South Africa - English

Alright. So, over a month and four countries into my trip, I finally caved. Here’s my blog. It’s even bilingual for your convenience, so y’all better write me replies.

I will try to fill in Spain, Morocco, and Ghana at a later date, but as of right now, here’s my six days in soccer nation:

As much as I loved my time down here, immigration was a bigger hassle than any other country so far. Starting at six, we were called over the PA by decks (“Seas”) to report to the immigration officials with our passports, so there went all chance of sleep. Dogs were brought on board to check for drugs and stowaways. A couple of international students (from Asian countries) ended up not being allowed off the ship at all because a new law was passed just a week or two ago that now requires them to have visas. I don’t think us Westerners realize how privileged we are in that regard.

Strangely enough, when we finally made it off the ship, there was nothing to indicate that we were actually in Africa. White people! White people everywhere! The V&A Waterfront, which was where we were docked, is a gigantic shopping mall/entertainment center, so not only is it where all the tourists go, it’s also one of the richer areas, meaning that predominantly white people work there. Not that it’s not worth seeing, or that it wasn’t nice to have wifi and souvenir shops again after going completely without in Ghana, but even Table Mountain in the background didn’t make it feel any less American.

I finally made it away from the Waterfront on the second day to go to Boulders Beach to see penguins, and that feeling that I was back in the States? Did not go away. Landscape wise, the rolling hills look a lot like California in the winter time, and add the 60 Degree weather complete with wind and fog, and you feel like you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere and made it back to San Francisco. Although the penguins were new. Boulders Beach is allegedly a warm water beach where all the penguins hang out and you can go swimming with them if you’re lucky. We were not lucky. The water was freezing cold, and all the penguins were huddled up between the rocks to keep warm. But we still managed to get plenty of awesome pictures, with and without penguins. Penguins may be sleek and elegant in the water, but on dry land, their awkwardness even outdoes camels. Also, one of them attacked my friend’s camera, so if a penguin ever cocks its head at you, be wary. It’s not trying to be cute.

But, as awesome as the penguins were, they cannot live up to my Safari. It was just a day trip to a small private reserve called Aquila, but man, did I get to see animals. My roommate Amanda had happened to sign up for the same trip, and it also happened to be her birthday the day before, so we were pretty groggy on the way there. We had amazing breakfast though and got to see ostriches and buffalo out the windows. Amanda took forever to get ready, so in an amazing stroke of luck, we ended up being on the last ATV. We were only four people total, as opposed to the 9-12 in the other vehicles, so we got to thoroughly talk to our guide, who took us really close to the elephants and giraffes, let us touch a mountain tortoise, and even let us duck under the outer fence at the leopard cage so we could take better pictures. We actually got to see all of the Big Five, the five most dangerous animals to hunt: Buffalo, Rhinos, Elephants, Lions, and Leopards. The leopard was in a cage, mind you, because they had just recently rescued it from an organization that was breeding it as hunting game and were still trying to get it used to the idea of outdoor living, but it was incredibly beautiful. Elephants and rhinos and buffalos are all impressive because they’re big, and lions are impressive because they’re lions (and they were posing on a rocky ledge, so that had a big Lion King vibe to it), but the leopard was actually gorgeous to look at. Needless to say, I had a great time. I usually don’t enjoy SAS trips too much, but the Safari was just all around an awesome experience.

Aside from the last day, the rest of my time in South Africa (2 and a half days) was dedicated to a service project for my leadership class. Originally we had wanted to talk about dental hygiene because two of the people in our group are studying to be doctors or dentists, so we contacted an organization called Youth For Christ that (among other things) supports a small community of farm workers and a local school. Originally we were going to work with the farm community, but then were told that our efforts would be more valuable at the school. Well, we went to visit the school on the first day of our project, only to be told by one of the two teachers that we were working with that he would much rather we inspired the kids, showed them a world beyond school and home. Of course, our first thought was to take the kids out to actually see the world, because even though the beach is maybe ten minutes of driving time away, a lot of them have never actually seen it. Unfortunately our plans were nixed by the principal who told us that since recently, field trips have to be pre-approved by the government two months in advance because a lot of schools were undertaking field trips in unsafe transportation and many children ended up dying in car accidents. So we decided instead tell them about our lives, show them pictures, play games to teach them how to think outside the box. It wasn’t anything like we had originally intended, but it was still great. All the kids wanted to hug, hold hands, sing for us, play games with us. We were still completely exhausted afterwards and ended up mostly just hanging out at the village. We did see a cow get slaughtered right there on the road, that is, we watched the dead body get hacked apart with axes. I really don’t know what it is with dead cows on this trip. It was fascinating, though.

We ended up only talking about dental hygiene for 15 minutes or so, but I would still call the trip a big success. Absolutely exhausting, but we made it!

My last day was dedicated to shark cage diving. It doesn’t really make sense considering that, you know, sharks scare me, but for some reason, I really wanted to go. No matter that almost everyone who went earlier that week either didn’t get to go because the seas were too rough or didn’t actually see any sharks, no matter that we had to be there at 7:30 and weren’t scheduled to be back until 5, a mere hour before on-ship time. It took us a good hour to find somewhere to anchor because the seas were so rough and ended up in an area where few sharks go this time of year, but we still gave it a shot. One of the crew people hacked up fishes to throw into the water to attract sharks, another had a tuna head on a rope to give the shark something visual to focus on. It took another hour or so, but then we finally got that call of “Shark! Shark! Shark!” and looked over the side just in time to see a gigantic dark shape disappear underneath the boat. Well, naturally we all rushed into the water. ;) I was in the first group, so the four of us climbed into the cage, which is really just a rusty bunch of iron bars with a couple of flotation devices. You stay above water until the crew yells at you to get down, then you hold your breath and duck under and hopefully see a shark swim right by the cage. And believe me when I say that the water is freezing cold. I wasn’t shivering, I was shaking. But funnily enough, the actual diving itself wasn’t half as terrifying as you’d think. Honestly, sharks are slightly goofy looking. I mean, they’re big, and their teeth are impressive enough that I wouldn’t want to be in the water with them without a cage between us, but sharks themselves really don’t look like much. But I still had a blast, I took some great pictures, and I think I aged five years on the way back because we passed a sign saying Cape Town 57 km at 20 minutes to five, and two minutes later the six lane highway suddenly turned into one lane in each direction. But we made it! No dock time for Mauritius. I even managed to drop off my postcards. :)

For me, what distinguished South Africa from the rest of the countries I’ve seen so far is the inequality. Yes, Ghana was incredibly poor, but at least everybody was poor. Going from the Waterfront to the farming community might as well have been going to another country. Apartheid hasn’t been over long, and although changes are happening, they’re slow. People were telling me about racist remarks they heard from white locals (who don’t even make up 10 percent of the population, so who are they to talk?), and the school we visited was all either black or colored children. And yes, there’s probably a reason why Cape Town is the most violent city in the world. There was just tension everywhere, and although I didn’t get to go to Robben Island, I think I’ve gotten a sense of the underlying conflict in this country. It scares me. Especially considering how similar the concept of blacks having to have passes during Apartheid is to the Arizona Immigration Bill, I think this is one topic where we all need to be extremely cautious.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed myself immensely. Between getting up early every day and going out every night, I barely slept for six days. I got stung by bugs, was freezing cold, got sunburned, and spent obscene amounts of money (compared to the other countries, at least). And it was totally worth it.

Lots of love from 30˚ 50.7S/030˚ 46.3E