Farewell South Africa!

For the class I was taking here in Cape Town, each of my USC comrades and I were asked to put together a final project to sum up our time here and show some of the people we met. I made a video using some of my personal photos and video footage as well as some of the interviews that I did for News24. Here's what I came up with:

And with that, my South African adventure comes to an end. Farewell, SA!!

The elephant in the room

One of the cool things about traveling abroad is that it can really alter the way you view your own country. I spent a lot of time in India--a place we Westerners like to paint as a horrible place for social inequality, where poverty is everywhere and no one has a chance at improving their situation. While I did notice poverty a lot in India, the experience of being there actually just caused me to spend more time thinking about social mobility, or lack thereof, in the USA.

In South Africa, the issue that's been on my mind the most is, perhaps unsurprisingly, race.

I've been highly aware of racial issues since I stepped off the plane here, but I haven't written anything on the subject yet. That's mostly because I have no idea what to say. I've been spending all of this time trying to come up with something insightful, but it hasn't happened.

People call South Africa "the rainbow nation" because of the amazing diversity here. But while it is a diverse place, and that diversity widely celebrated, racial issues in this country did not just dissolve with the Apartheid government in 1994.

South Africa has some pretty distinct racial categories. The categories don't necessarily stem from the attitudes of the people here, but from the country's political history. Apartheid, a system of government which was based entirely on race, had to define race very categorically in order to work. As a result, anyone in this country born before 1994 still knows in a deep, intimate way which category they fit into.

The basic breakdown is White, Colored, and Black. White people basically have entirely European heritage while Black people identify as entirely African. So that leaves "Colored." It's hard for us Americans to wrap our minds around, first of all, because in the USA, obviously, "colored" is an extremely derogatory word. Secondly, in the USA we don't really differentiate between someone who is of African descent and someone who is mixed race. Our half-Kenyan, half Irish-American president, Barack Obama, for example, we call "black." Here, it would be a lot more complicated.

South Africa population | Infographics

Colored most often means mixed race, but racial mixing has been happening in South Africa since the 1600s, so while many Colored people are, technically "mixed," many have only a vague idea of what their racial mix is, and while they don't identify as "Black African," their ancestors have in most cases, been in Africa for hundreds of years. Racial heritage among South Africa's Colored population can include Dutch, English, Indian, Pacific Islander, East Asian, African, and any other combination of the many many cultures that have passed through South Africa due to colonization, slavery, and trading. Traders and colonizers who passed through Cape Town did not enslave the native people they found here, rather, they brought slaves from all over Asia and other parts of Africa. Most slaves they brought, however, were men. So the gender imbalance inevitably lead to some racial mixing. Indian, Asian or East African slaves would marry native South African Khoi Khoi women and white men would frequently impregnate the rare female slaves they owned. As a result, Cape Town became an extremely interracial society until Apartheid outlawed interracial sex or marriage in the 1950s. Interestingly, hundreds of years after slavery, South Africa's Colored, mixed race population still generally only lives around Cape Town in the provinces known as the Western Cape and Northern Cape. Here in Cape Town, the population is largely Colored, but in the rest of the country, Colored people remain a small minority.

Ethnic Breakdown of South Africas Population by Province | Infographics

Another hard thing for Americans to conceptualize about race in South Africa is that there are two pretty distinct groups of White people here in South Africa. Afrikaners are descended of Dutch settlers and speak Afrikaans, a dialect of Dutch (mixed with African and Asian languages). They have a strong history of farming and make up the biggest population of white people here. But then there are also the English. You might meet one White person here who sounds like they're speaking English as a second language (because they are) and another White person who grew up in the same city whose accent sounds vaguely British or Australian. Afrikaners and English people, of course also, have fairly different customs, family names, favorite recipes, and whatever else defines culture.

The Black/African population in South Africa is just as diverse as any other grouping. A person who identifies as Black might be Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, or one of many other tribal groups. Nelson Mandela came from a Xhosa tribe, while Jacob Zuma, the current president of South Africa is Zulu. Of course, each group also has their own language and cultural heritage. Almost 80 percent of South Africa's population identifies as Black, though here again, this varies widely region-to-region. Here in the Western Cape, Black people are a minority.

Beyond those three big groups there are many other ethnic and racial groups in South Africa as well. There is a huge Indian diaspora here, especially in the city of Durban. Gandhi even got his start in politics fighting for the rights of Indian people in South Africa. There is also a huge refugee population in South Africa. This country takes in more refugees than almost anywhere else in the world. Many of them come from other African countries. As is the case in many countries with large immigrant populations, these newcomers don't always receive a warm welcome. 

As I mentioned before, Apartheid called for strict divisions among the races. Your social standing was defined by your DNA. But of course, there are always gray areas. South Africans will tell you all kinds of stories--from amazingly recent memory--about a time when two brothers might be legally classified with one as White and the other Colored or one Colored and one Black, or when a government bureaucrat would run a comb through your hair to see if your locks were straight enough to "pass" for "White."

What's eerie is that many of the racial divides set up by Apartheid have had long lasting effects. Black people in South Africa, though the largest group by the numbers, still experience hugely disproportionate poverty. White people, making up less than 10 percent of the country's population, still seem to be the wealthy ones. People still identify certain parts of town as a "Black township," or a "White suburb." Most employees in the shops at the mall attached to the apartment where I have been living are Black or Colored while most of the shoppers are White. Riding in the elevator in my office building the other day, I heard a White woman mistake a Black woman who is an employee of the building who was carrying a tray of food for a delivery person. And the list of examples goes on.

Race also comes up frequently in conversation. Almost every person I met in South Africa had something to say on the subject. There was the highly educated Colored man who works in city government and admitted he still feels nervous speaking in front of his White coworkers. There was the White employee of the national park who I interviewed who said improving outreach efforts to other populations (implying beyond just White) of the city was a major concern for her. There were the many many conversations about race as it relates to politics.

It all seems eyebrow-raising, but on the other hand, familiar. After all, don't I live in a diverse city where city government is still largely white? Or where sections of town are strongly associated with certain racial populations? Recent events surrounding the Trayvon Martin case in the USA serve as reminders that racial conflict is still very present in American society.

My time in South Africa has certainly taught me a lot about the history of race here and the remaining issues surrounding race in this country, but I think in the long run, my South African experience will also help me look at racial issues in the USA with a little more perspective.

Things I'm hauling home

Tomorrow is my last day in South Africa! I'm packing up now and here's what's weighing down my luggage (besides the aforementioned Kudu). I would bring all of these things home by the caseload if I could, but I'll have to settle for just as much as will fit in my bursting-at-the-seams suitcases.

Wine! I never tasted a bad wine the whole time I was in South Africa. It's cheap and wonderful and I'll miss it!

Rooibos! I love rooibos tea and it's so hard to find in the USA. Here, it's hard to avoid, in fact, I'll admit, at this point I've had so much rooibos (at least one cup per day, often more) while I've been here that I'm starting to get sick of it, but I know that will wear off soon and I'll start craving it as soon as I'm back home.

Peri peri sauce!! Peri peri sauce is something I had never heard of before South Africa. Now I'm mad that I know about it because I know I'll crave it for the rest of my life and I'll never be able to find it at home. It's the local hot sauce of choice and I think they make it from a special South African chili pepper and some kind of highly addictive narcotic. I may or may not have been heard uttering things about how I want to "guzzle peri peri sauce by the gallon." I'm already plotting ways I can get to the Eastern USA where they have the only locations of Nando's (an awesome, peri peri-centric South African fast food chain) in the country. I'll also be drafting a letter to their CEO suggesting they open a branch in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

Johannesburg day four: Soweto

(I'm back in Cape Town now with my computer and better Internet. I've added photos to all of the Joburg posts if you want to go back and see what I was talking about.)

I always have a knee-jerk reaction to guided tours. It's not that I don't find them informative--it's just the walking slowly in a clump that immediately identifies you to everyone around as a tourist, the lack of chances to get lost, the rehearsed jokes--I just prefer a clumsier, more nonsensical way to see a place. I also cringe at the idea of poverty tourism--something I've heard about in several parts of the world, LA included. While I get that it's important to expose people to the realities of poverty, it's hard to do in a way that doesn't come off as exploitative. On the other hand, what was I to do in Johannesburg, where some of the city's most well known sites also lie within its biggest township?

I had to break my own rules and take a guided tour of Soweto.

Besides the fact that Soweto (South West Township) is legally under the same jurisdiction as Joburg, it could easily be its own city. It's a massive ecosystem 3.5 million people strong--that's bigger than Johannesburg's city center. While parts of the township are as affluent-looking as any American suburb, other parts are made up of rows and rows of corrugated tin shacks with no electricity or running water.

I booked a Soweto tour through my hostel. Besides the driver, it was just me and two young people who are studying the tourism industry, so were only riding along for educational purposes. (A side note--these are the fourth and fifth people I've met in South Africa who are studying hospitality and tourism. That could be a coincidence, or it could be evidence of a new, growing industry.) In three and a half hours I know we barely scratched the surface of Soweto.

At our stops in the township, the driver and the students stayed behind in the car while I got out to look around. At our first stop, that meant I was alone wandering through one of Soweto's most impoverished areas. The driver connected me with a local volunteer guide who walked me back through the shacks and pointed out a daycare.

He told me about using pit toilets and collecting water in a bucket from a community tap and getting used to total darkness at night after the government realized people were stealing electricity from streetlights and shut them all off. "Take pictures!" everyone encouraged as I walked through this community. There were plenty of things to take pictures of, but I didn't take that many in this area, I couldn't help feeling a little disrespectful snapping away at people in their homes.

Two massive towers that used to be part of a power plant are a major Soweto landmark. Once, they served the white people of Johannesburg while polluting the black townships, now they are no longer active, but they have been made into a huge piece of public art which celebrates Soweto life in murals.

Nelson Mandela lived in Soweto once. Before he was imprisoned in Cape Town's Robben Island prison, he had a small brick house there with his second wife, Winnie. The house is now a museum. Mandela's birthday was last week, so the messages of well wishers are still hanging on the walls outside the house.

Just down the road from where Mandela lived, sits another Soweto landmark--perhaps the township's most well recognize. Soweto rose to global infamy in 1976 when black schoolkids who, under a new Apartheid law, were being forced to speak Afrikaans at school, decided to strike. Police opened fire on the crowd of children killing 176. The tragedy was a major turning point in the struggle against Apartheid. Today, the spot is a beautiful memorial and museum.

I left Johannesburg in the afternoon after the tour. I almost didn't go on a Soweto tour, but after visiting I was so glad I did. I think I would have missed out on an important place in South Africa if I hadn't. 

Johannesburg day three: caves and lions

One of the big draws about Joburg for me was a world heritage site about an hour outside town called "The Cradle of Humankind." The name kind of says it all--it's an area where tons of fossils and remnants of our early ancestors have been found.

The drive out of Joburg was an interesting experience itself. The more I see of this city, the more I think it looks like Los Angeles. One similarity is that it takes a loooong time to get past the city part and into the countryside. Driving though the city and into suburbia is a cool way to get a sense of life here though. I don't really mind traveling alone, but I really missed having someone else in the car that I could hand the camera to while I drove so they could take pictures of all the interesting things I was passing--crowds of people walking down the side of the freeway on the way to work, busy marketplaces, a beautiful college campus, and the posters which someone has plastered to every park bench, bus stop and public trash can in the city, which advertise "penis enlargement."

When I did make it out of the city, the countryside was really beautiful. It doesn't look like Cape Town at all. It looks much more like what you probably envision when you think "Africa:" wide, grassy, yellowish plains against a big, impossibly blue sky.

Maropeng was the name of my first stop, it's a museum about some of the history of the area's archeological sites. Of course it's interesting to learn about our very early ancestors, but the presentation of the information at this museum is at times baffling. At one point in the museum you go on a short boat ride underground. It's something akin to "It's a Small World," but with less educational value. Of course, I'm always totally delighted by that kind of nonsense.

I headed from Maropeng to the nearby Sterkfontein Caves. The caves are 20 million years old and 40 meters underground if I remember correctly. Somewhere inside, a very important skeleton of one of man's very ancient ancestors was found. The poor fellow fell down a crevasse many hundreds of thousands of years ago only to be fossilized and dug up by modern archaeologists. It looks like "Goonies" inside the cave, you have to crawl around under a lot of big rocks, and we got to see a bat, so that was all great for me.

 I was tired after the museum and the caves, but I needed to press on! There were more attractions awaiting me. Within the same big park is a place called the Rhino and Lion reserve, which is basically self explanatory. What I didn't know about this place was that you get to drive around in your own car--a do it yourself safari, you might say. So I proceeded down the dirt road to see some animals and dirty my rental car.

When I got to the lion area I was surprised that the lions were napping right next to the dirt road. One of them was even napping IN the road which meant I had to drive my dinky VW over some big rocks to avoid her. Then I wondered if anyone has ever had to change a tire in the park right next to a pride of lions. Luckily, I didn't have to.

The Rhino and Lion park has its own ancient cave and though I had just spent an hour in the impressive Sterkfontein Caves, I was still interested in this one. If nothing else, I wanted to see how it earned the name "The Wonder Cave." The Wonder Cave is not as old as Sterkfontein--10 million years instead of 20 million--and not as deep either, but it is much more adorned with beautiful, white, limestone stalactites and stalagmites. It's like an underground rock cathedral. The tites and mites take about 100 years to gain one centimeter in length, so the massive size of these ones makes the cave's age apparent.

By the time I emerged from the Wonder Cave it was almost 4pm. This worried me because the guard at the entrance to the park had warned me that most attractions would close at 4 and I still had one thing left to do. I wanted to hold a baby lion.

I drove as fast as my little VW could handle on gravel and dirt roads toward the visitor center where the baby lions live. I got there just as they were beginning to close but ran though the gate anyways. I stood near the baby lion enclosure hoping some employee would see me and take pity, scooping a cub into my arms. That didn't happen, so instead I took pictures of their kitten like faces and their oversized paws though the bars until the employees kicked me out. Holding a baby lion will get added to the ever lengthening list of things I want to do someday when I come back to Africa.

Johannesburg day two: brunch, etc.

My second day in Johannesburg began as every Sunday should as far as I'm concerned, that is, with brunch.

 In Cape Town, my comrades and I have been taking a once weekly class about South African media taught by a lovely Capetonian couple named Chantel and Andre. Hearing that I was traveling to Joburg alone, Andre insisted that I get in touch with Anwar, a good friend of his.

 Anwar and his girlfriend Jolene came to get me from my hostel--how lovely it was to be driven around by someone else--and took me to a spot downtown that completely surprised me. We parked in an industrial area under a freeway overpass and approached a graffitied warehouse building but stepped inside and were in a hip, bustling marketplace that makes Seattle's Pike Place look sleepy and lame by comparison.

Jolene and Anwar were kind enough to treat me to a decadent crepe while we perused booths of cool art, vintage clothing, anti-Zuma posters, and hipster cupcakes.

 When they returned me to my hostel I hopped in my rental car again--an act of great bravery--and headed out toward Johannesburg's number one attraction, the Apartheid Museum.

GPS and I had differing opinions as to where one can turn legally, what "keep left means," and how to get onto a freeway, but we made it there. The Apartheid Museum, a memorial to one of the greatest social justice atrocities in recent history, sits on the campus of a huge casino and theme park complex. As you walk in past huge pillars reading "freedom" and "equality," you can hear the shrieks of young children on roller coasters nearby--another form of liberation, I guess?

The museum takes about two full hours to see. It's ends up being a lot of reading, but it's set up effectively. Chillingly, as you enter the museum, one door is marked "whites," the other, "non-whites," and you can only go through one.

I thought I would learn about South African history, and I did, but I was also amazed how much I already knew, that is, how much I've learned in the past two months.

After the museum it was late afternoon which in South Africa I have lovingly come to know as wine time. All the guidebooks say that the neighborhood of Melville is the place to be for trendiness and nightlife, so GPS and I headed that way. As promised, Melville was a bastion of trendy restaurants and bars--though I should note that almost every restaurant and bar that I haven been to in this country has been way cooler than the average LA eatery/drinkery. Sorry LA.

My Joburg native coworker in Cape Town had suggested a spot in the neighborhood, but the "Liberation Cafe" across the street looked more my speed. There, I drank wine, watched people salsa dance, and. Was joined yet again by Anwar and Jolene, who were very kind in their willingness to spend time with me.

Johannesburg day one: driving on th left

Naturally my first stop in Johannesburg was the South African Brewers' "World of Beer" museum. But it wasn't entirely because beer is a high priority for me. A lot of it just had to do with the fact that I was hopelessly lost. When I landed in this city I was exceedingly proud of myself--I got my rental car and made it to my hostel with uncanny ease. It was a more seamless travel experience than I usually have at home in LA.

 My ego inflated, I decided to head out for my first afternoon of sightseeing. I knew vaguely that the downtown part of Johannesburg had some interesting sights, plus I had theater tickets in that area for that night, so I decided to start there. I used the location of the beer museum just to get me started with an address to type into a google search and left with those directions in hand.

 My troubles began when I couldn't figure out how to get out to the hotel's gated driveway. My troubles continued when half the roads I needed to find we're unmarked and the other half had undergone name changes--a noble effort to erase the ghosts of colonialism, but a major impediment to my map reading.

 I managed to get from my hotel to downtown, but then I was faced with crazy pedestrians, buses, one- way streets, and roadside hawkers. You might say I was overwhelmed. When I had reached the point when my google directions became completely meaningless, I found a gas station to pull over in and start toiling with the rental company-provided GPS. (Maybe I should have done that in the first place.) I told GPS the address of the beer museum having nothing else to offer her at this point. In her calming, dulcet tone, she directed me there. As she soothingly said that we had arrived at our destination, a toothless man jumped right in front of my car.

You see, in South Africa, they don't have parking meters, they just have guys who stand around on the sidewalk and watch your car. Apparently, they also aggressively urge you to park with them. Not having driven a car in an urban center very much yet, I did not know this and was completely terrified when the man started yelling something in my window. I don't know how he could tell I was a tourist initially, but when I cowered in fear and started shaking my head, I'm sure it confirmed all of his suspicions about me. He charged me what I am certain is way way too much, but I nearly ran him over getting into the space, so I didn't feel like I was in a position to argue.

 At this point I was right in front for the beer museum and had lost all interest in exploring this neighborhood on foot. What I needed, as indicated by my palpitating heart and crazy eyes, was a drink. So into the beer museum I went.

I've been to the Guinness museum in Dublin and I grew up in microbrewtown, USA, so I feel pretty solid on my understanding of the whole hops plus barley process, but I did learn a thing or two at the "World of Beer." The Disneyesque exhibit walks you through African tribal beer making traditions then the European process as introduced by colonists. I learned that black South Africans weren't allowed to buy any "European" alcohol until 1962, so even beer had a dark history with Apartheid. The end of the tour came with a much needed TWO free drinks, though oddly, they had nothing on tap. I got a free souvenir glass then forgot to take it with me.

After beers and a pretty decent veggie burger I found my way to the theater. The play--a musical about five men in an Apartheid era prion--was fantastic. The parking was free.

Things South Africans say

 

Howzit

This is somewhere between "hello" and "how ya doin?" but it doesn't seem like people really use it as a question. It's just "howzit." When Barack Obama spoke at the University of Cape Town last month he opened with "Howzit!" and got a big laugh.

Lekker
An Afrikaans word. It means "good," "cool," etc. I thought people were talking about "liquor" all the time for the first week I spent here.

Robot
Adorably, a traffic light. My coworker had a fun time explaining this to me when she was driving me around one day.

Shame
I'm still not 100 percent sure what people here mean when they say this, but they say it all the time. It seems to come up in the same places that we would say "that's a shame," or "what a pity," but then they also use it when they see a cute baby or hear a funny joke, so I guess it's a multipurpose expression. When I had a bad cold a few weeks ago, people said "oh, shame!" to me so much I began to wonder if it might also be some sort of religious blessing meant to exercise one's demons.

Is it?
This is another confusing one. We say "is it?" too, but usually only in response to a statement that contains the word "is," as in,
"It's raining outside."
"Oh is it?"
But in South Africa, "is it?" can be used as a response to almost any statement, as in,
"The child is very sick."
"Is it?"
"You owe me 10 rand."
"Is it?"
"I don't understand your weird slang."
"Is it?"

Hectic
When I use the word hectic, I'm usually describing a busy schedule or bad traffic while trying to sound slightly fancy or Britishy. When South Africans use the word hectic they're describing something that I would describe as "crazy," which is confusing, because that can be something good or bad, as in,
"The crime in that neighborhood is really hectic!"
or
"Did you see that amazing cricket game? It was hectic!"

Bakkie 
A pick-up truck, but also sometimes a Tupperware container.

Bru
Like "bro" or "buddy" or "brother."

Braai
A barbecue. 

Now/now now
This is used to mean the opposite of the actual meaning of the word "now." When someone tells you "I'll be ready now," it does not mean they're there and ready to go, it means they're almost ready. When your waiter in a restaurant tells you your food is coming "just now," it means you'll be waiting 10 more minutes. It's not that South Africans are always tardy, it's just that they have completely re-purposed this word.

Pleasure (pronounced pleh-zhuuuuuh)
South Africans use this about the same way we would use it, that is,
"Nice to meet you."
"Pleasure!"
But they use it much more frequently than any American would.

Kind regards
The only way to end an email. 

Sorry
I don't think I've heard any South African use the phrase "excuse me." "Sorry" seems to be the preferred response in situations such as offending someone, asking someone to speak up, apologizing for bumping into someone in a crowded grocery store aisle, or begging for money from a passerby. I was taking a picture the other day and a man standing nearby kept saying "Sorry! Sorry!" I thought he was apologizing for getting in the way of my shot--turns out he just wanted me to give him money and was trying to get my attention.  

Short i=short u
I haven't come close to mastering any part of the South African accent (possibly because there are so many different accents and dialects heard in South Africa), but one common speech pattern I have picked up on is the pronunciation of the short i sound, which comes out sounding more like how I would pronounce a u. For example, you don't watch a film here, you watch a fulm; it's not an elevator or a lift, but a luft; my burthday took place on July fufteenth; and at the end of the meal you have to pay your bull.

Happy Birthday Madiba!

Nelson Mandela is turning 95 in the hospital today.

Here's an African Gray Parrot singing 'Happy Birthday' to him.

Katie and the kudu

 

I am now in possession of a very large wire kudu head. 

I first saw the kudu in a record store early in my trip to South Africa. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was made of crazy wire and green bottle caps and its vacant expression bore deep into my soul. It's been on my mind constantly for like two months.

So yesterday was my birthday so I just bought it. It was an unforgettable adrenaline rush.

Of course, when I bought it was telling myself, "this will totally fit in your suitcase."

On closer examination, I don't think it will.

I purchased the kudu at a shop that's about a mile away from where I live--too close to take a taxi, but just far enough away that I had time to get more than a few funny looks from the Cape Town public as I marched home across town with it in my arms on a cloudy Monday afternoon.

So now I have it. And now I'm faced with the task of transporting a huge kudu head across the globe. As far as I can estimate, I think there are about four options:

1. Buy a big suitcase and put the kudu in it

2. Carry the kudu onto the airplane at the risk of having it confiscated at the super-harsh London airport

3. Carry the kudu to the post office here and beg them to help me ship it across the world for possibly a lot of money

4. Come to terms with the fact that this might have been a bad decision and panic before leaving the kudu behind

Does anyone out there know how to get a kudu head from South Africa to the western United States? Any tips welcome.

The (left-side drive) roadtrip

I have come, in recent years, to have a special fondness for cave paintings. I was delighted then, to find out that petroglyphs can be found throughout South Africa. The trick is just getting to them.

I was disappointed when I realized, that, since cave paintings aren't necessarily what every tourist wants to see, there aren't many bus tours or organized cave painting sightseeing adventures available here. In order to get myself to the nearest rock art site, I would need to rent a car and take matters into my own hands.

This is problematic for a few reasons. On the most basic level, I've never rented a car before in my life. I have also never driven on the left side of the road. Another problem stems from the travel habits I have developed over the years. In India, I pretty much gave up on ever planning anything. Beyond buying a train ticket, there just aren't a lot of things you can successfully plan in advance in India. You roll into town and cross your fingers that the hotel your guidebook suggests still exists and that they'll have a room for you. You get places by asking people on the street where to go and paying them $1 to drive you across town. Most countries don't work that way, yet I still apply my "the best plan is no plan at all" mentality to everywhere I travel. My travel planning skills have further been stunted by my growing dependency on my wonderful, Hotwire expert of a fiance, who takes no greater pleasure in life than booking hotels, finding things on maps, and designing weekend getaways, leaving me with no responsibilities other than going along for the ride and taking pictures.

When it came to getting to the cave paintings, I guess I didn't do quite enough advance planning. I did think enough in advance to book the rental car and the hotel and to look up some directions, but on the whole, it wasn't my best effort.

My travel companion Graham and I set out from Cape Town in our shiny rental car (with a sweet, Iphone-friendly audio system) on Saturday morning. Driving on the left turned out to be not as freaky as I imagined it would be, but it was still a little confusing. Getting into the car, Graham and I would decide "do you want to drive, or should I?" Decision made, we would approach the vehicle and both walk to the wrong door. Once in the car, I would reach down for the gear shift with my right hand and find myself grasping the air. Once in motion everything felt fine--it's easy enough to follow the car in front of you--but any time I had to turn, enter a parking lot, or maneuver clockwise around a roundabout, things got more confusing. I can understand two lines of cars moving straight down the left side of the road, but all bets are off when turning as my brain tries to grapple with the sight of cars coming from seemingly random directions.

I had thought to print directions to our hotel, but hadn't put much thought into how remote the area would be. I guess the hotel's website, which lists the location by GPS coordinates rather than a street address, might have been my first clue. The website shows a hand-drawn map with the nearest town marked then a squiggly line leading to the location. For no logical reason, I assumed the squiggly line equated to about 10-15 minutes of driving, but it turned out to be closer to 45 minutes down a remote country road. The drive was stunning though. The closer we got to our destination, the more our surroundings looked like some mashup of Middle Earth and Mars.

The Traveller's Rest, as the spot was called, was a quaint collection of "cottages" in the wilderness. After finding our cottage we immediately set out for the main attraction: the cave paintings.

I take great pride in the fact that I had the foresight to book the hotel nearest the petroglyphs, so from our cottage we only had to take a short walk to get to the entrance to the "Sevilla Rock Art Trail."

The paintings were everything I had hoped they would be: funny little humanoids, cute animals, freaky monster-looking things, etc. The trail had nine cave painting sites in total, so it was a nice hike to track down each one and crawl around on the big red boulders. The brochure didn't give the best description of the origins of the paintings, but I later found out that that is because very little is still known about them other than the rough estimation that they are between 1,500 and 2,000 years-old. We got slightly lost on the walk back from the caves, but found our cottage again just as the sun was going down.

 

 (You should see a photo slideshow here. If you don't see it, update your Flash settings or click here.)

I don't know why I assumed ancient cave paintings in the middle of the South African wilderness would come with a variety of full-service restaurants nearby, but that's what I assumed. So one of my travel planning oversights was not packing any food or wine. In need of both after our hike, Graham and I high-tailed it back to Clanwilliam, the nearest town, to see what we could find before everything closed for the night. We made it to a wine store just before closing time. Then for dinner we found a very strange hotel restaurant which had limited vegetarian options but an adorable, friendly cat, so it pretty much worked out.

After checking out of the Traveller's Rest the next morning we returned to Clanwilliam for breakfast. We found a small cafe, where, because of a lack of tables, we ended up sharing our meal with a an Afrikaner woman and her pre-teen daughter, both of whom had impossible-to-remember Afrikaans names. The daughter was distraught over the death of that actor from 'Glee.' The mother was one of the first people in a foreign country I have ever met who had not only heard of, but had actually visited the state of Oregon (usually I have to explain it as "a rainy place north of California where Nike and The Simpsons come from"), where her brother is married to a naturopahtic (of course) doctor.

After breakfast we pressed on toward our next hiking destination. In the same area as the cave paintings, there are supposed to be some large rock formations--something along the lines of Arches National Park in Utah. They sure do look awesome in all the guidebook pictures. Too bad I failed to figure out how to get us to them.

Part of our failure to find the rocks was my own fault for not figuring it all out in advance, but I won't take all of the blame. All of the maps I looked at of the area--Google, my guidebook, and our little rental car GPS--were infuriatingly vague and they all made it appear as though the rock formations are somewhere near the town of Citrusdal. Citrusdal has a tourism office, so I assumed if we went there everything would fall into place. I don't know why I assumed a tourism office in a tiny farming town would be open on a Sunday, however, and it wasn't. Driving around country roads where directional signs are scarce and what information there is is written in Afrikaans further complicated the issue.

After a long, country road drive to Citrusdal, an awkward offer of directions from a Citrusdal local, and closer examination of our variety of vague maps, I realized the rock formations were about an hour behind us in a direction that would have been inconvenient to back-track to.

Crestfallen, we pressed on toward Cape Town. At least we acquired some cheap and deliciously citrusy citrus from a Citrusdal citrus farm.

Desperate to make up for my heinous map reading error, I located in my guidebook an alternative stop for our drive back. Near the wine-growing town of Darling, there is a wildflower park marked in my guidebook. This being the middle of South African winter, I was doubtful that any wildflower would be there, but we tried it anyways. It turned out to be a lovely, meadowy spot. Only some flowers were blooming--including, surprisingly, a lot of wild calla lilies--but we saw some cool birds and it was a nice place to stretch our legs before the drive back to Cape Town.

We didn't get to see the big cool rocks. But we did see the cave paintings and the flowers. Though my strange travel habits may have had something to do with that, the same habits have taught me that a 50 percent accuracy rate while traveling, while only half successful, is not necessarily half bad.

Flush

It's time we talked about bathrooms.

Once, sitting at a table of well traveled people, I heard someone say, "Oh, you've traveled a lot too. We should swap poop stories sometime."

It's true; the more you travel, the more awkward bathroom situations you find yourself in. I can tell you about my friend's moment of desperation squatting over a dirty toilet with no toilet paper in rural India when he opted to re-purpose a page from his passport; I can tell you about my vomit-and-poop-ridden 23rd birthday; I can tell you about the super efficient toilets of the Tokyo airport, about tribal outhouses in the mountains of Thailand, about not being able to find the flusher in several different situations, and about having to share slimy hostel bathrooms throughout Europe with the young, the smelly, the drunk and lusty.

But I'll spare you all the details.

Like many aspects of life in South Africa, toilets are a topic that come with racial, social, and political connotations. Access to sanitation is actually becoming such a divisive issue here that there have been a series of protests recently in which demonstrators dump human waste on or around politicians.

It's pretty disgusting, but it's hard to blame them, especially considering the numbers. Only about 60 percent of people in this country have a flush toilet in their home, according to 2011 census data. But here in the more affluent, urbanized Western Cape (the province where Cape Town is) that number jumps to almost 90 percent. It's another reminder that most experiences I have had in South Africa have been comparatively luxurious and pretty anomalous to the average South African lifestyle.

The facts are even harder to swallow when I consider that my toilet situation here has been pretty noteworthy. Having experienced my share of international commodes, I can say with some degree of certainty that Cape Town could well have some of the best bathrooms in the world.

From the moment I arrived in Cape Town I have been impressed. The cleanliness! The spaciousness! The privacy! The abundance of toilet paper--two ply!  But the best part is the stalls. In the USA we get thinly walled cubicles that leave your feet exposed. The gaps between the doors are usually big enough for snotty little kids to stick their faces into. The locks only work occasionally. There's never a coat hook when you need one. In Austin once, I remember going into a bar restroom and having nothing but a translucent Texas Longhorns shower curtain to separate me and my bare butt from the rest of the world. Capetonians wouldn't put up with that. Most public restrooms stalls here are designed with a solid, floor-to-ceiling wall between you and the next person doing their business. The doors are both soundproof and smellproof and nary a lock is broken. They don't usually have paper towels, but the hand dryers are almost always the super efficient kind that blast air hard enough to blow the skin off your hands.

As is the case in the UK and in most former British colonies I've visited, the one drawback of the bathrooms here is the use of the two-spouted sink--one tap for icy, one tap for scalding--which, as far as I'm concerned is totally useless, but then, you can't have everything.

The bathrooms here have been so nice that I don't think I would have taken them for granted in the first place, but knowing how many South Africans are fighting for access to nicer toilets really puts things in perspective. I really had no idea South Africa's facilities would be such a glaring lesson in wealth divides for me in this country, but I did know before I arrived here that investigating the porcelain thrones of South Africa would be a high priority for me for a different reason.

You see, this is my first time in the Southern hemisphere and I've heard all my life about the reverse effects of gravity on the flow of toilet water down here.

 

(My journalism skills are really being put to use here, no?)

Of course, as soon as I landed in Cape Town I totally forgot which way water flows in the Northern hemisphere. Can anyone help me out here? If you're on the top half of the globe right now, just do me a favor and go flush for me. I'm fairly sure I recall American toilets swirling counter clockwise, but now that I know that my South African toilet is distinctly clockwise flowing, that might just be wishful thinking. I do so want this myth to be true.

If anyone can confirm for me that it is true I will be unspeakably happy.

The protest

Just around the corner from where I work in Cape Town I see the same blind street musician performing almost every day.

It came as quite a surprise earlier this week when that guy, whose name is Lunga Goodman Nono, started making national headlines.

According to several witnesses, Nono was playing on his usual corner on Monday when six police officers dragged him through the street and smashed his guitar--his only livelihood besides his disability check--claiming that he didn't have a permit.

The incident drew viral attention on South African social media. Nono's guitar has since been replaced, he's been offered a record deal, and funds have been raised to pay his police fines.

Yesterday a protest with a little over 100 people took place where he usually performs in Cape Town's Greenmarket Square. I covered the event for News24. I spoke to protestors and also managed to track down Nono's wife and her cousin. His wife only speaks isiXhosa, but her cousin was able to translate.

Watch the video on News24.

The Festival

USC was kind enough to send Shannon, Graham and me on a little field trip to a town called Grahamstown (no connection with Graham the person) this weekend. Grahamstown is the home of Rhodes University and of South Africa's National Arts Festival, which they conveniently scheduled during our visit to the country.

We left on Friday morning and returned Sunday night. To get to Grahamstown from Cape Town we had to take a short flight to the city of Port Elizabeth then ride in a bus. As it happens, there are several privately owned nature reserves between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown, so driving between the two it's easy to spot zebras, springboks, giraffes, and wildebeests from the freeway. If you know me at all, you can imagine how I squealed with delight every time this happened during the hour-and-half-long drive.

We stayed on the campus of the university. It's amazing how colleges kind of look the same everywhere. My little dorm room had the last tenant's stickers on the wall, the hallways had silly construction paper decorations taped up everywhere, the women's bathroom had a poster explaining one's options in the event of an unwanted pregnancy. On top of the familiar dormy ambiance, Rhodes University literally looks just like Occidental College--big white buildings with red tile roofs, early 20th century architecture, green spaces punctuated with weird sculptures--the whole deal. It was eerie. 

I digress--you're here to read about the festival.

Since we only had one full day, it didn't seem like we really had enough time to get the whole Arts Festival experience, but all things considered, I think we did pretty well. First of all, we got media passes. Media passes are fun because they get you into places for free and they let you take pictures even when photography isn't allowed for the laypeople.

I was taking photos for News24 which you can view here.

In my short time in Grahamstown I managed to squeeze in three little music/dance shows, two really weird modern dance shows, one one-act-one-man play, two jazz concerts, a performance by Chinese acrobats, a church service which was supposed to include more marimba music than it actually did, and a little bit of shopping at an open-air arts and crafts market. I also drank beers at several new places.

 

(You should see a photo slideshow here. If you don't see it, update your Flash settings or click here.)

Of course, some shows were better than others, but as a former theater critic, I've learned to tolerate watching the whole spectrum of the embarrassing and weird things people do onstage.

A big highlight was the Soweto String Quartet. They were enjoyable not only for their snazzy, zebra-striped jackets, but also for their music. In fact, their music is so popular here in South Africa that apparently even Nelson Mandela is a fan.

I'll leave it to them to finish this post:

Mandela and the newsroom

I am working at the largest online news company in South Africa and the media environment in this country has been a little tense in recent weeks.

Nelson Mandela was the first black president of this country, but he is also a living symbol of the anti-Apartheid struggle. Many South Africans feel a strong emotional connection to him, not necessarily as a politician, but as the face of their tumultuous history.  Many South Africans even refer to Mandela by terms of respect and endearment: Madiba, or Tata. Mandela is a few days shy of his 95th birthday and he has now been hospitalized for one month. Many assume these are his final days.

When he entered the hospital in Pretoria (other side of the country from Cape Town) on June 8 with a recurring lung infection, the local media immediately took notice. Within a few days, the international media had taken notice too.

Almost as long as Mandela has been in the hospital, journalists from several local and international outlets have been camping outside the hospital. One organization, reportedly, is even sub-letting an apartment across the street from the hospital to get better views and satellite reception from the balcony.

While those journalists have been waiting for weeks, tweeting, photographing, and reporting any signs of activity, other journalists are preparing from the office. Articles, undoubtedly, have been written in advance about Mandela’s death. Organizations have created plans for how to report the information when the time comes. Portraits of Mandela with 1918-2013 written on them have likely already been photoshopped.

It’s a little morbid, but is it wrong?

If you trust user comments, it certainly is. “Vultures!” web users have written under photos of journalists sitting outside the Pretoria hospital, “Leave the Mandela family alone!”

The Mandela family has expressed varying opinions on the matter.

“I just think it’s in bad taste, it’s crass," Makaziwe Mandela said about the media’s treatment of the situation in a scathing interview on national television.

On the other hand, Mandela’s wife, Graca Machel issued a statement thanking supporters—including the media—from around the world saying, “We have felt the closeness of the world and the meaning of strength and peace.”

In the age of the Internet, we are more connected than ever. That has allowed people worldwide to share their expressions of concern about the ailing political hero. But it has also put a heavy responsibility on media outlets.

News24’s slogan is, “Breaking News. First.” It’s a promise to deliver information as fast as technology will allow. It’s also difficult standard to maintain. 

The speed of Internet news demands that the media must be prepared to report information quickly, but social rules say it’s impolite to pay attention too closely. So for now, our job in the media is a little awkward.

Double discrimination

The first green card for a foreign spouse in a same-sex marriage was issued in the USA this week. But the USA is not the only country in the world where gay rights and issues of immigration are hot topics.

Xenophobia has been in the news a lot recently in South Africa. This country receives more refugees than anywhere else on the continent. Unfortunately, as the refugee populations rise, so too do tensions between locals and foreigners.

Many refugees in South Africa face additional discrimination because they identify as LGBTI. Homosexuality is illegal in 38 African countries. In some countries, it is a death penalty offense. South Africa, on the other hand, was the first country in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation in their constitution. South Africa has by far the most liberal laws regarding LGBTI rights on the African continent. But as many sexual refugees find out, homophobia still exists in the country.

My friend Shannon is interning with an organization called Passop here in Cape Town. She has been working with LGBTI refugees and helped me connect me with some interviews so that I could make this video about the issue.

Watch this video on News24.

POTUS

Being a journalist is pretty cool.

Remember when I saw the president of South Africa?

Well, last night I saw the president of the United States.

Contrasting the two experiences is somewhat funny. My News24 coworker who was with me at both events admitted she was more excited to see Obama. "Does that make me a bad South African?" she asked.

When I saw Jacob Zuma, my coworker and I heard about the event in the morning, walked a few blocks from our office to the South African government buildings, then breezed past security to hear the president give a very brief PR-stunt-style speech alongside American actor Danny Glover. I was able to get in with my foreign driver's license, and I stood an arm's length away from Zuma.

Seeing President Obama wasn't quite as easy.

First of all, this is the most expensive presidential trip in history. Obama brought massive amounts of security along with him on his three-country tour of Africa, including, but not limited to, an aircraft carrier docked offshore with a fully staffed medical trauma center, bulletproof limousines, and Marine helicopters. The Obamas also canceled the family safari they had scheduled in Tanzania because the nature park was posing too much of a logistical challenge for the presidential snipers.

My colleagues and I had to submit scanned copies of our passports to the White House about a week in advance of Obama's visit. Then we had to wait until the day before the event to find out if we would be able to get in. Four of us submitted requests and the US Embassy only granted permission for three of us to get in--no explanation offered.

Obama wasn't scheduled to speak until about 6 pm, but we had to arrive at the event venue with all of our equipment at 11 am. We then had to leave the equipment there so that security could rummage through our stuff and sniff through everything all day. We came back at 4 pm and were issued our official White House badges and escorted to our official press area. The press area was separated from the audience by a little divider and the audience was separated from the podium by a little divider and several security guards.

 I wondered why the sharply dressed man in the press area next to me wasn't snapping photos like all of the other journalists, then I realized he was a secret service guy.

Obama touched on predictable points about Africa in his speech--government corruption, poverty, women's rights, development. He also paid homage to Nelson Mandela (who is still in the hospital after three weeks) throughout his speech. 

But my personal favorite part of Obama's speech was when he told an anecdote about his time at Occidental College. I don't think he saw my fist pump though.

Obama looked and sounded pretty much just the way I thought  he would in real life. The one thing that struck me from hanging around snapping photos of him for an hour was that this guy is amazingly photogenic. I ended up taking over 700 photos and hardly got any where he's making funny faces. What a pro!

See my best photos from Obama's speech on News24.