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.