2 Months Back

I've been meaning to write this post for 2 months; since the 26th of June when I arrived at LAX tired from traveling, excited to see my family, and  relieved that almost everything on the trip went perfectly. I say almost because I had one major catastrophe.

The 50 kilogram bag that I was carting around was stolen in Cape Town. The morning Jeff and I were supposed to be headed to Europe, we walked out to our rental car, which was unassumingly parked in the hostel parking lot, only to discover the back window punched in and my bag gone. Wonderful right? What was supposed to be a fun morning hiking up Table Mountain turned into a stressful, tear-filled morning of filling out police reports and realizing what I no longer had.

However, as terrible as having five months of memories and possessions stolen from me, the experience really wasn't that bad. Jeff and I ended up sampling all the coffee shops in the Cape Town airport, which at least gave me a much needed caffeine buzz to make it through the day. Not to mention, that Jeff somehow weaseled our way into a first class lounge which was a lot more comfortable place to spend the last 3 hours in the airport. Plus, on the bright side, I no longer had to cart a giant bag around the streets of Paris, London, and Cologne.

France, England, and Germany went by in no time and before I knew it, I was on Air Tahiti Nui heading back to California...

As much as I loved South Africa (and am longing to return), it is great to be back in California. Six months abroad has made me appreciate California and the US so much more than I could have ever imagined. It has also made me more humble and more conscious of all the injustices and issues around the world. I will have to expand more on that at some later time, however, those who have seen me since I've been home have heard my two cents regarding that matter.

Since I've been home, I've been eating and cooking a lot (thank goodness for all the choices of food available and California), cycling, running, and swimming a lot (I completed my first triathlon last week), and stressing out over the fact that I graduate from UCSB in 9 months!

But C'est le vie! I have to enjoy the end of my undergrad experience right? 

I'll write more later, but for now, I'm supposed to dash into the city to sample some vegan Mexican food!

Cheers!

3 weeks turned into 2

I leave Pietermartizburg in 2 weeks. 14 days and my study abroad venture at University of Kwa-Zulu Natal comes to an end. It’s difficult for me to fathom that after a term at Berkeley, and a term at UKZN, I’m fourexams away from ending my year long hiatus and returning to being a student at UC Santa Barbara. In fact, I've already picked classes for fall quarter. And I have already chosen my living situation for my senior year.

I’m so happy I chose to study abroad in South Africa and especially Pietermaritzburg. It has been such an eye-opening and humbling experience. Considering my limitations in languages and my desire to participate in an immersion program, I don’t think there are many other places I could have gone to experience such a unique cultural experience. I think I have said it before, but South Africa is so diverse and so divided. It has so many good and bad qualities associated with the fact that devastating political, social, and racial turmoil exists.

Before I came, I had the idea that the World Cup was going to have such beneficial affects for the citizens of South Africa. In actuality, it has not benefited the local population at all. Millions of dollars have been allocated to building new stadiums and increasing tourism, however, nothing has been spent to improve the quality of living for the nation’s citizens. The country is littered with filth from people unconcerned with the environment or the future. Half of the time that I have been in Pietermaritzburg the municipality has been on strike: meaning that trash is not collected or if it is, the city does not have enough money to bring it to the large land-fills and instead, just burns all the small dump sites. Therefore, not only is the air filled with smog from heavily polluting vehicles, it is also filled with the fumes and smoke from burning garbage.

Not to mention that recent political and social events have heavily increased the racial tensions among the population. Honestly though, the racism is just making the situation about ten times worse. I hear people talk and use derogatory terms and racist comments like it’s as normal as commenting on the weather. I don’t think I go a day without feeling offended people of the ignorance and disrespect towards one another that people though. So many people complain that the root of the problems in South Africa are based on lack of education, however, by using racial slurs, no matter the circumstance, it’s just proving that the ‘educated’ are just as ignorant as they people they are degrading. It just makes me so sad and so angry that there are still such social injustices and inequalities here…

However, at don’t mean to rant about that right now. I would more like to talk about the fact that I’m really going to miss South Africa once I leave. For all its problems and issues, it really is a beautiful place. The landscape and the scenery are amazing; I only wish I had more time (and more money) to explore them. I would have loved to visit Botswana and Namibia- actually, I would have loved to have visited every other country. Not to mention, it would have been so nice to work on archaeology here. I could honestly see myself coming back in a couple years in order to go to grad school or to work here. South Africa has so much history and culture that’s not only apparent in the people but also in the environment. Five months in this country, on this continent, is in no way long enough for me to be here. I know I will come back.

3 weeks left in Pietermaritzburg

shoot! I wrote something up last night to put on here because I know I've been horribly slacking the past month. However, I saved it on my laptop instead of my flashdrive. Therefore, I'll post it next time I get on the internet. I'm sorry! I really meant to put something up!

Planes, Flames, and Hadedas

I'm sorry, in the chaos that is this semester and life in Africa, I have been completely neglecting my blog. It's not that I don't want to write on it, it's just trying to find the time. My life is going in ten different directions at once. What have I been doing you ask? Well, school (so papers, projects, reports, and the like); field trips (I saw a bush baby!!), climbing; running; baking (finally); and all other shinanigans that are associated with Africa. This afternoon, I am going up to Underburg in the Drakensburgs with a few friends, Iain, Jeninne, Tracy, Haden, and Matt. If the weather holds up, which it doesn't look like it's going to, I'm supposed to fly up with Iain and Jeninne in Iain's father's tri-pacer. If not I'll drive up but I really hope the weather holds up.

Iain took me flying last week as well. It was so much fun to get back into the air! The plane is so cool too because it was made in the 1950s and is as basic as they come. I think it cruises around 100 knots and it flies very similarily to a Cessna 152. However, the cool thing about the tri-pacer is that it is canvas. I sat co-pilot and its a bench seat so in order for me to fly, I had to prop myself up off  the back of the seat. The only problem with the day we flew was that it was really smokey. Because winter is the dry season here, they burn fire breaks during the fall in order to control the fires in the winter. Therefore, the last couple weeks have been super smokey. But C'est le vie! I still was able to fly so I'm happy!

The friends I have made from South Africa, aforementioned above, are all really outdoorsy and into sports such as white water kayaking, climbing, hiking, dirt biking, etc. Plus this is Africa, so everyone seems to own a gun (my favorite right). Anyway, there are these really annoying birds, Hadedas, that used to be protected but are now as common as pigeons and seagulls in the US. But these things are soo annoying! They have the most horrendous call you can imagine! So I'm not a fan. Anyway, the guys were joking around about how I had to shoot a Hadeda before I left. No I didn't shoot one. But Matt brought over his pellet guns and shot empty soda bottles with those for a while. They thought they were really funny too and made me pose with the guns in order to show my dad. I think it's quite ridiculous but  o well.

Anyway, I'm off. Time to start being productive with this day!!

T.I.A. This is Africa

HELLO WORLD!!

It’s been too long.

I know, I know, it’s completely my fault. But to be fair, I’ve been really busy. So I’m just writing on Africa time (see, I eventually knew I would get around to it). The past few weeks have been completely crazy. Weekend Excursions, Midterms, Easter Break, My 21st Birthday. I finally used the internet yesterday for the first time in nearly two weeks and opened my email to 250+ messages in my inbox. I was quite afraid! Oh, and, I hit the half way point for my term in Africa. Actually, that makes me kind of sad, so I won’t talk about that again.

I don’t even know where to start at the moment. I don’t think I’m going to write a lot with the post either. There’s just so so so much to cover. Instead, I’ll just post a bunch of pictures.

The first set of pictures is from a weekend up in the Drakensburg Mountains. My camera battery died half way through the trip so I wasn’t able to take as many as I would have liked. But the mountains were beautiful. We did a canopy tour, I finally saw baboons, we attempted to watch the sunrise (but it was cloudy), and we went on a horseback ride to Sans Bushmen paintings.

And then I had midterms, papers and all that fun stuff intermixed with thunderstorms, climbing, paddling (i.e. unsuccessfully trying to learn to Eskimo roll in a pool), learning to ride a dirt bike, and exploring PMB.

And now, drum roll please…..
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EASTER BREAK! Cape Town and traveling up the N2 through the Eastern Cape, the Garden Route, the Wild Coast, and the Transkei.

The pictures basically speak for themselves but…

We found a delicious farmer’s market where I ate warthog and ostrich,

We went cage diving in Gansbaai with great white sharks,

We went on a wine tour around Paarl and Stellenboch in order to become wine snobs,

We hiked Table Mountain, in a cloud with 30knot winds,

We drove to Mossel Bay, where we split into 2 groups and I went to Addo Elephant Reserve,
We saw elephants, lions, hyenas, tortoises, vervet monkeys (which chased us from our safari tent), and so much more at Addo,

We drove to Chinsta for dune climbing, sundowners, and what we’re calling “Girls Gone Wild on the Wild Coast”,

And finally,


We drove the most horrendous 80km potholed road to Coffee Bay (where we nearly zigzagged our way through potholes while attempting to not get ran off the road by taxis) (I actually started hyperventilated while driving at one point), hiked 12km in rain and wind, over cliffs with goats and cows, to Hole in the Wall, and celebrated my twenty first birthday African style (yes, with war paint).

But just fyi, we are celebrating my twenty-first California style when I get back in June!!

Core Sampling

Do you remember that song from girl scouts? It went:

“Black socks they never get dirty

The longer you wear them the blacker they get

Some day I think I should launder them

But something keeps telling me don’t do it yet”

Well, my question is what if white socks turn black? Do they fall into that category have never getting dirty, especially if there is no chance of them ever turning white again? The socks I wore today turned black. I don’t think I will ever be able to get them white, especially considering I’m not due to do wash for another week or so. Okay, white socks turned black: this sounds really gross so I think I must explain.

Although I’m really happy to be studying at UKZN Pietermaritzburg, I don’t like how the school doesn’t have an anthropology or archaeology program. Therefore, a few weeks back, I asked my biogeography professor if he knew anyone local who studied archaeology so I could do something pertaining to my major while I was here. When I told him I studied paleoethnobotany, he replied that his lab was a paleogeography lab using pollen analysis to study past environmental change. Perfect! Although I’ve never done pollen analysis, it is a method used in Pbot which is usually associated with various other botanical analysis techniques. He then proceeded to introduce me to the graduate students in his lab who told me that when they went to the field, I could come along.

Pollen analysis is fairly difficult because preservation, especially in the tropics, is a big issue. In order to find decent, well preserved specimens, it’s necessary to find sediments where 40,000 year old sediments can remain intact. In the tropics, the best place to do this is in wetlands and bogs associated with indigenous forests. Therefore today, I accompanied my professor, a post-doc student, and 3 master students to Kar kloof National Reserve, 1600 meters in elevation, to take core samples of a wetland.

The drive up to the site was beautiful. There were dozens of raptors (buzzards, eagles, and falcons) along the side of the road, cranes with 2 meter wing spans, and at one point, we spotted about half a dozen somenga monkeys swinging through the trees. After off roading it for a good half hour, we finally reached out field site, which was a wetland situated on ranchland beneath 2000 meter high mountains.

I was told to wear old clothes and shoes I wouldn’t mind getting muddy. The problem, however, is my wardrobe is very small and I didn’t bring any old clothes with me. Thus, I had to wear my only pair of normal sneakers, my soccer pants, and a shirt that already has mud stains. We packed up the gear needed for sampling and trekked out into the field. After about 4 minutes of walking carefully through thigh high grass, my shoes and socks were soaked through since I was sinking up to my ankles in floating vegetation and sediment. For about an hour we carried on like this: tramping around through the wetland looking for bouncy ground where we would then proceed stick a rod in to see how deep the sediment was. The ideal sediment is black, mushy, and wet. However, we kept coming up with samples of clay and regolith, which are whitish, grainy, and amazingly difficult to get through.

When we finally selected the sampling site, we started the actual coring process. For those of you unfamiliar with coring, the process involves sticking a metal rod, with a shovel like device attached to the end in alternating holes, 10cm apart allowing you to collect sediment at given depths. Sounds simple right? Wrong! The first couple samples may be, when the corer is only plunged 48 or so centimeters, but when you start trying to take samples at 200cm, in very firm regolith, you get 2 grown men plus 2 or 3 grown women hanging on this thing. It’s quite a site, especially since everyone is covered in mud. We did this whole survey/coring process for 8 hours. By the end of it, we were so exhausted and sunburned that we were covering ourselves in war paint and having sediment fights. Good times.

Even though this sounds like strenuous and exhausting work, it was actually really fun and really interesting. It was cool to get out in the field and be able to work on a project with graduate students. Everyone that I went with is really intelligent and total bio nerds, which meant that I learned about all the flora and fauna in the area. They told me that whenever they go into the field, I am more than welcome to come along, and, not to mention, they offered to show me around different areas in the Drakensburg Mountains, such as baboon rock and the areas with Sans Bushmen paintings.

Plus, I really like making relationships and connections with people here. I really love all of the Americans (and Frenchies) that I have been hanging out with, but it’s nice to meet locals who are familiar with the land and willing to show me around.

On a side note, Friday night we had a Mexican/French feast! I made tortillas from scratch, with the help of a girl from Berkeley who knew what she was doing, and which turned more into tostadas because they weren’t flat enough. We made fried rice, chicken, salsa, and guacamole. Delicious! I ate enough to feed a small village. Then, to top it all off, the Frenchies made crepes dressed with sugar and lemon juice. So good! Best meal, by far, we have made since being here.

Protests

I’m skipping classes today. I’m a horrible student, I know.

Actually, this isn’t my choice; I was planning on going to classes, especially since I have a 3 hour practical today. The problem is that UKZN is having a protest today. A protest of what, this link will give you the rundown.

I went to the computer lan around 0800 to work on some assignments. As I walked over to the lan, located on Old Main campus, I noticed students congregating on the grass, surrounded by Risk Management Services, in front of the Old Clocktower Building. It was a small group so I didn’t think anything of it. Around 1000, my friend sent me a SMS stating that I shouldn’t go to class or be in major campus buildings because the protest was going to get violent. Protests by the ANC or the young communist league are conducted here everywhere and usually last a few days. The first day is fairly calm and then they usually escalate to levels where classrooms are stormed, tables are thrown, and two years ago, the police used rubber bullets to ward off the mob of protestors. So, I quickly decided to get off of campus in order to avoid being part of the fiasco, and detoured only to ask my instructor if I could make up the prac. Her only advice to me was stay away from the protest, which I am happily doing.

As I walked off campus to meet up with the girls at the bakery, down the street from campus, I began to notice the numerous police cars stationed around campus. Here is where it becomes interesting. Some of the girls had class this morning on New Arts and were quickly told to evacuate. Apparently, there was a bomb threat and students were becoming a bit rowdy and were using pepper spray and tear gas in some of the classrooms. RMS was there sorting it out and turning students away from New Arts campus so hopefully its under control by now. Chemistry, agriculture, and a few other lectures also had incidents of paper spray and a few of my friends, who are locals, got nailed pretty badly. Although a number of classes have been cancelled and a number of students refused to go to school today, the overall atmosphere of the campus is fairly at ease. As my lecturer said when I told her I was advised to miss class, they are used to this here; ordeals like this are a normal occurrence. Can you imagine?

I know Berkeley had an incident last week that turned a little violent, and my freshman year at Santa Barbara our anti-war demonstration turned into a disrespectful crashing of a meeting between military officials and UC leaders, however I’ve never been anywhere where I’ve actually felt afraid for my life.

I don’t understand the need for violent protests. I am all for peaceful protests and using public demonstrations to express injustices and displeasures, however, when they turn aggressive I feel that it sends the wrong message. For me, I’m not going to respect people who are causing harm to others or property. It sends the wrong message because it’s almost inviting the other side to fight back which only angers more people. Communication, speech, is so much more powerful than violence. It shows that the protestors are educated, they understand what they are fighting for, or against, and they are willing to settle their differences with the other side in an orderly and civilized manner.

It’s disheartening for me to hear about public protests that end in violence. It’s a sign that we are failing as a society resolve our differences through respect for each other. Hasn’t history taught us anything? Hasn’t this current military action show us nothing? Nothing gets resolved by violence. The issues will still persist; they just become covered up by the fact that one side will always have bigger and more powerful weapons. I want to believe that humans are innately good; I want to believe that peace is possible. However, things like today’s protest and the protest last week in Berkeley only work to remind me how uncivilized and destructive humans are.

Maybe, the protest of the UCs will be better. I guess I’ll find soon enough.