Townships, Slums, Suburbs, Mountains, and Beaches

April 4th, 2008

So I'm 5 days into Cape Town.

We've traveled all over the city now.  Yesterday we toured a township of one million people. There are businesses that build 5 by 10 foot shacks out of aluminum siding to sell for $300 to people who will plant them illegally in the newest slum expansions.  The government is building power cable poles that extend into areas where there are no buildings because they anticipate people needing some place to steal it from and would prefer them not to run illegal power cables across the streets.  There are concrete toilets and water faucets built in the middle of sandy fields with nothing around them because the government knows its only a matter of time (probably another year) before the slum extends to that area.  Its a mess.

Nonetheless a teacher in the slum told me that the people in the poorest shack neighborhoods that are constantly springing up and expanding the township are the happiest; evidently those who eventually get their free 2-room government housing accomodation are increasingly westernized and gain access to media about the opportunities and pleasures enjoyed by others, so much so that they are less happy than the people most isolated in the disparate slums.  Then I asked her why they build every public housing accomodation as a small 2-room house instead of an apartment in a huge building that would more efficiently and cost-effectively house everyone.  She responded that even as they become doctors, lawyers, or teachers, the local Xhosa-speaking people of the Khaylitsha slum still believe that they must spill the blood of a goat or cow on their own land in order to thank their ancestors and apartments would be insensitive to cultural practices like this.

That trip aside, today I recieved an angry response from the International Rivers Network to my term paper in which I critiqued their efforts at defending the poor in Uganda; I sent it to them hoping they would give me feedback, but I accidently offended them more than anything else. On this same day I found out that I'll probably be doing an asessment of a Male HIV clinic that is having trouble getting men to come get tested or a program that provides primary healthcare to refugees from Zimbabwe.  Hopefully that goes better than my last endeavor to provide constructive criticism to an organization.

I took the University of Cape Town bus to campus (theirs is modeled on Stanford's) hoping to meet up with Darshan for the first time, but evidently he didn't see my email in time and just as I arrived on campus it was struck by a two and a half hour power outage.  Every place in South Africa spends around 5 hours a week in the dark during peak power usage hours because the supply is so limited.  We went to the poshest and richest area of the Cape.  This series of beaches is filled with beautiful South African women and celebrities.  We also got a glimpse of the paragliding that I am planning for this Sunday with 3 others from the group.

All in all its been a whirlwind of a first week.

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Spring Break in Morocco: Executive Summary

March 30, 2007

I spent a wonderful week in Morocco with James and here is the brief summary (retrospectively).

James met me at the Marrakech airport on March 22nd. I'd planned to meet him at the hostel, but in order to find it he had to find a cab (there aren't any at the airport, go figure), transfer to some dude with a motorcycle who could drive around the alleys/roads of the old city, and finally wander in the dark until he finally found our hostel. A challenge for him at 7pm, impossible for me at midnight. Our hostel was like a 4-star hotel in the middle of the medina (the older city surrouding the central Mosque, where cars cannot drive, the roads are alleys, and usually surrounded by a wall). The next day we wandered the souks (the various shops), went to a couple museums and madrasas (islamic schools)(the school we visited was once the largest Quar'anic school in North Africa), and finally made our way to the Jamaa El-Fna. The Jamaa El-Fna in Marrakech is basically just the central square, but it is a United Nations World Heritage Site and home to the world famous snake charmers, dancing street monkeys, snail soup, and various other unexpected spectacles.

That night we bused to Fes, an 8-hour busride, for which we bought a bottle of whiskey and gave our first bribe to a bus attendant in exchange for his putting our bags on the bus (he demanded a small 7 dirham fee, about $1). Alcohol is illegal except when consumed by tourists, interestingly. The king tries to make everything very nice for tourists and so there is also practically capital punishment for harming us. One guy explained, "the king says our country cannot produce anything so if we touch the tourists that bring us money, we are done for". It seems like all of his decress are equally awesome.The whole time we were both reliant almost entirely on my high school french, which is spoken after Arabic or Berber. In Fes we visited the ancient tombs that gave us a spectacular view of the city, and then dove into the ancient city (once the imperial capital, and known as the true cultural center of the country). Marrakech is the typical tourist site, whereas Fes is more geared towards locals. That doesn't mean we didn't see anything awesome. The city is teeming with life once you make your way into the alleys, where you can buy camel heads and other unsavory things. It is also home to another world heritage site and the most famous Tannery in Morocco. We visited both and saw the Tannery from the roof tops above it. It is basically about a hundred, 4-foot diameter holes filled with different liquids like fats, pigeon poop, or just dye that they use to prepare and soften the leather hides. The day we visited they were making red leather and the day before's yellow leather was laying out in the sun. The smell was pungent. That night we stayed in another nice, but quieter hotel and the next morning we bused north to Chef Chaouen.

Chef is a much smaller city in the mountains, where all the buildings are painted a sky blue or white (we were told to keep the mosquitos away while attracting bees). 3/4 of the arable land east of the city is supposedly for Marijuana cultivation (illegally), which explains the overwhelming number of people trying to sell us Kif or hashish (don't worry mom, we weren't about to land ourselves in Morrocan jail). We left this city the next morning with our english-speaking guide, Mohammed. Mohammed led us over the mountains to a village on the other side (from the peak we could see the ocean, some 40 kilometers away). All in all we hiked a total of 14 kilometers that day, 10 of them up. We were the only visitors to the village for 5 days, and stayed at the only hotel in the mountain region, a 3 room house owned by Abdul, a stoner and village chief. The next day we set out again on an even longer and much more beautiful hike (around 20 kilometers) but this time mostly downhill. The countryside was beautiful and the will power required by the locals to farm the mountainsides is incredible, but they do it. Over mountains, down or up cliffsides, through farms, and tiny 20 person villages, I was shocked my shoes (the same old sambas I've been wearing for 3 years now and hiked the Tanzanian volcano in 2 years ago) survived it all in one piece.

After 2-days of trekking, James and I returned to Chef and took some much needed R & R. I did some sketches of the city, we enjoyed several pots of Morrocan Mint Tea (just mint and sugar), and smoked the cuban cigar he had brought from Madrid. The next day (yesterday), we split up; I went back by 13hours of busing to Marrakech for my flight this morning at 7 and he went north to Tangiers to catch a cheap flight to Madrid and then to Stanford. All in all it was an awesome week and I think we perfectly saw what Morocco was all about with our short trip. We saw the two most important cities (not the capital Rabat, or Casablanca, unfortunately) and got a great chance to see the countryside where the majority of the people still live. I still have another 24-25 weeks to go before I return to the states.