Back To Civilization

The place in Wilderness ended up being real nice, so nice that I wish we could’ve stayed there longer than half a day. It was just off the N2 (so close you could see/hear it), but seemed like it was much further away: we stayed in these little 21^st century log cabins that were alongside a little creek/lake thing, with a small brick road slicing through the property. Real nice. We killed some time playing ultimate, chowin down on some pizza, and sitting around a little fire just chilling and reminiscing. Before we knew it, it was 5:30 and ready to head out for the final leg to Cape Town; by noon we were back at Ikhaya Lodge, back where it all began. Further continuing the trend of returning to places we’ve been already, we ate again at Mama Africa, where we ate at our first (?) night in Cape Town. Thankfully I (and others) remembered how utterly shitty my meal was the first time, so I opted to get the ostrich (so.fucking.good) and dabbled in some warthog and brownie later on. A few of us went over to the outdoor part of the bar across the street and hung out for a while for our last night “all together,” which ironically had about half the people. The next morning, surprisingly, we had no grand goodbye session with everyone. I don’t know if it was because a lot of us are staying in a hostel together, or if people just wanted to gtf out, but it was definitely strange and pretty uncharacteristic of the group. But whatever, gotta just move past it.

I think this is gonna be my last post on this thing; to be honest, I’m trying to live it up in Cape Town (and Zurich for a half-day on the way home). I’m taking lotsa pictures, though, so prepare for a massive photo update on Facebook on the 5^th, after I get a haircut and get out of my self-induced American food coma. Now would be the time I’d say “bye” in Xhosa, showing how much I learned and how cultured I am, but since I clearly wasn’t paying attention when we learned that word I guess I’m just neither. Adios?

On The Road

The past week or so was frustratingly hectic and hecticly frustrating with the crapload of stuff we had to do since our workload is pretty backlogged at the end of the program (or at least at the end of our stay at The Haven). The main projects we have to do are a ten-page paper describing the social-ecological system we’re in (it’s as fun as it sounds) and a six-page “proposal” we have to pretend to write to an organization to help solve an issue regarding your SES; Jack, Rachel, and I are “writing” to the Penn State administration to convince them to expand the Parks and People model of studying abroad.

Over the course of the past week, though, there’s been a need for some/a lot of flexibility and restraint with the instructors, group members, and the program as a whole.

For our ten-pager, we were originally supposed to hand in the ten-page paper only, then it was a paper and a complex conceptual diagram, then (since our writing apparently blows) it was just the diagram we were turning in, and finally it was decided we’d answer the questions we based our paper on in bulleted form (which my group did in the first day before we even wrote the entire fucking paper) and turn them in with the diagram that nobody really has a clear grasp on. When stuff like that happens over the course of a few days, it gets annoying because you’ll be working on something really large, then learn a couple days later you didn’t need to do all that work, which just repeats and repeats, until you’re handing in something you did in fifteen minutes on the first day. With all this confusion, we’ve all had to deal with some…testiness among everyone in the group, and understandably so. Everyone has different writing styles, work ethics, presentation styles, and overall different approaches to doing pretty much everything; and when you stick a bunch of people together that clearly have done pretty well with their way, there’s bound to be some conflict. I’m glad that Jack, Rachel, and I had relatively little irritable moments with each other (or at least few that were acted upon) because we saw from one other group how nasty things can get.

My group’s proposal also had a roller-coaster ride throughout the process of creating it. We first thought of the idea on the very first day we got together, and instantly fell in love with it. We had this romanticized and idealistic vision that it would actually be used by Neil for something, and that it wasn’t really pretending to write to someone, we actually would be. The three of us all (apparently) misinterpreted something that was told to the group, and didn’t talk about the Dwesa-Cwebe SES at all in our first draft. Here we were thinking we were all awesome (understandably so, we had a lot of good ideas), and the whole time it was just soo wrong. Throughout the process of trying to change it to fit the syllabus (the relevant part of which we all lost), we ended up re-writing the damn thing three different times, growing increasingly more frustrated with ourselves, Neil, and the stupid Dwesa-Cwebe SES with each time we talked with Neil about it. Two days before it was due and we were scheduled to present, we were still confused with what was trying to be communicated to us, to the point where Neil said we should consider starting all over with an entirely new idea. This entire fiasco (combined with the bullshit with the ten-pager) made me, for the first time all trip, say I was ready to go home; not back to Cape Town, back to Newtown. After a group bitch-and-moan session, we decided to just make the changes, power through, and take whatever grade we get because, at this point, there wasn’t much more we could do.

The day of the presentations finally came, and I didn’t feel prepared at all. We had changed our proposal so many times that I could barely remember what exactly we were presenting about. I had my entire portions of the presentation written out, word for word, and couldn’t remember a ton of it a few hours beforehand. A little before the presentation, I figured to just wing it, which somehow actually worked well. Afterwards, we ate dinner and celebrated by beginning a long long night with five rand shots of the shittiest licorice-flavored alcohol the world has ever seen. The next day, our last day at the Haven, I was real hung over so it was a pretty miserable. We were leaving at six the next morning, so I just packed up and passed out at nine.

Rolling out was made slightly more difficult by literally the loudest storm I’ve ever heard in my life. I would not have been surprised in the slightest if one of the lightning bolts hit somewhere like ten feet from my room, because it definitely sounded like it did. Thankfully my thatch-grass roof held up from the rain (others weren’t so lucky), and I was able to wake up and get out nice and dry. The ride back to Wayne’s was pretty easy, mostly because we have an extra vehicle now (extra space!); plus we got to see Jan again for lunch in East London so that was cool. We eventually made it to Wayne’s and were greeted by a new Jack Russell puppy, which is easily the cutest thing I’ve seen here; finally a dog that isn’t emaciated and/or sad-looking and/or running around the streets. On Sunday we had yet another debrief, though this was about reflecting on our experiences and how it’ll be when we’re back home. The way it was set up was unorthodoxly helpful: there’d be three or four separate conversations/discussions going on different places, and you’d get to pick which one you wanted to take part in (leaving whenever you wanted), as opposed to listening in a big group about what the loudest person wants to talk about. I was admittedly skeptical about the unique setup, but I quickly realized how much more beneficial it was. We planned on hiking to this nearby cave afterwards, but it started to really storm just we just all sat around and got real lazy. It took the guys like over an hour to decide we wanted to watch a movie, eventually deciding on Hot Tub Time Machine.

The next day we actually did go to the cave, and what an interesting experience that was; someone mentioned during it that we always do the coolest/most memorable stuff when we’re here, and I’m pretty sure it’s true. We started out at a surprisingly quick pace, and eventually hiked our way up to this amazing panoramic view of the highway and surrounding hills. From there we slowly crept along this path that was all of three feet wide of stone, then random shrubbery, then a pretty big ass drop off a cliff. It was easily the most dangerous thing we’ve done all trip, but really fun nonetheless. At the end of the little path was a crevice/narrow hole in the rock face that we slowly slid through; never have I been happier for my long legs and skinny frame, damn that was tight. After making it through that, we hiked our way to this little rock wall, where we used branches and rocks to climb up to this cave where we hung out for a little, before making our way back downhill to Wayne’s.  We tried going to Rhodes that night since it’s only like five miles away, but gave up when we realized it was fruitless and just stayed in for the night. The next morning we packed up and peaced out around 8 and hit the road for our second to last leg of the trip back to Cape Town. Saying goodbye to Wayne and his family was strange (likewise with basically everyone else we’ve met) considering a large majority of us will never ever see them ever again. I’m not sure what exactly I’m trying to get at, but it’s weird.

The ride to our next stop (some campground in Wilderness (which is an awesome name for a city)) was full of reminiscing of us going in the opposite direction like nine weeks ago, the time some of us call “when we all still liked each other.” It’s cool when you can you can drive by seemingly random gas stations and actually have memories from them, especially ones that seem ages ago. One upsetting moment was driving over Bloukrans (sp?) Bridge, the bungee jumping place I and others wanted to go to, because we were told we couldn’t do it (for reasons unknown, probably some liability bullshit), even though the groups in years prior were able to. I guess that’s a reason to come back then.

All Quiet On The Eastern Cape

The next handful of days were almost depressingly monotonous (hence the lack of posts): wake up, breakfast, class, work on projects, lunch, work on projects, class, dinner, "work on projects" (this never happened), then sleep, with resting and regaining our sanity in there somewhere. It’s almost sad how fast things seem to be moving here now. In our first few weeks, we were all doing and seeing so much stuff that was not only interesting, but new. I’m not saying I want to leave the Haven, but the repetitive nature of everything reminds me too much of being back at school when the days just seem to blend together; things you think happened yesterday actually happened two, three days ago. Before I know it, the projects will be finished and presented and we’ll be on our trek back to Cape Town. Thankfully a group of us are staying later to experience South Africa not in the context of a class, but in that of a glass.

We do sneak some fun in pretty often, though, whether it’s the beach, playing darts in the bar, or just sitting around bullshitting. On Thursday (the 15^th) we finally got to play with the two little girls who live here (they’re a real life Zack and Cody, down to the blonde hair), which was an oddly satisfying break from the nonstop work schedule. There’s something funny about hide-and-seek with kids like a third your age that just makes you stop worrying about the buttload of work you have and just have some simple good old-fashioned fun. We’re also attempting to ease our transition back into American culture by filling out brackets for March Madness. Note to Steve: ‘Cuse better show up, I’ve talked them up a lot here. St. Patty’s was a really easy day: work, pass out, drink, and watch The History of Us and basketball. Neil left yesterday (St. Patty's) for the weekend so our work ethic was a little lower today; some of us barely banged out some quick work (putting some finishing touches on drafts or final projects for our projects, working on video journals, etc.) before heading to the beach to relax and make the most intricate sandcastle ever. Ironically enough we saw some familiar faces there, as some of the kids from the schools we among a group of them that walked/rode donkeys down to the beach to actually do something productive for their families while we played in the sand. Awkward.

Gettin Dwested One Last Time

Last weekend we went back to Dwesa again to work with some botany students from Rhodes University with some plant identification around the reserve. Why we needed to go is still unknown to pretty much everyone, but it was certainly an interesting weekend. No one brought a laptop because the power was out (plus we were camping) so I don’t exactly remember all the details as I write this on Monday; just justifying most of the vagueness that’ll follow.

We got there sometime around the early afternoon and set up our tents, then waited until it was dark, when Rhodes rolled in with their group of fifty-ish, the first thirty or so of which that came out first were female. At this point, though, most of us were really wiped from the 5+ hour trek to Dwesa and sitting around on empty stomachs, so we were pretty focused on eating. Plus it’s pretty tough to socialize when it’s pitch black. Oddly enough, the one group of people a bunch of us talked with that night was a group of three American exchange students we just happened to pick out of everyone else there. The next morning we had breakfast and mingled a bit, then split into groups of 8-10, basically made of a handful of Rhodes students/faculty and two Penn State students. My partner and I went with a group of bookish-yet-friendly looking girls that were right behind me for convenience’s sake, then we took off to the forest. We were driven about twenty minutes into the forest, then stopped in a little grassland opening in the forest. Basically what they had to do was collect, describe, and later press (flattening them between newspaper and cardboard) thirty different plant species, key word there being they. Us Penn State people had no flippin idea what in the hell we were doing; thankfully, as we later learned, we had equally low expectations from Neil, so goofing off and not getting in their way (which is what most of us did) was pretty much all we had to do. So Ken and I just walked around for what felt like forever collecting cool looking plants along the road, then sat on our asses watching our group sit and describe their own plants. It was easily the most exciting part of the trip so far. A little later we went back and had lunch, then went back to the conference center (an altogether too familiar walk) to press the plants we (as in they) found. Thankfully I was able to meet up with some equally “f-this” Penn Staters and we just sat in a back room and joked around until we got bored enough and left. What’s annoying/convenient is that we weren’t even being 100% lazy: there were so many people in that place that trying to sit down and help would’ve been impossible. Plus I asked my group if they needed help and they said no, which I took as my signal to do what I wanted, which was nap.  That night we listened to a riveting botany lecture, socialized with the Rhodes people a little more, and had another braai; kudos to the Rhodes people, they had some amazing food.

The next day was slightly more eventful. We were out in the forest again (way out there), though this time in the legit forest as opposed to some grassland-forest combo. Ken and I were told by our group members to go look for flowering plants, which seemed nonexistent in that boring overgreen forest. Since we just walked by basically everything green (which the girls behind us didn’t/couldn’t), we went really quickly (comparatively), so it got pretty boring pretty quickly again. Eventually we reconvened near where we started when it started to lightly drizzle; classic Dwesa, raining at the most inopportune times. When we finally left the rain had only picked up a little bit, staying consistent at a solid, wind-aided drizzle. Sometime shortly after, however, Mother Nature decided to give us a giant middle finger and unleash all the moisture in the world upon Dwesa. To be honest, it probably wasn’t even raining all that hard, it just felt like it with all that wind; we were all in the exposed bed of a pickup truck, so we had to deal with not only the windy rain but the buttload of branches and spider webs that just love to hit you, as if for payback for all the spider webs we’ve accidentally walked through or the branches we not-so-accidentally macheted. However miserable that 30-45 minute wet n wild gallivant was, it was yet another oddly significant/memorable moments that I probably won’t forget for a while, especially because we were the only group that got caught out in the rain. After going on a group beach walk instead of plant-pressing, we had yet another braai (best chicken kabobs I’ve ever had; not sure how many that is, though) then went to bed. Just like that, the weekend was over. The next morning we packed all our stuff up, had a rather quick breakfast, and peaced out by giving an oddly informal wave goodbye to all of the Rhodes students at once, some of whom were still in their tents. Thankfully Facebook exists, since we’re trying to meet back up with some of them when we’re near Grahamstown on our way back to Cape Town.

After a long drive back to The Haven that consisted of me losing my iPod under/in the seat (its exact location is complicated to explain), we all gorged ourselves at lunch and showered to feel clean for the first time in days. Unpacking our stuff and packing our stomachs at dinner followed shortly after, with the night being capped off with Batman Begins. By then it had started to rain, and all we could do was hope the weather didn’t carry over to our rest day…which it did. I woke up and zombied to breakfast, throwing my sunglasses on out of habit as I walked out the door. I was met with clouds and a drizzle that clouded my sunglasses since I was too tired to take them off. Thankfully the sun decided to peek out a little, so I figured a trip to the beach was due. And of course by the time I get down there it’s cloudy and rainy (not enough to be considered solid rain, but just enough to be bothersome) again. I spent the rest of the day sleeping, watching Shawshank Redemption and TV shows with other people, and reading the second Hunger Games book. Pretty much the easiest day ever. The next day (what I call “Hangover Day” because you’re so used to doing absolutely nothing from the rest day, then you’re thrown back into actually doing work) was the beginning of the end per say: we have only three weeks left, and two overarching projects to work on within our groups of three, plus one group one for Neil’s class. I’ve kinda been dreading this for most of the trip, not only because it’s a lot of intensive work, but also because it means the program’s winding down [insert Snooki waaah].

After our two-hour morning session, I finally finished the second Hunger Games book, quickly starting the third after. I’d definitely suggest them to anyone looking for some quick reads, though the whole love triangle plotline is getting annoying. Anyways, during our evening session we just got to watch America: A History of Us, a History Channel mini-series on the history of America. We’re basically watching it to understand our own history so that we can better understand South Africa’s…or something like that; I don’t even care why we’re watching it, just that we are to begin with because I love American history. They even have the narrator from 24/7 to narrate it, which makes it that much better. The only thing I don’t like is the number of unnecessary historical commentators (positions usually held for people of high academic regard). Call me un-American, but I really don’t need the elementary-level insight of Newt Gingrich, Michael Douglas, Jimmy Wales, and (wait for it)…Donald Trump. Seriously? Good thing this was made a couple years ago so we were spared a history lesson from Herman Cain.

The next day got increasingly better as the day went along. In the morning for our two hour class, we sat through this interactive online sustainability class that’s pretty boring to begin with and tends to drag on for what seems like forever even though it was only the second time we did it. After lunch, though, we got to go to drive/hike to this sick waterfall. If I ever figure out Dropbox (which is tough with a limited amount of Internet) there’ll be tons of pictures pretty soon. And to cap it all off, we watched District 9 after dinner; boy was that a good (and relevant to where we’re at) movie.

All Eyes On Me

I got up super early Monday because I was afraid I’d oversleep this really important first step in actually doing something here with the people living here other than the ones who take my dishes away at meals. So after grabbing some quick breakfast, my group of six left for the school in Cwebe (the C is pronounced like the noise you make when you say tsk-tsk and shake your head, the rest sounds like “way-bay”) while the other group stayed back since their ride is only ten easy minutes compared to our 1+ hour ride on the craptastic roads of Cwebe. The day before we learned that we’d probably just be going and observing these four days only, so we wanted to go learn a lot about how they do things there.

So we get there and walk into the teacher’s lounge equivalent to talk to the teachers before going into the classrooms. There we split into three groups of two; I was with the 4^th grade with another guy and, thankfully, Neil, who gave us both at least a little sense of safety and familiarity, moreso the latter than the former. We then made our way across the concrete courtyard and into the class. Boom, all eyes on the white people (and the Jamaican). I realized my biggest anxiety about being in there (being a distraction to them) was pretty much going to happen whether I liked it or not. My idea was that we’d sit together in the back (for the aforementioned reason), but we split up and found three empty seat/bench things. My bench actually became empty after the kid I was going to sit with bailed in about a millisecond after he saw me coming, but it was begrudgingly filled by a kid who was late; I bet he’ll never be late again. We sat through a math/“maths” class that lasted twice as long as it was supposed to because the social science teacher, who was supposed to teach after math, just didn’t show up. Through our research for our group paper, we learned that teacher absenteeism is actually a pretty big problem here for whatever reason or another. So after about two hours of fractions and decimals (which makes no sense because they use commas instead of decimal points, what do they call decimal points?), we got a short fifteen minute break to reconvene with the other three, talk quickly about what happened so far, and watch some little kids pretend a plastic bottle was a soccer ball (rather well, to their credit) before heading back in. The next class was English, which I was excited for because they’d be speaking in a language I understood for once. We then spent another two hours (the English teacher’s also the natural science teacher, but she just forgot to switch topics) on the difference between singular and plural, which, by the end, only a slight majority of the 45-ish students I’d say really understood.

After that they had their “long break” (lunch and recess), so we left for the day to get back to The Haven in time for lunch. Cheese-filled hot dogs, while sounding like an American delicacy, wasn’t exactly the lunch I had in mind, but I ate one anyways because I was so hungry; when you’re used to gorging yourself every breakfast then try doing just some toast and fruit, you get hungry pretty quickly. Before dinner we had a relatively easy two-hour session just talking about everything we observed the first day. After dinner I skedaddled pretty quickly because I got my hands on a new book (“Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs,” good so far) I wanted to start. Books here are like drugs that we’re all on. The first of the Hunger Games books went around to everyone pretty quickly, and thankfully someone just downloaded the next two for our iPods, so should have our fix for the next couple weeks.

The next day started exactly the same as the previous one. During the “assembly” (something I failed to mention before; they all stand in lines and sing and pray together, it’s awesome to hear, especially how harmonized they are) I was glad I was able to make some eye contact with some familiar faces from the day before. I don’t remember any of their names, so in my head I give them celebrity names according to who they kind of look like. So far I have Sam Cassell (because of skin color only; he’s my interpreter kind of because his English is pretty good), Ryan Howard (actual nose size varies), blacker Cuba Gooding Jr., sad Diggy Simmons, blacker female Ice Cube, Jrue Holliday, Mos Def, Demarcus Beasley, the kid from Role Models, and Wayne Simmonds (does this give you an idea of the b:g ratio?), along with a few non-celebrity nicknames I’ll save for some other time. The first class of the day was supposed to be Xhosa, but the teacher decided to make up for the missed Social Science class from yesterday and just not have Xhosa. They’re really really flexible with both classes and timing of said classes, even though there’s an organized schedule of each class and the time period it’s supposed to be in. The SS class was a blast because we basically just learned about the nine provinces of South Africa, which consisted of coloring in a map of South Africa and pretty much nothing else. I’ll admit I had almost too much fun coloring, so much that I felt like a student again, asking around for certain colors and what color went where because I was too in the zone to hear the teacher. After the coloring we had a little break because the Math teacher wasn’t there. I asked some kid around me if he wanted to draw in my notebook, and as soon as I said “draw” a mob formed around my desk. These kids really like drawing, especially one kid (I call him Smiles McGee (not to his face) because he’s always smiling), who eventually was given the pencil by the other students. Even though Smiles McGee is across the room from me, I can tell he’s always drawing; I jokingly called him out on it and everyone laughed, so it must not be a secret to anyone else. He ended up drawing me, and other than the fact that my head looks like the crypt keeper, it’s pretty darn good for a fourth grader. Pretty much right as he finished we had the short break, when we were finally able to bring the soccer ball out. I assumed the sight of it would bring mass chaos and anarchy to the courtyard, but they kept their excitement in check and formed a circle with a couple of us and just passed and juggled it around. English just flew by for the next two hours, and before I knew it we were on our way out.

The third day was pretty uneventful. It was cloudy and kind of drizzling in the morning so a lot of students were late (since they basically use the sun to wake them up). We sat through a Xhosa test that was pretty much just a reading comprehension test, were missing two teachers, then waited twenty minutes for the Math teacher (who was at the school the whole time) to show up, don’t know what her deal was. The only interesting thing all day was when I learned that Sam Cassell is actually a girl, which blew my mind. While it sounds really stupid to not know the difference between a boy and girl, a lot of them really do look similar, trust me. The last day was bittersweet: on one hand we were all sad to know we probably wouldn’t ever be back there with all/a few of the kids we started making friendly relationships with; but on the other hand, it started getting obvious how much of a distraction we were becoming, so most of us felt it was time to stop observing and get out. Unlike the first three days we were there, we decided to bring out the technology today, so I was able to take a lot of pictures and take a bunch of cool videos of the kids in my class. Towards the end of the day, we had an entire hour off for reasons unknown (then), so we were able to mess around with all the kids and take pictures and videos of them; it was legitimately fun. Before we left, though, all unknown hundreds of the kids in the school gathered around the courtyard and had a little singing/dancing concert. I don’t even know how else to describe it, but it was just fucking insanely cool to watch; it was another one of those unexpectedly memorable moments that was just really special to see. After screaming our final goodbyes, we piled back into the truck and rested our hands from all the clapping (to keep the beat for the dances), shared photos and stories, and actually got to meet with the chief of the village, who was dressed casually in a track suit (unlike the feathered-headdress idea some of us (not me) imagined), which just goes to show how relatively lax a lot of the stuff here is. Back at The Haven, we Skyped with a sustainability class from Penn State and talked about climate change. It was a nice idea, and I’m not saying it was totally useless, I’m sure the people on the other end got something out of it, but we basically just sat there and answered their relatively-basic program questions. The whole thing was kind of built up to be really cool, whereas in real life it was pretty eh.

A little later we debriefed on the last day of our time in the schools and if we should/want to go back or not, which was never really decided upon so I guess when the time comes you can go back if you want. Even though it’ll be awkward going back after all of the goodbye festivities we got, I definitely want to go back; I mean, why not? Most of the people who don’t want to go back seem to be hiding their uncomfortablility in the schools with some unnecessarily esoteric or philosophical reasoning; if you haven’t noticed, people not saying how they really feel about things is an annoying motif among the group members here, despite overly-preaching the opposite. Anyways, we then split before dinner to pack for our weekend camping scant back to Dwesa. Yahfreakinghoo. 

Hakuna Mthatha

Our trip to Mthatha Saturday will always be remembered by me for the unnecessary number of awkward encounters I had there with the locals. We left around 6:30 am that morning, which didn’t sit well with some people who celebrated Hailey’s 21^st birthday pretty hard. I, knowing my sleeping habits, chose not to stay out too too late so that making sure I was awake by 6-ish wasn’t that much of a pain in the ass. After barely surviving the all-too-familiar treacherous roads on the way to the N2, we made it into some little outdoor shopping mall in Mthatha. We walked around a little bit and browsed, then headed to McDonalds’s (‘merica!) for breakfast and free Wi-Fi. I gotta hand it to Mthatha, the Mickey D’s there is really classy and well maintained; and, on top of all of that, you don’t have to pay two rand to use the bathroom, unlike many other places.

After using up all the possible complimentary Internet as possible, my group of people went to Mr. Price, a clothing store, to search for a shirt that says “Africa, Not For Sissies” that Werner was wearing a couple weeks ago. In the process of looking for that shirt, I found easily the most awesome shirt ever: it’s a tiger with sunglasses over its eyes and a bandana on its neck. I took a picture of it (since it was only in XXL which isn’t exactly my size), which I hope to upload to Dropbox whenever/if I ever figure that out. Awkward situation one: I’m looking at this super awesome shirt, and the guy next to me seems real inquisitive. I see out of my peripherals that he has a few shirts over his arm, very much in the manner that workers do, so I automatically start asking him (at least twice) if they have this shirt in a smaller size. The three other people I’m with start bursting with laughter and start walking away. I leave the guy because he kept saying “I don’t know”, thinking either he’s a pretty crappy employee or that’s a rare shirt. Turns out, the guy didn’t even work there, and I was just asking some random customer if the store he was shopping at had this shirt in a different size somewhere else. Whoops.

Before lunch, someone else and I went to this grocery store to pick some stuff up. Between the two of us, we had a total of five items; but there are so many god damn people in that store, the “express” lane took about thirty minutes. It pretty much looked like any grocery store would at home like the day before Thanksgiving or Christmas, just times two. Such unorganized chaos. Anyways, after being cut in line a few different times, we finally made it near the register. As we turned a little corner, some drunk dude cut us while we were both turned around. He and the lady behind us then proceeded to argue (I think?) in Xhosa about him cutting us, creating awkward situation number two. He kept motioning towards us (and me in particular since I was right next to him) and trying to do these weird handshakes and laughing at me. It was super awkward because they’re badgering back and forth in Xhosa (which everyone but us in this place understands), while every one of the eleven trillion people in the express lane listens and chuckles at our expense (I think?). I had never been happier to get out of a grocery store before, and didn’t even care that the unhappy girl behind the register gave me an unnecessarily large fistful of coins.

After reconvening with some other people in the group, we got some really good ice-cream and hung out. One of our vans has been crapping out lately, so we earlier learned we’d be at the mall for a couple hours later while a mechanic fixed it. About thirty minutes before we had to meet up again, a group of four of us was approached by some drunk (I think?) guy who was eons nicer than the previous drunk guy I encountered. He told us about how he was a soldier many years ago and how much he loves his country. Something else he said that was pretty interesting was that he loved America and Obama in particular because he’s fighting for Africa. Though it was one of only a few good things he did as president, I’m curious if this guy knows George Bush actually started a pretty impressive fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa, or if he just assumes since Obama’s black he’s fighting for all blacks or something. It seems pretty counter-intuitive to the whole racial equality thing they want/Mandela preached; oddly enough his museum was closed that day. Towards the end of this little conversation (which he didn’t seem to want to end, maybe because he “love[s] white people”), he put his arms around me and one other guy (the other two had got away somehow) and drew us in really close. This is when I was like “Ok this is where I get stabbed or something and he demands money, what an odd way to go out.” Thankfully racist me was wrong, and this guy just said how much God loves us and how grateful he is or something like that. Keep in mind during this whole conversation, people were walking by making no attempt to hide their laughter at him and/or us. I realized after he walked away that that was one of those seemingly-insignificant yet randomly impactful moments that you just don’t forget very easily (the experience not the conversation, I’ve clearly forgot that already). Awkward moment number four came when the twelve of us were all together again waiting for Neil to show up with the vans so we could gtf outta there. We were all sitting down on the ground since standing started hurting about an hour before. All of a sudden, some drunk dude (this one I’m sure of) that I called (behind his back) the David Ortiz beggar (because of his resemblance to the baseball player) plops down next to me and starts asking for money. I politely told him I spent it all, which he wasn’t too thrilled with. Thankfully Neil chose that opportunity to show up, so I got up and got out of that situation pretty quickly. Afterwards, though, David Ortiz stuck around with us (super awkward), and once we started walking away he gave his goodbyes to us for whatever reason, which consisted of (for me) playfully punching me in the chest like we’ve been friends for years. At that point I was like get me the freak out of this city, which thankfully occurred.

That night we ate another awesome dinner, then celebrated Hailey’s actual birthday with cake, cupcakes, and some complementary wine and champagne. It was just a really fun night with some darts, pool, and more free shots from Ken. Sunday morning they have breakfast a little later here, so we were able to sleep in a little bit later usual. We spent our morning class just talking about everything we saw the previous day, and during the afternoon one we just talked about the paper we wrote as a group. Pretty easy. We all went to bed relatively early because we had to get up early the next morning to visit the schools.

Crisis Averted

Like I said before, the next two days (Friday and Saturday) were spent pretty exclusively on our group lab report. I won’t bore you all with the details, but it actually wasn’t as bad and boring as I thought. I got to do a lot of number crunching in Excel (which is fun for me); read, write, and revise parts of the written sections; and do everything else in the most relaxing and funny atmosphere with the other three members of my group. We discussed our oddly cohesive group dynamic earlier, like how we can joke around so much (to the point of pissing off other people around us who can’t simultaneously joke and work) yet still accomplish a lot, and how it’s really the first time in a while (or ever) that a group we’ve been in has been so unified and organized with the workload. Group projects are usually a pain in the ass because there are the people who are almost too chill about the whole thing, and the people who are so anal and upset at the aforementioned people that they just do the whole thing themselves. Thankfully, my group couldn’t be further from the norm, which made the two or so days we spent working on everything exponentially less crappy than they could have been.

Before we knew it Sunday morning arrived, which for many of us meant one thing: Haven food. We’d been talking up the copious amounts of food at The Haven pretty much ever since we left the first time and had to experience rationing at Dwesa, so we (myself included) were excited to just get there and stuff our faces and not have to worry about eating too much and the person next to you not eating enough. So after about seven hours in the car (a longer trip (because of the recent rains, apparently there’s a tropical storm/depression nearby) that consisted of me finishing Hunger Games, us blowing yet another tire, and reminding ourselves how desperately this area needs a new road) we finally touched grass at The Haven, and it was borderline magical. We went straight to lunch (which they held for us, they had a total of six guests in the three weeks we were gone, so we pretty much own the place) and gorged like there was no tomorrow. Freshly baked bread? Yea I’ll have three slices of white and two of wheat. Some chicken concoction? Don’t care, I’ll take three. Chocolate mousse for dessert? Are you shittin’ me?! So after eating about a village worth of food each, we figured out the room situation (got my own room, suhweet), unpacked, and put some finishing touches on our project before yet another feast at 7.

Following dinner we had a pretty brief yet thought-provoking cultural discussion with Erica. We talked about being ethnocentric versus ethno-relative and the ideas behind being culturally competent or something like that. One really good discussion tangent that came of it was regarding THON and if the Dwesa-Cwebe community and other parts of South Africa could do something similar to raise money for the reserve. First we all talked about different reasons we do or do not participate in THON, then Erica postulated that the reasons are all distinctly American values (generosity, independence, etc.), which I found pretty fascinating. This led to yet another tangent (which continued into a conversation with a group after the discussion) about people’s motives for doing THON and just some general overall opinions of it that I’ve never really heard before. It was really just super interesting to learn about everyone else’s thoughts on something that might initially seem pretty uniform in belief at first, but really has so many different beliefs and opinions along with it.

So I get up the next day around 5:30 with the intention of going for a run and doing some core afterwards. I never understand why I make such lofty goals for myself for the morning, considering I’m a completely different person in the morning. Exercise is about a million spots after breakfast on the list of things that’ll get me outta bed, so I snoozed my iPod and went back to sleep, which must’ve been some negative karma that transferred to my laptop. When I got back from lunch later it was just about dead (which was weird because I hibernated it with about 60% left), so I plugged it in, which did nothing. So I had the intention of turning it off and on, which I know is what my Dad would’ve told me to do, except for the part where it didn’t turn back on. For the next two days I had what was essentially a giant black brick plugged into the wall, sitting there doing nothing. It miraculously turned on Wednesday morning, after about the eighth holddownthepowerbuttonwaittakethebatteryoutandtrryagainputthebatteryinandtryagain process. Anyways, Monday night was fun because, seeing as Tuesday was our rest day, we got to get our drank on. Even though I didn’t drink as much as some others (thanks for the shots Ken…), it was still really really fun. The rest day couldn’t have come at a better time, as I was able to just do nothing at the beach and sleep away some stuffiness. I really love the rest days because they’re the best opportunity to just be by yourself for an extended period of time. Not that I don’t like hanging out with the rest of the group, but some me time is healthy for everyone I think. After having a blast doing nothing in particular then eating a whole lot, a few of us hung out and watched soccer until we got tired and called it a day.

The next day (Resurrection Day I called it, which oddly enough came on the third day…) we started Neil’s course, which is centered on sustainability. Though we’re only two days in as I write this, we haven’t really talked about “typical sustainability” like alternative energies and stuff like that. It’s definitely a …different approach, and I don’t want to rush to any judgments already, I just came in with a different expectation (solar energy in Africa? Brilliant! Let’s eat). The structure of this course is much more favorable, though, as it’s split into three one hour sessions a day (9, 12, 6), a time limit Neil is very good at sticking too (as opposed to our other professors so far). We had to do a little writing assignment about our passion, which kind of bothered me. I don’t really consider myself someone that has this burning passion for anything, even listing hobbies is hard (damn I’m boring), so I was stuck pretty hard on that one for a while until I just chose traveling considering I’ve enjoyed all of the traveling we’ve done thus far. The following day followed pretty much the same structure, just with everyone working on a group paper/project that’s due Sunday. It’s pretty odd that even though our group (for the most part) is extremely functional and cohesive socially, academically a lot of people just butt heads and waste time. I assume it’s because some people just take their academics super seriously and their way has obviously gotten them this far, but it’s ridiculously frustrating to try to get a point across to not just one stubborn person but a few, or just to watch other people try to suggest something that isn’t even considered. That’s why I’m glad my group from the previous project was able to work together again, because I know we’ll get stuff done and have fun without drama, which sounds like the perfect group for anything.

I woke up late the next day, reverting back to my pre-Africa self of snoozing my alarm until I remember I can just turn it off, yet somehow made it in time to catch the tail end of breakfast. In our first two sessions we discussed and learned more about our time in the schools next week. Monday through Thursday we’ll be pretty much just observing, then going back later and doing more teaching, which makes sense (learning about somewhere before we teach in there). The next day was essentially an off day because we were going to Mthatha, a city about 2-3 hours away, to buy some necessities, see the Nelson Mandela Museum, and just generally see civilization for a little bit. It would be my first time off Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve in what felt like forever, so that felt fantastic.

"I Don't Control Life But I Control How I React To It"

Laptop's fried.

Things just got interesting.

Almost Got A Peg Leg

The next morning was relatively easy work-wise, but it was rough for me because I didn’t sleep well the previous night. Though it sounds contradictory, I was too cold, even with a jacket and pants on. There was also this mouse on our roof making the worst possible noise in the world throughout the night, so I woke up every couple hours or so either from being cold or some mice screwing on the roof. After checking all the traps, we went on a three hour hike/“drive” (walking in a line in a field looking for stuff), during which I found a little venomous snake which was pretty cool.

Later on, my group of three went out with Jan and Werner (the actual spelling) for what was supposed to be a relatively short drive and search around Dwesa for a certain type of frog. The plan for the night for dinner was sausage (which really excited the two of them) so I totally wasn’t expecting us to be out until 9:30. It was fun though because we got to see a few different corners of Dwesa and learn a little more about the reserve. Apparently, locals burned down and vandalized the rondavels at different gates housing the staff that worked there to intimidate them into letting them in. So for a while we just walked in and around the burnt down houses (which held up surprisingly well for mud, sticks, and poop) looking for frogs and snakes. We then worked our way to some streams to look for a specific frog, where things were super close to being scary and painful. Jan was using the machete to chop down some stuff in his way to go investigate blood someone found on this tree. Not two minutes earlier I decided to cross this stream across and behind the aforementioned tree. In the process of chopping something down (which he easily could’ve snapped with his fingers) his follow-through swung the machete back and flew through the air, right where my legs would have been had I not moved across the stream; it was like when a baseball player accidentally lets go of his bat during the swing. So yea that could’ve been real bad.

We spent the next few hours walking in and around streams and ponds, the latter of which we did when it was pitch black out, the only light coming from our headlamps and the stars not masked by the clouds. Eventually they got the species they wanted and we were able to go back. The drive back was miserable, though, because we were really hungry, tired, and straight-up fed up with the road conditions, which were much worse than what we were used to. It’ll definitely be a weird adjustment when I get home, this place makes Pennsylvania roads seem not that bad. That night felt great though: getting out of that godforsaken truck bed, eating a ton of food, and sleeping like a baby in my sleeping bag all made for a good night.

The next day was reconvention day, but we still had to go out and check the traps one last time. It was annoying because the other group essentially had two days off due to travel, while we worked on both of those days. I think their work was more strenuous than ours (with the exception of the first day and a half), though, so I’m sure it evens out in the grand scheme of things. All of the traps were empty, and because of some girl drama and general tiredness amongst us, our last ride in the back of the bakkie was filled mostly with silence, with some sporadic two- and three-sentence conversations sprinkled throughout. After passing out for a surprisingly-long amount of time (considering my great sleep the night before thanks to the sleeping bag) to the point of almost being late to our session to discuss the next steps in our learning process, I went solo to the beach and went to work on my book (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”), which is soo good. Just about when the sun went down, the other half of our group rolled in after a long day of travelling (essentially 7:30 am to 7:30 pm). You would’ve thought we hadn’t seen each other in years by everyone’s reaction. Though both groups of six seemed to really bond together well, it really was nice to get everyone back in the same room together again. We spent the next hour or so at the conference center just eating and sharing stories, then walked back to the tents and chalets and essentially did the same thing until we all (the guys at least) passed out around 11, which is like really late for us.

Breakfast the next day started “late” at 7:30, so we got to sleep in and get some more sleep than what we were all used to the past week. I was starved from eating just mostly rice for dinner the night before, so I and a few others went early, where I helped myself to a double stack peanut butter sandwich and a buttload of lemon crème cookies, which really hit the spot. It was nice to actually sit down and slowly eat breakfast, considering most of the week we either packed our breakfast and ate it during a break or stuffed our faces in the minutes before (and a little after) 6 before we hit the road. After everyone else got there we went to work on our group projects, which essentially just consist of each group telling the other what they did and why it’s important. Our ten minute presentations turned into two that lasted at least twenty minutes, but they went fine so it’s all good. Knowing we had a rest day tomorrow, we all just chilled the rest of the night, eventually wandering down to the beach where us guys chatted under the stars on the huge black rocks. Fun stuff.

Our off day was essentially a beach day for everyone, which made me really wish I had a book available: my Hunger Games book is making the rounds among the guys and I finished my Lincoln vampire book the other day. Not having a book though was literally the only problem all day. As I said, any day spent on the beach is a good day. The sun was finally able to penetrate my SPF 15 sunscreen (albeit in the most awkward formations, burnt splotchy feet are no fun), I got to kick around a soccer ball for the first time in what seems like forever, and actually took a long walk on the beach. At night we had another braii for the departure of Jan and Werner, which, despite eating in the dark because of the lack of power, was awesome and amazingly delicious.

The following day was our first day in the field with Dr. Smithwick, so we were all pretty eager to get out in the field and do some relatively-simple grunt/slave labor. I somehow got stuck on the litter and soil team, so for the first three or so hours I and three others walked around the 40m x 40m plot of dense forest and thickets plopping down a roughly 2m² square PVC pipe contraction and collecting the sticks and leaves from the sample area, as well as taking a soil sample. It was quite exhilarating, so much so that I was ready to switch tasks after lunch. Thankfully, I was able to join another group that was doing DBHs (diameter (of the tree) at breast height), which basically just involves tagging trees, measuring their diameter, and recording it. Unfortunately that got old pretty quick, but we weren’t out there too long so it was all good. We capped off the night with some basic dinner and a long and dark session afterwards. The next day was to be essentially the same deal (plus an additional few hours), so I was determined to get on a different task force (the name I gave them to make things more exciting) for the new plot. So the next day comes around and I was able to get on a DBH crew that was really fun and chill; some people are straight business out in the field, so it was good to get with a group of people that was able to mix some humor into things. Somehow we finished like three hours early, so we were able to head back after lunch into the waiting arms of showers and electricity (not at the same time), the latter of which had recently been restored in the conference center. When we got back to our chalet, whoever was in front walked in and yelled “There’s shit in here!” I thought he meant like cockroach poop or something, which is unfortunately pretty common. No no no, this was monkey shit. After inspecting the scene a little more, we found an empty peanut butter can (from the closed trash can) out on the verandah, and muddy monkey tracks leading to the poop, but not away from the poop. Very strange. The rest of the day was super chill: I got to start my Hunger Games book, we figured out some more details on our group project/lab report, and killed a lot of time watching stuff together on people’s laptops.

The next few days will be spent working on our lab reports, so hopefully there’s a decent amount of free time before we head back to The Haven (praise the lawd) on Sunday. #bartscott

Shit Gets Real

Maybe relaxing wasn’t the best word choice. While Tuesday wasn’t incredibly physically demanding from digging and walking and trap-setting, it was no walk in the park (though, technically, it was a walk in the reserve).

Our day began nice and early again at 6 as we headed out in that uber-comfy pickup truck (a “bakkie” as they call it) to check the traps. Mine got two frogs somehow, though I kind of expected more considering it’s right next to a pond. But whatever, the week’s still young. After we checked all six we stopped and had breakfast, which for me consisted of a peanut butter sandwich, water, and a crapton of Marie Biscuits, my new food-related obsession. The next part of our day was pretty vague, as Jan just said we were going to walk around for a few hours looking for anything we could find. So we parked the bakkie in some random field and started walking along the beach until we hit the Mbashe River, then continued up the river bed. This part of the hike was painfully boring, as we basically just walked behind little sand dunes turning random sticks over looking for snakes and lizards and basically anything that moved that isn’t an ant. I basically non-obviously said screw that and started taking pictures instead, kicking over a few logs every now and then. After what seemed like an eternity of boredom and sleepily walking through the sand, we started abandoning the guess-and-check/blind person technique and started a hike through the forest.

We essentially hiked for the next four-ish hours through forest, grassland, and marsh, led by this guy named Ronnie (who works for the reserve I think) wielding his machete to carve up some semblance of a path. I kind of just blindly followed the person in front of me, so I apparently didn’t realize that we pretty much got lost walking around this annoyingly-dense forest with a penchant for having thorny stuff and random patches of grasslands with grasses almost as high as me. To be honest, the whole time was just a blur of bending under and around thorny plants for about twenty continuous feet, being smacked in the face by and hitting my head on branches, and wishing my water was a little cooler. I got some sick battle scars from it though, particularly one scratch on my arm that’s probably like six or seven inches long.

The next day was a combination of the two parts of the day before, simultaneously hiking and searching. We hiked the entire day because Jan needed the car for whatever reason, so my legs were really tired at the end of it, especially after the long day the day before. In the very beginning of the day, we got to walk across the Mbashe River mouth; it sounds a lot cooler than it actually is, but it’s fun to say I walked across a crocodile- (they’re more abundant upriver) and shark-infested river (they swim upstream from the ocean). We continued along the beach for a while until we turned up into the green rolling hills I could see from the beach that one day. From there we went up and down, up and down, up and down each hill, looking in random little ponds for snakes, frogs, and tadpoles. Thankfully Ken, our usual photographer, left his cameras in our chalet, opening up the photographer role for me as opposed to having to poke a stick around a pond hoping a frog gets pissed off enough for it to jump out. Eventually, just as my calves started burning from the inclines with grassiness not exactly made for walking up, we made it to this hill that looks like it juts out a little further than the rest. The views from that hill were amazing: onto the beach with the waves crashing, across the countless other rolling green hills and forest, this giant rock face across the one we were on, and of course the sick view straight out at the multicolored ocean. From there we turned around, checking some traps along the way, and used the roads to walk back to the chalets and a much-deserved shower.

That night we had (another) braai and I was part of the group tasked with making the meat, among other things, one of which was peas. Now that got me really excited, peas are my favorite vegetable; what didn’t get me excited was using a knife to open the can because we didn’t have a can-opener anywhere near. So I’m standing there stabbing this can of peas, and I completely miss the can and stab my finger. The two other people thought it was much worse than it was considering the embarrassingly-long string of expletives I let out. But at least the peas were good. By the time we were all done dinner and cleaned up, it was around quarter after nine. We had planned on having Jan give a presentation on his work for the Parks Board after dinner, but it was already close to bedtime for us (yea we get tired around 9-ish here). Sleep be damned, we had the presentation and discussion and got back to our chalets around 11, to meet the next morning at 5:45.

So the next morning we’re all there at like 5:50, ready to go. After sneaking in some coffee and peanut butter sandwiches, we all hopped into Jan’s bakkie and prepared to get butt-pounded on our way to all six traps. Then, all of a sudden, Ronnie (the machete-wielding trailblazer from a couple days ago) rushes up to Jan and says there’s an emergency. We were half confused and half “whatever” because we were really only half awake due to lack of sleep the night before. We were later told that the “crisis” (the word Jan used to quickly get our asses out of the truck) was an unresponsive warden who went out to push out poachers who came for mussels during the low tide; apparently the last contact they had with him had gunfire in it or something like that (we still don’t know the whole story, probably never will). We later learned that the police killed the poacher (still don’t know about the warden). At first glance it’s like “Oh cool, one less poacher in the world, good stuff.” But then you realize that that guy was probably just trying to get by, and probably knows some of the community members we’ve been interacting with almost every day. It’s one of those things that we (or me, at least, coming from someone with pretty much no interactions with poachers) have a different view of back home, and this just shows a unique perspective of the situation. Even things like conservation are different once you get down into the practice of it. Here (and in a lot of other places) they kill some of the reptiles and amphibians they catch because they need certain DNA from somewhere…I forget the details. But we usually think of conservation of saving everything and killing nothing, but in reality it involves actions that seem contradictory at first. Feel bad for a poacher? Kill to save? Sounds weird, but such is life I guess.

After a relatively long sleeping period (9-5 essentially, sleeping’s my job) we headed back out into the morning mist to check the traps again. Throughout the course of the drive out there, though, the rain increased, which made it pretty miserably damp in the back of the bakkie. Even more miserable was the fact that my trap yet again came up empty. Apparently the rainy weather aided some of the others’ traps while hindering mine, so hopefully it’s sunny tomorrow. I also need the laundry to get done (we hire ladies from the village to do our laundry, we’re job-creators) because it needs the sun to dry. Even when it’s done, though, it still smells funny, so everyone’s in this constant state of stank, either from the weather, sweat, or “clean” clothes. Weather forecast for the next few days? Rain. Awesome. 

“click-click-click” = Beautiful Beach

After setting up the tents and figuring out the sleeping situations (I chose to not sleep in the tents directly under the giant tree where all the monkeys are), us non-tenters brought our stuff up to the “chalets.” I had to lug my giant rolling duffel that somehow wasn’t over Swiss Air’s weight restrictions up about 40 yards of unevenly-spaced stone steps through the rainforest-esque surroundings. Eventually I made it to the chalet and just passed out on the couch, claiming it as my sleeping spot despite the presence of actual beds in the other rooms. They’re actually pretty nice, inside and out: they have this log cabiny exterior up the side of this big hill, and the inside has three rooms, a kitchen, and a little living room with a couple really comfy couches. For dinner we were spoiled by yet another braii, then split for the night as it started to rain. Little did we know, that’d be a continuing theme for the next few days. I realized that first night that the trick to sleeping in a place that has random bugs, cockroaches, and scorpions (though we haven’t seen any yet, only decapitated cockroaches), as well as a ridiculously high humidity level, is to just completely shut them out of your mind and imagine you’re somewhere much cleaner, cooler, and much much less sketchy. I got a solid eight hours of sleep that night, and had a dream related to Arrested Development, which goes down as a win in my book.

The next day was the last day for my one professor, Brian King. It was awesome to get to know a professor that well over the course of only two weeks, something you rarely get (in your first two years at least) at a school as big as Penn State. I used a Batman analogy to describe him (which fit perfectly because he loves Batman and is a huge comic-book nerd): you had Bruce Wayne Brian that we got during class that just got down to business and was super smart and knew his ish, and you had Batman Brian who was this super cool guy that curses, jokes, and plays Frisbee with his students.

Friday we followed up peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast with a session for our “new” class with our “new” professor. I’m not really a huge fan of it so far, since it has a more scientific and ecological lens as opposed to the historical one from Brian’s class, so it was rough going at 9am for the next two hours. After lunch of tomato and cheese sandwiches (I kid you not, I had leftovers from dinner the night before instead), we actually got a couple of the women from the local village to help teach us Xhosa (the local language). To be honest I was kind of disappointed with the lack of clicking (or at least what I thought would be the traditional clicking) in the words. And even when clicks are included, they’re really tough to seamlessly incorporate into the other syllables of the word. It’s funny though to hear the ladies talking and the clicks randomly pop up: “blah blah click blah blah blah click.” After that we had a ton of free time before dinner, so a few others and I walked along the beach to collect shells and hang out.

The beach there is beyond beautiful, and if it weren’t for the monkey gangs and swarms of sharks it’d be damn-near perfect. It’s the epitome of pristine and untouched, as there were about eight trillion shells, about three trillion of which were crazy beautiful. The official rule/law is that since it’s a marine nature reserve you can’t disturb/take any of the shells, but I may or may not have broken that. Between the two times I went, I may or may not have filled my pockets with the coolest looking shells that I assume would be easy to sneak through customs. The scenery in the background and backdrop further down the beach is so pretty, too, because there’s this transition from monkey-infested rainforest to huge Ireland-esque rolling green hills with waves crashing up against huge rock walls off in the distance. 

The next day we got our first little taste of the field work we’d be doing in a couple weeks after we all reconvene. (We’re splitting up the twelve us on Sunday for a week: one group (mine) was staying here at Dwesa and the other was going to Mkambathi (sp?) to work with our new professor, Erica Smithwick, for her research.) We had to drive out like thirty minutes into the forest/jungle combo, and then walk around a 40m x 40m plot of land with like fifteen different tree species in it. Yahoo. I feel bad when I realize how uninterested in trees I am when I’m working with a forest ecology professor, but trees just don’t do anything for me. I got more exciting news when I finally realized what me research project for the next week would be: capturing and identifying reptiles and amphibians. If there’s anything I could care less about then trees, they might be up there. Building traps to maybe identify some random-ass species of frog or snake or something just might be too exhilarating for me. I guess someone’s gotta do it though.

So Sunday finally came, the day of the split, and my group watched the other group off on their five hour trek up to Mkambathi, and then sat in the “conference center” (which has served as our lounge, classroom, and electricity whore) and waited for Jan and Vearna (our reptile and amphibian guides in Dwesa) to show up. About three hours later we were hitting the road with them to build and set up our first two (of six) traps. For fear of unknowingly saying something racist, I’m not sure how to describe the experience of the six of us crammed into the bed of their pickup truck; it was definitely interesting since it wasn’t something I’d ever done before, clearly thinking of my own safety because it was pretty damn easy to fall out of it on those crappy asphalt roads. But yea we were crammed into the back of this truck in addition to all this equipment, so it was a tight and uncomfortable (yet memorable) bunch of rides. So after like fifteen minutes of being sodomized by the grooves in the truck bed, we stopped to chop some trees down for the wooden stakes (we hunt vampires too). It was hilarious because when we went out in the field with Smithwick she was super adamant about not disturbing anything, even the little twigs and branches on the forest floor. We start walking through the forest and basically give Smithwick the finger and go to town on some trees with a couple of machetes. I gotta say, I want a machete when I get home, they’re so much fun. So Jamie, yes, I walked through the jungle with a machete.

We spent the next few hours setting up the first two traps, which weren’t exactly what I expected physically, but technologically it was. They basically consist of buckets, black plastic sheets, and lots and lots and lots and lots of dirt. There’s essentially one central bucket and three arteries per say of this plastic sheet that’s probably like fifty feet long, with little meshy metal traps along the sides. Apparently these reptiles and amphibians run along the sheets and end up in the buckets so we can do a biodiversity survey of the traps. It sounds really inefficient considering how big this place is, but I’m sure it’ll show some results. In order to dig these holes to put the buckets in, we had to dig with shovels and our hands to get all this dirt out so they could fit. Most of the time it was a bitch and a half to shovel and claw through the roots, but it gave me a nice excuse to use the machete to chop things up a bit. After digging the holes, we’d use dirt from those (and dig fresh holes) to weigh down the plastic sheets that these artards run along. This was the really really muddy part, but once you get really dirty it starts getting (dare I say) fun. I’m not a huge fan of half-assing something like getting dirty, so going essentially all in was pretty awesome. At night we got to shower and braii again (Jan loves his braiis), which was extremely relaxing after a relatively laborious day.

The next day we basically went around from 6-1 doing the same exact process four more times, then went like 5-7 driving around and checking the traps. One fun thing that happened on the way there in the morning was that we drove behind a couple of running zebras. It’s odd to see them in a forest setting when we’re so used to seeing them in a savannah or grassland. It was amazing to see how many different landscapes (biomes they’re called, I think) this one little nature reserve has, as we went from forest to jungle to coastal grassland to…regular (?) grasslands, back to the forest to a different type of grasslands to green rolling hills and on and on and on. So now that the two “tough” days of intense manual labor, we’re basically spending the rest of the week going from trap to trap and re-checking them all, and walking around turning over rocks looking for stuff the old-fashioned way. So things should be a tad more relaxing in the coming days. Hopefully I’m right…

Damn Africa You Scary

The next morning we actually left kind of early (as in before we were supposed to, not time early) for once and began our journey to The Haven Hotel inside of Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve. We stopped at a really nice gas station on the “border” of the Transkei to pick up some breakfast (cinnamon bun and yogurt, awesome combo) and kept trekkin on. Along the way, the van I was in (we rented two old-school VW buses, no shag carpeting in the back though) got a little taste of the local police force. They have a bunch of random car checks along the major highways for whatever reason, and Neil (program leader) was confronted by a police officer who thought his American license wasn’t valid even though Neil knew his license was okay as long as he was carrying less than ten people or something like that. After he left to talk it over with some other police officers, and after we were creeped on in the van by another officer who helped himself to open the window to start awkward conversation, we moved on, excited to tell the other van what had happened. Little did we know, their car would eventually blow a tire and they had to change it on the side of the road, giving us all a nice opportunity to stretch our legs.

The next two and a half hours or so were spent trying to navigate through one of the crappiest roads I’ve ever seen. For those who know Pennsylvania pretty well, it was like the Turnpike had never been paved, but was also made of dirt and had broken glass, cows, sheep, and African children in it. I tried sticking my camera out the window for a couple seconds to get clearer pictures, and it’d come out with a really dirty screen. I made the mistake of leaning out of the van to get a cool shot, and came back in with a crapton of dirt, dust, and Africa in my mouth. Whenever I put that picture up on Facebook (remember I can’t upload pictures here because they take up too much bandwidth on the modem we’re sharing) you people better appreciate it. Other than the road conditions, though, it was a really nice drive. The scenery is beautiful: seemingly-endless green rolling hills with colorful rondavels spread throughout, the blue-green ocean (that I can hear from my room) that was turned creamy brown by sedimentation where sharks supposedly feed, the friendliest people I’ve ever encountered who are always willing to smile and wave…

We finally made it to the hotel, and after pulling in and walking around, we realized why they call it The Haven. It’s just so pretty, no other way to describe it. The rooms are separate little cottages (used lightly, they’re not that big), most with thatched roofs, but all with half-doors which are just about the coolest things in the world. We got here Friday afternoon, so, knowing we had a rare “rest day” to pretty much do nothing/catch up on readings on Saturday, we pretty much just unpacked and worked into the night Friday, until we all just gave in and went to the bar (hooray for lower drinking age!).\

The next day some of us went for an early run (shocking right? I don’t remember the last time I exercised on purpose) through the woods and on the beach, which was miserably relaxing. After doing some core we washed off in the ocean (soo nice) and headed back. I really wish there weren’t so many sharks around because it looks like a nice ocean to actually go into, but I’m not messin with sharks. Not me no way no how. Later in the afternoon we saw the Queen Mary go by. Not gonna lie, it doesn’t look all that big. People were saying that it’s just because it was so far out that it looked kinda small, but I expected more from one of the largest cruise liners in the world. Someone in the group had the amazing idea of having a bonfire on the beach, so after getting unexpected approval from Neil at dinner, we spent the whole night on the beach. I imagine that’s what people in California do all the time; if so, I’m uber-jealous because it was so much fun. We just hung out, listened to music, drank cheap alcohol, and threw around a light-up Frisbee all night. Some of us were kinda hesitant when the sketchy chef, his assistant, and two equally-sketchy South African dudes asked to join us, but they were all really cool and not creepers. One of the guys actually has his PhD in botany or something like that.

The next day my current roommate, Tom, and I had a funny situation at the front desk. We, like others, have been having trouble getting hot water in our shower. So we went up to the receptionist, this jubilant, plump South African lady that was super nice, and asked if she knew what to do to get hot water. She said a bunch of stuff we didn’t understand, and then ended up giving us the keys to an entire room, just so we could use the shower in it. It was awesome.

Monday/Today (finally writing this up on the same day), we took our first visit to the schools we’ll be working at in about a month. (Half of the group of twelve is going to one school that’s like ten minutes away, the other half (my half) to one like two hours away on poor road conditions.) They were both situated on the top of hills on the side of the main dirt road, essentially consisting of four concrete buildings forming a rectangle: three were the classrooms themselves, the other being an administrative building, with a grassy/concrete area in the middle. I felt awkward saying the kids treated us like celebrities, but they were definitely excited to see us. Each of the classrooms had windows with kids’ faces filling them, and every time we walked by a door (they were all open because it was super hot out, and we just had to wear pants today) they’d all wave to us in the middle of class. I’m really excited to work with them all. Actually, correction, I’m excited to interact and play soccer with them, I have no freakin’ idea what we’re teaching them, hopefully someone in my group does. Other than that, it was pretty odd to see cows, goats, and dogs wandering around the school.

The journey for the next day was kind of a surprise to me, at least before the program started. I was under the impression we were staying at The Haven for the remaining eight weeks after we first arrived. I found out earlier in the trip that we would actually be moving to the other side of the river to camp for the next three weeks after a few days at the Haven. So we left that morning on the crappy roads with a long nasty drive ahead of us. We only had two vehicles to cram fifteen people in, one of which was this weird Mitsubishi SUV with the smallest seating space in the backseat ever. Someone had the genius idea of cramming two bigger guys and one skinny guy in the back seat of that car, and everyone else in the remaining VW van that didn’t blow a tire. And of course I, though not being the skinniest guy on the trip, got stuck in the middle, so I spent like three hours driving on even worse road conditions with my knees clapping together, my bladder full, and my ass hurting from sitting on the place where the cup holders pull out that isn’t technically supposed to be a seat. Some of the roads had amazing views that reminded me of the Mitsubishi (I think, possibly coincidental) commercial where they’re driving on the most dangerous road in the world in like Bolivia or something. Driving on the left of these roads was pretty scary though, especially because the road is wide enough for 1-1.5 cars max and we went by like three different cars zipping by on the side of this cliff.

Once we got to Dwesa we stopped in this grassy area to eat some sandwiches for lunch, and just across the road we saw some vervet monkeys (or just vervets, don’t know don’t care), which freaked me out something fierce. I hate monkeys.

I had more to had, but the Internet is really spotty here (noticing a common trend?), so I’ll just throw this up for now. My next post could potentially involve cockroaches, scorpions, and monkeys and me spraying Raid at all of them.

The JoePa Post

For those who thought I wouldn't find out about JoePa's death on a Penn State program, fear not, I knew pretty soon after it happened.

This is a journal I wrote about the whole ordeal a few days ago: 

           After hearing about the passing of Joe Paterno, I was very confused as to how to feel. The past few months have been nothing short of tumultuous, with new information and accusation coming out what seemed like every day, with new feelings and emotions following soon after. I’m not there in State College now (obviously) to see the reaction of the Penn State community as well as the rest of the nation, and to be honest I’m glad I’m not there. Too often in our society, the voices of the extremes are heard over the less vocal members of the more rational middle ground. Without even being there, I’m sure people across State College are saying how JoePa’s the greatest person to ever live, or how he’s aided in pedophilia or whatever blah blah blah. And I’m sure that’s just a microcosm of the rest of the country and the national media (wouldn’t be true if didn’t sneak that in, right?). In my opinion, we need a Rally to Restore Sanity for JoePa. People need to start focusing on the facts, and stop with the over-glorification and the accusations.

            Even way back when I got accepted to Penn State, I was afraid that he’d die while I was there, a feeling that I’m sure was shared by many other students. About a year and a half later, I had a not-so-fleeting feeling that he would die when I was in South Africa, and unfortunately I was right. While here, though, I learned more about the situation from some others on the trip. For instance, I knew that he had been told he was fired via telephone, but I had no idea someone drove to his house and told him to call some phone number to hear it. If that’s not sketchy I don’t know what is. It’s such an annoyingly difficult internal struggle to fight with when I hear about just straight-up dumb stuff our Board of Trustees do. On one hand, I selfishly hope that this can't be the only school in the country that’s run by a pack of baboons, and that my school isn’t the only one operated in a shadier fashion than the Masons. But on the other, I don’t really want the higher education system in our country to be filled with dimwits like Penn State apparently is/was.

            I’m not ashamed to admit that I went downtown that November night he got fired. Aside from a handful of idiots that made the rest of us look bad, I thought it was a good way to show the Board that the students (the ones funding their lifestyle) aren’t exactly thrilled with the way they’re handling things. I remember remembering (almost memory inception) part of a Family Guy episode where they show President Bush hiding in his tree house avoiding dealing with the Hurricane Katrina cleanup, and thinking about how sadly relevant that was to our situation. People are just fooling themselves if they think that we all went out there that night for the victims, let’s be real: it was for JoePa. The candlelight vigil, which had a higher attendance but less media coverage, was for the victims.

            In all, it’s sad to think that even I couldn’t resist talking about the scandal in this journal when there were so many more potential positives in his life to talk about. While I’m not exactly about to put him at capital-h status, someone of his stature deserves better.

That’s Some Lion King Ish Right There

After a morning of waking up too early resulting in silently attempting to pack and then getting my oversized duffel down the narrowest spiral staircase known to man, I was thrilled to just sit on my ass for eight hours and stare out the window. I’m onea those people that almost enjoys the journey moreso than the destination, so taking the Garden Route was an exciting thing for me. And boy did it not disappoint. All the different landscapes (mountains, grasslands, beach) are all so close together, so I could turn to the left, take a picture of the mountains, then turn to the right and take a picture of the beach. So cool. Suffice to say I didn’t get much work done in that van.

(Side note: we actually do haveta do work here. Our first “class” is a historical view of South Africa, gradually narrowing the scope from colonialism and apartheid across the entire country, to where we’re at now (yea I’m writing about a week ago), Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve. It’s a crapton of reading and discussing, which sucks because all the readings are in pdf format so we haveta read them on our computers, which sucks because we have to charge them a lot, which sucks because we’ve been moving around a lot lately and haven’t been able get a lot of consistent time for reading, which sucks because we have a lot to do.)

After about eight hours of driving along the Garden Route (split up into a few bathroom/food breaks obviously), we stopped to stay at this little place called the Harkerville Forest Lodge. Unfortunately we were only staying there for a night since it was so nice; it was like an awesome summer camp lodge with flora-covered wooden paths. So we spent the afternoon and night there reading, playing volleyball, discussing, taking pictures, and hanging out until we left early the next morning.

Oddly enough so far (knock on wood) I’ve had no problems getting up early and doing stuff, which is like the exact opposite of me at home. I thought moving seven hours forward would fuck with my system more, but I guess not. I’m also one of the few that haven’t gotten really sick (out of either end) already, just a lot of sneezing, but it’s not like I’ve never sneezed before so it’s all good.

That morning we drove another few hours until we hit this place near Grahmstown called the Conservation Academy, headed by this guy named Wayne and his wife. We learned a lot about the surrounding area (especially the plant-life) because Wayne’s a botanist, but we soon learned he’s much more than that. He quite literally knows everything there is to know about that area (and more). We went on a nature walk one morning (woke up at 5am, had a little trouble getting up that early) and he told us all about the flora and fauna around the hills and around his farm. We described him as a mix between Yoda, Indiana Jones, and Crocodile Dundee. When we went on our “game drive” (let’s be serious, it was a safari), he sat shotgun and talked with our driver (who looked just like Charlize Theron, good stuff) for most of the time about all the plants and animals. Speaking of the safari, many of us said that that was the (or one of the) “Holy crap, I’m in Africa” moments where it finally hits you. We saw zebras, giraffes (!), and an elephant really close, among others that, let’s face it, just aren’t as cool. I also ate a termite along the way, not great but not terrible either. A lot of the views were straight bananas, especially the ones from high up. I was kind of upset I didn’t get to see a wild lion, but we saw a bunch the day before at this wild cat sanctuary.

At the Amakhala Reserve place thing, they have this sanctuary for mistreated or abused lions and leopards. For instance, there were a few lions from a Romanian circus (why so many circuses in Romania?), a leopard from a zoo in Sierra Leone (they have zoos there?), and another lion from France. Not that I ever plan on being that close to a lion or leopard again in my life, but it was soo cool to see animals like that so close. You’d walk up about five or six feet off the ground into this hut thing that was about five feet from the cages (used loosely, they’re obviously fenced in, but they’re pretty large areas (comparatively at least)). We learned that one of the female lions was isolated on purpose because they tried to introduce another one with her, but she killed it within the first ten seconds. Crazy stuff.

So the last night at Wayne’s he treated us to a “braii” (BBQ) which was amazing. Springbok and corn just hits the spot. That night was the first time all trip I looked straight up at the stars. There wasn’t much air pollution so you could see a lot of the stars super clearly. The next morning we ate and left for Morgan’s Bay (for those keeping track geographically), where we were staying nearby at this place owned by the Eastern Cape Parks Board, who were welcoming us with another braii. Score. We stopped for some lunch at this “pancake house” right near the beach in this little town a few hours away. I, playing the role of ignorant American, was super pumped for a tall stack of pancakes and syrup with some OJ…notsomuch. Their pancakes are more like crepes (not really complaining about that though), so I got brown sugar cinnamon “pancakes” with cream. Holy hell were they amazing. After eating we waited for like four hours on/near the beach (where I got my first figurative taste of the Indian Ocean) for Neil (the leader of the program) to get some supplies, then headed to the braii.

I later went into a meat-coma after eating the half elephant amount of meat they gave us. It was pretty cool because they let us braii our own meat. Before and after eating, a lot of us were awestruck by the gorgeous sky in the background of the backyard. The entire sky was just lit up with thousands of stars with barely any blank space. The Milky Way was out in full blast too, something I know I’ve never seen that clearly.

That night was pretty rough, though, as the sleeping conditions were kinda eh. My original bed position lay right underneath this bunch of spiders that looked to be spawning by the second, it was so gross. No way was I sleeping under that, so I moved that ish pretty quick. The beds were also pretty awkward because every time you moved a muscle it’d make so much noise. Oh and the bathrooms were outside of the building and you had to remember to keep the doors closed because monkeys might get in. Yet another welcome to Africa moments for me. I hate monkeys.

“I’m Just Waiting For A Velociraptor To Jump Out”

I apologize in advance for the upcoming lack of pictures in the future posts. If it didn’t take so goddamn long for the pictures to upload, I’d post a lot more on here, but I’ll end up putting all of them on Facebook once I’m home and bored out of my mind. 

The plan for the day was to go to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. I had no idea what to expect from the gardens, so I kinda half-expected it to be just a really big collection of random plants while we walked along one of those paths with all the little stones. I was half-wrong, but boy was I happy I was. Apparently Kirstenbosch is one of the seven best botanical gardens in the world (with two of the others in NYC and St. Louis, which really surprised me) and is considered by many to be the best of those seven. After seeing the location of it, I’m not surprised at all, considering the backdrop for the entire gardens is Table Mountain, which is even prettier the closer you get. Even only a few days in, I realized that this is onea those trips where so much of these experiences are so unbelievably mind-blowing that pictures just don’t do them justice, so the pictures I'll eventually post are just a small snapshot (shitty pun very much intended) of the gardens. And to explain the post title, many of us noticed how similar the landscape (especially Table Mountain in the background) was to Hawaii and Jurassic Park (don’t know if it was shot there or not, probably was). But yea.

After finishing the walking part of the tour we ate lunch then sat underneath a huge tree on this super-nice grass and had one of our “sessions” to discuss everything we saw today. A couple times we were interrupted by some ducks and these scary birds that were a little too people-friendly for my liking.

For dinner we drove to the waterfront area of Cape Town (which is super nice, kinda European but with noticeable African themes) and ate at this Thai restaurant. I’m not one to group all Asian food together (actually I am), but I was pretty nervous because I pretty much just like rice. I was also poised to not make the same mistake I made at the other restaurant and inadvertently order something gross (which is pretty tough when you think you’re getting something you like, but I digress). I ended up getting the roasted duck for payback from earlier since the mother duck kinda scared me when she got close. That’s what happens in Africa I guess, if I’m afraid of it I’ll conquer it by eating it. I don’t see me eating snakes though.

That night about half of us went across the street to this really cool little bar with some good outdoor seating. I’m not really a beer person to begin with, but I know for a fact that duck was kicking back in my stomach so I didn’t drink that much. It was nice to just sit and talk with some people outside of the context of the trip, “real life shit” as I called it.

The next day was something I was anxiously awaiting the whole trip: the township tour. Quick history lesson for those who need it: during apartheid, the blacks got driven into these “townships” outside of many major urban centers that were/are riddled with poverty and crime. I had a rough idea of what I was going to see, so I chose not to take any pictures; I actually didn’t even take my camera at all to resist taking them. I just knew I would’ve felt weird taking pictures and gawking at people who aren’t just really poor, but all they’re doing is living. I just got the museum vibe from the whole picture-taking idea. I wrote in an email to my mom that it’d be like Bill Gates walking through our house and gasping at how comparatively “poor” we are. So yea, no pictures.

The first township we went to was Langa, which according to our tour guide has a population of 200,000 people. I had a pre-conceived notion that the entire place would be full of really really really poor people living in smaller-than-shacks. Don’t get me wrong: there were people in situations like that. But there were also three distinct social classes, with their “middle” class kind of equivalent-looking to our inner city ghettos. The lowest class, though, consisted partly of people living in halved shipping containers, all of which were lined up in rows so that we could walk through. Most of the rest of the lowest of the low lived in what you and I would expect the townships to look like (super-poor African shantytowns), and what Google Images would probably show you. Overall, there was just a lot of trash, dirt, and stank. What made it very foreign to me was that despite all that nastiness, there were a lot of people that were so pleasant towards us and made us feel welcome. The kids there were also really happy; some little girl legit scared the ish outta me when she jumped our form behind a wall. Little did she know Hailey was about to abduct her. Anyways, it was pretty awkward when our guide kept telling us we were allowed to take pictures, even when we’d be crowding into someone’s home, which were the about the size of a small American bathroom. Something that grossly stuck with me was when she said that nine year olds were having sex and trying to circumcise themselves to make them feel more like an adult. Camp people: just imagine the third- or fourth-graders doing that; it’s just scary gross. After the tour (which lasted forever because our guide loved to talk) we went to an awesome gift shop full of locally made jewelry and pottery where I bought a new bracelet to make up for the ones I left at home. Beth: I got you’re piece of jewelry here too, so just know you’re helping poor people in Africa by getting me to purchase it.

On the way home we drove through another township (“Nyanga” or something like that) and got to see/smell another township which was definitely interesting. We stopped for lunch on the side of the road in the little city place and got some lamb. I admittedly didn’t like seeing the sheep across the street in their little corral, all soft and cute. But…I ate it and it was good. Like real good.

Once we got back to the hotel we sat and talked about what we saw, which was super helpful especially in a place like that where there’s so much to see that you can’t just see it all. We went simple for dinner and just got pizza, which was real good because they don’t pile on the cheese, sauce, and grease like they do back home. Four slices of Hawaiian pizza was sufficient for me. Smelling like pizza > smelling like burning tires.