Jim, Bob and I—enjoyed it so much, we cancelled our Saturday tee-time back at Le Paradis and booked a 9:20am tee time at Tamarina. This morning, we went back there with Charlie Morris for our final Mauritian round. Again, my play was awful—I’m starting to think I’m really not very good at this game—but we enjoyed the views, the excellent conditions (lots of jokes comparing Tamarina to Achimota in Ghana), and the breezy but beautiful weather. A good time.
We were back to the ship by 3pm, and at 6pm, the crew buttoned up the gangplank with everyone onboard. Many of the students had banded together to rent villas on the beach for the 3 days, and they stayed on those beaches until they had just enough time—just enough—to reboard by the 6pm “ship time,” the time after which the captain can sail whenever he puts his mind to it. At 5pm, 400 students were still unaccounted for onboard. By 6pm, all were on the ship, many obviously having enjoyed more than a few draughts of the excellent Mauritian beer, Phoenix. The dining room and deck were noisy places at dinner.
It’s now Saturday night, and we’re back on the move, now heading for Chennai, India. Tomorrow and Monday are regular class days. Tuesday is what’s called “Sea Olympics,” when the various hallways onboard, called “seas,” compete against each other in picnic-type games for honor and glory. I’m looking forward to the day off.
Lots to catch up on. Though, in another sense, not much. We sailed from Cape Town into the roughest seas we’ve encountered since leaving Norfolk. We were advised to batten down everything in our cabins that could be battened down, and this time, it was no false alarm.
Almost as soon as we cleared the harbor, the ship starting rolling what seemed like 15°-20° port to starboard as large swells came rolling in from the southwest. They continued all night as we rounded Cape Horn and turned back to the northeast around the coast of South Africa. Sleeping was like being in a crib, certainly a different experience but also rather soothing. I didn’t hear anybody complain the next morning about sleeplessness, even less about seasickness. I guess we all have our sea legs after 6 weeks or so aboard the boat.
The rolling swells continued for the next 3 days as we continued around and up the coast of southern Africa, hugging the coast the entire time to minimize, as much as possible, the effect of the waves. Meanwhile, classes went on as usual, an interesting experience. My three classes are conducted in two classrooms. One is adjacent to the piano bar, with windows that look out onto the tops of the 5th deck lifeboats, not an especially interesting view—reassuring perhaps, but not interesting. The other classroom, where I have my 8am public speaking class on “A” days and my 1500 (3pm) business communication class on “B” days, sits just off the garden lounge on the 6th deck and has a wall of windows looking out the port side onto an unobstructed view of the water. So a rolling ship is a distinct distraction.
What’s more, as we sailed along the coast of South Africa, we were joined by several pods of whales—either right whales or humpbacks, I couldn’t tell which. But whatever family they came from, they seemed to delight in putting on a show for us, and for two days, a glance out any window would almost certainly see a couple of whales either breeching or leaping to get a better view of the ship. Between the rolling swells and the leaping whales, concentration in class took a hit.
On the third day out of Cape Town, we turned away from the African coast and headed east northeast toward Madagascar and Mauritius. The whales stayed behind.
Besides prepping for and conducting classes, I spent the 6 days between Cape Town and Mauritius grading papers. First, I finished looking at the 28 good-news memos my business comm. students had submitted the day before we arrived in South Africa. I had to get them back quickly because they had another paper due on the day before arrival in Port Louis, so they needed feedback to build on. Then I tackled the 3- to 4-page papers of my intercultural comm. class—30 of them, minus a couple who, for whatever reason, decided not to turn in a paper.
The quality of the papers ranges from pretty good to dismal. The assignment for the business comm. students was to write “a memo for the boss” announcing construction of a new health club for employees. The papers weren’t bad, largely because, in the assignment sheet, I had given the students all the content they needed to write the memo. All they had to do was organize it, decide what to include and not to include, and put the memo into language that a human being could understand. They seem to be getting it.
The intercultural papers are another matter. The assignment was challenging: to defend or criticize the Hofstede approach to the study of cultures, an approach we’ve been examining since leaving Morocco. I gave the class several pieces of reading to draw on, including a criticism of Hofstede and a defense. So I thought, with the jump start, they’d be able to find something worthwhile to write about. A few hit the mark. But many just didn’t seem to get the idea of criticism much less what it takes to write a persuasive paper.
I’m concerned about the quality of writing I’m seeing and what it means for this generation of college students. I’m even more concerned about the quality of thought—or lack of it—that I’m seeing. The students from the top-tier colleges and universities (Stanford, Dartmouth, Miami U.) do noticeably better, as do those from some lesser-known schools that must emphasize writing. But many students clearly don’t have much experience putting together a college-level paper. I’ve asked a couple of them what kind of background they have in composition, and many—an alarming number—say, “not much.”
It seems that many colleges are offering “humanities” courses, where students are assigned oral reports, complete with PowerPoint slides. But they have few written assignments. I hate to think that faculty at these schools are backing off the writing assignments because they’re time-consuming to grade. But I don’t know what else they could be thinking. The other faculty members onboard who are reviewing student writing—including Jahan Ramazani, former head of the English department at UVA—are seeing the same stuff from the onboard students. “Dismal” is the word.
We arrived at Port Louis, Mauritius, Thursday morning. When I woke at 7am and looked out my window, I saw the coast of the island off the starboard side of the ship, shrouded in early-morning haze, and silhouetted by the rising sun. The mountains of Mauritius rise sharply to very jagged peaks, some coming almost to a point some 3,000-or-so feet above sea level. Looking at the island get closer, I was reminded of the song “Bali Hai” from “South Pacific.” Any production of the shown could use the picture I saw—and took—for backdrop as Bloody Mary sings “Bali Hai may call you, on the wind of the sea . . .”
Mauritius reminds me of the Big Island, Hawai’i. It’s volcanic, although the caldera that accounts for all its lava rock is long extinct. The mountains fall sharply from their peaks, then, about 1,000 feet above sea level, begin a gradual slope to the Indian Ocean. The island is ringed by one of the largest continuous coral reefs in the world, and the reef encircles an ultramarine-blue strip of ocean that looks just like the color of the Pacific off the Hawaiian Islands. Mauritius is a major vacation destination for Europeans, South Africans, and Australians, so the beaches, like Hawai’i’s are lined with luxury hotels and golf courses.
It was at those golf courses that I spent almost the entire 3 days on the island. Thursday afternoon, Jim Cooper, Bob Chapel, and I were joined by Doctor Dave Stonington at Le Paradis resort & golf club at the far southern tip of the island. Le Paradis is the oldest course on Mauritius and sits on a peninsula jutting out into the Indian Ocean. The course runs around that peninsula, with lava rocks, inlets, and beaches lining almost every hole. Very pretty—looked a little like the pictures I’ve seen of Pebble Beach, though not as rugged. We played 18 holes at Le Paradis Thursday afternoon, and my streak of lousy golf continued, though a lousy day on the golf course still beats a day at the office or in a shipboard classroom.
Friday, we played 36 holes at Tamarina Resort, a very new (3-years-old) course that is an interesting layout, spectacularly landscaped, and just plain fun to play—a place that required lots of strategy, not just power and putts. We—Jim, Bob and I—enjoyed it so much, we cancelled our Saturday tee-time back at Le Paradis and booked a 9:20am tee time at Tamarina. This morning, we went back there with Charlie Morris for our final Mauritian round. Again, my play was awful—I’m starting to think I’m really not very good at this game—but we enjoyed the views, the excellent conditions (lots of jokes comparing Tamarina to Achimota in Ghana), and the breezy but beautiful weather. A good time.
We were back to the ship by 3pm, and at 6pm, the crew buttoned up the gangplank with everyone onboard. Many of the students had banded together to rent villas on the beach for the 3 days, and they stayed on those beaches until they had just enough time—just enough—to reboard by the 6pm “ship time,” the time after which the captain can sail whenever he puts his mind to it. At 5pm, 400 students were still unaccounted for onboard. By 6pm, all were on the ship, many obviously having enjoyed more than a few draughts of the excellent Mauritian beer, Phoenix. The dining room and deck were noisy places at dinner.
It’s now Saturday night, and we’re back on the move, now heading for Chennai, India. Tomorrow and Monday are regular class days. Tuesday is what’s called “Sea Olympics,” when the various hallways onboard, called “seas,” compete against each other in picnic-type games for honor and glory. I’m looking forward to the day off.
08 October 2009
Day 46--Cape Town, South Africa
7 October. Enroute from Johannesburg to Cape Town
I’m sitting on a South African Airlines’ 737 flying back to Cape Town following our 3-day stay at Impodimo (im-poh-DEE-moh) Game Lodge. The last 3 days have been absolutely, the highlight of the voyage so far. After what seemed like months of back-and-forth among Shamim, Maria, Betsy, and me over where we should go on our African safari and which place had space to accommodate our 6-person party, I think we’re all convinced we settled on the best place.
After landing on the dirt strip in west Madikwe, we taxied to a stop in front of an open-air Land Rover, where our young guide, Travis, was waiting to drive us to the lodge. Travis is a 27-year old South African from Cape Town who decided early on that he didn’t want to spend his life indoors. He fits the image of a big-game guide: a little under 6’ tall, tanned with a trim beard and moustache, attired in light brown safari shirt and shorts, he looked exactly like a guide should look standing by the rover. Travis enrolled in a game management program at what South Africans call a technical school, and, after graduation, he traveled to Madikwe and was hired by Impodimo as a trainee guide. That was 2-1/2 years ago, and he has since been certified as a fully certified guide.
Travis loaded us and our few bags into the Land Rover, and we pulled away from the dirt strip as the Caravan took off over our heads heading for the other side of the park. The drive to the lodge took about 20 minutes over rutted dirt and gravel roads leading into the sparse grass and low trees of the African bush veld. As we rounded one of the first curves in the road, there, off to one side of the road, chewing on the newly sprouted leaves of several trees, were 5 giraffes towering above us. I felt like Sam Neill in “Jurassic Park” when he sighted the brachiosaurus for the first time. Maybe, more accurately, I felt like a 5-year-old seeing the tall, graceful, weird, beautiful giraffe for the first time.
When we arrived at Impodimo, we were greeted by Michelle and Linea, two of the managers, who showed us around the lodge. Impodimo is a 5-star resort, and it fully deserves the rating. It’s build in, for lack of any other description, African-safari style: lots of wood and stone, overstuffed bush furniture, thickly thatched roof, elegant but in a rough-hewn sort of way. The lodge and 10 surrounding chalets sit on a hillside just above two watering holes, one small just a few yards below the pool, the other, larger one about 100 yards further down the hill. The watering holes and the resort sit on game trails used by elephants, leopards, rhinos, and other game living in the park.
After arriving at the lodge, we learned that our rooms wouldn’t be ready for a few hours, so we settled in to enjoy the views and surroundings. Madikwe Game Preserve was set aside in 1991 when the So. African or North-West Province government bought up many non- or low-producing farms, built a 150 km electrified fence around the area, brought in indigenous animals—all animals in the park are native to the area, though most had been driven out or killed as farmers moved in—and leased parcels to 20-or-so lodges. The only way to get into the park is through a lodge. They don’t permit drive-thrus, as they do in some of the other parks, such as Krueger, the most famous game preserve in So. Africa.
The goal on a safari is to see, up close and personal, as many animals as possible. The gold rings are sightings of what are called “the big 5”: elephant, rhinoceros, lion, leopard, and cape buffalo. Cape buffalo? Yes, because, like the other four animals, cape buffalo is a game animal, previously hunted for either trophy heads, skin, horn, or tusk. In the case of the buffalo, the magnificent horns on the old bulls were the prizes.
Our chalets were finally ready about 2pm. The chalets are, in a word, luxurious: king beds surrounded by mosquito netting, outside deck overlooking, in the case of mine, amenities in a 5-star hotel, plus my favorite: a shower on the outdoor deck. In the roughly 48 hours we spent in Madikwe, I took 5 very long showers on my deck. The food was wonderful, the animal sightings were incredible, the bed was soft, the staff was friendly. But what I’ll remember most of Impodimo Game Lodge is standing on my deck in the moonlight as the outdoor shower rained down on me in a torrent—make that a flood—of hot water. Keep the lions; take me back to Impodimo for the outdoor shower.
But the lions are pretty cool. The daily drill at Impodimo, as for most of the safari lodges, begins at 5:30am with a wake-up call from the guide assigned to one’s group. In our case, the group consisted of the 6 intrepid hunters: Jim and Shamim, Bob and Maria, Betsy Bloom, and me. We’d assemble at 6am for coffee and biscuits—cookies and a few breakfast cakes—then climb into the land rover for the morning safari drive. The land rover is like a small section of a theatre balcony: three layers of passenger seats stacked auditorium-like behind the driver’s seat, with each passenger row able to accommodate 3 passengers. So our land rover could have held as many as 10 passengers, with one sitting next to the guide. In our case, we safaried with only the 6 of us.
The morning drive looking for animals took us on dirt and gravel roads to every corner of the massive park. The process reminds me of the military chant: “hurry up and wait.” After hustling into the land rover, we’d sit, sometimes for an hour or more, as Travis drove us over deeply rutted, sometimes muddy paths looking for big game. Of the 12 hours we spent driving around Madikwe, surely no more than an hour was spent eyeball-to-eyeball with animals. Less for the big 5. But that hour was well worth the other 11 we spent watching scenery go by.
I can’t describe all the sightings because that would take more time and space than I have. But suffice to say we “bagged” all 5 plus many, many more species that were just as interesting to watch. We even saw two of the elusive, very shy leopards, both on the last day, and both only briefly as they darted across the road in front of us trying to make their escapes into the bush and up their hills.
Watching the lions—a set of brothers and another set of cousins—was wonderful. They are magnificent animals though, like their housecat cousins, they spend most of the day sleeping. Our sighting of 2 rhinoceros was far too fleeting, but they, too, are magnificent and enormous. We watched as a herd of cape buffalo, at least 25 strong, moved slowly across a field, traveling from one watering hole to another. And elephants are everywhere in Madikwe. They were one of the first animals we saw. And, as we drove along the highway enroute back to Johannesburg, we saw an elephant standing near the farthest south boundary, as if to say goodbye.
The one encounter I’ll probably remember most vividly happened Tuesday evening. As we were driving along a road about ½ hour before sunset, we rounded a curve and saw in front of us, no more than 50 yards up the road, an enormous bull elephant ambling slowly down the road toward us. He was being followed by another land rover full of tourists, but he was coming directly for us. Travis stopped the land rover, and the six of us sat there mesmerized as the bull made his way up the road, getting closer and closer with each step. By the time he had moved to within 25 yards, we could hear each foot step softly but firmly plodding onto the dirt path. And we heard his snorts, as if he was telling us to move aside because the road is his. It certainly was.
Bob and Maria were sitting behind me in the land rover, and now, with each step, I could hear Bob saying, quietly but urgently, “Travis, start the jeep.” Then, “Travis, let’s start the jeep now!” with a tone now bordering on panic. By this time, the bull was no more than 10 yards in front of the land rover, still moving toward us. Now Bob was very firm: “Travis, start the g---d---d jeep now!” At about that moment, Travis did, indeed, restart the land rover and back slowly away from the monster and into the grass alongside the road. We sat there for the next few moments as the bull, without missing a rhythmic footstep, moved past then turned into the veld and plodded away. It was almost as if he had been playing the old “chicken” game with us. And once we backed off, the game was over.
After the morning drives, we returned to the lodge for a large brunch of eggs, fruit, yogurt, granola, breads, and meats. Then we were on our own to read, nap, or lounge by the pool until 4pm high tea. Tea included tea and coffee plus small sandwiches and cakes. Then it was off to the evening drive, another 3+-hour ride along the bumpy roads looking for game. At sundown, we’d stop, and Travis would unpack from the rear of the land rover a table, cover, and two wicker baskets. In the baskets were setups for mixed drinks, wine, and beer, plus cookies and biscuits. Travis would mix drinks for us as we stood and watched the sun set over the African bush. Yes, it was exactly like that.
We’d return to the lodge by 8:30pm, where the staff greeted us with hot towels and, if we liked cocktails, followed by a wonderful dinner. Monday night, I enjoyed roast ostrich; Tuesday, I ordered the salmon. Both meals were gourmet quality.
Finally, Travis escorted us, armed with a rifle, to our chalets. We weren’t allowed to walk the resort paths at night because of the danger of running into animals. Travis told us that he’d had encounters with all of the big 5—lion, leopard, elephant, cape buffalo, and rhino (a black rhino, the aggressive kind)—walking the paths of Impodimo at night. So we were grateful for the escort.
I spent both evenings the same way: shower outside, pour myself a glass of wine and sit, wrapped in the provided bathrobe on the outdoor deck watching for the reflected eyes of big game. I didn’t see anything by the moon either night, but the atmosphere couldn’t have been better. I climbed into the netted bed by 11pm both night.
Wednesday, after the morning drive, we had brunch then waited for our driver, who arrived at noon and took us in a van for the 4-hour drive to Johannesburg. We arrived back in Cape Town at 9pm and were back onboard the MV Explorer by 9:45pm.
I’m now back in the faculty lounge on Thursday evening, finishing up this blog before we sail away from Cape Town.
This morning, Jim, Bob, and I taxied to Royal Cape Golf Club, where we played 18 holes on the oldest course in Africa, built in the 1880s by the British. It had a definite British stuffiness about it, but the course was in beautiful shape, and the weather was perfect: sunny and cool. I played miserably, losing $30 to Bob. But, as they say, a bad day on the golf course beats the best day at work.
Tomorrow, it’s back to work.
I’m sitting on a South African Airlines’ 737 flying back to Cape Town following our 3-day stay at Impodimo (im-poh-DEE-moh) Game Lodge. The last 3 days have been absolutely, the highlight of the voyage so far. After what seemed like months of back-and-forth among Shamim, Maria, Betsy, and me over where we should go on our African safari and which place had space to accommodate our 6-person party, I think we’re all convinced we settled on the best place.
After landing on the dirt strip in west Madikwe, we taxied to a stop in front of an open-air Land Rover, where our young guide, Travis, was waiting to drive us to the lodge. Travis is a 27-year old South African from Cape Town who decided early on that he didn’t want to spend his life indoors. He fits the image of a big-game guide: a little under 6’ tall, tanned with a trim beard and moustache, attired in light brown safari shirt and shorts, he looked exactly like a guide should look standing by the rover. Travis enrolled in a game management program at what South Africans call a technical school, and, after graduation, he traveled to Madikwe and was hired by Impodimo as a trainee guide. That was 2-1/2 years ago, and he has since been certified as a fully certified guide.
Travis loaded us and our few bags into the Land Rover, and we pulled away from the dirt strip as the Caravan took off over our heads heading for the other side of the park. The drive to the lodge took about 20 minutes over rutted dirt and gravel roads leading into the sparse grass and low trees of the African bush veld. As we rounded one of the first curves in the road, there, off to one side of the road, chewing on the newly sprouted leaves of several trees, were 5 giraffes towering above us. I felt like Sam Neill in “Jurassic Park” when he sighted the brachiosaurus for the first time. Maybe, more accurately, I felt like a 5-year-old seeing the tall, graceful, weird, beautiful giraffe for the first time.
When we arrived at Impodimo, we were greeted by Michelle and Linea, two of the managers, who showed us around the lodge. Impodimo is a 5-star resort, and it fully deserves the rating. It’s build in, for lack of any other description, African-safari style: lots of wood and stone, overstuffed bush furniture, thickly thatched roof, elegant but in a rough-hewn sort of way. The lodge and 10 surrounding chalets sit on a hillside just above two watering holes, one small just a few yards below the pool, the other, larger one about 100 yards further down the hill. The watering holes and the resort sit on game trails used by elephants, leopards, rhinos, and other game living in the park.
After arriving at the lodge, we learned that our rooms wouldn’t be ready for a few hours, so we settled in to enjoy the views and surroundings. Madikwe Game Preserve was set aside in 1991 when the So. African or North-West Province government bought up many non- or low-producing farms, built a 150 km electrified fence around the area, brought in indigenous animals—all animals in the park are native to the area, though most had been driven out or killed as farmers moved in—and leased parcels to 20-or-so lodges. The only way to get into the park is through a lodge. They don’t permit drive-thrus, as they do in some of the other parks, such as Krueger, the most famous game preserve in So. Africa.
The goal on a safari is to see, up close and personal, as many animals as possible. The gold rings are sightings of what are called “the big 5”: elephant, rhinoceros, lion, leopard, and cape buffalo. Cape buffalo? Yes, because, like the other four animals, cape buffalo is a game animal, previously hunted for either trophy heads, skin, horn, or tusk. In the case of the buffalo, the magnificent horns on the old bulls were the prizes.
Our chalets were finally ready about 2pm. The chalets are, in a word, luxurious: king beds surrounded by mosquito netting, outside deck overlooking, in the case of mine, amenities in a 5-star hotel, plus my favorite: a shower on the outdoor deck. In the roughly 48 hours we spent in Madikwe, I took 5 very long showers on my deck. The food was wonderful, the animal sightings were incredible, the bed was soft, the staff was friendly. But what I’ll remember most of Impodimo Game Lodge is standing on my deck in the moonlight as the outdoor shower rained down on me in a torrent—make that a flood—of hot water. Keep the lions; take me back to Impodimo for the outdoor shower.
But the lions are pretty cool. The daily drill at Impodimo, as for most of the safari lodges, begins at 5:30am with a wake-up call from the guide assigned to one’s group. In our case, the group consisted of the 6 intrepid hunters: Jim and Shamim, Bob and Maria, Betsy Bloom, and me. We’d assemble at 6am for coffee and biscuits—cookies and a few breakfast cakes—then climb into the land rover for the morning safari drive. The land rover is like a small section of a theatre balcony: three layers of passenger seats stacked auditorium-like behind the driver’s seat, with each passenger row able to accommodate 3 passengers. So our land rover could have held as many as 10 passengers, with one sitting next to the guide. In our case, we safaried with only the 6 of us.
The morning drive looking for animals took us on dirt and gravel roads to every corner of the massive park. The process reminds me of the military chant: “hurry up and wait.” After hustling into the land rover, we’d sit, sometimes for an hour or more, as Travis drove us over deeply rutted, sometimes muddy paths looking for big game. Of the 12 hours we spent driving around Madikwe, surely no more than an hour was spent eyeball-to-eyeball with animals. Less for the big 5. But that hour was well worth the other 11 we spent watching scenery go by.
I can’t describe all the sightings because that would take more time and space than I have. But suffice to say we “bagged” all 5 plus many, many more species that were just as interesting to watch. We even saw two of the elusive, very shy leopards, both on the last day, and both only briefly as they darted across the road in front of us trying to make their escapes into the bush and up their hills.
Watching the lions—a set of brothers and another set of cousins—was wonderful. They are magnificent animals though, like their housecat cousins, they spend most of the day sleeping. Our sighting of 2 rhinoceros was far too fleeting, but they, too, are magnificent and enormous. We watched as a herd of cape buffalo, at least 25 strong, moved slowly across a field, traveling from one watering hole to another. And elephants are everywhere in Madikwe. They were one of the first animals we saw. And, as we drove along the highway enroute back to Johannesburg, we saw an elephant standing near the farthest south boundary, as if to say goodbye.
The one encounter I’ll probably remember most vividly happened Tuesday evening. As we were driving along a road about ½ hour before sunset, we rounded a curve and saw in front of us, no more than 50 yards up the road, an enormous bull elephant ambling slowly down the road toward us. He was being followed by another land rover full of tourists, but he was coming directly for us. Travis stopped the land rover, and the six of us sat there mesmerized as the bull made his way up the road, getting closer and closer with each step. By the time he had moved to within 25 yards, we could hear each foot step softly but firmly plodding onto the dirt path. And we heard his snorts, as if he was telling us to move aside because the road is his. It certainly was.
Bob and Maria were sitting behind me in the land rover, and now, with each step, I could hear Bob saying, quietly but urgently, “Travis, start the jeep.” Then, “Travis, let’s start the jeep now!” with a tone now bordering on panic. By this time, the bull was no more than 10 yards in front of the land rover, still moving toward us. Now Bob was very firm: “Travis, start the g---d---d jeep now!” At about that moment, Travis did, indeed, restart the land rover and back slowly away from the monster and into the grass alongside the road. We sat there for the next few moments as the bull, without missing a rhythmic footstep, moved past then turned into the veld and plodded away. It was almost as if he had been playing the old “chicken” game with us. And once we backed off, the game was over.
After the morning drives, we returned to the lodge for a large brunch of eggs, fruit, yogurt, granola, breads, and meats. Then we were on our own to read, nap, or lounge by the pool until 4pm high tea. Tea included tea and coffee plus small sandwiches and cakes. Then it was off to the evening drive, another 3+-hour ride along the bumpy roads looking for game. At sundown, we’d stop, and Travis would unpack from the rear of the land rover a table, cover, and two wicker baskets. In the baskets were setups for mixed drinks, wine, and beer, plus cookies and biscuits. Travis would mix drinks for us as we stood and watched the sun set over the African bush. Yes, it was exactly like that.
We’d return to the lodge by 8:30pm, where the staff greeted us with hot towels and, if we liked cocktails, followed by a wonderful dinner. Monday night, I enjoyed roast ostrich; Tuesday, I ordered the salmon. Both meals were gourmet quality.
Finally, Travis escorted us, armed with a rifle, to our chalets. We weren’t allowed to walk the resort paths at night because of the danger of running into animals. Travis told us that he’d had encounters with all of the big 5—lion, leopard, elephant, cape buffalo, and rhino (a black rhino, the aggressive kind)—walking the paths of Impodimo at night. So we were grateful for the escort.
I spent both evenings the same way: shower outside, pour myself a glass of wine and sit, wrapped in the provided bathrobe on the outdoor deck watching for the reflected eyes of big game. I didn’t see anything by the moon either night, but the atmosphere couldn’t have been better. I climbed into the netted bed by 11pm both night.
Wednesday, after the morning drive, we had brunch then waited for our driver, who arrived at noon and took us in a van for the 4-hour drive to Johannesburg. We arrived back in Cape Town at 9pm and were back onboard the MV Explorer by 9:45pm.
I’m now back in the faculty lounge on Thursday evening, finishing up this blog before we sail away from Cape Town.
This morning, Jim, Bob, and I taxied to Royal Cape Golf Club, where we played 18 holes on the oldest course in Africa, built in the 1880s by the British. It had a definite British stuffiness about it, but the course was in beautiful shape, and the weather was perfect: sunny and cool. I played miserably, losing $30 to Bob. But, as they say, a bad day on the golf course beats the best day at work.
Tomorrow, it’s back to work.
07 October 2009
Day 43--Cape Town
5 October. Impodimo Game Lodge, Madikwe Game Reserve, North-West Province, South Africa
I’m sitting on the deck of my . . . I’m embarrassed to use the word, but it’s the only word that fits . . . chalet on the grounds of the Impodimo Game Lodge. We (Jim, Shamim, Bob, Maria, Betsy, and I) arrived here about 11:30am after an early morning flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, and a charter flight on a 15-passenger Cessna Caravan from Jo-burg (as they call it) to East Madikwe International Airport, which is a stretch of the dirt road running through the east section of the reserve, widened slightly to accommodate a small aircraft. No terminal, only a jeep waiting to take us to the Lodge. Before landing, the pilot had to buzz the runway to scare away the wildebeests and giraffes grazing near the approach end. Already we’ve seen impala, many zebras, and more giraffes—and that was only on our 20-minute ride to the lodge. I’m relaxing now before high tea at 5:00pm followed by an evening safari. But I’ll come back to that.
The V&A Waterfront and Khayelitsha
Saturday morning, I left the ship around 10am and spent the next 2 hours walking around the Victoria and Alfred waterfront, an area of shops, hotels, and restaurants that reminds me very much of the Rocks area of Sydney, minus, of course, the opera house and bridge. It’s anchored by the V&A Mall, a crisscross of aisles and stores, mostly upscale, that wind from where the MV Explorer is docked about ¼ mile inland along the piers.
I walked along the waterfront, then turned toward downtown Cape Town, reaching the boundary of the adjacent drydock area before turning back toward the ship. I passed the Nelson Mandela Pier, from which the boat to Robbin Island departs 4 times a day. Robbin Island is now a museum, but until 1994, it housed a maximum security prison where The Afrikaans government sent political prisoners, including Mandela.
By the time I got back close to the ship, I was very hungry, so I stopped for a plate of hake and chips, deep fried, accompanied by fried calamari. I could hear my arteries cracking as I ate every bite. Delicious!
After seeing the wealth of the waterfront, representing the lifestyle of the top 10% of the South African population, I decided I had to see the other side of South African life: the townships. “Township” is a euphemism for the areas surrounding South African cities where, under apartheid, Black families congregated, built their homes, and commuted into the all-white cities to serve as housemaids, gardeners, and the other menial but necessary jobs required to maintain the white lifestyle. I decided to take the trip to Khayelitsha (kile-YEET-shah) because it had been organized as a faculty-directed practicum by Andi Mitnick, my fellow Communication Studies professor and, based on her many years on the faculty at Kutztown State U. in Philadelphia, the nominal head of our 2-person department.
We left the ship around 1330 (1:30pm) along with about 30 students and a few lifelong learners, heading for the township, which sits about 25 miles east of the city, on the other side of Table Mountain. On the way, we passed downtown Cape Town, a city that could be mistaken for Dallas, Denver, or any other city that has enjoyed a recent boom in downtown construction. We took the N2 motorway, the primary east-west highway in South Africa, driving past the hospital where Dr. Christian Bernard performed the first heart transplant, past the old football stadium where the Cape Town team (The Blacks?) play their matches, past the exit to the Stellenbosch wine country, past small sections of makeshift housing intermingled with newer brick homes, and finally turning off on the Khayelitsha exit.
As we crossed over the motorway and crested over a hill that eventually runs down to the Indian Ocean, about 2 miles in front of the bus, I could see on the right side the township: a mass of shacks built from corregated sheeting, reclaimed wood, makeshift doors, windows salvaged from demolished homes and buildings. The township stretched as far as we could see, from almost the water’s edge north to the motorway we had just exited, and from the road we were on almost to the eastern base of Table Mountain—a total of what looked like 10 to 15 square miles, maybe more.
Khayelitsha might have been mistaken for one of the many villages we passed through on the way from Ghana to Benin, except here there was no red clay and accompanying dust. Instead, the roads are paved and in fine condition. Here, too, electrical wires spread in all directions across the township, and we saw men and women walking back from government-built water supplies carrying large buckets of fresh water to their homes. As we drove back and forth through the streets, many scenes were reminiscent of West Africa—makeshift store fronts, children playing on or close to the streets, hawkers selling wares in temporary-not-temporary stands, certainly pervasive poverty. But there were no large piles of trash in the few empty spaces, no fires burning. And here and there we saw brick homes either under construction or completed and occupied by families who formerly lived in one of the shacks.
Khayelitsha certainly is no paradise. You couldn’t even call it a poor man’s alternative to Cape Town—it’s a different world. But it has a sense of pride that I think we all found very surprising. We made several stops in the township, first at a church, where local artisans peddled homemade jewelry and knickknacks while a marimba band played. Then we went to a school, where women dressed in colorful ethnic clothing showed us how they make tapestries and wall hangings, all of which are for sale, of course. Finally, we went to a run-down looking, 2-story building, also made from gathered cast-off material. On top of the building was a sign reading “Vicki’s B&B.” Inside, we found a very neat, tidy hotel, including 4 bedrooms furnished with queen-size beds, dressers, curtains, everything you’d expect to find in a B&B anywhere in the world. No en suite—common, very clean bath—but a place where I’d spend the night without hesitating for a moment.
The owner, Vicki, is an ample woman. Dressed in traditional clothing, she shared her story with us: starting as a tiny place, eventually adding space, better furnishings, clientele. Today she has a thriving business and is, justifiably, very proud. She talked to the group for a few minutes about her history and motivation. But the story that stuck with me was hearing her explain why they tell visitors never to give the small children in the township money. “Because,” she said, “if you give them money, the next time visitors come here, the children will ask—beg—for money. That would make us ashamed.”
Khayelitsha, like, I’m sure, the people of the other townships, has a very long way to go. Forty percent are still unemployed. And the average annual income, according to our tour guide, is roughly $1,200. The people are starting to grow impatient with the government for not moving fast enough to build the brick houses, construct sanitary facilities, and provide electricity to all the houses.
As in Ghana, the people in the makeshift homes are friendly, outgoing, welcoming. But, unlike what we saw in Ghana, I had the feeling that the people of the township have a clear goal: they seem to know where they’re heading and what they want.
The tour took longer than planned, and we didn’t return to the ship until almost 7pm, so I missed the wine-country dinner. But I had a fine glass of wine, a salad, and a wonderful pizza (first one since leaving Libertyville) at a restaurant overlooking the waterfront. And I felt very gratified that I had taken the time to see a slice of South Africa as 80% of the population know it.
Green Market and Robbin Island
Sunday morning after breakfast on the ship, I joined Bob, Maria, and Betsy on a trip to the Green Market, a weekly farmer’s market that happens every Sunday in the Green Point area of Cape Town. The market used to cover several acres of Green Point, an open park bordering Cape Town’s version of Chicago’s Gold Coast: several miles of very expensive apartment and condo buildings overlooking the Atlantic shoreline. But now they’re building a new football stadium in Green Point in preparation for South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup. So the Green Market has shrunk to a narrow strip of stalls barely 100 yards long.
The government of South Africa had wanted to build the new stadium closer to the townships, from where most of the local football (soccer) fans will come to see the matches next year. But FIFA, governing body of world soccer, insisted on its being built close to the waterfront so that television coverage would be able to show Table Mountain in the background. No sense in showing the shacks of Khayelitsha and spoiling the big-screen HD view of the match between two quarter-finalists!
At any rate, we spent an hour or so prowling the stands of the market, and I bought a few items to remind me of my visit to South Africa. “You got this where?! Wow! Africa, huh? What’s that like?” About 11am, Bob and I decided to head back to the ship, and the ladies headed off to the botanical gardens.
I joined Bob for lunch at a waterfront sandwich place, then he went shopping for safari clothes, and I went to the Nelson Mandela pier, from where the boat to Robbing Island departs. The 30-minute ride to the Island took us away from the waterfront and out into Table Bay. The island sits about 8 miles offshore, surrounded by the very cold and very shark infested waters of the bay. Table Bay and the waters off the Cape of Good Hope are where naturalists, documentary filmmakers, and the Cousteau Society people go to view great whites up close and personal. Many students from the ship, in fact, signed up for cage dives in order to have intimate encounters with the beasts. Initial reports are that the dives lived up to the hype. At any rate, the sharks and frigid waters combine to make Robbin Island South Africa’s Alcatraz—a very secure place to throw criminals and political prisoners.
After stepping off the hydrofoil, the 200-or-so of us who made the trip were hustled onto waiting busses for a drive around the island, culminating in a walking tour of the maximum security prison where Mandela spent 18 his 28 years as a prisoner of the government. Our tour guide on the bus was Yassim Mohammad, who lives permanently on the island and may have been a prisoner himself at one time—he was circumspect about the exact circumstances that led him there. But regardless of his background, Yassim, a man in his late 60s or early 70s, neatly dressed in sweater, white shirt, and pressed slacks, and sporting a tiny white goatee on his tan chin, treated us to almost 2 hours of stories and wisecracks as we circled the island. He reminded me of a gentle, though very dramatic, Don Rickles, with endless cracks about the nationalities of the passengers. From Yassim’s stand-up act: “We have the Australians to thank for all the rabbits on the island. The first rabbit came here to help control the spread of eucalyptus, but once here all they did was breed. And you know what they say about rabbits: they breed like Australians.” And “You all know how Indians play football [soccer]: you give them a corner, and they set up a stand.” Folks, he had a million of ‘em.
But Yassim was also a wealth of knowledge about the island and the history of political prisoners who were sent there during the harshest years of apartheid. We spent several minutes at the limestone quarry, for instance, where he told of how Nelson Mandela and hundreds of others moved tons of limestone from one end of the quarry to another day after day in the blazing sun, which, when reflected off the brilliant whiteness of the limestone, burns one’s eyes into blindness. Today, photographers aren’t permitted to take flash photos of Mandela because of the sensitivity of his eyes to light following many years in the quarry.
The quarry also become a sort of university, where the political prisoners, many of whom were doctors, professors, and other well educated South Africans, would teach each other various subjects as they passed hauling limestone in the quarry. As Yassim told us the story of the “quarry degrees,” I thought about the US POWs held in Hanoi prisons during the war. They, too, held classes during the years in the Hanoi Hilton and other POW camps around the city, often tapping out lessons to other POWs in code. It was in the quarry, according to Yassim, that Mandela developed and taught his policy of reconciliation—basically forgive-but-don’t-forget—to fellow resistance leaders. That policy, based on the teachings of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, became the foundation of Mandela’s government after he was elected president in ’93. Yassim referred to it as the 3-M principle—Mandela, Martin, and Mahatma—mined from the limestone quarry.
Yassim also told of escorting dignitaries around the island, including Hillary Clinton (“Her husband couldn’t join her. He was working in the White House. [wry smile]”) and then-Senator Barack Obama (“I asked him not to tell President Bush about the WWII guns still in place on the island. Bush might invade here claiming we have weapons of mass destruction.”)
Finally, we arrived at the maximum-security prison, said goodbye to Yassim as we stepped off the bus, and were greeted by another guide who had, indeed, spent several years as a political prisoner on the island. I didn’t get his name, but I did get his history, including years of underground fighting against the apartheid government. In June, 1976, he had been present in Soweto when the grade-school students demonstrated against the Afrikaans language they were being taught in their classrooms. In the ensuing encounter with police, hundreds of the unarmed students where shot, most of them in the back while trying to run away from the police.
The prison has been tidied up considerably from the way it must have looked during its active years. Still, it’s a stark place: long barracks that held 60 to 70 prisoners in rooms slightly larger than the family room in my house; guard towers sticking up around the perimeter; high walls topped by razor-edged concertina wire; every building a steel gray.
We walked into one of the prisoner barracks and sat around the perimeter as the guide told us about a typical day for most of the former population: early rise, small meal, out to the quarry or around the prison for maintenance, some exercise, another meal, back to the barracks. Every day was the same for, in many cases, a life term.
Then we went to a complex where the political prisoners were held. Here, two buildings and a high wall surrounded a courtyard where Mandela and the others were allowed outside their cells for 20 minutes of recreation each day. Otherwise, these “special cases” remained in their cells or in the quarry all day. And political prisoners weren’t allowed to mingle with the murderers, thieves, and rapists for fear the former might contaminate the latter.
Finally, we were led into one of the buildings, and halfway down the cell-lined corridor, we passed a single cell, about 8’X8’, furnished with a think mat and pillow along one wall and a 1-foot-square table under a window lined with thick bars. This is where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his life. Seeing these conditions, it’s remarkable that he didn’t develop absolute rage at the government that was imprisoning him. But he didn’t, becoming, instead, a very wise and, from all reports, a very gentle and forgiving leader. Based on what I’ve seen, that attitude seems pervasive in South Africa.
At 6pm, we reboarded the hydrofoil and returned to the V&A waterfront. I went to the ship for a quick dinner. Then I packed a few things in my roll-aboard suitcase and was about to go to bed when Jim Cooper called to remind me of our 4:30am pickup time for the trip to the airport. He also said that, according to the trip instructions, we were allowed no more than 18 pounds of carry-on luggage and that we “have to” carry on because of the tight connection in Johannesburg. I went to Jim & Shamim’s room, weighed my bag on their hand-held scale, and discovered that, without my backpack, I already was toting 29 pounds. Jim and Shamim strongly encouraged me to unpack all but, essentially, a pair of clean underwear and a toothbrush. But I decided to chance it. Monday morning, I showed up with my roll-aboard—all 29 pounds—and a backpack loaded with cameras and my laptop.
I had no problems. Security for the domestic flight was similar to US pre-flight security except we didn’t have to remove our shoes, they didn’t require liquids in a zip-lock bag, and, despite my metal knee, I wasn’t subjected to a wanding, only a cursory pat-down. I’m sure security for international flights in more rigorous, but checking in for the Cape Town-to-Johannesburg was no more difficult—easier, in fact—than checking in for a flight from Chicago to Cleveland.
After a 90-minute flight to Jo-Burg, we were carted to the charter side of the airport for the Federal Air flight to West Madikwe. By 11:45am, we were sitting in Impodimo Lodge enjoying a welcome drink and waiting for our rooms to be readied.
I’m sitting on the deck of my . . . I’m embarrassed to use the word, but it’s the only word that fits . . . chalet on the grounds of the Impodimo Game Lodge. We (Jim, Shamim, Bob, Maria, Betsy, and I) arrived here about 11:30am after an early morning flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, and a charter flight on a 15-passenger Cessna Caravan from Jo-burg (as they call it) to East Madikwe International Airport, which is a stretch of the dirt road running through the east section of the reserve, widened slightly to accommodate a small aircraft. No terminal, only a jeep waiting to take us to the Lodge. Before landing, the pilot had to buzz the runway to scare away the wildebeests and giraffes grazing near the approach end. Already we’ve seen impala, many zebras, and more giraffes—and that was only on our 20-minute ride to the lodge. I’m relaxing now before high tea at 5:00pm followed by an evening safari. But I’ll come back to that.
The V&A Waterfront and Khayelitsha
Saturday morning, I left the ship around 10am and spent the next 2 hours walking around the Victoria and Alfred waterfront, an area of shops, hotels, and restaurants that reminds me very much of the Rocks area of Sydney, minus, of course, the opera house and bridge. It’s anchored by the V&A Mall, a crisscross of aisles and stores, mostly upscale, that wind from where the MV Explorer is docked about ¼ mile inland along the piers.
I walked along the waterfront, then turned toward downtown Cape Town, reaching the boundary of the adjacent drydock area before turning back toward the ship. I passed the Nelson Mandela Pier, from which the boat to Robbin Island departs 4 times a day. Robbin Island is now a museum, but until 1994, it housed a maximum security prison where The Afrikaans government sent political prisoners, including Mandela.
By the time I got back close to the ship, I was very hungry, so I stopped for a plate of hake and chips, deep fried, accompanied by fried calamari. I could hear my arteries cracking as I ate every bite. Delicious!
After seeing the wealth of the waterfront, representing the lifestyle of the top 10% of the South African population, I decided I had to see the other side of South African life: the townships. “Township” is a euphemism for the areas surrounding South African cities where, under apartheid, Black families congregated, built their homes, and commuted into the all-white cities to serve as housemaids, gardeners, and the other menial but necessary jobs required to maintain the white lifestyle. I decided to take the trip to Khayelitsha (kile-YEET-shah) because it had been organized as a faculty-directed practicum by Andi Mitnick, my fellow Communication Studies professor and, based on her many years on the faculty at Kutztown State U. in Philadelphia, the nominal head of our 2-person department.
We left the ship around 1330 (1:30pm) along with about 30 students and a few lifelong learners, heading for the township, which sits about 25 miles east of the city, on the other side of Table Mountain. On the way, we passed downtown Cape Town, a city that could be mistaken for Dallas, Denver, or any other city that has enjoyed a recent boom in downtown construction. We took the N2 motorway, the primary east-west highway in South Africa, driving past the hospital where Dr. Christian Bernard performed the first heart transplant, past the old football stadium where the Cape Town team (The Blacks?) play their matches, past the exit to the Stellenbosch wine country, past small sections of makeshift housing intermingled with newer brick homes, and finally turning off on the Khayelitsha exit.
As we crossed over the motorway and crested over a hill that eventually runs down to the Indian Ocean, about 2 miles in front of the bus, I could see on the right side the township: a mass of shacks built from corregated sheeting, reclaimed wood, makeshift doors, windows salvaged from demolished homes and buildings. The township stretched as far as we could see, from almost the water’s edge north to the motorway we had just exited, and from the road we were on almost to the eastern base of Table Mountain—a total of what looked like 10 to 15 square miles, maybe more.
Khayelitsha might have been mistaken for one of the many villages we passed through on the way from Ghana to Benin, except here there was no red clay and accompanying dust. Instead, the roads are paved and in fine condition. Here, too, electrical wires spread in all directions across the township, and we saw men and women walking back from government-built water supplies carrying large buckets of fresh water to their homes. As we drove back and forth through the streets, many scenes were reminiscent of West Africa—makeshift store fronts, children playing on or close to the streets, hawkers selling wares in temporary-not-temporary stands, certainly pervasive poverty. But there were no large piles of trash in the few empty spaces, no fires burning. And here and there we saw brick homes either under construction or completed and occupied by families who formerly lived in one of the shacks.
Khayelitsha certainly is no paradise. You couldn’t even call it a poor man’s alternative to Cape Town—it’s a different world. But it has a sense of pride that I think we all found very surprising. We made several stops in the township, first at a church, where local artisans peddled homemade jewelry and knickknacks while a marimba band played. Then we went to a school, where women dressed in colorful ethnic clothing showed us how they make tapestries and wall hangings, all of which are for sale, of course. Finally, we went to a run-down looking, 2-story building, also made from gathered cast-off material. On top of the building was a sign reading “Vicki’s B&B.” Inside, we found a very neat, tidy hotel, including 4 bedrooms furnished with queen-size beds, dressers, curtains, everything you’d expect to find in a B&B anywhere in the world. No en suite—common, very clean bath—but a place where I’d spend the night without hesitating for a moment.
The owner, Vicki, is an ample woman. Dressed in traditional clothing, she shared her story with us: starting as a tiny place, eventually adding space, better furnishings, clientele. Today she has a thriving business and is, justifiably, very proud. She talked to the group for a few minutes about her history and motivation. But the story that stuck with me was hearing her explain why they tell visitors never to give the small children in the township money. “Because,” she said, “if you give them money, the next time visitors come here, the children will ask—beg—for money. That would make us ashamed.”
Khayelitsha, like, I’m sure, the people of the other townships, has a very long way to go. Forty percent are still unemployed. And the average annual income, according to our tour guide, is roughly $1,200. The people are starting to grow impatient with the government for not moving fast enough to build the brick houses, construct sanitary facilities, and provide electricity to all the houses.
As in Ghana, the people in the makeshift homes are friendly, outgoing, welcoming. But, unlike what we saw in Ghana, I had the feeling that the people of the township have a clear goal: they seem to know where they’re heading and what they want.
The tour took longer than planned, and we didn’t return to the ship until almost 7pm, so I missed the wine-country dinner. But I had a fine glass of wine, a salad, and a wonderful pizza (first one since leaving Libertyville) at a restaurant overlooking the waterfront. And I felt very gratified that I had taken the time to see a slice of South Africa as 80% of the population know it.
Green Market and Robbin Island
Sunday morning after breakfast on the ship, I joined Bob, Maria, and Betsy on a trip to the Green Market, a weekly farmer’s market that happens every Sunday in the Green Point area of Cape Town. The market used to cover several acres of Green Point, an open park bordering Cape Town’s version of Chicago’s Gold Coast: several miles of very expensive apartment and condo buildings overlooking the Atlantic shoreline. But now they’re building a new football stadium in Green Point in preparation for South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup. So the Green Market has shrunk to a narrow strip of stalls barely 100 yards long.
The government of South Africa had wanted to build the new stadium closer to the townships, from where most of the local football (soccer) fans will come to see the matches next year. But FIFA, governing body of world soccer, insisted on its being built close to the waterfront so that television coverage would be able to show Table Mountain in the background. No sense in showing the shacks of Khayelitsha and spoiling the big-screen HD view of the match between two quarter-finalists!
At any rate, we spent an hour or so prowling the stands of the market, and I bought a few items to remind me of my visit to South Africa. “You got this where?! Wow! Africa, huh? What’s that like?” About 11am, Bob and I decided to head back to the ship, and the ladies headed off to the botanical gardens.
I joined Bob for lunch at a waterfront sandwich place, then he went shopping for safari clothes, and I went to the Nelson Mandela pier, from where the boat to Robbing Island departs. The 30-minute ride to the Island took us away from the waterfront and out into Table Bay. The island sits about 8 miles offshore, surrounded by the very cold and very shark infested waters of the bay. Table Bay and the waters off the Cape of Good Hope are where naturalists, documentary filmmakers, and the Cousteau Society people go to view great whites up close and personal. Many students from the ship, in fact, signed up for cage dives in order to have intimate encounters with the beasts. Initial reports are that the dives lived up to the hype. At any rate, the sharks and frigid waters combine to make Robbin Island South Africa’s Alcatraz—a very secure place to throw criminals and political prisoners.
After stepping off the hydrofoil, the 200-or-so of us who made the trip were hustled onto waiting busses for a drive around the island, culminating in a walking tour of the maximum security prison where Mandela spent 18 his 28 years as a prisoner of the government. Our tour guide on the bus was Yassim Mohammad, who lives permanently on the island and may have been a prisoner himself at one time—he was circumspect about the exact circumstances that led him there. But regardless of his background, Yassim, a man in his late 60s or early 70s, neatly dressed in sweater, white shirt, and pressed slacks, and sporting a tiny white goatee on his tan chin, treated us to almost 2 hours of stories and wisecracks as we circled the island. He reminded me of a gentle, though very dramatic, Don Rickles, with endless cracks about the nationalities of the passengers. From Yassim’s stand-up act: “We have the Australians to thank for all the rabbits on the island. The first rabbit came here to help control the spread of eucalyptus, but once here all they did was breed. And you know what they say about rabbits: they breed like Australians.” And “You all know how Indians play football [soccer]: you give them a corner, and they set up a stand.” Folks, he had a million of ‘em.
But Yassim was also a wealth of knowledge about the island and the history of political prisoners who were sent there during the harshest years of apartheid. We spent several minutes at the limestone quarry, for instance, where he told of how Nelson Mandela and hundreds of others moved tons of limestone from one end of the quarry to another day after day in the blazing sun, which, when reflected off the brilliant whiteness of the limestone, burns one’s eyes into blindness. Today, photographers aren’t permitted to take flash photos of Mandela because of the sensitivity of his eyes to light following many years in the quarry.
The quarry also become a sort of university, where the political prisoners, many of whom were doctors, professors, and other well educated South Africans, would teach each other various subjects as they passed hauling limestone in the quarry. As Yassim told us the story of the “quarry degrees,” I thought about the US POWs held in Hanoi prisons during the war. They, too, held classes during the years in the Hanoi Hilton and other POW camps around the city, often tapping out lessons to other POWs in code. It was in the quarry, according to Yassim, that Mandela developed and taught his policy of reconciliation—basically forgive-but-don’t-forget—to fellow resistance leaders. That policy, based on the teachings of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, became the foundation of Mandela’s government after he was elected president in ’93. Yassim referred to it as the 3-M principle—Mandela, Martin, and Mahatma—mined from the limestone quarry.
Yassim also told of escorting dignitaries around the island, including Hillary Clinton (“Her husband couldn’t join her. He was working in the White House. [wry smile]”) and then-Senator Barack Obama (“I asked him not to tell President Bush about the WWII guns still in place on the island. Bush might invade here claiming we have weapons of mass destruction.”)
Finally, we arrived at the maximum-security prison, said goodbye to Yassim as we stepped off the bus, and were greeted by another guide who had, indeed, spent several years as a political prisoner on the island. I didn’t get his name, but I did get his history, including years of underground fighting against the apartheid government. In June, 1976, he had been present in Soweto when the grade-school students demonstrated against the Afrikaans language they were being taught in their classrooms. In the ensuing encounter with police, hundreds of the unarmed students where shot, most of them in the back while trying to run away from the police.
The prison has been tidied up considerably from the way it must have looked during its active years. Still, it’s a stark place: long barracks that held 60 to 70 prisoners in rooms slightly larger than the family room in my house; guard towers sticking up around the perimeter; high walls topped by razor-edged concertina wire; every building a steel gray.
We walked into one of the prisoner barracks and sat around the perimeter as the guide told us about a typical day for most of the former population: early rise, small meal, out to the quarry or around the prison for maintenance, some exercise, another meal, back to the barracks. Every day was the same for, in many cases, a life term.
Then we went to a complex where the political prisoners were held. Here, two buildings and a high wall surrounded a courtyard where Mandela and the others were allowed outside their cells for 20 minutes of recreation each day. Otherwise, these “special cases” remained in their cells or in the quarry all day. And political prisoners weren’t allowed to mingle with the murderers, thieves, and rapists for fear the former might contaminate the latter.
Finally, we were led into one of the buildings, and halfway down the cell-lined corridor, we passed a single cell, about 8’X8’, furnished with a think mat and pillow along one wall and a 1-foot-square table under a window lined with thick bars. This is where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his life. Seeing these conditions, it’s remarkable that he didn’t develop absolute rage at the government that was imprisoning him. But he didn’t, becoming, instead, a very wise and, from all reports, a very gentle and forgiving leader. Based on what I’ve seen, that attitude seems pervasive in South Africa.
At 6pm, we reboarded the hydrofoil and returned to the V&A waterfront. I went to the ship for a quick dinner. Then I packed a few things in my roll-aboard suitcase and was about to go to bed when Jim Cooper called to remind me of our 4:30am pickup time for the trip to the airport. He also said that, according to the trip instructions, we were allowed no more than 18 pounds of carry-on luggage and that we “have to” carry on because of the tight connection in Johannesburg. I went to Jim & Shamim’s room, weighed my bag on their hand-held scale, and discovered that, without my backpack, I already was toting 29 pounds. Jim and Shamim strongly encouraged me to unpack all but, essentially, a pair of clean underwear and a toothbrush. But I decided to chance it. Monday morning, I showed up with my roll-aboard—all 29 pounds—and a backpack loaded with cameras and my laptop.
I had no problems. Security for the domestic flight was similar to US pre-flight security except we didn’t have to remove our shoes, they didn’t require liquids in a zip-lock bag, and, despite my metal knee, I wasn’t subjected to a wanding, only a cursory pat-down. I’m sure security for international flights in more rigorous, but checking in for the Cape Town-to-Johannesburg was no more difficult—easier, in fact—than checking in for a flight from Chicago to Cleveland.
After a 90-minute flight to Jo-Burg, we were carted to the charter side of the airport for the Federal Air flight to West Madikwe. By 11:45am, we were sitting in Impodimo Lodge enjoying a welcome drink and waiting for our rooms to be readied.
03 October 2009
Day 41--Cape Town
3 October. In port, Cape Town, South Africa
Words can’t do justice to this very beautiful city, sitting at the base of what they call Table Mountain. So I’ll post pictures on Facebook. Suffice to say that we’re docked adjacent to the Table Bay 5-star hotel, at the Victoria & Alfred waterfront, steps away from the low-rise, Dutch-colonial-style old city. And, as if custom ordered by SAS, the sky is cloudless, the wind is nonexistent, and the temperature is a perfect 75 Farenheit.
I have no firm plans for the next two days other than to explore the city, probably take a ride to the top of the mountain, maybe cruise to Robbin Island, where Mandela was imprisoned for almost 30 years, perhaps take a train down to Simon's Town, the farthest south suburb, which sits on an False Bay. Tonight I’ve been invited to join Jim and Shamim for a drive down toward the Cape of Good Hope to buy some wine and have dinner in “the oldest restaurant in South Africa.” Tomorrow morning I’ll take in the Sunday market. Then, Monday morning, we head off on safari.
It’s wonderful to be tied up to land and looking forward to 6 days in what those who have been here before say is the most beautiful country in the world. We’ll see. Being here, looking forward to those days, almost takes away the sting of Chicago’s loss of the 2016 Olympics.
Almost.
Words can’t do justice to this very beautiful city, sitting at the base of what they call Table Mountain. So I’ll post pictures on Facebook. Suffice to say that we’re docked adjacent to the Table Bay 5-star hotel, at the Victoria & Alfred waterfront, steps away from the low-rise, Dutch-colonial-style old city. And, as if custom ordered by SAS, the sky is cloudless, the wind is nonexistent, and the temperature is a perfect 75 Farenheit.
I have no firm plans for the next two days other than to explore the city, probably take a ride to the top of the mountain, maybe cruise to Robbin Island, where Mandela was imprisoned for almost 30 years, perhaps take a train down to Simon's Town, the farthest south suburb, which sits on an False Bay. Tonight I’ve been invited to join Jim and Shamim for a drive down toward the Cape of Good Hope to buy some wine and have dinner in “the oldest restaurant in South Africa.” Tomorrow morning I’ll take in the Sunday market. Then, Monday morning, we head off on safari.
It’s wonderful to be tied up to land and looking forward to 6 days in what those who have been here before say is the most beautiful country in the world. We’ll see. Being here, looking forward to those days, almost takes away the sting of Chicago’s loss of the 2016 Olympics.
Almost.
02 October 2009
Day 40--Off South Africa enroute to Cape Town
2 October. 29° 43” S, 15° 56” E. Course = 150°. Speed = 20 knots
If territorial waters extended 250 miles offshore, I could say we just passed into South Africa. And, after 3 very cloudy, windy, cool, “lumpy” days at sea, the sun is finally out, the temperatures are going up, and the swells are beginning to unswell. These are good omens for the upcoming days in South Africa.
I’ve spent these days between Ghana and Cape Town focusing on classes, either refining the prep I did before we sailed or reading and commenting on the journals I received from my intercultural comm. and business comm students. It’s while grading essays that I have the most admiration for those who choose to make teaching a profession. The difficulty of reading 60-or-so papers, all on roughly the same subject, written by students whose writing skills—at least for many—are still works in progress, is something that must be experienced to be appreciated. A reviewer must go back and forth constantly between evaluating the thought and critiquing the mechanics—an exhausting process.
The good news is that most of my students have taken my “talk to me on paper” sermon to heart. The writing is much clearer, the grammar is more correct (which must mean that many of the errors I saw in the first batch sprung from carelessness more than ignorance), the content is more interesting . . . though still very much the same from paper to paper.
So now I’m starting to see the writing migrate into the three broad categories: highly skilled, highly unskilled, and the broad range in the middle. The rewards happen when a student moves up or, at least, acknowledges that he or she needs work and wants to do the work to improve. My experience is that most students are perfectly content staying where they are. The movers make teaching worthwhile.
We’ve had two excellent lectures on South African history over the past couple of days, and, now that my classes are over and Friday happy hour is almost here, I can start thinking about and looking forward to Cape Town. Like most Americans, I’m familiar with the evils of apartheid and know that Nelson Mandela became president of the country in the early ‘90s, effectively ending the policy. What I wasn’t familiar with was the history that led to what were genuinely horrific years for Black South Africans, especially after the Afrikaners’—descendents (loosely) of the Dutch who established a foothold at the southern end of the continent in the 17th century—took firm control of the government in the 60’s.
Now the country—still a highly developed, very wealthy nation—is in the throes of big-time culture change. As we’ve learned, racial violence, including black-on-white violence, has fallen dramatically under the leadership of the African National Congress, which is the party of Mandela and his successors. But crime rates have soared to among the highest in the world. Cape Town’s numerous gangs roam the streets to prey on anyone who isn’t alert. They hijack cars in broad daylight (a recently passed So. African law allows unaccompanied women drivers to run red lights), they lurk around ATMs, they ply the crowds looking for pockets to pick. All this as a result of the extreme disparity in wealth that still exists, a remnant of the apartheid years.
So we’ll be arriving in a port that is both beautiful and dangerous. The message has come through very clearly. We’ll see how carefully the 550 students and 100+ faculty and staff remember the message once we wake to see ourselves sailing into the welcoming arms of what everyone says is one of the world’s most spectacular harbors. I can’t help thinking a little of Odysseus and the sirens.
But I also know we all can’t wait to get off the boat!
If territorial waters extended 250 miles offshore, I could say we just passed into South Africa. And, after 3 very cloudy, windy, cool, “lumpy” days at sea, the sun is finally out, the temperatures are going up, and the swells are beginning to unswell. These are good omens for the upcoming days in South Africa.
I’ve spent these days between Ghana and Cape Town focusing on classes, either refining the prep I did before we sailed or reading and commenting on the journals I received from my intercultural comm. and business comm students. It’s while grading essays that I have the most admiration for those who choose to make teaching a profession. The difficulty of reading 60-or-so papers, all on roughly the same subject, written by students whose writing skills—at least for many—are still works in progress, is something that must be experienced to be appreciated. A reviewer must go back and forth constantly between evaluating the thought and critiquing the mechanics—an exhausting process.
The good news is that most of my students have taken my “talk to me on paper” sermon to heart. The writing is much clearer, the grammar is more correct (which must mean that many of the errors I saw in the first batch sprung from carelessness more than ignorance), the content is more interesting . . . though still very much the same from paper to paper.
So now I’m starting to see the writing migrate into the three broad categories: highly skilled, highly unskilled, and the broad range in the middle. The rewards happen when a student moves up or, at least, acknowledges that he or she needs work and wants to do the work to improve. My experience is that most students are perfectly content staying where they are. The movers make teaching worthwhile.
We’ve had two excellent lectures on South African history over the past couple of days, and, now that my classes are over and Friday happy hour is almost here, I can start thinking about and looking forward to Cape Town. Like most Americans, I’m familiar with the evils of apartheid and know that Nelson Mandela became president of the country in the early ‘90s, effectively ending the policy. What I wasn’t familiar with was the history that led to what were genuinely horrific years for Black South Africans, especially after the Afrikaners’—descendents (loosely) of the Dutch who established a foothold at the southern end of the continent in the 17th century—took firm control of the government in the 60’s.
Now the country—still a highly developed, very wealthy nation—is in the throes of big-time culture change. As we’ve learned, racial violence, including black-on-white violence, has fallen dramatically under the leadership of the African National Congress, which is the party of Mandela and his successors. But crime rates have soared to among the highest in the world. Cape Town’s numerous gangs roam the streets to prey on anyone who isn’t alert. They hijack cars in broad daylight (a recently passed So. African law allows unaccompanied women drivers to run red lights), they lurk around ATMs, they ply the crowds looking for pockets to pick. All this as a result of the extreme disparity in wealth that still exists, a remnant of the apartheid years.
So we’ll be arriving in a port that is both beautiful and dangerous. The message has come through very clearly. We’ll see how carefully the 550 students and 100+ faculty and staff remember the message once we wake to see ourselves sailing into the welcoming arms of what everyone says is one of the world’s most spectacular harbors. I can’t help thinking a little of Odysseus and the sirens.
But I also know we all can’t wait to get off the boat!
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