NGOs, Baha'is, and Video Conferences - times in South Africa: part I

Oh man, Cape Town.  The wake of Apartheid remains and raises ships unequally and unevenly still through what we know now as “Economic Apartheid.”  The governmental structure has changed, but economic apartheid is evident in all other areas of life.  It is confusing and entirely evident everywhere.  It is evident in schools, in neighborhoods, in traffic, in conversation, on billboards, in new political doctrine, and to try and write this out is a limitation on expression because the words don’t exist or I just don’t know them.  The way I can write this out so is dry, but the emotional experience is where the “bulk” resides.  Feel me?  But anyway, what did I do?!  Let me just preface this by saying that most of what I did was totally spontaneous and from now on, that is how I will try to travel.  The best times are the good times that aren’t planned.

So, you already know what I did on the first day.  It was a great day.  Now Jani has officially “adopted” Kirra and me and because of that… I am able to get a “Mom hug” every day!  It’s wonderful.  It’s also great because I tutor Megan, and she is just SO smart.  All I have to do is check over her work, which is most often perfect, then go over the new concepts with her.  It’s pretty awesome.

Anyway, on the second day in South Africa, I took a cooking class in Cape Malay.  Cape Malay is the Islamic area of Cape Town and it is beautiful.  The houses line the streets going uphill right onto the side of Table Mountain, and almost every house is painted a different bright color.  I took a lot of pictures of this, but we’re back to the grind here in being able to post said pictures…I’ll see what I can do.  So we did a small walking tour of the area and then we went to our cooking class.  This class was held in our instructor’s kitchen and her two assistants were her daughters and her apprentice assistant  - her granddaughter.  There were only six SAS students on this tour, so it was amazingly cozy and homey.  Our instructor, Faldela, was great!  She was wild!  There was no room to be timid in her kitchen, and she wanted us to jump at jobs.  So while another girl in our group worked on the basis of our chicken curry, I started making the dough for the roti.  Roti is the bread that curry is eaten with.  I mean, my hand were COVERED in dough, it was wonderful to be cooking again.  The vestibular and tactile stimulation of cooking, I think, really keeps me sane.  That is why I love to cook so much:  because it is de-stressing and it is the only creative outlet I excel at.  After the roti, we learned how to make a sambal, which is that delicious “salsa” that accompanies Indian food; she even told us her secret ingredient.  Not only that, but my favorite part of the class was the “spices quiz.”  Faldela put out a beautiful tray of spices and we were supposed to sniff them and take a guess as to what they were.  Oh man.  I kicked butt, to be humble. ☺ Why were we cooking Indian food, you are wondering?  Well, Cape Malay is the most diverse neighborhood in Cape Town, and remained so even during Apartheid.  There is a huge Muslim population, but they were Muslims who immigrated from Indian in the early 19th century due to persecution.  So, the food is South African with a decidedly Indian touch.  It’s wonderful too, instead of red curry; it’s a delicious yellow curry.  In case your wondering, Thai food is where you are most likely to find green curries.  Okay, so after the sambal, we made samosas.  Faldela had already rolled out the dough for the samosas, so our job was to carefully separate the pieces, make the filling, and then roll them up!  The process of folding the samosa quite similar to folding the American flag: Corner to corner.  I’ll show you this one day at home if you want; because you better believe that I will make this meal again!  Anyway, after our meal was cooked, we all sat down and ate together like a family.  And… I want you all to practice something until I get home.  Whenever you eat something that is “finger food” or something that you can eat with your hands, do so with ONLY your right hand.  It will be good Islamic practice for you for when we eat this meal.  It’s surprisingly hard.  Why do Muslims eat only with their right hand?  “Because the left hand is for impure actions not to be discussed at the dinner table.”  Also, monetary transactions can never be completed with the left hand either.  Interesting, no? 

So after the Cape Malay cooking tour, I returned to the ship, walked around the mall on the waterfront with my friend Lila, who goes to Berkley, and then I took a nap.  Kirra returned from whatever trip she was on and then we went to find the elusive, not at all superfluous internet.  On our way down the hallway to the gangway…whom did we find, but our lovely cabin steward Rene carrying MAIL?!  That day… cabin 3155 received 7, count them, 7 (!!) pieces of mail.  I got four and Kirra got three.  Not only that, but some of the mail that I received was forwarded from Ghana.  Amazing. I felt so loved.  In total now, I have received two pieces of mail from Scuttle, two pieces of mail from Andrew, and one card from my Mommy and Daddy.  It was great.  So, if you are wondering, the way to find my snail mail address is on www.semesteratsea.org.  Go to the website and click on “map and itinerary” of the Fall 2009 voyage.   Then, on the left side of the new page, there is a link that says, “staying in touch.”  Click on that and on that page there is a list of addresses of the ports we will be in as well as the way to address the mail.  Make sure you don’t forget my name.  If possible, somewhere on the envelope, write “cabin 3155,” but don’t put that in the actual address.  Also, make sure you write the name of the country after the address.  I know it seems daunting, I promise it’s not that bad.  There is also a suggested date to mail.  Make sure you mail it before that date, otherwise I probably won’t get it and not all ports will be as nice as Ghana and forward mail.  So, that night after uploading pictures, reading my mail, and having delicious rooibos tea, I went to bed early to meet my bus in the morning at 6 am. 

The next morning, I got up nice and early to work on a Habitat for Humanity house.  After having breakfast on the ship, we picked up our box lunches and boarded our bus.  I sat up in the front because I’ve decided that is the best way to learn on the SAS sponsored trips, and so far it’s not proven me wrong.  I’ve also decided that a lot of South Africans are rather prophetic and poetic in the way they speak and what they speak about.  Our bus driver was a colored man (in SA, that means “mixed race” and is not politically incorrect to say) and he was talking about…well, everything, but what he said that resonated with me most was “Putting money into a society to try and fix all of the problems is like putting water into a colander.  Only a little bit gets to each area and it’s just not enough that way.  We need to put our money into schools and clinics and other areas that can spread the messages effectively.”  He was a smart, and well-informed guy.  It was neat talking to him.  So we drove into a township called Mfuleni where Habitat for Humanity has a headquarters and where in the past ONE year, has put up 360 houses.  During the 4 days that SAS was in South Africa and working with Habitat for Humanity, we put up one whole house.  I went on the first day and when we got there, all that was done was the floor.  Our job was to mix cement, and put up the cinder block walls.  We finished each of the four walls up to where the windows were going to be put in.  We also unloaded a truck that came during the day that was full of the concrete roof top pieces and the pieces of concrete that go on top of the windows and doors.  I had a lot of fun, but I was also really, really sore at the end of the day.  Some interesting things about Habitat for Humanity:  They are an international NGO and the day that we were working on this house was World Habitat Day.  Because of that, lots of Cape Town press came out to the site and took pictures and interviewed us, and…the next day, we were in THREE papers.  I have the front pages saved on my computer, so you all can see me in the South African newspapers when I get home.  Also, the way Habitat works is like this:  To be eligible to become a Habitat for Humanity homeowner, you must make less than a certain amount of money per year, and usually, you must have another circumstance.  The sustainable part of the organization is that before work begins on your house, you must put in more than 50 hours working on other Habitat for Humanity houses.  Reciprocity remains because the percentage of Habitat for Humanity homeowners that continue to work on future homes is about 85%.  It’s a pretty awesome NGO.  So, after about 3 hours of work on the house in the morning, our homeowners, who are both deaf, brought us out tea, coffee, and this delicious bread/donut thing called “fat cook.”  After another two hours of work, we had lunch (which most of us donated to the kids in the township), and got back to work for the rest of the day.  At the end of the day, we took a walk around the township, which was a good opportunity.  White people, especially tourists, are not recommended to visit townships because they are generally very unsafe.  We walked around this township with our job Forman and just about every child in the neighborhood; it was like a parade.  When a child noticed us and the other kids, he would join in our walk.  At one point, I was carrying a little girl who told me she was three, and each of my hands was being held by at least one child.  It is like a race for these kids to be touched by us.  It was the same in Ghana when we were there, and was that way in each of the townships I visited.  They compete for everything; even love.  It’s a bittersweet tendency.  After lots and lots of hugs, we got back on our bus and traveled back to our ship.  That night, I went out for South African wine with some girls from SAS.  It was nice, we had a cheese plate a couple glasses of wine, and shared a dessert.  That’s my kind of dinner.  Cheese and flambéed crepes.  ☺

Wowie, that’s a long one, and I’m only halfway done with SA.  I need to take a break because my mid-term portfolio evaluation for my Service Learning class is right now.  I promise to finish this though later today because I’m pretty much free until the pre-port this evening.  Global Studies mid-terms don’t scare me!