Frontier Weekend

Hello Comrades,

I hope everyone is doing fine today.  Hopefully there aren’t too many suffering from a case of the Monday’s today.  This past weekend was a fun one here in SA.  The whole group took a trip inland to a farm for the weekend.  The farm was in the shadow of The Great Winterberg Mountain which is the third largest mountain in SA.  A pair of families hosted our group to accommodate the entire group.

View of the area

The first thing to note is that the farms are primarily animals.  There are cows, chickens, and sheep just like farms in Minnesota.  Unlike farms in Minnesota, there are eland, springbok, kudu, and other animals indigenous to SA.  Obviously since it is very mountainous, the land is not ideal for crops like the breadbasket of the US.  Farming is what the Afrikaners took a liking to after settling in Cape Town in the 177^th century.  I’m not accustomed to life on a farm at all.  I am a city boy, so most of the activities we did were my first experiences with them. 

We left early Friday and arrived in time for a late lunch.  Following that, we visited a nice river to swim in with various waterfalls.  That was obviously very cool to do.  When we returned to the farm though, we help round up some of the sheep in the pen.  The reason we did this was to castrate the sheep.  Yes, that was new to me.  I guess it serves a couple different purposes.  The first is so that the wool doesn’t get infected or tainted.  Basically, the tail will eventually fall off which is a great place for maggots and bugs to get in the wool and infect it.  The second is for breading purposes.  The best bulls are bought, so the ones on the farm are just used for their wool.  We then had a late dinner before playing guitar and entertaining each other before splitting up for bed.

The mountain we climbed

On Saturday, we went to a neighbor’s plot of land to climb a mountain.  On our way around the land we stopped at where they sheer the sheep to watch a couple of sheep getting a hair-cut.  It is amazing how much wool comes from one sheep.  All of the roads are dirt and filled with huge holes which made are main mode of transportation fun (the back of a bakkie- a pick-up truck).  We were able to drive a large portion up the mountain.  By looking at the final peak, I thought it would be a quick trek up.  Nope, the height is misleading, and there is always another peak at the top.  The view was phenomenal because you can see the entire valley filled with various villages and farms.  The landscape is quite different from that on the coast, and you really can see the “bush” that Africa is known for having.

Riding around in the bakkies

Later, we went to the other families house were we relaxed by their pool, played tennis on their court, or chatted with our hosts on the patio.  It is definitely a different side from what we have seen.  Another first followed this, shooting a gun.  The owner brought out a 22 gauge rifle, and we were all given one shot at hitting the bulls-eye on a target.  My shot was not very close, but it was not the furthest either.  It is a good thing I don’t have to hunt for my own food.  The owner then showed us his gun case and trophy room.  He has quite the collection of both.  The trophy room was particularly cool because it was decorated with everything on the walls from a giraffe to a zebra to a wildebeest. 

Trophy Room

Sunday we did a different hike which ended at a cool canyon with a swimming hole that we swam in.  Maybe one of the coolest places I’ve seen yet because after swimming through part of the canyon it opened up to various ledges and a crevasse with a very cool waterfall.  At the base of the waterfall was a pool where you could sit and relax.  I was not able to get any pictures because I needed to swim to the spot.  The mystique will have to remain a legend.  The land over all was very cool.  I don’t think I could live like that though.  The distance to town is too far, and I need to be in an area with something going on.  The trip was a blast though.

I will probably not post again for a couple weeks because we are taking a big trip to Cape Town.  We leave Thursday the 29^th and we will not get back until April 9^th for “fall” break.  The entire time there will be packed with activities.  Among the activities are bungee jumping at the world’s highest bungee, an international jazz fest   (with Atmosphere- a Minnesota artist who is one of my favorites), climbing table mountain, visiting Robben Island, a wine tour, homestays (in the townships).  Those are just some of the activities amongst many that will be fun.  It is the trip that I am looking forward to most on the trip along with most of the group.  There will be plenty to do, so I will probably need to split up the posts. 

Until then, thanks for reading!  Congrats to the Osseo Boys team for being state champs, great work.

Cheers,

Bobby

Human Rights Day

Hey Everyone,

So I decided to post a link to our Shosholoza video on Facebook.  I don't think you need a profile to view it, but if you do let me know and I will try another way.  Now, there are no music majors in our group and overall no amazing singers and we were taught this song in 20 minutes, so considering those circumstances, I think it turned out really well.  This is our show for the NMMU choir who sang for us in return after.  They were much better than us(Sorry, no video of them).  I have posted a video of a flash mob they did last July in the big shopping center here in PE, so check them out.

Shosholoza

NMMU Choir Flash Mob

Otherwise, yesterday was Human Rights Day in honor of the Sharpeville Massacre.  The event was on March 21, 1960 when a large group in the Sharpeville Township (about 35 miles south of Johannesburg) protested the Pass Laws of Apartheid which forced people to carry a pass stating where they were allowed to be.  Blacks could therefore not go into a white area unless in their pass their employer allowed it during the day.  The police on the scene had live ammunition and fired on the protesters killing 69 and wounding more than 350.  The worst part about it was, almost all of the bullet wounds were found to be in the back as people were running away.  


In honor of that event, we had class off which I spent finishing my 18 page paper on the transition stage of 1990-1994.  This period was after Apartheid, but before Democracy.  More people died during those 4 years than in the prior 300 years of the country, and that includes Apartheid and the South African War (Anglo-Boer Wars).  It was a hectic time in the country which is why the end result is considered a miracle.

Thanks for reading as always!

Cheers,
Bobby

Learning about the City

Hey Everyone,

This week was not overly scheduled with activities.  As I mentioned in the short post on Thursday, I had a few papers due during the week with another next week.  Yes, I am taking classes here and getting an education.  I need to remind myself of that with the ocean view, trips around the country, and general summer weather creating quite the distractions.  I must apologize once again for not having the Shosholoza video up yet again.  I borrowed it from one of my comrades here, and did not foresee this much trouble in getting it online. 

We had an interesting speaker come talk to us in literature class this week.  Her name was Janet Cherry.  She is a white woman that was part of the liberation struggle actively during the 80’s.  She spent various stints in jail, and gave us a bit of information on what was going on in the Port Elizabeth area for the struggle.  We also saw a video where she was interviewed.  It was really cool to be able to see footage of places we recognized and be able to understand the context of what she was saying.

 

On Friday, which was apparently one of the craziest days of the tournament ever, I went to the downtown area with Chris to check it out.  We really wanted to see more of the city that we live in.  It was really great, so much life and energy.  The main stretch of Govan Mbeki Ave is filled with all kinds of shops and stores.  There are also many side stands where people sell fruit or crafts.  I enjoy the South African style.  They wear a lot of vibrant colored polo’s which I plan to get a few to wear.  I am looking to accumulate more polo’s anyway. 

I hope everyone had a nice St. Patrick’s Day.  It is not celebrated here, at all.  Our group wore green and had a nice braai (barbecue) which was fun.  After we finished with the braai, there was a semi-professional rugby player and his dad that started cooking.  His team is from East London and they played a game earlier in the afternoon.  A couple of us had a really interesting conversation with them.  They were very paranoid about the crime in South Africa.  Many of the native white people seem to be that we have talked with.  They would never go to the downtown area because they were scarred of being robbed and jumped.  They were also scarred that the car was parked out in the small lot with no shelter.  They were surprised that we use the Kombi’s to get to school and back.  I have found that many of the white South Africans have these fears about their country.  Much of it is from the unknown.  They just assume the worst about the things they don’t know.  This father and son were great people and we had a great time chatting with them (they laughed at us telling them we grill patties back in the states).  I have noticed that there has just been a certain conditioning here.  There are some really great people here that show great hospitality, but many people are afraid to search for them.  As always there are some great improvements being made at all times with some great hope for the future.  Yes, we have to be vigilant at all times as well.  Being aware of surroundings is needed, but we have a smart group that has not had even one problem yet.

As always thanks for reading.  Next weekend we will visit a farm and learn about the rural life in South Africa with a trip to Cape Town the week after, so there are some fun weeks ahead.

Cheers,

Bobby

Shosholoza

Hey Everyone,

I must first apologize for not putting the video up earlier this week like I said I would.  The video is a different format than usual, and I need to figure out how to change it.  I may have to upload it to youtube and put a link on here.  This week has been pretty packed in school.  We had a couple of papers due in class, so I haven't done anything of huge note.  I decided to post a few photos for your enjoyment instead.

Walking on campus with Matt.

The soccer stadium from our balcony (the harbor is in front of the stadium).

The break area at Pendla.  Where we play games like soccer.

The courtyard that all the classes surroung at Pendla.

A monkey in a tree above us at Hogsback.

One of the signs on campus. 

The drivers in SA drive much more aggresive than back in Minnesota.  They honk a lot more, but more as a hello.  I have actually been surprised.  We have only seen one little fender bender since coming here.

As always, thanks for reading! 

Cheers,

Bobby

National Anthem-Hogsback

Hey Everybody,

I hope everyone is having a great day today.  As always, it was an exciting week.  I’ll start off by giving you all the Pendla update.  This week was hectic at the primary school.  The teacher we work with has done a good job of allowing us an opportunity to teach them English and read to the students.  During this time, she usually leaves us alone with the students.  The problem with this is that she leaves us alone with the students for way too long.  We do not have enough activities to keep them entertained and focused for the entire time, so after a while it is very hectic in the room.  The kids don’t respect us as an enforcer like they do their teacher.  They think we are there to play with them, and speaking Xhosa gives them a tool against us.  I did make a seating chart with the names of the students.  I know a good amount of the students, but not quite all of them.  Each trip to the school brings a full day of energy and excitement which is great to see.

 Some of the students in my class.

(The girls wear the yellow dresses while the boys wear the tan)

In music class we learned the history of the national anthem Nkosi Sikelel ‘iAfrika along with how to sing the song.  The song includes 5 of the official languages of the country (Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Afrikaans, English).  It is truly a beautiful song with the first verse a Xhosa/Zulu hymn which is where the song gets its name.  Certain groups will only sing the part of the song that they know.  If any of you have seen the movie Invictus which is based on the Rugby World Cup shortly after Mandela was elected president, this can be seen.  At the rugby game we noticed that the fans would at least mumble or hum the parts that they did not know.  They are teaching the entire version to kids now-a-days as part of the unifying goal of the country.  We also learned the unofficial national anthem of the country Shosholoza.  This song comes from the sound of a train (SHO-SHO-SHO-SHO), and is about the train picking up workers to work in the mines which has been the biggest business for the country the past century.  We sang the song to the NMMU choir and in turn they sang for us.  I will try and post the video tomorrow.  Unfortunately, it will use up too much of my internet here at my flat, so I will use the school’s internet.

The South African countryside.

Many of you read my post from last week where I commented on the government.  The government here is doing a great job.  One thing that shows this is its spending.  1/5 of government spending goes to education.  That is 20% for those of you not great at math.  Now if you know anything about the US spending, that is quite a bit higher of a percentage.  It really shows that the government realizes that education is the key to a better life, and is backing it up.  Also, there was a very large strike last Wednesday.  It was supposedly the biggest strike since the free era of ’94.  It was going to just be a Johannesburg strike dealing with some toll booths that are being built, but it spread nationwide.  We were notified on Tuesday that we might not have class on Wednesday because the university might have to shut down if there weren’t enough employees.  Don’t worry; we still had class as it was not quite as big as expected.  During the day there were about 10,000 people that marched around downtown.  Port Elizabeth is similar to Detroit, but they are quick to point out that the industry is growing here.  The car industry was hit worst as the GM plant reported 85% of hourly employees did not show up for work that day.  One thing that I am impressed with in South Africa is the way they deal with problems.  They are great at really talking things out and taking a very open mind into the conversations.  Sometimes this can drag out a process which would cause a go-go American to become impatient, but I am sure that this will be worked out just fine.

This past weekend I travelled with a small group to Hogsback.  It is a little town North of PE and slightly East.  The town is situated in the mountains which look like a hog’s back at the various peaks.  We stayed at a backpackers hostile and hiked through the mountains on Friday afternoon and Saturday.  We were able to see some really great mountains along with a few pretty neat waterfalls.  There was also a swimming hole at the bottom of one of the waterfalls that we stopped and swam in.  We were literally walking around in the jungle and there were multiple monkeys that would be swinging on vines above us.  On the way there, we made a 3 hour car ride into a 7 hour ride on the way there because we took a wrong turn.  We were not discouraged, and that is probably why we went so far before realizing that we were not going the right way.  The landscape was so nice.  We would be driving on the side of a rocky mountain one minute, and be looking over a stretch of open savannah the next.  We also made a few stops.  One particular stop was in the town of Alice shortly before we arrived at Hogsback.  The reason for this stop was because that is where the University of Fort Hare is located.  In reading Mandela’s autobiography, we learned that this is where Mandela went to college for the first time. It was very cool to walk around a place that we read about and where Mandela really grew as a person so much.

 Some pictures from Hogsback.

Thanks for reading! I appreciate all the support from everyone.  If you have any comments, please feel free to leave them.  Also, if there is something that you would like for me to post about that you read about or have heard is going on, just send me or my parents an e-mail.  I would love to give my observations about the matter.  Today is Selection Sunday for college basketball.  March Madness is my favorite time of the year for sports, but it is worth it to be experiencing all that I am here in South Africa.  I will still be completing a bracket, but I haven’t watched a game in well over a month.  I want to wish Sam and Gonzaga good luck along with Michael and the Osseo basketball team as they head into their respective post-seasons.

Cheers,

Bobby

Politics and Surfing

Hey Everyone,

It was a full week between posts and a full week of life in South Africa.  On Monday we had volunteering in the morning as usual.  Ryan Fuchs and I have become the IT staff for the school.  The two computers that the office uses were freezing about 30 seconds after they were turned on.  They had just put on new anti-virus which was competing with the old anti-virus.  We just had to remove the old anti-virus.  The teachers can use computers just fine, but they don’t understand some of the little things.  I am planning on setting up a seminar to teach them some more about keeping the computers safe and working.  Later on our music class visited St. Dominic Priory High School for a presentation from their marimba group.  The school itself was very nice, and was much more diverse than I expected while driving up.  The group gave us a great show, and it was fun to go on a field trip for the first time in a while.

Marimba Show

After that it was on to the rugby game at NMMU.  The Varsity Cup is the league that the team plays in, and it is a similar atmosphere to a football game.  Some of the student section was chanting longer than I have ever seen before.  The energy was awesome.  The Madibaz are apparently not very good, but they won on a last second field goal that bounced off the cross-bar in.  There is no clock on the score board, so the reason we knew it was last second was from the team rushing out to celebrate.  No storming of the field for the fans though because the field is surrounded by barbed-wire fencing.  We will surely go tomorrow for the last home game of the season since they are not going to be playing there in the playoffs.  One thing that is different is the fact that the players get paid after games.  That would certainly be a nice bonus. 

On Wednesday morning we had a class dealing with our volunteer sites.  We meet in this class every couple of weeks or so, and do it to help us organize our projects and gauge how the volunteering is going.  Pendla Primary School is in my opinion the most frustrating site of the three that our group is split between.  The reason I say this is because the other two sites of Missionvale Care Center and House of Resurrection are run by people with similar goals as we have.  The teachers are assigned to Pendla; and although they want the best for the students, it is treated as an obligation more than as a passion.  Maybe I was just lucky to have many great teachers growing up that went above and beyond what was in their contract, but that is just my opinion.  Our major plan is to get a library check-out system that the students can use.

On Thursday we had a guest speaker lecture to us about the transition years from 1990-1994.  The main focus was on the many meetings between the last president of the National Party during Apartheid President F.W. deKlerk and future president Nelson Mandela.  The two received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 because of how they handled the situation.  The professor certainly had a different view from what we have seen thus far here.  He, of Afrikaner ethnicity, was very critical of Mandela.  He discussed the differences between the Zulu led En Carta and Mandela led African National Congress (ANC) which was predominately Xhosa.  The National Party knew it was going to lose the election of 1994, and it wanted En Carta to gain the upper hand after the talks, but that didn’t happen.  He regarded Mandela as a communist and the entire ANC as radicals which can be true to a point.  George Washington and the colonists were a bit radical as well.  Just from listening to him he focused more on the various tribes and differences more than any other speaker we have seen. 

The current president of the country is Jacob Zuma.  His political party is the ANC.  The ANC has won every election since 1994, and are doing a great job at riding the coattails of liberating the country.  The political system is corrupt at the moment though.  There is no Mandela amongst the current leaders and it is based much more on who you know rather than the most deserving.  This has lead to a large gap in the country.  There is a belief from many people that the government will come and build them a house or give them a handout.  I have met a few students at the university from some of the bordering countries, and they have all seen that in South Africa.  Zimbabwe, for example, is not as rich as South Africa, but a poor person in Zimbabwe is better off than a poor person in SA.  Part of the problem is that of South Africa’s population of 50 million, only 5 million make enough money to pay taxes.  About 25-30 million are unemployed.  This leads to lots of beggars in the streets of which I see every day. 

Beggar searching our garbage

The next election or two, and just the future in general should be exciting for SA.  The young generation that was born after Apartheid, and therefore not immediately effected, is growing of age to make their mark.  The ANC did not win in a landslide in the last election as in previous ones, and much of the country is not as patient as they were in the 90’s.  I think that this will lead to some really progressive steps made in the next decade. 

The group before surfing

This past weekend was really great.  A group of 12 of us went to Jeffery’s Bay to go surfing.  My flat mates and I took lessons on Friday afternoon while the girls went horseback riding.  We paid about $30 dollars for a two hour session, but we were out riding the waves for about 3 hours.  The instructor was a 26 year old guy that has been surfing for his entire life, and is really just living a simple life.  I was able to get it fairly quickly, and by the end of the session was regularly getting up and shredding.  We had a great braai (barbecue) that night and had a great chance to bond with the 12 of us at the hostile we stayed at.  In the morning the girls took lessons while we rented a couple boards to surf with them.  Overall, a great experience with some great friends. 

Cooking the braai

Thanks for reading.  Cheers!

Bobby

Surfing