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.