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.

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.

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.

Second Weekend in Cape Town

The braai on Friday went fairly well, except that we followed all the instructions given to us by Buyiswa and still managed to offend people because we only provided food for 30- ourselves and the people in the park we work with. We didn't know that we were supposed to be feeding two other groups of workers as well. Hopefully our faux pas doesn't affect us too much. I cooked all the chicken (it took several hours) and Matt made the salad. Next time, we are making it a pot luck.

This picture is of Cape Town City hall and library.

Friday night was halloween, and they don't really celebrate that much here. We went to the News Cafe for dinner, the food was decent but not exceptional. Afterward, we headed out on the town to see what was going on for Halloween. We went to Long Street, and the Dubliner, but after an hour or so, about half of us left to go to a club. We went to Hemisphere, one of the nicer clubs in Cape Town, located at the top of a 32 story building, with windows on all sides. Unfortunately, we didn't know the minimum age was 25, and that most of the people in the club were over 40... but they let us in anyway. It was fun, but there weren't other people our age to dance with. We left around 2 am and headed home.

The next day was low key, I went out to lunch and to the waterfront with Laura and Debra, and we went to the Two Oceans aquarium which was nice. It was smaller than Mystic, but had sharks, penguins, giant rays, a sea turtle and a kelp forest, so it ended up being enjoyable. We stayed in on Saturday night because we'd planned to climb Table Mountain on Sunday. The weather didn't work out however, so we went shopping on Sunday instead because it was raining and there was now view. I bought a gold Africa pendant for my necklace, its really nice and has a diamond on it. And it was cheap. Sweet deal.

Monday was the ZERI orientation in the park,which consisted of learning about radical methods of water purification (naturally spiraling) and changing production processes. It was interesting to say the least, then we worked on different design aspects of how to rebuild an area of the park behin the community centre that was damage in a fire this weekend.

Today we are meeting with our advisors, hopefully coming up with an acceptable project and going to the Cape Town library. After some Kauai burgers of course. That is most definitely my new favorite restaurant. And theres gelato right next door.

The project aspect is frustrating. Really frustrating. But hopefully things will work out this week.

Molo vs Molwhene

We've been learning a bit of Xhosa (pronounced kosa with a click at the beginning) in the settlements (thats the language that most of the inhabitants speak in the area we are working in.) It involves clicking noises that none of us have mastered so far, which has given our new friends in the settlements a good laugh. We start our official lessons tomorrow with Buyiswa which will be helpful, since I've mastered the two forms of hello (molo and molwhene) and that is about the extent of it, I can never remember goodbye or thank you.

We've been meeting a lot with Buyiswa who runs a lot of the bed and breakfast for volunteers in the settlement, and she's been very helpful in organising our co researcher effort. The six people she selected for us have been guiding us around the C1 section of the park and helping the other groups to gather their research information. Yesterday, we went out with the Water and Sanitation and Mapping teams and toured their specific areas of interest. Its kind of depressing to tour the water spouts and toilets, often as many as 24 families share one toilet that does not flush. The only flush toilets are reserved for guests of the lodge, and for our use thankfully as well. The shacks are anywhere from 6 feet tall to about 20 feet tall, mostly made of corrogated iron and pieces of trash found in the area and recycled because the area was formerly a garbage dump. Some have yards, some have gardens, a few even have their own outhouses, which consist of a covered hole in the ground that gets moved when it fills up. The whole village is on a set of sand dunes, so the soil is no good for farming, and the wind constantly blows the sand everywhere, as the ocean is just over the dunes and you can see it from most of the shacks.

We toured the inside of a bar at 10 am, the drinking problems here are intense. People start at 7 am and the "shabeen" as they are called was full, and people were already drunk and stumbling. We've been encouraged to shop at the local stores, (which like the bars are also made of the same material as the shacks) and buy items that are sealed such as bottled soda and chips to support the local economy. The community center, youth center and guest house are sandbag buildings and part of the redevelopment effort. Sand bag buildings done by eco beam consist of special beams constructing the house, and instead of insulation the walls are filled with small 6x12 bags of sand which are stacked inside them, before the walls are plastered, which makes them fire proof and much more resistant to the wind. There is a sense of hope here, theres a preschool and a youth centre with computers, and the people we've met have seemed optemistic which is inspiring.

On the social WPI front, we went to dinner at a brewery on the water front which had delicious food, and confused waitresses. Afterward we attempted to go to a famous club known as Tiger Tiger, and after a 100 rand taxi ride, we could not get in (well we could, the guys could not) because of a dress code that requires pants, a collard shirt and shoes. They were wearing flip flops and shorts, and the bouncer turned us down. We went to an Asian bar, Cubana, the Doubliner and a gay club instead, before going to the News Cafe and back to our rooms. Most of these places do have dress codes, but they made exceptions for us, because we didn't know better... silly Americans.

Yesterday we cooked our own dinner and drank wine we'd bought at the local wine/liqour store. Which was nice, because we'd been looking for a licqour store since we got here, because even though drinks are cheap, its still cheaper to buy things to drink at home. Here, things were very cheap. For example, a fifth of smirnoff was 70 rand (a little less than 7 dollars) and I bought a bottle of delicious wine for $1.50 which I shared with Jason. "Good wine" costs around R100 per bottle, and people were joking about how they spent a hundred bucks on a bottle of wine, which is around 10 dollars.

Currently, we're in the Cape Town public city library, only slightly sketchy... and compiling our conatact lists, its kind of nice to have a day off from the settlements, its exhausting to be there and walk around in the sun all day. The library is pretty nice, and we get free wi fi. So I'm happy. Maybe we can get Kauaii Burgers for lunch. Its difficult to talk to people at home, as its only 7 am there, and after one in the afternoon here, and it will be getting worse with daylight savings time this weekend, but we're climbing table mountain and surfing, so its okay.

Cape Town (the first few days)

When we got to Cape Town, we didn't go out the first night, but bought two bottles of wine for three dollars each from the grociery store along with a few other necessary things. It was decent wine too, we drank it while waching Resident Evil which was terrible. The next day (Saturday) we went grociery shopping after a meeting with our advisors and formed a group grociery system. The food is all different though, and because the sugar used is unrefined, everything tastes different, the candy and soda are a lot sweeter, so I can barely drink/eat them.

That night, we went out to dinner at the Africa Cafe, which serves traditional African food, tapas style. We ordered fruity alchoholic drinks and had lots of interesting food. Rice with berries, chicken in sauce, tapioca yoghert bread and other such foods. Most of them were really good, especially the desserts. Which, are obviously my favorite anyway. There were really sweet decorations in the restaurant too; the chandeliers made out of recycled things and the wall mural made out of can tops was cool too. There is a lot of recycled things here made into other things, which is a great theme, and ends up with cool decorations.

After dinner, we went home to St. John's and then out to Long Street, which getting there was a project in it self. First we went to the Buena Vista Social Cafe, but then left because it was too small and/or sketchy/smoky, and called several cabs. We tried a few different clubs, but mostly stayed at the Dubliner, because it was classy on top, a piano bar and outside balcony with reasonably priced drinks (~20 rand). And downstairs, you could dance, and it was only slightly sketchy. We stayed out until about one or so, and took a cab home (which costs about 3 american dollars, ridiculously cheap for a 15 min cab ride).

The next morning, we went to the district Six museum, which commemorates a district in Cape Town that was demolished during the Apartheid because it allowed different races to live there in harmony and was a bad example. The man giving us a tour of the museum lived there during that time and told us the story and showed pictures of when the house his family had had for four generations was bulldozed. And now, they are giving the land back to the owners, but much of it was used for a university, and the rest is lying unused and a mess.

We napped, and then took a drive around Cape Point with Debra's aunt and cousin, up signal hill and around to the different beaches. We saw the Indian Ocean, which is supposed to be warmer, and the surfing beach, and breifly drove through a vinyard. The views are amazing. We also saw whales while driving along the edge of the mountains.

Today was our first day working in the settlements. We met the deputy mayor of Cape Town at a reception and then traveled to Monwabisi Park. We toured the Indlovu Center, the Creche (daycare) and other places. It was really inspiring to see the sense of community there and the redevelopment ideas coming from within the community. THings like the fact that if you steal things or cause crime in the community, the street committee will demolish your shack are interesting. But I think that our project will be effective, and we are meeting the co researchers tomorrow. I learned the African handshake as well, which is slightly different from a regular one, and we are setting up Xhosa lessons for the coming weeks so we can communicate more effectively in the settlements. Overall, I'm excited, but exhausted. I really hope that our project can make a real difference though.