Nathaniel's Blog
Saturday, April 22, 2006
The Southern Coast
Since we intend to follow our visit of South Africa with a brief stop over in Swaziland and a short time in Mozambique, we are following the long beautiful coastline of this country in a north easterly direction. All along this mountainous, bayspattered highway are cheap little backpacking establishments where we can pitch our tents, catch up on our article writing and watch the ocean, which reacts to my presence with a meek and lake like glassiness that is coming to seem malicious. In fact, I am starting to feel responsible for dragging this salt puddle with me to all of the famous surf spots spread so evenly along the coastal route. Perhaps I should be apologizing to the line of disappointed surfers pouting at the bar beneath hanging vintage surfboards whose only option is to watch video footage of luckier men enjoying their sport on a three dimensional ocean.
Since there are screaming unguarded four year old boys marauding through all common rooms of this establishment with screeching war cries and plastic tricycles, it is difficult to focus on work. I check the waves every ten minutes, as if they will have risen miraculously and I watch the surfing video to which I have strategically turned my back, as it is reflected in a framed Billabong promotional photograph. In between the injections of discouragement that my wave checking rain walks constitute, I write paragraphs about the South African government's denialism towards HIV/AIDS.
Mike has just calculated that 1,400 kilometers still separate us from Nelspruit, the South African town near Mozambique and Swaziland where Sean and Mike will be united with their replacement credit cards and our available funds. In all likelihood we will try to make good time in that direction, stopping in Durban where Sean has lined up a story and soaking up the soothing sight of a completely dormant ocean. Incidentally, the surf report has just indicated that Jeffrey's Bay-our current resting spot-will have ideal surf conditions two days after our departure.
Since we intend to follow our visit of South Africa with a brief stop over in Swaziland and a short time in Mozambique, we are following the long beautiful coastline of this country in a north easterly direction. All along this mountainous, bayspattered highway are cheap little backpacking establishments where we can pitch our tents, catch up on our article writing and watch the ocean, which reacts to my presence with a meek and lake like glassiness that is coming to seem malicious. In fact, I am starting to feel responsible for dragging this salt puddle with me to all of the famous surf spots spread so evenly along the coastal route. Perhaps I should be apologizing to the line of disappointed surfers pouting at the bar beneath hanging vintage surfboards whose only option is to watch video footage of luckier men enjoying their sport on a three dimensional ocean.
Since there are screaming unguarded four year old boys marauding through all common rooms of this establishment with screeching war cries and plastic tricycles, it is difficult to focus on work. I check the waves every ten minutes, as if they will have risen miraculously and I watch the surfing video to which I have strategically turned my back, as it is reflected in a framed Billabong promotional photograph. In between the injections of discouragement that my wave checking rain walks constitute, I write paragraphs about the South African government's denialism towards HIV/AIDS.
Mike has just calculated that 1,400 kilometers still separate us from Nelspruit, the South African town near Mozambique and Swaziland where Sean and Mike will be united with their replacement credit cards and our available funds. In all likelihood we will try to make good time in that direction, stopping in Durban where Sean has lined up a story and soaking up the soothing sight of a completely dormant ocean. Incidentally, the surf report has just indicated that Jeffrey's Bay-our current resting spot-will have ideal surf conditions two days after our departure.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Having ceased to fall through clinging liquids
Our plummet from the Sahara slowed considerably in Southern Africa. The last two months, three countries and several thousand miles were composed first of whipping cream, then of cushion foam, then of pudding, then of peanut butter. This whole region thickened relentlessly around the momentum of our trip. It sought to outmaneuver our sizeable combined desire to be challenged with a well orchestrated appeal to the hibernating sloth in each of us that will always cling to comfort and familiarity, a sloth that grows more weary so far away from real jungles.
Whereas before I would react to a favorable atmosphere with the pleasant thought that I would someday like to return; now I think about remaining behind-about stepping out of our crotchety non rocket for the last and final time. It is not out of preference for this region that I have considered lingering or searching for work here-many of the places through which we have already traveled are far more attractive to me-rather, it is a consequence of general fatigue. Arguably worse, this exhausted compromise making attitude leads me to consider returning to the United States, despite having promised in absolute sincerity to a great many people that I would not return there until it had begun a massive cultural and political about face.
Nevertheless, we have begun moving north. We have traveled several hundred miles along the second axis of this trip. The car continues to deteriorate (another day by the side of the road, another stressful search for a new rear shock-this time the two of us guarding the car were left to fret about hijackings and South Africa's vicious roadside banditry, much more frightening after darkness fell-though, I confess some pride in our ability to accomplish the whole shock extraction/replacement exercise in little time with no trouble) and our funds are all but finished-the car repairs and fuel alone in the last three countries have set us back over two thousand dollars. The website should be updated soon to indicate that we are motoring through our last thousand dollars.
A number of our aspirations with regards to media attention-especially here in South Africa-have proven ill founded, which is discouraging. None of us feel eager to initiate a fresh round of self-promotion and ignored email distribution. If, at this point, we were snuggled into the lap of a sponsor whose principal interest was our research into the locally fought war against HIV/AIDS, I do not think any of us would hesitate to claw our way back out of this confusing almost Western part of Africa and up its eastern coast-visiting our friends in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania.
But as things stand, it is far more likely that we would need to be sustained, once more, by our well-wishing and supportive network of friends and relations, whose interest has clearly been focused on our travel blogs and photographs. I have been moved by the generosity of you people, by your comments, interests and encouragement; but I do not feel comfortable asking for a second helping. We hoped that a larger corporate or charitable organization would pick up our story and give it perpetuation, which has not happened. We are in the midst of our final search efforts in that category; but, as this blog might indicate, I am preparing for disappointment.
I am not explaining this to create a sense of obligation in our readership, far from it. I mention these concerns to lessen the surprise that our readers might experience if our trip concludes, unexpectedly, sometime in the next month or two. We are not rolling over; each of us continues to mine for attention and assistance in personally determined ways; but as you might have noticed, we don't have the only website on the internet and we haven't yet been on the news (outside of Ghana or Nigeria).
In a different vein, I would like to mention that Mike will shortly be posting an interesting feature on an organization working in Johannesburg's famous Soweto Township and I'll be supplying a piece on the Treatment Action Campaign-an organization driven by South African activists unafraid to take their government to court, to embarrass it internationally or to occupy its buildings. Good people.
Our plummet from the Sahara slowed considerably in Southern Africa. The last two months, three countries and several thousand miles were composed first of whipping cream, then of cushion foam, then of pudding, then of peanut butter. This whole region thickened relentlessly around the momentum of our trip. It sought to outmaneuver our sizeable combined desire to be challenged with a well orchestrated appeal to the hibernating sloth in each of us that will always cling to comfort and familiarity, a sloth that grows more weary so far away from real jungles.
Whereas before I would react to a favorable atmosphere with the pleasant thought that I would someday like to return; now I think about remaining behind-about stepping out of our crotchety non rocket for the last and final time. It is not out of preference for this region that I have considered lingering or searching for work here-many of the places through which we have already traveled are far more attractive to me-rather, it is a consequence of general fatigue. Arguably worse, this exhausted compromise making attitude leads me to consider returning to the United States, despite having promised in absolute sincerity to a great many people that I would not return there until it had begun a massive cultural and political about face.
Nevertheless, we have begun moving north. We have traveled several hundred miles along the second axis of this trip. The car continues to deteriorate (another day by the side of the road, another stressful search for a new rear shock-this time the two of us guarding the car were left to fret about hijackings and South Africa's vicious roadside banditry, much more frightening after darkness fell-though, I confess some pride in our ability to accomplish the whole shock extraction/replacement exercise in little time with no trouble) and our funds are all but finished-the car repairs and fuel alone in the last three countries have set us back over two thousand dollars. The website should be updated soon to indicate that we are motoring through our last thousand dollars.
A number of our aspirations with regards to media attention-especially here in South Africa-have proven ill founded, which is discouraging. None of us feel eager to initiate a fresh round of self-promotion and ignored email distribution. If, at this point, we were snuggled into the lap of a sponsor whose principal interest was our research into the locally fought war against HIV/AIDS, I do not think any of us would hesitate to claw our way back out of this confusing almost Western part of Africa and up its eastern coast-visiting our friends in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania.
But as things stand, it is far more likely that we would need to be sustained, once more, by our well-wishing and supportive network of friends and relations, whose interest has clearly been focused on our travel blogs and photographs. I have been moved by the generosity of you people, by your comments, interests and encouragement; but I do not feel comfortable asking for a second helping. We hoped that a larger corporate or charitable organization would pick up our story and give it perpetuation, which has not happened. We are in the midst of our final search efforts in that category; but, as this blog might indicate, I am preparing for disappointment.
I am not explaining this to create a sense of obligation in our readership, far from it. I mention these concerns to lessen the surprise that our readers might experience if our trip concludes, unexpectedly, sometime in the next month or two. We are not rolling over; each of us continues to mine for attention and assistance in personally determined ways; but as you might have noticed, we don't have the only website on the internet and we haven't yet been on the news (outside of Ghana or Nigeria).
In a different vein, I would like to mention that Mike will shortly be posting an interesting feature on an organization working in Johannesburg's famous Soweto Township and I'll be supplying a piece on the Treatment Action Campaign-an organization driven by South African activists unafraid to take their government to court, to embarrass it internationally or to occupy its buildings. Good people.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
I have been waiting for things to happen / Adventure Withdrawal
(A blog reflecting on Botswana and the obligation to be involved with bizzare things that was left behind in my computer when I traveled to meet up with my folks)
Gaborone was surprising in a bland sort of fashion. Our outdated guide books lead us to expect a sprawling, overpopulated, dirty, underdeveloped and poorly planned urban mess. Gaborone was none of these things. However, Gaborone was neither invigorating nor vibrant nor exotic. It gave me nothing to say. Repeatedly, I recognized Middle America and the monotone of commercial culture. Gabs felt more African than Windhoek because it was filled with black people. I like to see local permanent residents benefiting from the natural wealth of their country. Several people said, "There is no poor part of town;" No township. No place where conspicuously or traditionally African life exists or makes noise.
I feel obligated, in this blog, to present experiences that are largely unavailable to a western audience, experiences that demonstrate how risky or comical or mind boggling this trip can be. But for about one week in Gaborone I simply enjoyed the company of our amicable host and his friendly neighbors. I was frustrated in my attempts to interview several different people and I spent evenings at franchised establishments as flavorless as TGI Fridays or as fake and full of posers as a shopping center's upmarket bar. That was fine and well because the company and conversation were sufficiently vibrant and engaging; but sometimes, it doesn't feel right to poach from my conversations with friends or my knowledge of their own strongest stories for the enrichment of these more public writings.
The main reason we loitered in Gabs for nearly a week was the Ditshwanelo Human Rights Film Festival. Ditshwanelo is the Botswana Centre for Human Rights and this is the sixth year they have held their festival. Unfortunately, it does not seem to have been gathering momentum. Nowhere in any of the city's major malls, on its university campus or in its bars did I once see a poster, a pamphlet or other promotional material. This might account for the dismally small audience. On each of the first three nights, fewer than thirty people sparsely populated the comfortable screening room of a very fancy hotel and casino. The audience was almost entirely white-embassy types-and most of them were well over forty. It is safe to say that citizens of Botswana were poorly represented and that its young people were nearly invisible. This kept things on the comatose side of festive.
Over the course of eight nights, the festival screened sixteen movies touching on divergent themes such as genocide, gender, music of resistance, indigenous peoples and wartime. Most of the films deserved a significantly larger audience; all of them were thought provoking; the strongest were crushing in their revelations.
The festival opened with a speech from a government minister who urged the Batswana to produce films, to seek out Botswana’s oral historians and to capture their knowledge before it fades. He jested, "I hope that it is a lack of human rights abuse in Botwswana that has kept Botswana films out of this festival." He then urged people to consult him for some of the valuable and undisclosed oral history before saying his thank yous and taking his seat. The event coordinator thanked the minister, listed a raft of sponsors including famed human rights defenders Shell Oil and the U.S. government, and then encouraged everyone to sign a petition to close the illegal prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay. The first movie began and the minister slipped out the door.
For a review of five different human rights films from around Southern Africa, follow the link to our HIV/AIDS page and check the Botswana section. The article is with our web master and ready for posting.
(A blog reflecting on Botswana and the obligation to be involved with bizzare things that was left behind in my computer when I traveled to meet up with my folks)
Gaborone was surprising in a bland sort of fashion. Our outdated guide books lead us to expect a sprawling, overpopulated, dirty, underdeveloped and poorly planned urban mess. Gaborone was none of these things. However, Gaborone was neither invigorating nor vibrant nor exotic. It gave me nothing to say. Repeatedly, I recognized Middle America and the monotone of commercial culture. Gabs felt more African than Windhoek because it was filled with black people. I like to see local permanent residents benefiting from the natural wealth of their country. Several people said, "There is no poor part of town;" No township. No place where conspicuously or traditionally African life exists or makes noise.
I feel obligated, in this blog, to present experiences that are largely unavailable to a western audience, experiences that demonstrate how risky or comical or mind boggling this trip can be. But for about one week in Gaborone I simply enjoyed the company of our amicable host and his friendly neighbors. I was frustrated in my attempts to interview several different people and I spent evenings at franchised establishments as flavorless as TGI Fridays or as fake and full of posers as a shopping center's upmarket bar. That was fine and well because the company and conversation were sufficiently vibrant and engaging; but sometimes, it doesn't feel right to poach from my conversations with friends or my knowledge of their own strongest stories for the enrichment of these more public writings.
The main reason we loitered in Gabs for nearly a week was the Ditshwanelo Human Rights Film Festival. Ditshwanelo is the Botswana Centre for Human Rights and this is the sixth year they have held their festival. Unfortunately, it does not seem to have been gathering momentum. Nowhere in any of the city's major malls, on its university campus or in its bars did I once see a poster, a pamphlet or other promotional material. This might account for the dismally small audience. On each of the first three nights, fewer than thirty people sparsely populated the comfortable screening room of a very fancy hotel and casino. The audience was almost entirely white-embassy types-and most of them were well over forty. It is safe to say that citizens of Botswana were poorly represented and that its young people were nearly invisible. This kept things on the comatose side of festive.
Over the course of eight nights, the festival screened sixteen movies touching on divergent themes such as genocide, gender, music of resistance, indigenous peoples and wartime. Most of the films deserved a significantly larger audience; all of them were thought provoking; the strongest were crushing in their revelations.
The festival opened with a speech from a government minister who urged the Batswana to produce films, to seek out Botswana’s oral historians and to capture their knowledge before it fades. He jested, "I hope that it is a lack of human rights abuse in Botwswana that has kept Botswana films out of this festival." He then urged people to consult him for some of the valuable and undisclosed oral history before saying his thank yous and taking his seat. The event coordinator thanked the minister, listed a raft of sponsors including famed human rights defenders Shell Oil and the U.S. government, and then encouraged everyone to sign a petition to close the illegal prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay. The first movie began and the minister slipped out the door.
For a review of five different human rights films from around Southern Africa, follow the link to our HIV/AIDS page and check the Botswana section. The article is with our web master and ready for posting.
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Hints at the family vacation.
My parents had inadvertently booked into a quirky urban castle, newly built, loftily perched and committed to flaunting a great number of architectural conventions and norms of interior design (successfully, on the whole). It was nestled into an obviously upper class suburb called Melville where fluorescent vested black men loitered around providing security for the largely white perambulators interested in the antique stores, fine dining and fashion outlets. The obvious advantage was that my parents and I could walk around with relative security during the evenings, whereas (I'm told) we would have been constrained to taxi cabs in many of the city's less prosperous neighbourhoods.
Johannesburg is manifestly a world class city. There are other urban centres in Sub Saharan Africa that boast a cluster of sky scrapers, reliable infrastructure, crowds, neighbourhood diversity and the like; but none of the ones that I have seen are nearly so overwhelming as Joburg. It looked, from the airplane, from fifty kilometres away, from the central bus station, from the windows of my taxi cab and from the panoramic window of my B&B, exactly like the world class cities of the United States. Not as dense as Manhattan or the Chicago Loop and not as big as L.A; but heftier than Boston, Philadelphia or Atlanta. I haven't seen anything like it in years and I immediately regretted that I would be unable to spend a much longer time exploring what it has to offer. I did not expect to be jealous of Tuuli's opportunity to stay and work there and I would have expected that any jealousy would actually have been rooted in my growing desire to stay still and capitalize on meaningful friendships; but this is pure location envy.
Rather than linger, I boarded a budget airline with my parents and headed for the Cape Town Peninsula, where my family has spent the last week reuniting. We based our vacation in a retirement village called Fish Hoek, having learned that cities bring out our differences, while places of natural beauty connect us to the shared years of our nuclear development and remind us of our ability to be simultaneously entertained. Slightly more on Cape Town and clan Calhoun will be forthcoming.
I am now hovering in the confused ether of solitude that occupies the tiny space between ye olde family time and the tsunami of our doomed red car. I missed the car.
My parents had inadvertently booked into a quirky urban castle, newly built, loftily perched and committed to flaunting a great number of architectural conventions and norms of interior design (successfully, on the whole). It was nestled into an obviously upper class suburb called Melville where fluorescent vested black men loitered around providing security for the largely white perambulators interested in the antique stores, fine dining and fashion outlets. The obvious advantage was that my parents and I could walk around with relative security during the evenings, whereas (I'm told) we would have been constrained to taxi cabs in many of the city's less prosperous neighbourhoods.
Johannesburg is manifestly a world class city. There are other urban centres in Sub Saharan Africa that boast a cluster of sky scrapers, reliable infrastructure, crowds, neighbourhood diversity and the like; but none of the ones that I have seen are nearly so overwhelming as Joburg. It looked, from the airplane, from fifty kilometres away, from the central bus station, from the windows of my taxi cab and from the panoramic window of my B&B, exactly like the world class cities of the United States. Not as dense as Manhattan or the Chicago Loop and not as big as L.A; but heftier than Boston, Philadelphia or Atlanta. I haven't seen anything like it in years and I immediately regretted that I would be unable to spend a much longer time exploring what it has to offer. I did not expect to be jealous of Tuuli's opportunity to stay and work there and I would have expected that any jealousy would actually have been rooted in my growing desire to stay still and capitalize on meaningful friendships; but this is pure location envy.
Rather than linger, I boarded a budget airline with my parents and headed for the Cape Town Peninsula, where my family has spent the last week reuniting. We based our vacation in a retirement village called Fish Hoek, having learned that cities bring out our differences, while places of natural beauty connect us to the shared years of our nuclear development and remind us of our ability to be simultaneously entertained. Slightly more on Cape Town and clan Calhoun will be forthcoming.
I am now hovering in the confused ether of solitude that occupies the tiny space between ye olde family time and the tsunami of our doomed red car. I missed the car.
Botswana was mellow to the point of being unremarkable. Such organized and relatively prosperous environments lull me into quiescence and destroy my story telling urge.
Nobody encouraged me to expect that our visit to the small South African town of Naboomspruit would constitute a riveting shift toward the exotic. That is because Naboom hosts fewer than three thousand people, an aging, largely white population and could easily have been airlifted from Tennessee--provided it was then stocked with residents whose accent is much more pleasant, whose taste for short shorts and pulled up socks is more acute and who speak of their pick up trucks, fondly, as "bukkies".
The town was recently renamed Mokopane in the recent wave of identity shifts imposed by the new South African government, which is eager to shed the unpronounceable billion syllable Boer/Afrikaans/Monkey Dutch names that have enshrouded all of its rivers, bridges, mountains, streets and towns. These new names will take a great while to settle into common usage, especially in towns like Naboomspruit, where many of the residents find Naboomspruit far more pronounceable than Mokopane. I have not been able to skilfully pronounce place names since I left Philadelphia in 2001-about two weeks after learning how to pronounce Schulykill.
Normally, I am not a birthday celebrator; but since there are no bank holidays on this trip and since events like Thanksgiving, Valentines Day, Halloween or Anarchist Day are impossible to remember while living in a car, I have actually been looking forward to the attention and license that a birthday typically warrants. If we had travelled a few days more quickly (if the car had not persisted in being a completely decrepit glue nag) it would have been possible to bounce around Johannesburg enjoying the risky and engaging night life in the company of friends of friends. However, we were not able to travel so briskly and I was surprised by a round of something awful one minute after my birthday technically began in a rowdy and well filled bar, complete with long-arm dancing and massive Boer farmers.
The people always make the party. On my technical birthday (when the bartender tried to humble me with a double shot of 180 proof, relentless, hot pepper hooch called F U 2) and on my normal birthday, my friends and I were in excellent (massive) hands. People I had met just days before, outdid themselves making my feel worth the trouble and physically uncoordinated. A group of us enjoyed a top quality Braai, discovered that our auto mechanic is a moonshine wizard and learned that all the clubs in Naboom close at midnight on March 29th, 2006.
Nobody encouraged me to expect that our visit to the small South African town of Naboomspruit would constitute a riveting shift toward the exotic. That is because Naboom hosts fewer than three thousand people, an aging, largely white population and could easily have been airlifted from Tennessee--provided it was then stocked with residents whose accent is much more pleasant, whose taste for short shorts and pulled up socks is more acute and who speak of their pick up trucks, fondly, as "bukkies".
The town was recently renamed Mokopane in the recent wave of identity shifts imposed by the new South African government, which is eager to shed the unpronounceable billion syllable Boer/Afrikaans/Monkey Dutch names that have enshrouded all of its rivers, bridges, mountains, streets and towns. These new names will take a great while to settle into common usage, especially in towns like Naboomspruit, where many of the residents find Naboomspruit far more pronounceable than Mokopane. I have not been able to skilfully pronounce place names since I left Philadelphia in 2001-about two weeks after learning how to pronounce Schulykill.
Normally, I am not a birthday celebrator; but since there are no bank holidays on this trip and since events like Thanksgiving, Valentines Day, Halloween or Anarchist Day are impossible to remember while living in a car, I have actually been looking forward to the attention and license that a birthday typically warrants. If we had travelled a few days more quickly (if the car had not persisted in being a completely decrepit glue nag) it would have been possible to bounce around Johannesburg enjoying the risky and engaging night life in the company of friends of friends. However, we were not able to travel so briskly and I was surprised by a round of something awful one minute after my birthday technically began in a rowdy and well filled bar, complete with long-arm dancing and massive Boer farmers.
The people always make the party. On my technical birthday (when the bartender tried to humble me with a double shot of 180 proof, relentless, hot pepper hooch called F U 2) and on my normal birthday, my friends and I were in excellent (massive) hands. People I had met just days before, outdid themselves making my feel worth the trouble and physically uncoordinated. A group of us enjoyed a top quality Braai, discovered that our auto mechanic is a moonshine wizard and learned that all the clubs in Naboom close at midnight on March 29th, 2006.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Cape Town is far from Bilma.
In the immediate aftermath of my twenty-seventh birthday, I boarded a beaten old public taxi and drove to Park Station in Johannesburg--an infamous location within a notorious city. I found my parents at a local B&B with no problem and we enjoyed catching up while exploring Joburg and waiting for the arrival of my younger sister, Annaliese. Owing to some delays with her international flight, Annaliese was only able to join the rest of us in Cape Town, to which we all flew on the end of my family vacation's third day.
That was the first day that my nuclear family spent together since January 31st 2004. Since it involved considerable timing and sacrifice for my family to join me on the other side of the planet, I made sure to stay clear of internet cafes and I left my computer with the gang (who spent the whole duration of my parent's visit waiting for experts to fix our increasingly fussy, expensive and vulnerable car. Rumor has it that they have succeeded.).
I still have two days to spend with my sister, for whom I intend to continue my internet fast after taking this little half hour to explain my apparent negligence. Once she departs on Saturday afternoon, I will be on my own in Cape Town, waiting for Sean and Mike to cover the fourteen hundred kilometers between Joburg and the Cape of Good Hope. During that time it is my intention to pick up all the slack that has been accumulating behind me and knit it into several blogs and a film festival review. Also, I will be surfing religiously--having calculated that it is, in fact, cheaper to buy a used surfboard and wet suit than to ceaselessly rent them.
Thanks entirely to the chronic, consistently well timed, delightful and exceptional generosity of Eva Tameling, I now possess an used orange and green 6'9" Gun--model of surfboard--made by CCL surf and a 3mm full body wet suit with water proof pajama shoes made by O'neil. Not since my mountain biking days have I been this childishly excited to own a sporting toy. A twenty cent train ride will deposit me at a well frequented beach in a bay that has the highest recorded population of Great White sharks known to man. Apparently, from a helicopter, one can view these death minnows trawling back and forth "like submarines" just 50 meters behind the most distant breaking wave. I also learned that they can discern a human's pulse from a kilometer away and that one great white was known to swim from Cape Town to Perth, Australia, and back in 91 days.
For the last ten months I have suffered more from surfing deprivation than from malnourishment, distemper, invasion of mental space, blister beetle, disillusionment, mosquitoes, paranoia and skin disease combined. Hopefully, by the time my friends catch up with me (they have our telephone, by the way) I will be balanced, driven and glowing. Thanks again to everyone who helped to make this family vacation possible--we all needed it--and thanks to those of you who have simply kept us on the road. Don't be shy. We are happy to receive requests, criticisms, suggestions and abuse. Feedback is food, whether or not we like it.
Thanks for your patience. Don't worry. As soon as my good friends acclimate to Cape Town, we will set out with all due haste to traverse "The Garden Route" along South Africa's south eastern coast, stopping in Swaziland, briefly, before entering Mozambique and getting back into something that acts and feels like Africa.
In the immediate aftermath of my twenty-seventh birthday, I boarded a beaten old public taxi and drove to Park Station in Johannesburg--an infamous location within a notorious city. I found my parents at a local B&B with no problem and we enjoyed catching up while exploring Joburg and waiting for the arrival of my younger sister, Annaliese. Owing to some delays with her international flight, Annaliese was only able to join the rest of us in Cape Town, to which we all flew on the end of my family vacation's third day.
That was the first day that my nuclear family spent together since January 31st 2004. Since it involved considerable timing and sacrifice for my family to join me on the other side of the planet, I made sure to stay clear of internet cafes and I left my computer with the gang (who spent the whole duration of my parent's visit waiting for experts to fix our increasingly fussy, expensive and vulnerable car. Rumor has it that they have succeeded.).
I still have two days to spend with my sister, for whom I intend to continue my internet fast after taking this little half hour to explain my apparent negligence. Once she departs on Saturday afternoon, I will be on my own in Cape Town, waiting for Sean and Mike to cover the fourteen hundred kilometers between Joburg and the Cape of Good Hope. During that time it is my intention to pick up all the slack that has been accumulating behind me and knit it into several blogs and a film festival review. Also, I will be surfing religiously--having calculated that it is, in fact, cheaper to buy a used surfboard and wet suit than to ceaselessly rent them.
Thanks entirely to the chronic, consistently well timed, delightful and exceptional generosity of Eva Tameling, I now possess an used orange and green 6'9" Gun--model of surfboard--made by CCL surf and a 3mm full body wet suit with water proof pajama shoes made by O'neil. Not since my mountain biking days have I been this childishly excited to own a sporting toy. A twenty cent train ride will deposit me at a well frequented beach in a bay that has the highest recorded population of Great White sharks known to man. Apparently, from a helicopter, one can view these death minnows trawling back and forth "like submarines" just 50 meters behind the most distant breaking wave. I also learned that they can discern a human's pulse from a kilometer away and that one great white was known to swim from Cape Town to Perth, Australia, and back in 91 days.
For the last ten months I have suffered more from surfing deprivation than from malnourishment, distemper, invasion of mental space, blister beetle, disillusionment, mosquitoes, paranoia and skin disease combined. Hopefully, by the time my friends catch up with me (they have our telephone, by the way) I will be balanced, driven and glowing. Thanks again to everyone who helped to make this family vacation possible--we all needed it--and thanks to those of you who have simply kept us on the road. Don't be shy. We are happy to receive requests, criticisms, suggestions and abuse. Feedback is food, whether or not we like it.
Thanks for your patience. Don't worry. As soon as my good friends acclimate to Cape Town, we will set out with all due haste to traverse "The Garden Route" along South Africa's south eastern coast, stopping in Swaziland, briefly, before entering Mozambique and getting back into something that acts and feels like Africa.
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