The Burn and the Garden Route

The burn happened on a night before we were supposed to go into Monwabisi Park. We found out when we met downstairs in the morning that the community centre, youth centre, creche, soup kitchen, clinic and guest house, as well as the new back packers lodge that was under construction had all gone up in flames. This caused a wide variety of emotions, from anger and dispair to the desire to rebuild everything better than before. The cause of the fire was never actually discovered, but it was "determined" to be a candle tipping over, highly unlikely in a time of political unrest that a candle would demolish 80 shacks and buildings and render hundreds of people homeless. Part of the reason the fire was such a disaster was the flamibility of the construction materials of the shacks and the inability for fire trucks to access the site quickly. By the time the fire was put out, too much damage was done.

Even more disturbing is the fact that even now, the fire department has no desire to implement longer hoses or more fire safety plans, but instead stated that people could just use fire extinguishers. Di and Buyiswa have both been very strong throughout this process however, and believe that everything can be built back, stronger, more fire proof and better than ever. The burn site is difficult to see, the work of 10 years went up in flames, along with many peoples homes and livlihoods.

Now our projects have evolved to an Integrated Planning idea where we work to rebuild all of these buildings to be environmentally friendly and maximally effective. We are using our design and engineering skills to work on plans that we can show to city officials and potential donors so that they are more willing to approve the projeect and donate money. It is difficult, however, when our advisors sometimes disagree with our sponsors and there is a lapse in communication.

Our last free weekend in Cape Town was spent travelling the Garden Route, the N2 Highway up the coast from Cape Town to the Eastern Cape. It continues further up the Wild Coast, but we stopped at the eastern cape in the Tsitsikamma National Park. We left on Friday night and stayed in a backpackers lodge in Storms River. It was a long drive, but scenic, because our hired minibus driver drove way below the speed limit. We arrived at 1 am, and slept in triple bunk beds. We woke up early the next morning and travelled 20 minutes to the Bloukrans bridge, home to the highest commercial bungee jump in the world.

Walking out to the bridge was terribly scary. You travel on a narrow catwalk, and wear a safety belt. Before travelling out, they weigh everyone and write a label on their hands with this number. Luckily, its in kilos, so no one could tell how much anyone else weighed. Once out to the centre of the bridge, (some people ziplined there instead of walking), it was like a club. They encourage everyone to jump, and 4 people form our group did. At the last minute, I decided to... mostly because they told me that statistically it was the safest place in Africa, and because everyone said it wasn't as scary as they thought.

It was intense, falling for 8 seconds... a total of 203 m. But the whole process, bounces included is over in less than a minute. Bouncing was the worst... you're weightless and you arent sure when the drop will start again. That is incredibly scary. But the falling itself was just... fast. When you come ot a stop, someone is sent down on a rope to retreive you. I grabbed his legs and counted loudly the seconds until we reached the top of the bridge again. Hanging upside down waiting for him to arrive was by far the scariest part.

After the bridge adventure, we visited a water fall zipline, and did a zipline tour. That was more fun, and far less scary. Overall, the adventure weekend was a success and we toured the beautiful garden route of south africa.

Kruger Part 2

The safari started the next morning when we woke up at 5 am. The night was rough because we discovered scorpions in our shower and large burrowing spiders in the sand around our tents. The bartender talked to us about how many black mambas he'd seen in the past few years, and by the time I crawled into my tent, I was inspecting it for all of these undesirable animals. We also saw a large rhino beetle that was flying visciously, and was huge.

The safari itself was amazing. We saw four of the big five on the first day- elephants, rhinos, lions and buffalo, but we did not get to see a leapord. The big five are named as such because they are the five most dangerous animals in Africa. We also saw hippos, tons of zebra, impalas and giraffes. The lions we saw were sitting under a tree with their kill from the night before's hooves sticking up in the air. Which is really something you could only see in the wild, unlike the other safari that people went on where the lions were fed chicken daily in a certain place so they could be spotted easily. We drove around in greater than 100 degree F heat, and cooked our own meals and the African plains were as beautiful as I'd imagined. We cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast, and sandwiches for lunch, dinner varied each night but was usually pretty good. We took a night drive the first night of the safari, in a much larger tank like truck, as opposed to the pick up trucks with stadium seating we drove in during the day. Our guide was a middle aged Scottish man who was fun and knew a lot about the animals and the park, as he'd been a guide for 12 years. We didn't see any large cats on our night drive, which was slightly disappointing, but we did see lots of impala and other antelope hiding in the bushes.

At night we slept in Kruger park, and could hear hyenas rustling outside the fence around our tents. We had a large campfire both nights, and running water from a water tower near by that we climbed to watch the sun set. Hyenas are not tiny or cute. The first one I saw had a large amount of flesh torn from its shoulder and was much larger than a dog with broader shoulders. Supposedly they have one of the strongest jaws. The second day was similar, lots of driving, lots of animals, lots of pictures. The last day, we drove home- well back to Johannesburg where we flew home to St Johns.

On Sunday, we cooked a large Thanksgiving dinner for all the WPI students, as well as some of the St. John's staff. It was delicious, and made me more homesick than anything I'd done so far. Being away for Thanksgiving was easier when I pretended it wasn't happening, but when we ate it by ourselves in the lodge, it was fun but different and didn't feel like thanksgiving at all.

We recieved devastating news this week that our project centre, the Indlovu Project has burned to the ground. More details to follow on that.

Kruger Part 1

So, I know I haven't posted in a while, but there hasn't been much to write about, then this weekend was crazy. So, last week was a lot of work, and the weekend was a wash due to bad weather and a broken boat. I shopped and bought a lot of presents (for other people and for myself... :) ) So that was fun, and useful. We went to see the new James Bond movie, and its nice because a movie plus a medium popcorn and soda is R50. Sweet deal. Thats cheaper than JUST a movie in the states, and the theatres are pretty nice.

This week we finished up our first draft of the Atlas, and just received comments from our advisors today. That will be interesting. We also worked on Endlovini TV (Endlovini meaning strength in Xhosa) which was basically Oprah in Monwabisi but it was popular with residents, mostly, I suspect, because people like seeing themselves on TV. But they talked about important issues on it, such as safety in the community, why they moved there and teenage pregnancy and its problems. So, thats interesting. Its a lot of work though, but its filmed and written entirely by community members, so there is definitely a knowledge exchange, they are learning about the video equipment and techniques, and we're learning a lot about their culture.

On Tuesday, we left for Kreuger national park, and our safari. Ten of us went on the trip, and we flew to Jo'Burg on Tuesday night and stayed in an airport lodge. We got upgraded from Kulula to British Airways, which was much nicer and included dinner. I was surprised at the lack of security and precautions taken on the flight. We were allowed to bring basically anything in our carry ons, and they only checked our passports once when we bought our tickets, not at security. The airport lodge was decent, nicer than St. Johns, and in the suburbs of Johannesburg near the airport.

Our safari bus picked us up at the lodge at 6 am and we drove the 6 hours to Kruger. We stopped at several attractions and for food on the way. First was God's Window, but it was really foggy there. Its a rainforest area, so it generally is, but its in the mountains, and when clear offers great views of the valleys below. There were lots of interesting plants and loud insects there. After God's Window, we visited the three Rondevals which are round pieces of land sticking out of a the third largest (and worlds greenest) canyon, and the pot holes which are wierd sinkholes in the ground that are huge. It was all very beautiful, and I've never seen anything quite like these places. Rondevals are the traditional houses made with thatched roofs, and you can see in the picture that the land looks somewhat like them.

We spent our second night in the lodge outside Kruger, and spent time in the pool there, and ate a delicious dinner. There was a crazy bar tender who told the most ridiculous dirty jokes, which was entertaining, and there were children who came in and did tribal dances and encouraged all the guys to dance as well, luckily for me it was only guys who were encouraged to dance and I didn't have to.

And the internet is not letting me upload more pictures, so the safari itself will come tomorrow.

Pictures from top to bottom: Three Rondevals, Potholes, God's Window, Sunset from the jeep

Surfing and a tour of the Cape of Good Hope

Friday was the big Charrette about housing and water redevelopment. We all presented our ideas and work so far, as well as future work to the sponsors and members of the Street Committee, Monwabisi's informal government.

After the Charette we went out to a fancy Italian dinner on the Water front. It was the last day of the Volvo Boat Race's appearance in Cape Town, so the V and A was packed. Its funny because I can see how people think Americans are obnoxious. This restaurant was fancy, as in they took your napkin and put it on your lap for you... awkward. But, because in American terms dinner costs about 15 dollars, we were wearing jeans and sweatshirts, and were seated in the back. It was delicious though. After that long Friday, we went to Springbok the pub out by Newlands and the Rugby stadium. It was a lot of fun. Friday morning, we left on the train for Muizenberg, a very good surfing beach. Apparantly there are a lot of shark attacks there. The train was very sketchy. Apparantly, public transportation is not commonly used if you can take a taxi, you do. But it would have been about a 20 dollar cab ride each way (because it was like an hour away) and it was only R17 ($1.70) to take the trian round trip. The beach was beautiful, and warm because it is on the Indian Ocean. We rented surfboards and wetsuits for R100 for the whole day!! Which was really nice. I caught a few decent waves, although you have to paddle pretty far out to get past the mush which makes me slightly nervous.

Instead of seaweed being everywhere on the beach, there are large strands of kelp because there are kelp forests just off shore. The strands are about 20 feet long, and 4 inches in diameter and are scattered on the beach. There were also large jellyfish, but no sharks! After a long day of surfing and sunning ourselves we headed back on the train. We stayed in Saturday night because Sunday was planned as a tour of the Cape Point.

The tour of Cape Point picked us up in vans early on Sunday. We started by driving through Green Point (where we are staying, which is also apparantly frequented by American Celebrities), Sea Point, through Camps Bay, past Muizenberg and to a place where we took a boat to seal island. Which is literally a very very large rock COVERED in seals. Its kind of gross. We drove to Boulder Beach afterward to see the penguins! Which was slightly more exciting because you can get a lot closer to them. One of the people on the trip got bitten after trying to pet one. We drove to the Cape of Good Hope after, and biked several miles to the place where our picnic lunch was. There were LOTS of baboons. In the parking lots, in the roads, everywhere, just wild baboons. There were also ostriches on the beach. I never considered that these animals would just be wandering around outside of nature reserves, but they are.

After lunch we drove to the end of the cape, to the most south western point in Africa. That was fun, then we continued down the cape and climbed up the hill to the tip of the cape where the lighthouse is. (The funicular tram was broken) The views were beautiful and we could see the rock the Flying Dutchman ( and many other ships) crashed on. There we re artifacts in the little museum up there too. Despite popular belief the Cape Horn is NOT the southern most point in Africa. But it is where the Indian and Atlantic meet, and you can see a line in the water where it gets darker. After the hike up, we climbed back down and took the bus home. Overall a busy, but very fun weekend. I think that we have seen almost all of the touristy things in Cape Town now.


Pictures as follows: plant on a fence put there by a witch doctor, beach shacks on the beach at Muizenberg, where the oceans meet

What we've been doing in Monwabisi

So I guess a post about the work I'm doing here would be appropriate. Its kind of hard to explain, but I'll do the best I can. So, instead of writing our IQP report, our professors decided that we should combine all the group work and create an Atlas of Monwabisi Park. Since I am on the Communications Team, our job has been to initiate a co-researcher program in the park, and make it sustainable. We also had to analyze communication among the sectors involved (see diagram that I had to create to do this) and create a database logging all communication and contact information among the groups. We are also responsible for updating and re doing the Cape Town Project Centre website so that it is useful to current students, alumni and prospective students. Right now, its kind of useless. The other component is to create a "voice" for the community by using photos and their words to tell their stories which will be used in sponsor presentations and in the atlas. We work 40 hours a week on this project, or about that much and have weekends completely off to travel.

Tomorrow is the big Indaba/Charette involving all of our sponsors, advisors and other members of the park, and the rest of the students. In the morning, we will be giving our presentations about our projects (there are 6 groups of three or four students) and in the afternoon we will be drumming, getting our hair braided and eating. It should be a very good time, as well as a productive one.

Today I toured the Shabeens (or bars) with a member of the Mapping team and three co- researchers. Some were nicer than others, some had clients at 9 am on a Thursday. Deb got a marriage proposal (some man asked what he would have to do to make her stay in Africa and be his wife), we both got hit on quite a lot, but I guess we stood out in the bars, as definitely foreigners and probably Americans. We also got handed condoms by AIDS prevention workers, and this got our advisor Scott very excited and asking lots of awkward questions. But this is a step in the right direction, as very recently South Africa was denying that AIDS was a real disease and refused outside help.

We finally got to work out our presentation with the Co-Researchers, and we shall see how it goes tomorrow.

Wine Tours and Table Mountain

Friday night was fun. We went to a rugby club called the Springbok (which is South Africa's rugby mascot) and it was a good time, finally a club with people our age! We also tried absinthe, which is entertaining to drink. You pour a wine glass about a third full with it, and hold a spoon filled with sugar over the glass with a little bit of the liquid in it, then light the spoon on fire. When the sugar carmelizes, you stir it in, blow the flame out and drink the glass.

This is a picture of the first (and best) winery we went to in Stellenbosch.

The wine tour on saturday took us around Stellenbosch, to 4 different wineries. The first one was the most beautiful, and most stereotypical plantation. De Leuwen Jagt was the former name of it, which means the Lion Hunt in Afrikaans. We sat at tables on a lawn that overlooked the entire vinyard, and had mountains in the background. It was gorgeous. The next two wineries we went to were more modern, and very chic, but also beautiful. I don't like wine very much. So, all day I bought one bottle of dessert wine because it tastes like candy. It was a fun trip, and we got to check out the Cape Dutch architecture and enjoy all sorts of wine. We stopped in Stellenbosch for lunch, near the university and had some delicious food.

When we got home, a bunch of us took a taxi to Camp's Bay beach and watched the sun go down- the perfect ending to our day. We then went out for sushi, and since I hate the way seaweed tastes I got raw fish on rice which was much better. I had pad thai with it which I also enjoyed. I'm getting better about new foods.

This is a picture of the sunset on Camps Bay beach.

Sunday was Table Mountain day. We went to bed early so we could get up at 7 to get on the mountain and be done with it before noon. Table mountain is the wierdest mountain I've ever seen. We went to the botanical gardens then climbed up Skeleton Gorge to one of the highest points. We met a group of South African climbers who warned us not to take the cliff side route since it was difficult and made it seem like you could fall off the mountain. Having heard that from our friends who had climbed the week before, we opted for the resivour route.

This was a poor life choice. The boys who had the map kind of ditched us, and I ended up climbing with Kelly, Steph and Marcella. We walked past lakes with sandy beaches and red water, on the top of a mountain!!! It was extremely weird. After we passed them, we saw people laying out tanning, on top of table mountain in their bathing suits by the water. We kept hiking, and reached another summit, thinking it was the last one. It was not, and we headed downhill looking for the cable car lift to take us down. We climbed several summits this way. And by climbed I mean climbed cliff faces via the laddars that were bolted into them, or climbed along the cliff using chains bolted into it. We didn't know that we'd accidentally taken the advanced challenge trail. Poor choice. Basically we ran out of water, got scared, and luckily we decided to keep going, and as soon as we made it over the last ridge, we saw the cable car and restaurant off in the distance. Matt was waiting for us with chilled bottles of water, and we ate lunch and took pictures. We took the cable car down, which was also scary, considering that it had no glass windows on half of it. Oh dear.


This is a picture of the lake on top of Table Mountain. Wierd. You can see the city below in the distance.


After that rough morning, we went to Camps Bay, ate Kauai and spent the day at the beach. Glorious. Although the water was freezing.

Today was some what productive, we went to the Park and talked with the co researchers about our final project, and worked with them on gathering life stories of people. I went with three of them and we talked to people in about five houses and took pictures, and asked them information about themselves. The insides of the shacks are sometimes nice, you'd think it was a tiny regular home from the inside.

This is a picture from the look out station on Table Mountain, overlooking Camps Bay and the Atlantic.

Staying Optemistic in Monwabisi

Sometimes, this is an extremely difficult task. Its hard to see the discrepancy between the millionaires play ground and the shacks, and wonder how people can not understand the problem. This picture is a view from Signal Hill, where they fire a cannon every day at noon, and you can hear it throughout the main parts of the city. We've had some good, and interesting dining experiences while in Cape Town, yesterday we went to a fancy Thai restaurant, ordered dinner for 7 and two bottles of wine, and the final cost was 800 rand, or roughly eighty dollars, including gratuity. It was delicious, and I'm going to have to try more Thai food in the future. Most nights we watch movies because the night life is pretty slow, and there isn't much to do that doesn't involve going to bars. We have a projector screen we set up on the porch, and watch tv shows and movies when its nice out.

The Co-Researcher project has been working out really well. All of the project groups enjoy working with them, and we're beginning to become friends. I can have a small introductory conversation in Xhosa, consisting of Hello, How are you? Good, and you? etc. Matt is working on an interactive audio dictionary to put online so that we can all learn the basics and maybe some additional interesting words. The co researchers love laughing at our attempts though, but they are always willing to help. As a group, we've decided that we are most likely combining the efforts of all the groups and making a publishable atlas of current situations and possible redevelopment strategies for the park. along with a human component, consisting of photos of people and their life stories. It will be a source of pride for members of the community and will also be appealing to possible donors to the cause and useful for the government. We've learned that in many cases, the civil services of Cape Town have no idea of the problems with bathrooms and electricity, and the photos the energy and water teams have taken are helping them realize they exist.

Yesterday, I went with Marco to the public library again so he could work on the contact database and I could work on the graphics of the communication network, which our advisors have pushed. It was productive, and on the way back we had an interesting experience with a cab driver. When he found out we were Americans, he immediately asked what we thought of Obama. We replied, and he went on about how he had wished McCain had won because Obama had no respect or experience, and was not militaristic and would have no control. He also said that South Africa does not have an active armed force, which I hadn't known, and that since they eliminated it the country had fallen into chaos. This is the opposite end of the spectrum from our sponsor, Di, who was estatic that a black man was leading the United States. So there is a wide range of opinions on the matter, as there are in the US.

A scary incident today reminded us all that we aren't perfectly safe here, when one of the students got very sick quickly and couldn't breathe. He was with co researchers in the middle of the settlement, and we didn't know where our advisors were, as they had also left with co researchers. Luckily, they were able to get him back to the Indlovu Centre and an electrician was nearby with a car, and he was rushed to the hospital. But, since Di was not there today, we have no transportation other than Fachme. (yes thats our bus drivers name, and YES we make jokes about it all the time. Even our advisors love to pronounce his name strategically.) Hopefully he will be fine, but its scary. This is the same guy who a woman threatened to kill a few days ago when he wouldn't give her cigarette money because we are always strictly instructed never to give to beggars and to tell them we are giving our time and hard work. It has been a long week, and the weekend is much needed, and I'm excited for the wine tour at Stellenbosch tomorrow.

Also, there is a famous around the world sailboat race at the V and A water front now for the next few weeks. I think we'll be checking it out soon.