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.