Durban: Where the Collier Family Resides

We arrived in Durban with absolutely no plan. Just a contact number. We called our contacts and they came to pick us up. Within moments of meeting them, we could tell that we were in for a treat. Tracey and Alec can (and do) do it all...and they let us join in for the fun!

We toured around Durban- visited the beautiful kloofs (little canyons), walked along the boardwalk, and viewed the largest mosque in the Southern hemisphere (according to Durbanites-I think this word might be my own creation).



We then spent a day with the local Lion's Club- Tracey and Alec are active members- cleaning up the river. Tessa and I started with high spirits, but ended (as you can tell) a little discouraged. There really is a lot of trash in our rivers these days. This leads me to think that we need a revival of the Litter Bugs Me Club (the membership requirements are quite easy: Pick up a piece of litter a day. If you forget to pick up one day, just pick up two another day. If you remember to pick up litter one day, the odds are another member may forget....so still try and pick up two, three, or four pieces of litter a day!)



Our host brother, Aidan, is the lead singer of a hard-core Christian rock band, The Rising End. We spent our Saturday night at his concert, amidst all of the moshers. Truly, this scene is WILD! I do not know what all of his fans will do when he moves to Canada to study...



Family photo. Richard (the German foreign exchange student), Alisa, Tracey, Alec, Aidan, and Tessa. We took a family road trip through South Africa to the game reserve, where we were able to spot everything from cheetahs to giraffes, wildabeasts, rhinos, hippos, and zebras!



I guess you are not allowed to do this...



Notice how Tessa framed this giraffe. She really has become an excellent photographer.

While we were in Durban, we were fortunate enough to stay with one of Tracey's friends, Mahkosi, in a Luganda township outside of Durban.



While in Luganda, we ate some of the largest meals I have ever ate in my life. Truthfully, we would receive a plate stacked 8 inches high, full of ox liver, potatoes, spinach, and cauliflower. After the meal, we would watch South African soap operas and a dance show. When we were lucky, the family would dance along.



We decided to visit the sangoma, a traditional healer. Tessa met with the sangoma in her private hut. This was where she learned that she will die of a heart attack.



During the days, while Mahkosi was at work, we decided that we should work as well. We were directed to a Kreche (preschool) that was housed in an orphanage.

Day 1. We spent the whole day playing London Bridge is Falling Down, teaching children the chicken dance, and making them do push-ups and jumping jacks (to tire them out). This is them at nap time.

Day 2. Twenty minutes into our time there, the teacher says that she has a meeting and asks if we can manage the kids for the day. Of course...I cannot think of one reason why that would be a less than brilliant idea. Through the course of the day, one boy pooped his pants, Tessa was peed on, children waged war while pinning us to the ground, and at one point we noticed one of the kids running away on the street outside of the gated compound. No worries, I am sure little kids are always running on the streets with no adult supervision...



This kid loved Tessa.



And yogurt.



We finished our time in Durban with a trivia night with the Lion's Club. What more could we ask for?

Johannesburg//Jo'burg/JHB/Jozi...

Don't worry girls, I'll take care of this one.

Do you know the Dervish-whirling, magic-tricking, bungee-jumping, question-asking, no-prisoner-taking, shark-dragging, shoe-losing wonders that are Tessa and Alisa?
I do.
What to do when encountering one, or both, of these unique creatures: First, stay calm. Second, make them show you a traveler's trick and third, answer all their questions - it's usually in your best interests.


This photograph is evidence in order to eliminate any doubt as to whether or not the girls actually were in Africa. I had to work for a few hours on a Sunday and so I decided to leave the girls to their own devices at the Rosebank Flea Market. When I returned they were not ready to leave. One hour later, they still were not ready to leave. Concerned, I decided to try to find them. Walking through the market I wondered what they could possibly still be doing, with stalls everywhere closing up for the day.
I happened upon the young lasses assisting a Sudanese jewelry seller with packing away all of his hundreds of sets of earrings into tiny little plastic bags. In the midst of our Xenophobic crisis we had foreign foreigners helping local foreigners. It's complicated... we know.


This was another result of the Flea Market Quest. Here you will witness true use of mind power.


Did you ever find yourself wondering how they get by, traveling the world with but one pair of sandals? What, pray tell, do they do about cold feet ?(the literal kind). Well here it is.
Now you know.


So well behaved. This image is for the viewing pleasure of nervous parents, worried aunts and other concerned individuals who suffer from constant visual flashes of their darlings jumping off bridges, taking unreliable cross-country taxi rides and other death-defying stunts.
When in doubt, come back to this photograph. Breathe. Count to ten. Resume panic.


Medical experts finding a cure for cancer; Scientists formulating an AIDS vaccine; Environmentalists stumbling upon a simple solution for global warming could not understand the pure joy of the discovery of the juice goggles.

...too much?


A little melodrama never killed anyone.


...did it?


This is a tribute to aunt Judy!
Without whom we would never have met these edgy twirlers in the first place.
Or perhaps we would have... Who knows?
The world is getting smaller - and the truth is getting harder to tell.

With Love

Gilli

Three Countries in Under 36 Hours

Time is flying by...since our last blog, we have stayed with a SERVAS host family in Durban, celebrated two Shabbat dinners with Gilli's family in Johannesburg, and ventured into Swaziland with Christian Terrett and Nozizwe. These stories will all make their way onto the blog...as for now though, we are heading off to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. That will mean that, in a period of 36 short hours, we will have been present (and active) in Swaziland, South Africa, and Ethiopia.

Takin' Care of Business

We simply felt that there was not enough talk about peanut butter on this blog. Our peanut butter survey was not random. It was the product, and then catalyst, of hours of discussion. Many people ask Alisa and me if we ever fight. We do. About peanut butter.

So, way back in El Salvador we were asked to buy peanut butter for the sandwiches of the study abroad students. I picked out 3 creamy and 1 crunchy because, even though I believe crunchy to be the far superior of the two, I thought that the majority of people liked creamy. Alisa then made a bold claim. She told us that she was absolutely certain that most women liked creamy and that most men liked crunchy. She later tempered her prediction to a 60-40 split. She was convinced that 60% of women liked creamy and that 60% of men liked crunchy. I thought this was absurd and so we immediately began asking every person we met how they felt about this great life mystery.

We were both amazed by the results and also by all of the new questions the discussions raised.

It became immediately clear that the majority of men and women liked crunchy, not creamy, leaving Alisa and I both to question our previously understood realities. Alisa, a lover of creamy and a member of a family in which the women like creamy and the man likes crunchy, realized that she had always assumed that what she experienced was the same as what everyone else experienced. I realized that rather than place myself in the majority like Alisa, I liked to put myself in the place of the minority. I was happy to think of myself as one of the few who truly understood how good crunchy peanut butter was. I had to accept that I had been in the majority all along.

Those outside the gender binary was the only group to go for creamy. What could this possibly mean? Those outside the gender binary are by definition an ambiguous group from the start. And did people vote in this category because they personally identify outside the binary or because they believe their peanut butter preference to be non-gendered?

Further questions:
Is a person who likes creamy unwilling to eat crunchy, whereas a person who likes crunchy willing to eat either? Like with orange juice, the pulp person will swing both ways, but the no-pulp person is a purist.
Is peanut butter preference culturally specific? Is age a factor?
Are there trends with these groups? If presented with "left or right," "curvy or straight," and "wheat or white," will the crunchy person go for left, curvy, and wheat?

Feel free to weigh in . . .

Flashback to Cape Town

We're going through and backing up our photos and discovered these oldies but goodies.
Camps Bay, Cape Town


Short story: Alisa lived in New Orleans and made a friend named Andrew. Andrew is living in London and we met him for a beer on our layover. He gave us the phone number of a South African friend, Dan, who he studied with at Cambridge. We met Dan and Dan's roommate Ari at a bar in Cape Town the first week we arrived. Four weeks later, while we were back in Cape Town, we went to lunch with one of the filmmakers that we met at Tessa's aunt's workshop. Her name is Gilli and she is from Johannesburg. She picked us up and started telling us how she had procured the car from a friend named Ari. Sure enough, it was the same Ari from the first week. Later that day we ended up at his house and strangled him. He is the kind of person who lends himself to being strangled.

Gilli got us on the Invite List to a Sneaker Party. Apparently sneaker culture is huge in the US. . .have you heard of it? Seriously, let us know.

One of our last days with Aunt Judy was spent going to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists were incarcerated. On the way, we stopped to dance to street music.

On the boat to Robben Island.


It was windy.


Nelson Mandela's cell.


This is the limestone quarry in which the prisoners worked. The reflection of the limestone was extremely bright and the prisoners were not allowed to wear sunglasses. Now many of the former prisoners have permanent eye damage. The cave in the corner served both as the break room where they ate their lunch and the toilet. It became one of the places where the prisoners could organize and share stories about the struggle. This is part of the reason why Robben Island came to be known as the "university" of the struggle.

Bulungula - a little slice of paradise

We're getting a bit out of date with the blog. Here are photos from the week before last. For this past week we have actually been in Durban and are now on our way to Johannesburg. We leave South Africa on May 31st and are starting to think ahead to our next stop, Ethiopia, so if anyone has any information, ideas, or connections, we would be forever grateful to you!

So after the bungee jumping, pool playing and gas station sleeping, we eventually made to a backpackers lodge called Bulungula. We took the bus as far as we could and then the lodge picked us up in a 4 by 4 to take us another 2 1/2 hours over the bumpiest road Carolyn, Alisa, and I had ever experienced.

This is actually a photo of a smooth part of the road, but it shows them changing a second flat tire due to the rough terrain. The ride through the countryside was made especially beautiful by the setting sun.

We arrived at Bulungula after dark, ate a wonderfully warm dinner, sat next to a fire in the candle light, and then went to sleep early in the little hut we would share for the next 7 nights. We woke up with the sun and opened our hut door to discover that the ocean was just in front of us. A glorious surprise.

Our hut was the fourth one in from the right.

The ocean at our doorstep.

The view from our door looking the other way.

Bulungula is a unique backpackers lodge because it is 40% owned by the local village, fair trade certified, and working toward eliminating the community's cycle of poverty. Many members of the village work for the lodge doing cleaning, maintenance, management, and cooking (delicious traditional meals!) and there are also a number of community members starting their own tourist businesses. These businesses, including horseback riding, canoeing, village tours, and massage, enable the tourist to explore the area and learn about Khosa culture.

The lodge is also unique because it runs almost entirely on solar and wind energy. After sunset they use candle light and they have organic composting toilets. The showers are called "rocket showers" and entail pouring paraffin into the base of the shower head and lighting it on fire. It roars and spurts flames!

We spent the week waking up with sun, going for long walks on the beach, and exploring the community through the various community-run tours.


One of the tours we did was called "Woman Power" and we spent a day learning some of the activities a typical local woman does in a day. Here is Alisa on her way to learn how to make the mud bricks for building houses. She had to smear wet cow dung over the bricks to help them solidify.


Our faces are covered with kolin, a naturally occurring clay, that is used as sunscreen.


The village has one single restaurant that they have set up for tourists. It is a one room hut with a set of shelves, a couple stoves, and a bench. We ate delicious crepes and then had a long walk home over the hills. We reached the ocean as the sun began to set. (Photo by Carolyn)



On our tour of the village, we met a lot of great people including this little girl who stood like a queen looking over her domain and would copy every face we made. On the tour we also learned that in order to build a new field you must give the chief a box of beer, wine, and one sheep. If you want to build a hut, you must give the headman (who is subordinate to the chief) a box of beer and wine (no sheep). (Photo by Carolyn)


We spent one afternoon canoeing! Carolyn (the only one with serious canoeing experience) took the canoe with the guide, leaving Alisa and Tessa to fend for themselves. This may surprise you, but we are not exactly the most proficient canoers. Despite our struggles to coordinate and inability to keep up with the other canoe, we couldn't help but feel at peace as we kept accidently hitting the shore of the mangrove-lined river.


It is typically the children's responsibility to keep the cows out of the fields and so the government built these fences so that the children could go to school. Unfortunately, it seems that school attendance is still low. The lodge's current project is to build a proper school building so that the children of the village can have quality teachers and materials. The current school operates in the shade of a tree.

We spent one day with the local herbalist learning about various roots, barks, and leaves. There were medical remedies for everything from an upset stomach to lack of breast milk to madness. There were also other types of potions for attracting lovers, making friends, and getting people out of jail. He told us sadly that he has no herb for curing AIDS (which affects a serious percentage of the community), but is hoping one will be found soon. And isn't his outfit awesome?


Alisa and Carolyn trying a root. Villagers use this as a way to stave off hunger.



This photo is pretty much self-explanatory . . .

Alisa was walking down the beach one morning and encountered a fisherman who had just caught a shark. He struggled to reel it in. He then unhooked it and left it on the beach to die. After about half an hour, the shark died. Alisa went over with the fisherman, Samuel, and slitted open the stomach of the shark. Samuel then ripped it open and grabbed out two huge clumps of fat lard for the dogs. As they explored the shark's carcass, Samuel remarked, "I think it might be pregnant. What a shame!" Alisa then ran up to the lodge and tried to recruit as many people as she could to go and see the shark. In this photo, Alisa is trying to engage some of the locals in shark games. Let's just say they weren't quite as enthused as Alisa. (We later found out that shark catching is actually quite common. Wa wa wa.)



Priceless. A musical adventure at Bulungula. On the right we have a little boy from the village playing sophisticated African beats. On the left we have a little boy from the United States making fart noises with his armpit.



Totally unrelated to Bulungula: the next World Cup. It will be held in South Africa in 2010 and they are EXCITED. We loved that this huge countdown sign had already started. Just 768 short days away.

The World's Highest Bungy Jump

Special Addition:

Here are two more photos that Carolyn took and sent to us. The first was taken right after we jumped. You can't see it, but the bridge we jumped off of is in the blackness behind us. Just imagine how high it was . . . really high :) Carolyn took the second photo at the pool hall.


A week and a half ago we decided to take the Garden Route out of Cape Town and head toward one of the top-rated, most sustainable backpacking lodges in the world (the local community owns forty percent of the lodge, it is fair trade certified and complete with solar panels, composting toilets, wind power, lots of candle light, and paraffin rocket showers...you get the drift).

We met up with Tessa's friend from Thailand, Carolyn, and she, thankfully, organized our whole adventure together (this may have been the first time we actually had a plan and had purchased tickets more than a day in advance). We mentioned to Carolyn that we would love to try and hit up Storm's River, a hamlet boasting the highest bungy jumping bridge in the world, and so Carolyn booked our bus tickets in an effort to ensure that we would make it to the bungy jumping bridge before they closed. Our plan was to arrive at Storm's River around 3 pm, catch a ride to the bungy jumping bridge, jump, spend a partial night at the hostel, and then leave early in the morning so that we could catch our 3:45 am bus out of Storm's River.

As you might have been able to guess, our bus was running a bit late. We arrived in Storm's River at 4:10 pm (the bungy place closes at 5 pm and was a 35-40 min drive and we had no transportation!). I (Alisa) started running (which is rare; you can tell that I was desperate) frantically through the parking lot asking each and every car if they were driving near the bungy place and could drop us off. Everyone was so incredibly supportive but no one was driving in that direction (or had enough room for three of us and our massive backpacks). Right as a little red car offered to take me (alone due to lack of space), a woman named Michelle from Dijembe Backpacker's drove up. We hurled our backpacks into the back of the truck and took off toward Bloukran's Bungy. The clock was ticking. She was a mad driver, originally from Johannesburg and we made it to the jump site. We were the last group to suit up.













To get to the jumping off point we had to walk along narrow pathway suspended beneath the bridge. This in itself was already intimidating! Once to the jumping point, there was loud dance music blaring and lots of energy to get everyone pumped up. They strapped us in and didn't give any instructions besides stick your arms out and jump. Alisa screamed the entire time leading up to her jump and had to be pushed off the bridge. Tessa didn't decide to jump until on the platform and then decided and jumped 5 minutes later.

It was actually a very magical experience to be flying toward the earth seeing the world from an entirely new viewpoint. Absolutely surreal.

After the jump Tessa, Carolyn, and I decided (in an effort to save a few dollars) that it would be wise to camp out at the gas station. Our next bus was coming to pick us up at 4 am and we thought that it would be quite ludicrous to pay for a night's stay when you are really only staying there for a partial night (10 hours is nothing!). As we were waving goodbye to the bungy crew we mentioned that we were going to be staying at the gas station and that we were going to start a little party there...they told us that they might drop by.

We drove back into town with Michelle, from the backpacker's lodge. She asked if she could stop off at the backpacker's lodge to serve dinner. We gladly obliged and warmed ourselves up by the fire. Eventually Michelle motioned us to the truck and drove us back to our soon to be home.

Back at the gas station, we unloaded our backpacks and went to crash in what we thought was the all-nite fast food restaurant, Steers. Little did we know that they were actually closing at 10 pm! We started brainstorming our options. 1. Sleep on the cold benches outside 2. Try and bring our backpacks into the convenient store and nestle ourselves in a corner in there 3. Call the backpacker's and tell them that we really did need a room The cashier overheard our predicament and menioned that she would try and help us out. Eventually she ended up securing a place for us-the break/locker room of the gas attendants! Right as the clock struck 10 pm and we were being kicked out of Steers, Conden and Charles (two guys from the bungy jumping crew) arrived and offered to take us out to play pool.


As you may have been able to guess, we took them up on their offer and went to a local bar to play pool. The time flew by and we didnt return to the gas station until 2 am.




We then moved our backpacks into the gas attendant station's locker room and enjoyed an hour and a half of shut-eye.


Right above me, on the wall, a little wall posting reads: "The PATH to YOUR Future"...you decide!

Monkey Valley: Where Monkeys Don't Run Wild, But Filmmakers Do

This past week has been absolutely phenomenal. Last Sunday, Aunt Judy arrived and whisked us away with her to a resort outside of Cape Town where she was teaching a workshop on directing actors. Eleven of South Africa's most promising filmmakers, as well as various people within the filming industry, descended upon a tiny resort. While the filmmakers were in their workshops, Tessa and I were able to lounge about the resort, take long strolls on the beach, practice our contact juggling and fire dancing skills, read and write, befriend the waiting staff, and just take time for some much needed rest and relaxation. This is the first time in our whole trip in which we did not have to worry (and by worry I mean plan) about anything, Aunt Judy took care of our EVERY need.



This was our first sundowner on the beach. Marten supplied the champagne and raspberries, as well as mango bits, springbok jerky, crackers, and cheese. As we sat on the beach together, watching the translucent (I love that word!) waves crashing ashore, we spotted a clan of dolphins and a group of seals (and I was just sharing how one of my hopes in life was to see dolphins in the ocean...what are the odds?). MAGICAL.
sunset


Here is Marten sitting in above Monkey Valley Resort, our home for the week. Whenever you thought the party was about to die, Marten would always come out of nowhere with two more bottles of wine. He also led us in late night singing sessions, much to the delight of the other guests.

Tessa summed up our days at Monkey Valley quite well: We eat and we sleep. We think and we write and we eat. We think and we drink and we eat and we talk. And then we sleep. What a beautiful way to live!

We also watched a lot of sunsets. Here is one of many, many sunset photos. We're pretty sure Cape Town wins thus far for most beautiful sunsets.




Alisa with some of the great Monkey Valley staff: Morne, Frankie, and Cedric. Apparently, Frankie and Cedric are both former models . . . we believe it! It turns out that Cape Town is one of the modeling capitals of the world and a lot of companies come here for their photo shoots. We have witnessed two modeling shoots on the street so far.

Yet another sundowner. This time with the entire crew. The film project they are working on is called The Commandments (based on The Dekalog by Kieslowski). Each director is creating a feature film or a 50 minute episode about one of the many issues facing modern South Africa. The films are set to come out in 2010.

Here I am with Nosizwe, an apiring 23 year old film maker (who has graciously offered to host us in her home in Swaziland). Every day Nosizwe, and the rest of the filmmakers, would work extensively with Aunt Judy (also known as Judith Weston, one of the most prominent teachers of directors...if anyone is involved in acting or directing they should read her book which, allegedly, is one of the most powerful books in the field, "Directing Actors"). By night, however, the filmmakers would need to unwind...so we might have joined them in this process. My favorite part of this night was when a round of tequila shots was first brought to the table. I squeezed Aunt Judy because I really cannot take a shot well. She offered to help me but, as she was doing so, was spotted by one of the other filmmakers. He then proceeded to get Aunt Judy a shot. One. Two. Three. We all took the shot and set down our glasses. I looked at Aunt Judy's and under a half millimeter had disappeared. I love it!


On Aunt Judy's day off we set out to explore the surrounding area. Marten loaned us his rental car and so Alisa got behind the wheel and, without any practice, drove for the first time on the left side of the road. (Marten assured us that he was FULLY insured.) Our first stop was more penguins!

Eventually we made it to Cape Point. We ate lunch at the base (a baboon ran across the canopy above us!) and then rode the funicular to the top. The Cape of Good Hope is in the background.

Antartica is just over the horizon.


As we were standing at the very top of Cape Point, looking out at the edge of the world, we saw in the distance a rainbow moving slowly toward us. It must be a good omen.

Driving from Cape Point to the Cape of Good Hope we encountered an entire troop of baboons just hanging out in the middle of the road. One came up to Aunt Judy's door and tried to break in. Being the intrepid travelers that we are, we thought ahead and had locked the door. Our intrepidness only goes so far, however. Rather than immediately whip out our cameras, we all screamed and pinned ourselves to the other side of the car . . . We saw ostriches, too!























The south-western most point of the African continent.


This was the view.

We felt so elated, we literally jumped for joy.

One of the other highlights of our Monkey Valley week was celebrating Alisa's 24th birthday.
Aunt Judy, Marten, and Jacky surprised me with an outstanding birthday dinner (complete with an abundance of champagne, wine, and rich chocolate cake). I think I was in a state of bliss (you might not be able to tell from the photo).

As soon as everyone got their slice of cake, Alisa told us that we were not allowed to use cutlery. Penny, our wonderful waitress, immediately took this to heart and snatched everyone's forks.

Here's everyone! Thanks so much for an incredible week.