(no subject)

[jianantonic]

If you've been following me on Facebook, you are already aware that I am having an amazing time in South Africa. I have some down time now, so I figured I'd post a little bit about the trip so far. I only get a very small allotment of bandwidth per day, so I haven't uploaded any photos yet. Jess has posted several of hers, though, and tagged me in most of them on Facebook. That is where my own will end up upon my return. Feel free to add me if we're not friends already -- Meg Massie Myers.

Anyway, I'll just start at the beginning.

Saturday, Jan 21: up at 6am, and this was the last sleep I would have for way too long, but I kind of knew that would happen. Flew to Seattle, had a long layover there, then got on my first 11-hour flight to Frankfurt. Luckily, the winds were with us and it was actually more like a 9-hour flight. I slept for about 20 minutes of it. It was on an Airbus 330A, and I had a bulkhead seat in coach. That seat was SWEET. Only one seatmate (the rest of the rows were 3 or 4, but mine was only 2), and no one in front of me. They fed us a couple of times and I had my own TV, so I watched Harry Potter, Crazy Stupid Love, and all the sitcom episodes that were available. For reasons unknown, Harry Potter was shown with Japanese subtitles, so I spent much of the movie figuring out various characters. I'm not quite fluent yet.

Sunday, Jan 22: I was supposed to land in Frankfurt before Jess (~10am), and then our plan was to find each other outside of customs somewhere, assuming that we would be hustled through as soon as we got off the plane. That was not at all the case, though, and there was no free internet, and that airport is a FUCKING NIGHTMARE, so I consider it a miracle that Jess happened to be right outside my gate when I deplaned, and we didn't have to do a crazy dance of finding each other. We were not required to go through passport controls in Frankfurt, but since we wanted to go out into the city, we did leave the secure area. Jess has a friend who lives there, and we made arrangements to meet up with her. Also more of a challenge than we were prepared for, but we did find her, and headed out into downtown Frankfurt. Katja took us around a really cool pedestrian mall, and we had some German food, then took random photos of funky architecture and walked around a little more until it got cold and rainy and we decided to head back to the airport. As we walked around, we saw tons of crazy advertisements, and of course took pictures of all of them. My favorite was an ad for a pregnancy test. I didn't even notice the product at first, just the really amusing word, "SCHWANGER," which Jess and I have been using ever since to mean "fucked up." A pretty appropriate usage, imho, since it is German for "pregnant." Fucked up, same thing.

We spent the remainder of our layover just relaxing in the super-luxe Lufthansa Presidential Lounge, which had a full buffet and assortment of delicious noms and drinks. Our flight to Cape Town left at 10pm, and Jess, that whore, fell asleep immediately. We were in the bulkhead again, which I thought would be cool, but not so much on this plane. It was a 747 (which is my favorite to look at, but not to ride in), had no TV, and no leg room. And we were next to two screaming kids. So that was fun and all, but it got better. As soon as our flight was at cruising altitude, I got up to get my bag out of the overhead (because in bulkhead, you can't have your shit with you during takeoff, which is generally a small price to pay for the leg room and whatnot). And then I broke a bitch's nose! Well, so she claims. Here's what happened. I opened the overhead, reached for my bag, and I swear I hadn't so much as touched a thing when her bag came tumbling out of the bin. Before I could react, it hit her in the face. She started crying and screaming, but completely ignored me as I apologized and offered to get the flight attendant or anything to soothe her, so eventually I just got my own bag down and went back to my seat in the row in front of her. A few things to note: I had filled the bin with my own stuff and closed it when I boarded the plane. Because it was full -- it was one of the really small bins, so it's not like I was being a spacehog. When she boarded the plane after me, she had a bag that was way too big for any of the bins, and they made her check it. She threw a fit about that, and I guess she shoved her other bag on top of my stuff, which is fine, if she could get it to fit, but she can't blame me that it was in there so precariously that it fell out when I opened the bin. Also, the bag that hit her was not heavy. It was just like a small camera bag, so no doubt it hurt, but it probably didn't really do much damage. She grabbed the outside corner of her eye, like around her temple, when she was crying. This is an important detail for later.

Anyway, I was finally able to drift off to a light sleep on this flight, sometime after midnight. But then at 1, they came through serving dinner. I have no idea why they serve a meal at that hour, but I would've been content to sleep through it, except that the woman's husband shook my seat and poked me until I woke up. No joke. Then he asked me in a really rude, exasperated tone, and "asked" isn't really the right word, actually, "We need you to move your seat up so we can eat." Look, I know the tray table is a tight squeeze when the seat back in front of you is reclined (thus another reason to love the bulkhead), but you know what? FUCKING DEAL WITH IT. It's not impossible to eat, and to wake someone up at 1am, and violently so, to ask them to make themselves less comfortable, is SO NOT KOSHER. At this point, I was glad I'd hit that woman in the face. I was unable to sleep again for the remainder of the flight. So for the two days that I was traveling, I caught about 40 minutes total of sleep. As this was about hour 30 of the trip, I think the only thing that kept me from completely losing my shit at these people was the fact that I did feel guilty about the bag-to-the-face incident. Though I maintain that it was never my fault anyway. ANYWAY, the flight proceeded, and was pretty much the longest 10 hours of my life, what with the not sleeping and the no entertainment and whatnot. Then as we were making our final approach, the woman behind us says something like "that's the girl that broke my nose." Jess and I exchanged glances like "wtf?" I wondered if she was going to say anything to me...she never did, though. Just the occasional passive aggressive bullshit like that. And here's the thing -- I didn't hit her in the nose. But after that comment, I was thinking, "Bitch, I'll give you a broken nose..." But I behaved myself. Still, it's things like this that led me to ask my therapist if I should maybe increase my meds...because while I do feel justified in kind of hating the world sometimes, I don't really like feeling ragey. But then we were in Africa and I was no longer mad. Just really, excruciatingly sleepy.

Monday, Jan 23: As soon as we got to our hostel, I passed out, and passed out hard. After about a three-hour nap, Jess woke me up, and I was right back to wanting to cut a bitch. Seriously, she was lucky I was so drained of energy, because I was SO pissed that she was making me get up. She wouldn't leave me alone, or trust me that I'd "be right down" if she went ahead without me. What a hobag. But once I got up, I was glad she'd forced the issue, because I know I never would've adjusted to the time change (+10 hours) otherwise, and it was great to get out and start experiencing Cape Town. We walked down to Long Street, which is like the Bourbon Street of South Africa. We did a little preliminary shopping, though I didn't want to buy souvenirs before I knew what our experiences were going to be, so I actually restrained myself quite well. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant (best polenta + mushrooms I've ever had, omg), and explored a little more before coming back to the hostel and crashing early. Our first tour was already arranged for the next day.

Tuesday, Jan 24: SAFARI! A van picked us up around 7am, already packed with other tourists (all Europeans), and drove us two hours north to Aquila Game Reserve, where we met with rangers and went on our safari. It was tame as safaris go (from what I hear, anyway), but we saw lots of great animals. I'll post all the pics soon, but here's the list of what I saw that day: wild monkey (hanging out on the roadside, not part of the reserve), peacocks, giraffes, springboks, wildebeasts, rhinos, ostriches, dung beetle*, zebra**, lions, cheetahs, crocodiles, and probably some other things I'm forgetting, but we did not see any hippos or elephants, though they say they do have them there.

*Our tour guide was disproportionately thrilled by the site of the dung beetle. He had us all get out of the van to get a closer look at this beetle as it rolled a turd down the road. Jess took a video. It's exactly what it sounds like.

**We're in love with the way they pronounce "zebra" here. "ZEHbreh."

The ride in the safari vehicle was, to put it lightly, incredibly uncomfortable. I am bruised up the right side of my body from repeatedly being bounced into the metal rails on the side of the van. But it was so, so worth it. We were able to get really close to all the animals, and the ranger gave us all kinds of great information. For instance, most African animals have patterns on their coats that blend in with their habitat, but they all have white markings on the backs of their ears to make it easy for their young to spot them from behind and keep up with the herds while traveling. There was lots more information, of course, but this is one of the tidbits that I actually remember.  Oh, and he also told us how delicious each animal was.  Apparently they're all pretty great, except zebra.

Getting back from the safari was kind of a nightmare. A bunch of the people from our group completely ignored the "we're leaving at 2pm" imperative, and just fucked around on their own until well after 3, while Jess and I sat in the van being pissed off at them. When we got back, it was time to nap some more, and then we had dinner at the hostel and made arrangements for further tours.

Wednesday, Jan 25: We broke up our schedule a bit by putting a day or two between all the organized tours we'd booked, so we had Wednesday as a free day. We had big plans, but it was so fucking hot, we were moving in slow motion and unable to make any decisions. We roamed Long Street for a while and did a little more shopping, then came back and zonked out at the hostel for a bit. We woke up around 1 just dripping with sweat, and decided to go to the pool. I'm not sure there's any amount of outside heat that would make that pool comfortable. We dipped our toes in, recoiled from the cold, and decided to go to the beach instead. Turns out the ocean is even colder, but fuck it, we were already there, so we put our stuff down and slowly waded into the water. Jess was a champ about it, but I was a huge wuss. I would run away every time a wave would come. Eventually I acclimated enough to go in up to my thighs, but that's as brave as I got. It did feel really good given how hot it was outside, but I just couldn't stand the cold enough to plunge in. This from the girl who regularly swims in mountain rivers. It was fucking cold, y'all. We laid out, read books, sunscreened up, got burned anyway, and came back to the hostel around dinner time.

Our plan was to walk to Africa Cafe, which is a big touristy restaurant here. We'd passed it on our way out of town on the Safari and remembered that it wasn't very far away, so we asked at the front desk for directions. The girl told us it was on Long Street. Both of us were highly suspect -- we'd walked up and down Long Street a lot, and we were fairly certain we were never on Long Street when we passed it before. She INSISTED, though, and whatever, she's the one who lives here, so we decided it must just be a little farther down Long Street than we'd walked. As the trek dragged on and on, we were pretty sure she'd given us schwanger directions, and we kind of gave up on it. Just then, an amazing African dress in a window caught our eyes, and we tabled all thoughts of dinner to duck into this store. We were sure the prices would be outrageous, so we were just going to look at what they had -- lots of really ornate traditional African dresses, skirts, and men's tunics -- and it turns out, they were very reasonably priced. Everything on display was too large for me, though, and I was all set to walk out when the shopkeeper came up to me and asked me what I liked, that he would make it for me. I picked out a dress that I loved and changed into it. He pinned it up for me and marked it for measurements, and then fucking custom made me a dress right then and there. Jess picked out material for a wrap skirt and also had a custom design done for her. We were annoyed about the totally wrong directions for dinner, but it all worked out for the better, because we got AMAZING clothes out of the deal. Now I just need a good formal occasion, because the dress I picked out is way fancy. I told Z that he can pick a date night for us where he can wear his tux and I'll wear that dress. I'm excited :) We eventually settled on Indian food for dinner at a cafe on Long Street, and it was fabulous. On the way back, we stopped at a grocery store where we found Jess' favorite chocolate bars (not available in the US) and bought about a million of them. I ate one, which was a huge mistake, because then I couldn't get to sleep that night. I was up until well past 2am. Not good, since we had a tour departing at 7am the next day. Despite my weariness, this was to be the best day of the trip for me so far...

Thursday, Jan 26: We went on a Township Tour with three others from our hostel. Our guide was Chippa, a lifelong resident of the township. I knew apartheid existed, but in my mind it was just the African Jim Crow. Hooboy was I in for a culture shock.

During Apartheid, all non-whites were forced to move out of their homes in the cities and into townships. The townships were also separated by race: black African, Asian, and coloured, which includes everyone of mixed race. Not only were these groups not to comingle with whites, they weren't allowed to comingle with each other, so when people were forced into townships, many families were broken up -- the black father went to one township, the Asian mother to another, and their coloured children became orphans in the coloured township. Many families resisted, and their homes were eventually bulldozed.

I think the most extreme poverty you learn about in American schools is the tenaments in New York City around the turn of the 20th century -- lots of immigrant families living together in shitty apartments with no amenities, basically. Well, take that image, multiply it by INFINITY, and you have an idea of the levels of poverty in the townships. Chippa explained that even in the townships, there are classes -- there's a small upper class consisting of professionals like doctors and lawyers, and they have nice homes and nice cars. The nicest homes there are basically like small ranch houses, valued at about $60,000. I was pretty sure we were in the lower class section when we wandered through rows of shanties set up as shops, but Chippa told us later that this was the middle class. We went to a pub first, which was a shanty with a couple of ratty cushions for sitting, and one communal bucket of homebrew. No electricity, just a single room about the size of a walk-in closet. The locals come in, get tipsy, and sing together. I had a sip of the beer...it was pretty foul, and not much like other beers, but I could see the appeal, I guess. Walking through more of these shanties, I heard a thud, and noticed sheep's heads being thrown out a window near us. I figured this was a butcher tossing out what s/he wasn't going to use, but I was wrong. It was a butcher, but she was throwing the heads onto the street from a freezer to thaw them for cooking. Sheep's head is a delicacy there, but in fact it's the only part of the sheep that they eat. They get the heads from local farmers who use all the other parts, and Chippa said that the eyeballs are particularly delicious. I know that being a vegetarian makes me more sensitive than most people to things like this, but you guys, seriously, this was exceptionally disgusting. But I'm not judging. Just...icked out.

Chippa took us inside all the different kinds of homes in the township. First we went to a row of shipping containers, which had each been divided into two homes. Most of the occupants were single mothers with their children, and Chippa said that the average half-shipping-container home had one-three adults (almost always women), and about six children. Older children sleep on the floor while everyone else shares a bed. Some had hot plates and a few dishes on a shelf, whatever random blankets and garments they could fit in there (not much), a television, and little else. One thing that was kind of interesting to me was that even though the poverty was so extreme that we'd see nine people sharing one twin bed, almost everywhere we went had a television. I think, though, that the TVs were provided with the homes -- all the furniture was the same in every house, which leads me to believe it was provided by the government. Most of the non-shanties were government-owned, but it wasn't a welfare system -- everyone paid rent for where they lived, unless they built their own shanties, which most did. More on those in a moment.

After the shipping containers, we toured some cement apartments. Fire is a major concern, because most of the shanties are basically built out of kindling, so it's a definite advantage to live in a cement home. Except that these apartments were by far the most crowded living conditions. Each apartment had one common room with a kitchen and a few old-school appliances (the fridge your great-grandparents got rid of in the 60's may be in these apartments now), one bathroom (none of the shanties or container houses had plumbing -- there were toilets lined up around the edge of the neighborhoods, but I only saw a couple of showers), and six dormitory rooms. Originally, the dormitories were for single men, three to a room. The rooms were tiny, each packed with three twin beds and not enough space for the six of our tour group to all get in there at the same time. And yet, these rooms would house up to 16 people, and usually no fewer than 10. The men that lived there first eventually brought their families to live with them, and several generations would be there together. We met one family that was grandfather, daughter, and her six children. All sharing one twin bed, in a room with two other families doing the same. They store boxes of clothes on top of the beds, but there was nothing else in the way of things. We wondered how the families can possibly get so large, given the coitus-prohibitive conditions, but obviously they find a way. Residents pay approximately $2/month in rent to live there, and most have trouble scraping that much together. It was horrifying. But everyone we met smiled at us, welcomed us into their homes, encouraged us to take photos, and was kind to us. Chippa said that the tourism is good for them, because we shop in their communities, and we bring awareness -- people who visit are usually moved to do something charitable. I certainly was. I've been brainstorming ever since how I could put my skills and resources to use to improve the situation for these people. The biggest problems are lack of education and AIDS, which also comes from a lack of education. Chippa said "People here think that using condoms is like eating candy without taking off the wrapper. What's the point?" There were also advertisements EVERYWHERE for "fast, pain-free abortions." Abortion is legal here, but apparently these ads are all from people who are not medical professionals in any way, which is illegal, but still a big problem, because most township residents can't afford real healthcare. They do have a national healthcare system, but it's divided -- they ALSO have private hospitals, and all the good doctors are at private, expensive hospitals, while the public ones are staffed mostly by flunkees. It's scary.

The last part of the township we toured was by far the largest; the shantytown. Chippa said that these people don't have to pay rent or own the land they're on, they just have to find the materials to build their homes. Most are one or two rooms, again packed with more people than I can even visualize sharing one space, and have little if any roof. They're not at all protected from the elements, and it's kind of a miracle that the shanties remain standing. They really are thrown together any which way -- I saw one house that had part of a wall made from an American JC Penney ad. No thicker than a poster. There's some corrugated metal, but it was mostly cardboard and trash bags.

Though the residents are no longer required to live in townships since the end of Apartheid, most don't have the means to leave. Some don't want to leave, because they have their communities there, and they really love it. Still, they're very dangerous places, it's hard to get work, because they're far from the city, and conditions even at the best are very poor.

We also visited a preschool, where the children sang and danced for us. The schools are all run by volunteers, completely supported by donations. Getting a good education is the only hope many of these children have, and school might be the only place they ever get to eat. I just wanted to hug each and every one of those children. I think I would really like to come back here and volunteer in one of the township schools, but I don't know if that's something I'll ever be able to do. In any case, the tour was nothing less than life-changing, and I have a very strong desire to do anything I can to help these people improve their situations.

So that was the township tour. After that, we were both exhausted, but we had another tour on the schedule: Robben Island. I'll be brief about this because there's not much to say. Our first tour guide sucked and we both fell asleep on the bus during the tour. Oops. But then we got out at the maximum security prison, where our guide was a former political prisoner, arrested, tortured, and detained for his outspoken (peaceful) resistance to Apartheid. This is the prison where Nelson Mandela was held, along with thousands of others. Bad scene, but really interesting. It's no longer a jail, just a museum.

Friday, Jan 27: Today has been another free day. We did some shopping this morning, and have mostly vegged out the rest of the day. We took naps, because tonight we're going to a drag ball at a local nightclub. I'm sure I'll have more to say about that later. It has been CRAZY hot all day, so it's been a good time to just sit and write out the details of the trip so far.

I have a LOT more to say about the townships, and I'd love to chat more about it and share especially those pictures when I'm back home.