Attempting to finish the contents of my kitchen

I never realized just how much food we've bought over the semester until this week, my last week here. Ideally, I'd finish everything in the cabinets before I boarded the plane, but that's looking to be impossible. The almost-full jar of cinnamon? And why are there so many cans of peas? I don't even like peas.

Anyway, if all goes according to plan, I should be back in the States this weekend, provided British Airways doesn't pull an Air France.

I have lots of philosophical musings about how strange it is to live somewhere for months, knowing you'll have to leave, but that's probably better suited to an indie film starring some dark-haired girl with bangs. Well, they weren't that philosophical, anyway.

There are now just 8 Rands per US dollar. It's a good time, financially, to get out of Dodge.

In a related story, Facebook is a good medium to discover that, as far as the conventional social timeline goes, I'm way behind. When did everyone decide to get married? Did I miss the memo?

Totsiens!

Oprah

For my Afrikaans course, our final project was to give a three-minute presentation on something about our home country. Everyone else spoke about their hometowns, and though I enjoy herding cattle and whatnot, I decided this final called for a little something extra. So I decided to talk about Oprah. Fascinating.

Here's my presentation, with (quite) literal translation afterwards:

Oprah is 'n beroemde persoon. Sy is die gasheer van 'n kletsprogram, The Oprah Winfrey Show. Maar, haar leef was nie altyd volmaak. Sy was verkrag by haar oom.

Sy was gebore in Mississippi en sy was baie godsdienstig. Maar sy nie wil 'n prediker. Haar eerste werk was vir die lokaal nuus. Sy was baie aandoenlik en mense hou van haar.

En 1986 (negentien ses-en-tagtag), sy het 'n nasionaal kletsprogram begin. Vir die dekade, die program het omstrede kwessies bespreek. Oprah het baie homoseksueel mense gehad vir haar onderhouds. Dus, want baie mense het hierdie onderhouds bewaak, publiek opinie van homoseksueels was aan die toeneem.

Dis uitwerking se naam is Oprahism. Alles Oprah hou van, almal hou van. Alles Oprah hou nie van nie, almal hou nie van nie.: Dit is amper 'n godsdiens! Een tyd, Oprah het [mad cow disease] bespreek. Sy het nie wil eet vleis vertel nie. Dus, duisends van mense het nie vleis eet nie.

Oprah is 'n entrepreneur. St is 'n kletsprogram gasheer, 'n tydskrif redakteur en sy het 'n skool vir meisies in Johannesburg begin gister-jaar. Sy is baie magtig!

TRANSLATION:

Oprah is a famous person. She is the host of a talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show. But, her life was not always perfect. She was raped by her uncle. [Okay, not the best transition, but whatevs.]

She was born in Mississippi and she was very religious. But she did not want a preacher. [I was going for "she didn't want to become a preacher, but now it's become oddly sexual.] Her first job was for the local news. She was very emotional and people liked her.

In 1986, she began a national talkshow. For the decade, the show discussed controversial issues. Oprah interviewed many homosexual people. Thus, because many people watched these interviews, public opinion of homosexuals was on the rise.

The name of this phenomenon is Oprahism. Everything Oprah likes, everyone likes. Everything Oprah does not like, everyone does not like: It is almost a religion! One time, Oprah was speaking about Mad Cow Disease. She said she did not want to eat meat again. Thus, thousands of people did not eat meat.

Oprah is an entrepreneur. She is a talkshow host, a magazine editor and she began a school for girls in Johannesburg last year. She is very powerful!

And I apologize to rape victims. I don't mean to marginalize trauma. I'm just a bad writer. And I'm still not convinced that Afrikaans is a real language.

"Give me the business" on the Mozambican bus

Back when I was in my super-pretentious, French New Wave-loving phase (hint: not that long ago), I watched a Godard film about 1960s Paris. "Les enfants d'aujourd'hui, the children of Marx and Coca-Cola" the back of the DVD box had proclaimed. Whatever that was supposed to mean, it sounded interesting, so I rented it. (For the record, the adorable dark-haired girl with bangs fell in love with the chauvinist male protagonist, only to get pregnant and abort the fetus... let's just say it was a bit of a downer. Though it no doubt provided amusement to my French teacher when I referenced "throwing away a baby" in an essay. Oh, idioms...)

Still, "the children of Marx and Coca-Cola" have always fascinated me. In the film, they're frequently seen waxing philosophical in sidewalk cafes -- maybe French people do that naturally? -- and, well, raging against the machine, or whatever it is that nonconformists do. At the same time, though, there's this pervasive American-ness that even the (so I hear) snobby Frenchies have to acknowledge. 'Cause I mean, let's be honest: their food and language are wonderful, but they've been a little on the decline post-Napoleon.

And of course, I know that Hollywood churns out a lot of movies, and that there's a lot of music being made here in the states, but it's quite another thing to experience this sort of Americanization in another country. As an American.

We took a public bus from Maputo to Inhambane, the "sleepy colonial town" the guidebooks had mentioned. The bus was considerably larger than the chapas we'd been frequenting in the city, but once all was said and done, there wasn't much personal space. It also turns out that having a duffel bag on your lap for seven hours isn't too comfortable. (On the way back, however, I learned the true meaning of discomfort, as I sat beside a guy with the worst B.O. I've ever experienced.)

The driver, though, had some jammin' tunes he decided to play -- some of it sounded kind of tropical/Brazilian. It wasn't anything I'd heard before, so it was a nice way to see the Mozambican countryside. A couple of songs were really, really repetitive techno (is that phrase redundant? I guess so), and I prayed to the powers-that-be that the music selection would soon change. I'm not a fan of techno. (Sorry, Melissa.)

And then Beyonce came on.

Seriously! It is impossible to get away from her. She's everywhere. And then the guy who sings "I Wanna Make Love in this Club" (Chris Brown? Sorry, bad with pop culture; forgive me?), then Rihanna (I love her... but honestly?). So basically, I was seeing the Mozambican countryside to a Rihanna soundtrack.

Then -- and maybe this isn't that new, but I've never heard it -- a song with magical lyrics came on. And by "magical," I mean incredibly subtle. The chorus went something like, "and then you GIVE ME THE BUSINESS".

It was bizarre. A bus full of Mozambicans, most of whom cannot speak a word of English, listening to a somewhat-graphic song about doin' it. In the Mozambican countryside. Where it's drastically more conservative than in the cities, and if you're going to wear a skirt, better make sure it's knee-length. The Business! Strangest moment of my life.

Also, good job, America. The 'Hood follows me everywhere I go!

Bribery: fun for you and me

Okay, I forgot to include perhaps one of the more interesting parts of our Kruger trip, behind the almost-being-crushed-by-an-elephant bit. Also important to note: not my fault.

Kruger National Park is sort of like my mother: it has a lot of rules. (If you're reading this, Mom, I love you! <333 I admire your moral integrity!) But what are rules, really? Just jotted-down commandments. Given by squares. You can read the set of rules and immediately forget them. As a former Montessori School child, I thoroughly appreciate the genius of hands-on learning (time for off-color joke? I think so). You have to really see something in action to learn about it. So I guess the following experience more or less taught us another of the park's rules.

So when you have lions, elephants, kudu, rhinos, impala, whathaveyou, running around on your drive-through reservation, a speeding car can be bad news. Let me just say, I was not the one driving. I'm going to deny any sort of involvement here, because I never break the rules.

We got pulled over going 70 km in a 50 km zone as we rushed to get back to camp by gate-closing time. 50 k's is the maximum speed allowed in the park. Ugh. I totally would convert that to miles, but a) I don't think it's necessary, and b) why are we like the only country that hasn't hopped on the Metric System bandwagon? Frustrating. At first, it was a little scary. Were we going to get arrested? Sent to Guantanamo Bay? Sent to Siberia? My imagination, per usual, was working slightly overtime.

Turns out, the Kruger Park policeman guy just wanted to issue a ticket to the tune of R400, payable upon our departure. He seemed genuinely confused as to why someone would speed in the park. I mean, hey, we aren't PETA activists.

Anyway, the following day we got packed up to leave. We drove to the exit gate and showed our Confirmation slip to the guard there (they're really particular about this slip that shows you've paid for lodging during your stay), and he lifted up the gate to let us pass.

Then Nick's morals got in the way.

"I got a traffic ticket yesterday, so I probably need to pay that," he said.

"What kind of ticket?" the guard asked. "Did you have a fine?" He asked to see the slip of paper.

It was odd because there are so many things in life that are NOT like the movies. For example, kissing. Not nearly as fun as it looks in films. (Or... maybe I've just been kissing frogs? If you're interested and, more importantly, talented, please don't hesitate to give me a call.) Working out also looks cute enough in movies, but of course it's torture IRL. And I think the whole bribery scenario is widespread enough to have made its mark in several Hollywood films. What I'm trying to say is, I've seen several movie scenes about bribery. And, unlike kissing, the degree of attractiveness of people or working out, bribery is... the same in movies and in real life.

"So... you have to pay R400?" the guard said. We nodded. He leaned closer to our car.

"Tell you what," he said. "How about you pay me R260? Don't go in there [motioning to the main office] and pay them R400. You win, I win."

We looked at each other for a few seconds. Nick asked me what I thought we should do. I'm bad at making spur-of-the-moment decisions, plus I missed the "How to successfully bribe government officials" lecture in PoliSci.

In the end, R260 was handed over to the guard. He promised to rip up the pink slip, and we hoped the bribery charges wouldn't haunt us forever, barring us from entering South Africa in the future. I highly doubt it'll happen based on what I've heard about the SA police force, but something like this could really ruin, say, a U.S. political career. Hm.

However, an important lesson was learned: political corruption does exist. Also, we totally could have left Kruger without paying anything, but then someone had to mention the traffic ticket (j/k). Oh, and I lost my innocence.

Mozambique: not South Africa, thank goodness

Kruger was nice -- I am thankful for my efficient new sleep schedule (going to bed at 9 p.m., waking up at 7) -- but getting up at 5:30 got kind of old. Good thing, then, that we called it quits after four days to venture to Mozambique.

Customs was generally uneventful, besides acquiring a couple of new stamps in my passport -- also, the Mozambican visa has a neat holographic on it, cha-ching. Customs was stressful (when isn't it?) but uneventful.

Due to my extreme lack of pictures and huge chunks of text in my last few entries, I'm going to attempt to make this as illustrated as possible. Attempt, mind you... I will also attempt to capture the essence of Mozambique in this entry. A lofty task, I'm sure, much like Conan taking over the Tonight Show (how did I forget about this? Also, good, because Leno has been a little too safe and predictable in recent years).

Maputo is only about 70 km from the border, and the South African government, in its infinite kindness (read: trade benefits), paid a fair amount of cash to fix up the roads from S.A. to the capital. Mozambican roads are notoriously terrible. Most cars, to avoid the potholes, move to the other side of the road (often the wrong side), so not only do drivers have to watch out for livestock and potholes in the road, they also have to make sure they don't drive into other cars.

We took public transport.

And, since I've almost reached the end of my semester here, I don't think I should mince words. I really don't enjoy Cape Town. I don't think it's aesthetically pleasing, and there are few historical sites. Everyone takes a car, so the streets are largely empty of pedestrians (except for the people who can't afford cars). So if Cape Town is everything I hate in a city, Maputo is everything I enjoy in a city. It's busy, vibrant, and even continues to exist after 6 p.m. on weekdays.


Depending on how you measure developed countries, I think it'd be pretty obvious that venturing from South Africa to Mozambique is a change in lifestyle. Don't drink the water, we were advised. So we bought bottled water. Don't catch malaria, we were advised. So we started taking anti-malarials and covering up with mosquito repellent twice a day, burning mosquito coils and wearing long sleeves whenever possible. Not a second too soon, either: malaria kills more people in Mozambique than HIV/SIDA. And the average life expectancy is 39.

I'm a pretty healthy individual, with no known allergies and, due to my love of (often greasy) food, I'm in slightly-less-than peak physical condition, but I've never really been susceptible to disease hysteria until this trip. A few days after coming into Mozambique, I woke up with a high fever and sore throat. The symptoms of malaria are much like that of flu, with fevers and aches/pains. The sore throat didn't really fit the bill, but I wasn't acting so rationally, so I became convinced I'd acquired malaria. Since I hadn't noticed any mosquito bites, it seemed strange; also, the likelihood of acquiring malaria while a) not every mosquito carries the virus, b) the ones that do only sting you between dusk and dawn, c) the anti-malarials should counter most of the non-resistant strains, and d) the mosquito repellant should repel most mosquitos leaving you bite-less, was quite slim. But I'd still rather not see another mosquito net for awhile.

But back to the city. The first thing I noticed was, true to the travel blogs I'd read before, the streets were paved with trash. I didn't see a public trash can the entire time I was there, and on more than a few occasions, passengers on buses merely tossed their used bottles and wrappers out the window without a second thought. I wondered if anyone ever actually picked up the trash -- I saw a guy sweeping the sidewalk, but he just swept the trash into the street -- but it looks like it just gets pushed around. It's dirty. It's often smelly. But it all combines to create a very pleasant, friendly city. It's even -- dare I say? -- pretty.

Also, we ended up staying with another perfect stranger, courtesy of Hospitality Club (which, as far as I can tell, is identical to Couch Surfers in everything but name), who also turned out not to be a serial killer. Phew. That's two in a row, so I guess it's been a lucky streak. Jose volunteers for an organization that helps blind kids. I'll admit, I didn't talk to him alot, admittedly because his English was a little difficult to understand. After awhile I learned that "he was laze" meant "he was lazy" and that the "frys" was the freezer, and "hypo" was not a prefix for "-glycemia" but rather the large mammal that lives in lakes and roams the earth at night. He lived on the outskirts of town, a good hour and a half (by chapa) to the city center. His house -- a modest one bedroom-one bathroom affair -- was nonetheless pretty nice.

The one downside? He seemed to have a pretty traditional view of women: he asked if I'd be okay walking around the city since "women are less resistant than men." I'd been struggling with my duffel bag earlier because a) I packed way too much stuff, again, and b) Mozambique is covered in sand -- not just regular sand, but super soft sand. The kind of sand you sink into while walking. So the heavy duffel bag + hard walking scenario = me working up a sweat and panting (read: sweating profusely, gasping for breath). And trying to keep up with Jose, who seemed to subscribe to the time-is-money philosophy and thus walked fast, not to mention the fact that he had longer legs than me... it was an ordeal. He offered to carry my bag a few times -- at first, I handed it over, relieved, but then I decided I needed to carry it, for womankind. Somehow, it seemed futile to try to point out to him that not all women are weaklings, that I'm not a fit specimen to measure women by since I'm completely out of shape and muscle mass, and there are plenty of women athletes who could outrun him. So instead I tried my best to shoulder my bag and keep up. It was a heavy burden. And I still couldn't keep up.



Sexism aside, the one true aspect of cultural immersion came in the form of the chapas (see above), the public buses. I think "bus" is a very generous term here. They're vans with four rows of seats, and are in various states of disrepair. As the guidebook puts it, the owners of the chapas are out to make a profit, and if this includes putting in a few more people for the sake of capacity, they'll do it. My favorite games to play in the chapa included Not Getting Squished, Ignoring B.O. and Counting How Many People Fit Into a Chapa. The personal record was 23 people squeezed into a four-row van (hint: each row should fit maybe four skinny people). The plusses? Each ride cost 5 medicais (before they switched their currency to the new medicais in 2006, the equivalent of 5,000 medicais... but they decided all those zeroes were annoying).

The cons? Ohhhh so many. The drivers, as the guidebook suggests, are prone to taking dangerous shortcuts for the sake of getting to their destination more quickly, with little regard for the personal safety of the passengers. Let me just say, Maputo is not a city for the faint of heart, with regard to driving. Translation: scariest driving destination ever. I was certain (once again) that I was going to be killed while on a chapa my final evening in Maputo. Moreover, it's uncomfortable, and if you sit on the folding seats, be prepared to jump out at every stop to let out passengers. Jose had mentioned that the chapas get kind of frustrating when you actually have to take them. Oh, I believe it. I sort of like order in my life, which is why I much prefer subway systems or trains, things with a schedule. The chapas were constantly crowded.

On the issue of Portuguese, neither me nor Nick knew any. Our initial plan -- to speak both French and Spanish at the same time, because Portuguese probably is a mixture between the two -- didn't work out so well, because Portuguese and Spanish are apparently pretty similar. So that worked. I just stuck to "quanto?" (how much?). And asking the lady on the bus what vegetable she was eating in Portu-French: "Le... nom de legume?" I sputtered. She looked at me, smiled, and said "un amaniola" (cassava).

Speaking of which, the people in Mozambique I saw were nice. Yes, we were the only white people for miles -- much like in South Africa -- yet the environment is so different. Jose's neighborhood was devoid of white people, so we got plenty of stares in the street. People even asked him (joking, I think) where he was taking us. Kids, I think as part of a dare, would run up and touch us (to see if we were real?), or cross our paths and run off to the safety of their groups. There was some laughing, some pointing, but it felt more out of curiosity than out of spite or malice. There was a LOT of staring, though. People would literally stop what they were doing and watch us walk by, though as we got into the city, this decreased.

And about safety, I guess the logic holds: you can get mugged even the safest city; by the same token, in a dangerous city, you could escape unscathed. One lady at a travel agency on campus warned against going to Mozambique because it was dangerous, but South Africa's incredibly dangerous. Except for at Inhambane, a small town, I never felt like I was putting myself in danger. That could have been because we were traveling with a local, but it was also because there aren't a lot of the residual affects as a result of Apartheid and racial disparity.

For one thing, there aren't that many white people (the Portuguese were driven out several years back). For another thing, although Mozambique is definitely a poor country, I saw so many Mercedes and BMWs while there -- conspicuous consumption, indeed. In some neighborhoods, the houses are enormous. And the Polana Shopping Center, with its designer stores (Lacoste, Louis Vuitton, etc.) and impeccably-dressed salespersons, felt like a slice of New York City.

And the city is just so interesting: there are bullet holes in buildings and trees from the civil war that ended in the 1990s, the architecture is a mix of boring Marxist-style high-rises and Mediterranean styles. There's peeling paint, a general artistic shabby feel to the city, and just... a history. The streets are named after famous communist leaders and visionaries. Avs. Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Mao Tse Tung... a far cry from "Blue Lake," the cutesy, nature-inspired street name upon which I lived for the first 17 years of my life.

With Jose, we visited the busiest market I've ever been to. I have never seen so many people in my life. We were the only white people in the crowd of thousands. It was so busy and I thought I might get lost, as the sun was setting and visibility was somewhat lessened. But finally, after four months, I think I could finally say I've seen the real Africa.

If there's one "stereotypically African" city to see, make it Maputo. Armed guards stand in front of government buildings (for the record, you're forbidden to take pictures of the buildings, unless you love spending time in jail or with the authorities), vendors sell their wares on the streets, Mercedes zoom by, you can venture through the black market and check out the traditional medicines and enjoy some seafood. All in a day's work.

During our four days in Maputo we saw the museum of natural history, housed in an old mosque, and geological museum, in the old synagogue (hello, religion), but the Museu de Revolucao was unfortunately closed.

Still, Mozambique is pricey. A meal in Stellenbosch, for two, might run $7-8. In Maputo, however, it was difficult to order for two and pay less than $15. So though R1 = ~3,000 MT (or 3 new Meticais), dinner prices are quite lofty. Still, I haggled with a street vendor for a purse and ended up paying maybe $4 for it, so I suppose not all the prices were terrible.

The Portuguese-speaking Mozambicans seem to have rather close ties with the Brazilians rather than the Portuguese, as the Brazilian soap operas are popular. Jose said the Brazilians' dialect of Portuguese is also much more poetic than the Mozambicans', and the guidebook claims the Mozambicans boast a more "sing-songy" Portuguese dialect. However, reading the usual phrases didn't prepare me for a bakery visit when, armed with the equivalent of 50 cents, I set out to buy two small loaves of sweet bread and a couple chocolate thingies.

"Dos paos dorce?"

The guy nodded and put them in a bag.

"Um... and... dos... these?" I pointed to the chocolate pastries.

He shook his head and mumbled something.

"...Dos?" He mumbled something again. It sounded like "vinte." I asked, "quanto?" a few times, then laid my money out on the counter. The bread (pao) was 6 meticais, and after laying out the 15 meticais I had, he shook his head and handed 9 back to me. It was a confusing exchange. The bread was delicious, though. They have a lot of bakeries in Maputo that make sweet bread. Sweet bread is my new favorite thing (step aside, Oprah!). It smells wonderful, is nice and soft... hm. (Weird. I felt like I was describing myself for a second...)

Oddly enough, since I've never taken Spanish or Portuguese or Italian, or any language that could have remotely helped me get along in Mozambique, I found an odd sort of confidence in speaking to people. Nick favors the pointing method which, like it sounds, involves basically pointing at the desired foodstuff and holding up x fingers for the quantity. Once I realized "dos" was pronounced "dohsh," not like Spanish, it was kind of interesting. Still, my comprehension skills were awful. Saying French is a little too different from Portuguese is kind of a cop-out, too. I need to take a language class next semester.

An elephant almost crushed our car (and other stories)

Kruger National Park is now one of my favorite things about South Africa (the first, of course, being malva pudding). The idea -- genius. I hadn't actually been on a genuine safari and -- though I'm in the one place where one should book a safari -- didn't end up going on a safari. Still, I maintain that Kruger Park IS a safari. The park is enormous, the size of Israel (or New Jersey), and you basically drive a car through hundreds of kilometers, looking for wildlife.

The picture on the front of our KNP guidebook seemed to suggest we'd be driving amongst herds of elephants. Cool. Hennie (the Afrikaner we'd stayed with the night before) warned us against elephants, however, as he and his wife almost got trampled on more than one occasion. The secret, he told us, was to make sure, upon spotting an elephant, that none of its friends were lurking in the bushes nearby. Apparently, they don't take too kindly to cars and tend to stampede.

When people offer me life advice, I take it one of two ways. Assuming the person dispensing the advice isn't crazy or stupid, I consider the advice and take it. Assuming the person, however, is slightly crazy or the advice ridiculous, I sort of laugh it off. This advice was taken in the latter way. How not to get trampled by elephants? LOL.

I think, if this study-abroad experience has taught me anything, it's that I shouldn't assume I'm invincible. Bad things happen to me. I fracture vertebrae. I get terrified of snorkeling. That's just how it is. And yet, invariably I think I'm immune to danger.

So, yes, Kruger. After renting a car in Nelspruit we arrived at Kruger -- it was a little shaky at first, because Nick "learned" how to drive stick in three practice sessions before driving on a South African highway (being a former British colony, South Africa subscribes to the driving-on-the-left-side-of-the-road philosophy, as well as having the steering wheel on the other side, something he didn't learn in the U.S.), and we sputtered for a while before he got his bearings. It was midday, and people are allowed to drive their cars from 6 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (daylight hours, because it's really dangerous to not be a professional game driver on a wildlife reserve at night), and we'd reserved our lodging for four days and we'd be darned if we weren't going to get our money's worth. So we set out to see what we could see.

Which, at first, was basically nothing. Well, there were some deer-like things -- impala, steenbok, kudu -- but it was sort of like fishing when nothing bites. Not that I've ever fished before, but I imagine it'd be kind of boring, much like looking for wildlife without success. But then -- kabam! -- we saw some zebra! They were grazing. Amazing. They looked just like horses. Some of the cars stopped to look, but others drove past, because they'd already seen zebras, and BORING. We drove on with the occasional impala (by this point, their novelty was somewhat wearing off) in the distance but absolutely nothing.

And then -- and then Nick said "Oh my god" and reversed the car. And standing on our right, on the side of the road, not ten feet from the car, was an ELEPHANT. It was so ... huge! And so hungry! It was eating and ohmygodihaveneverseenanelephantinitsnaturalhabitatomgomgomg. So we turned off the car and just watched. We snapped pictures, we took videos, we marveled at the sheer size -- and appetite -- of one of the Big Five.

I think the best way to explain Kruger Park is to equate it with Jurassic Park (the original, not the ten million sequels). Same concept. Only, well, sans dinosaurs. And plus African wildlife. You just drive in your car and observe animals in their natural habitat, a self-guided safari. Sure, you're taking some kind of risk with the bigger animals, but you're also seeing these animals close up. Eeek!

But, like Jurassic Park, it's terrifying. Because our elephant friend realized he wasn't alone. Soon, he decided the tree he was tearing apart wasn't so important. He looked at us and took a few steps toward the car.

Let me once again mention that the car was off. Further, starting the car would probably only make Ellie angry (= goring us, grinding our bones to make bread, etc.), so I guess in technical terms we were, at that moment, SOL. And completely subject to nature.

Ellie-poo was approaching. My sweat glands were working overtime (note to self: the roll-on I just bought? Not so effective). I wished I hadn't just had a lot of water to drink. I was suddenly reminded of another scene in Jurassic Park, the one where the T-rex attacks and they're in the car and he throws them in the tree and crushes them, and the girl screams and there's blood everywhere and they almost die. (I guess watching that movie at a young, impressionable age might have been a mistake. Perhaps that + my overactive imagination were not really what I needed at this point.)

The elephant managed to actually enter the road and stopped just a foot or two from the car. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. My sweat glands and urinary tract were not the only bodily organs working overtime, however: I also had quite a few disjointed thoughts running through my head, not the least of which being, seriously? This is how I'm going to die? Getting trampled by an elephant in South Africa? No one's ever going to believe that! Ugh.

The runners-up include:

1. It's a boy. Elephants are enormous, turns out. No surprise there, but as I was bracing myself for eminent death, I really wished I weren't seeing the elephant's package. In such horrific detail. Wouldn't it be better to go out looking at a young, shirtless Streetcar-era Marlon Brando or something? Not at eight-foot-long genitalia. G-ross.

2. Why do I think I'm invincible? Avis, the company we'd used to rent the car, had even told us elephants were "notorious" for trashing cars. I wished I'd paid more attention to the how-to-avoid-an-elephant-stampede lecture. The good news, though, was that not additional elephants seemed to be lurking about. The bad news, of course, was that death was staring us right in the face.

So we sat there, staring at each other for what felt like a few years. I guess, in actuality, it was probably just a minute or two (however, if it's actually 2012, let me know. K?). The elephant was probably all "WTF?" and we were all, "FML." Nick had rolled up his window at one point, although it seems the good this would have done us is minimal. Unless the elephant didn't enjoy hearing girls hysterically babbling phrases like "Oh god, oh god, oh god" or "please, please, please, go away" or "how am I going to leave a pretty corpse if I get gored?" or "WHAT? I thought they were herbivores?" Nick tried to calm my hyper-perspiring self down -- "It just wants to eat. That's all it wants to do. Eat. It's going to go eat" -- but he seemed pretty freaked out, so it didn't assuage my fears.

But the good news: we're apparently pretty boring. After checking out our super-compact Hyundai, the elephant decided it needed to really pick up the pace if it wanted to keep up its eating-14-hours-a-day quota, so he trudged back across the road and proceeded to uproot more trees.

Sigh of relief. Perspiration ceased. I realized I now had a stereotypical dangerous-wildlife story to tell. Happy endings for all. We started up the Hyundai and were out of there.

Since leaving the park (I love how I am so well prepared for places well after visiting them), I've learned the elephants in Kruger are especially vicious, more so than other elephants at wildlife reserves. Does it make our close encounter that much more exciting? (Yes.)

A few minutes later, we stopped for a giraffe, which crossed the road slowly.

"Does... that thing like goring humans?" I asked. (I'll attribute my stupidity to being in shock.)

Giraffes -- not one of the Big Five (lion, rhino, leopard, elephant and buffalo), but still pretty amazing. They were so calm, too, and seeing cars pass by didn't phase them at all.

To sum up Kruger briefly, in three full days, we saw four of the Big Five. We ran across herds of elephants (none so close as the one we saw on day one), rhinos, buffalo and lions. The lions -- sightings are a little more rare than for the other animals -- were cute. Though, really, in the heat of the sun they seemed a little lethargic. At first I thought they were literally dropping dead, but it turns out they just have a not-so-subtle way of falling asleep. Otherwise, they were big cats. And I was glad I was in a car. Strangely, the big herbivores (elephants, rhinos, buffalo) are the scariest animals to see from a car because they can actually do some damage. No leopard sightings, though they're notoriously hard to spot.

And yes, we eventually got to be the tools who passed the zebra, because I mean, we'd already seen a ton of them so whatever. No other terrifying wildlife encounters. We also saw a cute baby giraffe and a bridge with lots of baboons.

Sadly, my computer is developing an aversion to SD cards, so my words will have to be illustrative enough. I will, however, upload pictures as soon as I can. Until then, pretend I've taken this picture (and yes, that I've stepped out of the car, because I'm a B.A.):

Picture courtesy safarisdirect.co.za

Public transport blues -- the beginning of winter break

So the title's a little melodramatic, but can you blame me when I was on a bus for 18 hours straight? It did get me from Cape Town to Johannesburg, however...

Sadly, public transport in Africa is one of those things I'm going to have to love -- or perhaps tolerate -- because that's all we'll be using in Mozambique (Mocambique, en Portuguese).

Speaking of which, having taken two useless languages in my life (Latin and French, as well as a smattering of Afrikaans I've picked up, enough to know that if someone says "ek is omgelukkig" they are unhappy) has not prepared me for the Mozambique experience. "Fala engles?" may become my new favorite sentence. The answer, I fear, will most often be "nao".

Anyway. So, Johannesburg. The bus ride was incredibly long and made a little worse by the fact that the air conditioner was on the entire time, and it gets really cold at night. Even in layers, with a blanket over me, I was freezing the entire time, so I didn't get the sleep I needed. Still, I saw a genuine African sunrise over the savanna (I've heard that term applies to any flat, dry area in Africa) and watched as we pulled into town. I've heard some really awful things about Jo'burg, which is a little unfortunate because they have so much stuff to do there. Then it was on to Pretoria, an hour's drive north, and we passed the tremendously affluent suburbs (where the white people live).

OH. RACE. I have to say, my faith has been (somewhat) restored in humanity since beginning this trip. Maybe it's because of the location of my study-abroad program -- in Stellenbosch, an affluent Afrikaner bubble, nothing at all like the "real" Africa -- but I haven't seen too many middle-class black people. Sadly, in South Africa, criminals = black people. Not that criminals are always black people, but that that's sort of the conception. And in Stellenbosch, an area with wealthy Anglos and Afrikaners and poor blacks, it's kind of true. Just because, you know, poor people, economic frustrations... crime. I'm not expressing myself well. But it's kind of ridiculous and leads to a sort of racial profiling that, while I know it exists in America, makes me uncomfortable. If I see a poor-looking black guy standing on the corner in Stellenbosch, I know I'm going to get hassled. The cute little kid running around? He'll hassle me too, and perhaps even muster up a few tears while begging me for five rand. It's ridiculous, of course, to racially profile and everything, but I had never been hassled by a white person.

Until yesterday! We were walking with this Dutch guy we met on the bus ride from Cape Town, and we passed Pretoria's city square where a woman was following me, going, "Miss? Miss?" and then mumbling something while shaking a coffee cup at me. My usual tactic is to avoid eye contact entirely, possibly mumbling, "no, sorry" as I walk away. But I saw her out of the corner of my eye and had to turn around. I mean, unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, she looked white. I turned around. She was white. The Dutch guy was all, "you okay?" when he saw my shocked expression, but I wasn't really shocked by the poverty. Whatever, I've been hassled before. But this was my first non-black beggar. Landmark!

Pretoria has really convinced me that South Africa does, in fact, have a black middle class. And a black upper class. I saw a black guy driving a fancy Mercedes -- you would never see that in Stellenbosch -- and tons of trendy younguns who didn't once try to ask me for money. Which probably was a smart idea because 1) I looked frumpalicious in my four-years-old black sweater whereas they were all bedecked in designer, and 2) I didn't really have much cash on me. Double win. Also, Pretoria has also convinced me that South Africa is PRETTY. I mean, the architecture. The landscape is gorgeous, but I already knew that. But per my earlier complaints about Cape Town lacking historic architecture, I say to Past Sarah, relax. You just... have to travel east for 19 hours. But there's some amazing British centuries-old buildings, including the First National Bank, the court where Nelson M. (we're on intimate terms now) received his life sentence, and a statue in the centre of Paul Kruger. Sadly, we missed the anthropology and police museums, but we walked around probably four hours just traveling from the hostel to the city centre.

Four hours is a long time. It was ample time to assure me that 1) I'm completely out of shape (what's new?) and 2) that I wore the wrong footwear. However, saying I walked until my feet bled makes me appear like a badass. And the appearance of something is all you need, really.

Pretoria is also not very white. At all. I know, I know, what continent am I on, again? But Stellenbosch, in the affluent areas, is like 99.99999% white. Even Cape Town city proper is pretty white. But we'd walk around and not see another whitey for probably ten minutes until we spotted a beaten-down-looking woman waiting for a bus or something. I have never felt so white in my life.

The Backpackers was nice -- taking a shower after two days without one feels glorious -- and rather uneventful except for a guy from Zimbabwe who slept in a bunk under mine and didn't subscribe to the idea of deodorant. It could have been a long night, but I passed out before my nose had sufficient time to complain. Still, staying somewhere for something like R100/night ($10-ish) is amazing. You get a place to sleep, a shower, all you'd get in a hotel, only at a fraction of the price. I guess you pay for privacy, and I think in a few years I'll tire of the whole hostel thing. Certainly with kids, hostels would be out of the question. But I'm young, unattached, so there's no reason to not use hostels. This is what I tell myself whenever I realize that vacations = no privacy. I'm pretty much a loner at heart (my revelation after 18 or so years). I can turn on the extroversion when needed (though for the last few months, I've been lazy about it, so I haven't), but I'm shy and self conscious. And I love my privacy. And I sometimes hate people. So really, hostels are a great test of will for me. I'm trying to love them. But I appreciate family vacations much more now (upscale hotels). At least you're not living with perfect strangers that way.

Speaking of strangers, that's who me and Nick are with: a couple from outside Nelspruit (a few hours outside of Kruger National Park). They seem nice, though if I never reappear, please assume I've been killed. J/K. Probably. The man, Hettie, made us some vetkoek (in English, "fat cake") which is the universal fried bread dough thing. Sort of like a donut, but not sweet. And you fill it with mincemeat, which is surprisingly tasty. We get a bedroom AND bathroom to ourselves, which goes well above and beyond the average hostel, no matter how quaint. Oh, and he's like 60. The tip-offs: he said he usually eats dinner at 4 p.m., and when I told him I was tired since we woke up at 6 this morning his reply was, "What? That's not early... we usually get up at 5:45". Considering I'm too tired at this point to go out on the town like normal kids my age, I think this is actually a good thing.

Hester (his wife) and her daughter were speaking in Afrikaans, but the drawback of having taken one Afrikaans class and not having taken it very seriously since I only needed a 50 to pass, was that I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying. No, wait. A few words. There was a "vandag" (today), a few days of the week, "omgelukkig" (which I remembered from our "emotions" segment). Congrats. A semester of learning a language, and all I have to say for myself is "Ek is jammer, Suid-Afrika".

If all goes well, we should be staying in Kruger Park tomorrow. I'm excited, because this is infinitely better than a safari -- we drive a car (Fossil Rim-style) through hundreds of miles of trails where animals roam freely: lions, giraffes, rhino, hippos (but only at night!), elephants, buffalo, hyena, kudu, etc. etc. etc. And -- this is the first time anyone has warned me about this, and perhaps the last -- Hennie told us to be careful and look both ways so that we don't get charged by an elephant herd.

Yay.

P.S. I apologize for the recent lack of pictures. As soon as I have a reliable computer, I'll upload some of the better ones.

Blog fail

Sorry, all. I've been a bit disoriented the last couple of weeks. I guess I could blame it on the malaria meds (I'm on the hallucination-inducing ones), or perhaps the fact that I actually have work to do for my classes. In fact, after an entire semester of doing, well, nothing, it's hard to just accept that I need to write a single-spaced eight-page paper today or else I'll die.

Last weekend, I went to Robben Island -- where Nelson Mandela stayed in prison for 20-plus years, along with other anti-Apartheid activists -- which was interesting. The staff of the museum lives on the island, which is a good 30-minute boat ride from Cape Town's Victoria and Albert Waterfront. All the tours were led by ex-Robben Island prisoners, so they told us about their experiences. The cells were pretty small -- Mandela didn't have a lot of room to spread out, for sure -- but other than that, there was a little garden in the middle, meals were provided to them, they were on an island and away from Cape Town... I mean, not to be blasphemous, but it seemed like a pretty sweet deal. Except for the physical labor business: Mandela got so much limestone in his eyes over time that he can't handle glare. Photographers are forbidden from using flash when taking his picture.

The same day I went to the District Six Museum, which I found a little more emotionally exhausting. My main complaint about Cape Town has always been how, for such an old city, it feels so modern. I'm not saying modernity is bad, but I was expecting a more historic feel along the waterfront. Instead, the waterfront is so touristy and shiny and new: in short, completely fake and un-African. I feel like I'm in some suburb's supermall rather than on the Cape Town waterfront. Except for the Bo-Kaap (the primarily Malaysian/Muslim area of the city, with plenty of mosques and delicious Malay food), Cape Town isn't really too iconic. Except for the Houses of Parliament and the Dutch East India Company's Gardens in the center, it's kind of a faceless metropole.

But after seeing the museum, I realize this could just be a result of apartheid. During the 1970s the city government eradicated this vibrant (albeit poor) community: the Africans (blacks) were forced into the townships (shantytowns outside of the city) and the others were forced into different neighborhoods in accordance with the Group Areas Act which segregated areas of town by race. The museum was not geared toward an international audience but rather the ex-inhabitants of District Six, so at times it was hard to follow, but it was really affecting. To this day, it seems few people actually live in Cape Town; if they're rich they live in the rich, white suburbs, and if they're poor they live in the poor, black suburbs. It's unfortunate, though, to think of how the whole character of the city could have been so different. Worst of all, the city claimed it was demolishing "unstable" buildings -- which most of the time just needed a fresh coat of paint but were otherwise intact -- and saving money by driving out the members of the community, but it spent millions of dollars and failed to erect what it promised. In short, all that money was spent for nothing.

On a somewhat lighter note, last night was the AIFS farewell, end-of-semester dinner. At least, that's what my pounding head tells me. I think I finished almost an entire bottle of wine. My tolerance is really increasing this semester. We went to Five Flies, this semi-snooty restaurant/cigar bar where the average two-course meal was R185 (about $20; though to put this in perspective, you can get a normal meal in town for less than R40). And for all my attempts to be cultured, I always feel out of place in fancy restaurants. There were at least four knives, and I kept forgetting I'd already used one and ended up using all of them to butter my bread. Then, of course, there was the R114 bottle of wine. The meal was delicious: I ended up ordering smoked snoek (fish) with pesto for a starter, then springbok with port sauce for dinner. The sauce was delicious, the springbok (in European/African style) was basically rare, but it was amazing. I don't even like red meat that much, but it was wonderful. Plus, I have a feeling I might not be eating springbok for awhile. Or rhino. Or ostrich. Or kudu. I guess I have had a fair amount of game meat since I've been here...

As always happens whenever I pound down a few (two? three?) glasses of wine, I start to get a little tipsy and a lot sentimental. So even though I wasn't in love with everyone in the program, by the time our program director, Hestea, said a few words and congratulated us on our "unique decision" to study in Africa, I must say I was touched. Not as much as Stephanie, who looked like she was tearing up, but it was a nice way to end the semester. Also, since I realized how much last night's dinner cost, I appreciate it even more. AIFS is kind of cheap sometimes (always) but it was a classy place. There was all sorts of artificial nostalgia: a 12-minute PowerPoint chronicling our journey since January and the lifelong friends we've made (or not!), tzatziki sauce and potato chips, randomly inappropriate pictures of shirtless men that will haunt my dreams. It was swell.

Okay, to the people from my program who I love (you know who you are, and chances are we've had fairly long conversations in the very recent past), ignore the previous two sentences.

But really, with Kruger National Park and Mozambique looming in the not-too-distance future (three days), I'm pretty excited. But I'm also ready to come home. I miss the U.S. I miss broccoli-cheddar soup, hot dogs and chicken fried steak. And a country that wouldn't appoint a rapist president. So I'm thinking I'll be sort of ready to leave, when June 12 arrives. But we'll see.

Mozambique preparations

It's sad that most of the big decisions in life aren't clear-cut. Clearly, Bridget Jones had to choose Mark Darcy, because Hugh Grant was sort of a nympho-jerk. But when I was trying to figure out which malaria medication to take today, I totally couldn't decide which one was Mr. Darcy and which one was Hugh Grant.

Yes, malaria is kind of a problem in the Eastern Cape, and up through Mozambique, which is where I'm going after I finish writing 13,000-or-so combined words for my history, English and film classes. And provided I finish my Afrikaans presentation on Oprah. So there are mainly three options to impede (and hopefully, well, stop) the spread of malaria:

1) Mefliam -- take 1 tablet/week from 1 week pre-departure to 4 weeks afterward.
PROS: Really cheap (R130)
CONS: Side effects include hallucinations, confusion, psychological trauma, nightmares.

2) Doxycycline -- take 1 tablet/day, from 2 days pre-departure to 4 weeks afterward.
PROS: Also cheap (~R150)
CONS: Sun sensitivity (if used too often, by people in malaria-prone areas, can lead to super-sensitive, thick skin. Yum), stomachaches, nausea.

3) Malanil -- 1 tablet/day, from 1 day before to 7 days after.
PROS: NO SIDE EFFECTS!
CONS: COSTS R800 (almost $100).

So, do I want to lead a trippy existence the duration of my trip and possibly be too confused to know what's going on, or do I just want to have constant nausea and sunburns, for a low monetary cost? OR do I want to shell out an inordinate sum of money (about one-fifth of the cost of the entire trip) for just this medication? It's a toughie.

Cinco de Mayo!

Hola! Andale! Si! Feliz Cinco de Mayo, everyone! As you can probably imagine, there is no place Cinco de Mayo-er than Stellenbosch, South Africa, where I have seen 0.00001 Mexicans so far. (I'm assuming at least one of the "coloureds" has some Mexican ancestry. It's plausible, right?) Here's some fun I have Mexi-planned for tonight, in honor of this special day:

1. Deciding on a topic for my modernism semester essay, due in one week. Considering this is the class with the professor who hates me, I should probably be worried, but I haven't even started the paper. Santa Anna would be proud.

2. Trivia night at the Irish pub. You Mexi-can, too! I might get the Gulliver's Travels question right, again, because apparently that's the only book the trivia writer's ever read. Si, amigo.

3. Cleaning my dorm. There's toilet/sink/bedroom cleaning to be done and, well... okay, I'm going to take the high road here and not make some menial labor joke. Because that would not be politically correct (which is, after all, the whole point of Cinco de Mayo).

4. Washing my clothes. (Where is Maria when you need her?)

Let me just say, I am 1/8 Hispanic. So I kind of have an "in", in case you were wondering, the same way members of the gay community have reclaimed "queer". Go out and spread the joy and love that is Cinco de Mayo, amigos! (Time for me to Wikipedia Cinco de Mayo.)

Politically-correct picture from http://www.shirtsnob.com/

Fat and exercise

I have no problem with my weight. What I have a problem with is my random storage of fat deposits that interfere with my Jessica Alba impersonations. Like Jess has neck fat or a tummy!

Anyway, in a last-ditch effort to whip my bod into shape I signed up for a Pilates class last semester. I didn't even know what Pilates was, other than that affluent white women were always talking about doing it, and honestly, that was really all I needed to know. I like dressing up like I'm going to work out, because it's like I'm on a mission. Further, I like to imagine (delusionally? Perhaps) that people are like, "wow? She's going to work out? I am just so completely impressed by how healthy she is. Maybe someday she and I will be BFFs... please, God?". You know what? That isn't a delusion. I know that's what people are thinking.

But yeah, that's where the fun ends. Because after you get all dolled up to go to the gym you actually have to... go to the gym. And though, in theory, I liked the idea of working out my abs, I didn't end up liking the whole, uh, working out part. Because -- and after years of being MIA from the playground and dodging high school phys. ed requirements by doing marching band (phew!) -- I think I never realized that exercise isn't nearly as fun as it looks when you're the one exercising. Moreover, Pilates is difficult. I mean, really hard. We had a weightlifter in that class, and his veins were always popping out of his neck in a really gross way, practically mocking me for trying to lose some of that derriere.

So, even though I nodded and smiled sweetly at the instructor when, at the end of the semester, she asked the class how many of us would do Pilates exercises regularly in the future (wow, I lie a LOT), I knew it wasn't going to happen. Just like wearing a hat or getting work done while baking cookies. Or Michael Cera not being typecast, again.

Unfortunately, the Ghost of Pilates Past has followed me here. After doing my physical therapy stretches religiously for about a week, I demonstrated "bird-dog", the first in my four-stretch series, for the therapist (note: I was not involved in the naming process. Because "bird-dog" would not have made it to the cutting-room floor, if I'd had my way. Lame!).

"Hmm," she said, pursing her lips. Not a good sign. "See... these exercises... you should be working really hard when you stretch, keeping a neutral spine," she explained.

Turns out I was doing it completely wrong. That's why it wasn't that painful. So I'm back to Pilates, doing ridiculous sit ups that should ideally strengthen my back. While working out my abs and thighs intensely. Argh. Looks like I have no choice but to get in shape. Help?

P.S. The pictures: my submissions for the Cold Mountain cover art contest (mountains at the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Town's Table Mountain during ascent to View Point) and a church in town.

As you were coming down from swine flu hysteria...

So, the Wine and Cheese Festival turns into much less of a party when you're lactose intolerant. Just fyi.

It occurred to me today that I'm going home in (a little less than) 1.5 months. Eek. I still need to go to Durban and Namibia! And a safari! And self-actualization! It's a little... stressful.

When we first got here, one of our orientation sessions was about culture shock. I forget what the graph looked like, but it went from "OMG culture shock" to "OMG I love it here" to "okay, I'm analyzing your culture more, and I sense there are some problems" to "OMG I can't go home I love it here too much". So I think I'm in the analytical-problem phase. Zuma aside, here are some aspects of South Africa that have been (dare I say it?) pissing me off lately.

1) Malls. We went to this super high-tech mall in Cape Town last weekend, the fanciest mall I've ever visited. It was like Vegas: lights everywhere, super fake marble interior, interactive map. But the thing is, while my bedroom might tell you a different story, I kind of like order in my life. It's why I love passing judgment on people's terrible life decisions and labeling others "idiots" within seconds of meeting them. It's nice to have some semblance of organization. And this isn't just limited to relationships: I like to have some order in places like shopping malls, where, without order, it would sort of suck. You know how there's this unspoken rule about which side of the walkway to walk on? And if you dare to walk the wrong way, you get trampled, like Simba's father in The Lion King, because everyone's all going in one direction? Yeah, not so in South Africa. People walk everywhere: on the left side, on the right side, on your face. I nearly had a nervous breakdown dodging all the corpulent shoppers and strollers. Strollers are the worst. Little kids think they're just entitled to everything.

2) Cavemen who live in my dorm. Okay, since I've bared it all (literally) in this blog (I'm writing in the nude right now), I see no reason to pretend I didn't come here expecting to meet the love of my life or something. After all, the South African lady I sat next to on the plane ride over here was just coming back from her daughter's wedding to some guy she met while studying in Spain. If any Olsen twins movie ever made is any indication, we all know that if a (heterosexual) girl goes on vacation, she'll soon befriend and mac on a (heterosexual) foreign male. And apart from the sweater-clad cute-o-saurus in my Hemingway class, the males here fail to impress.* They continue to run around yelling "luuuuuuuuugh" and "gaaaaaaaaaah" each afternoon in random intervals. And somehow, I'm not jumping to impregnate any of them.

*However, in light of recent events, I'm going to have to say that a) French boys have nice accents and are nice conversationalists; and b) some Dutch boys aren't so bad, either. Great. I come to South Africa and find the European boys the most intriguing. However, my standards of male hotness are shifting. Am I growing up?

3) Pizza. I miss real pizza. Star Pizza? The pizzas here lack flavor and good tomato sauce.

4) The accent. Like, I mean, I love it, but at the same time, is the pronunciation of one's R's enough to utterly confuse people here? I've adopted a faux S.A. accent to limit the amount of confusion that results when I say just about anything.

Actually, the Afrikaner South African accent is the easiest to understand; I find it really difficult to understand the Xhosa and Zulu speakers.

5) Lack of a car. At first, it was cute. "It's better to walk and explore the town on foot," I thought. "Think of all the calories I'll burn." Then it was slightly annoying, but there was a goal in mind. "Well, I'm getting leg muscles, for the first time in my life." I put up with lugging groceries home and sweating my face off (I hate sweating before noon; it just doesn't seem right somehow) because I had a goal. And maybe I've lost those leg muscles or something, because my legs don't look that impressive anymore. If I'm going to be a weakling, I want a car. I'm never taking it for granted again.

Also, they apparently have inspections here, but judging by some cars' emissions, I'm thinking they have tons of cars on the road here that would NEVER be allowed back home. Also, VW Bugs -- cute in theory, ugly and cramped inside. Not unlike some brown-haired, blue-eyed bloggers I know...

P.S. Pictures are of the Stellenbosch Museum's colonial Dutch houses. Sadly, they're much more plush than is my dorm room.

April is the cruelest month

I miss Hispanic people.

You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think

I've been thinking about the phrase "you can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can't take the trailer park out of the girl" today. Not because I'm from a trailer park, unless you call White Lake Hills -- a, like its name implies, mostly-white-middle-class residential development where the average age was 50 and after 7 p.m. almost all the residents had gone to sleep because that's what old people do -- a trailer park. Which you would not, because it was not. But in the gourmet-food sense, I'm trailer trash. I eat french fries with mayonnaise. I enjoy cheeseburgers. I've been known to eat a potato-chip-peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. I use just your average olive oil, nothing special. And today we went to the South African Cheese Festival, where I was shown, yet again, my gustatory limits.

Yes, an entire festival devoted to cheese. Has there been a better idea, ever? Nevermind the fact that I'm probably lactose intolerant, I enjoy dairy more than anything else in life. And nothing goes with cheese quite like wine. Or ice cream. Or biltong (the South African version of beef jerky, only better), in a variety of flavors: bees (the guy assured me it was "beef", but in Afrikaans), rhino, kudu, springbok, ostrich. Or chili-flavored chocolate. Or salami-flavored chocolate. Luckily for me (and all the South Africans with extremely warped tastebuds who actually like that stuff), these were all in abundance.

Also, let me just say, if my planned career fails to pan out, I might just become a chef. The uniforms are adorable, and I love watching Top Chef, if only to salivate at that pretty blond guy and the weird-yet-powerfully-appetizing dishes they put together. Mango-bacon sausage with parsley? Sign me up.

And, in between all the cheese stalls (call me old-fashioned, but I still love aged cheddar and edam the best) were wine stalls galore. For the price of admission, you could try literally hundreds of wines. Because I had a little wine tasting of my own in the dorm a few nights ago which ended rather badly, I wasn't quite in the mood to be pouring shiraz down my throat, but I took one for the team. (The team = me.) And though I was hoping to, as the semester progressed, become like Paul Giamatti's wine snob character in Sideways -- minus the huge eyes, scarily-receding hairline, annoying verbosity and getting the cute blonde at the end -- I still wouldn't be able to tell a Shiraz from a Pinotage if I met them in a dark alley. I do know pinotage = hermitage + pinot noir. (Note: if I'm wrong, forget I said that.) But I like red wine better than white, and I tend to gravitate toward the pinotage. And only wimps drink rose wine (sry, roommate). Plus, Vitamin C. And higher alcohol content than in beer and cider. Need I say more? Though, to be honest, the whole "hints of freshly-mowed grass" thing... I'm a little skeptical about that. Who's going to call b.s. on your palate?

At around noon, we sat in on a cooking class. Like The Food Network, only live! And this chef was saucy: she stuck her fingers in several men's mouths ("oh, taste this!") and overtly flirted with the middle-aged male audience members she selected to help cook the lamb. She was really obsessed with double entendres, good-quality olive oil, Moroccan spices and parsley. I really enjoyed the highly-inappropriate comments she made about the poor nerdy guy's attempt at rubbing the lamb shank with olive oil: "Oh, wow! Lucky you!" at the wife, while Mr. Glasses gently massaged the meat. Plus, she'd constantly refer to food products as "sexy", especially the apples, which were caramelizing quickly. It almost made me forget how she basically advertised herself the entire time: "This isn't just any sea salt. This is JENNY MORRIS sea salt!" as she handed another unsuspecting audience member his free gift.

And when the stuff was all cooked -- seven dishes in all, including a bread pudding with ricotta cheese, caramelized apples, raisins and honey that has got to be one of the tastiest things I've ever had, even though I'm really not a fan of bread pudding at all -- the audience hurried over, all 80 of them, to partake in what we'd been smelling for the past hour. I don't even enjoy red meat tremendously, but the lamb was seasoned deliciously (also, South Africans enjoy their meat practically still moo-ing; my middle name is "Medium-well, please", so it's been a bit of a learning process) and the cheese/tomato/olive dip was superb. I love the way gourmet cooking makes everything taste delicious, even the ugmo vegetables, like asparagus. I think it was the most delicious food I've had so far.

But the line, it seems, was drawn at some of the weirder goat cheese concoctions. I like goat cheese, but the more aged and sharper it gets, the less I like it. There was one version of particularly soft goat cheese with wine mixed in that was disgusting. Also, the chili pesto (is nothing sacred?) failed to impress. I swear, Afrikaners are obsessed with biltong and chili. And with invading others' personal space. I am so American.

To conclude: in six hours, I failed to get drunk, but I tried some excellent wines, cheeses and bread. It was a little warm and a lot crowded, but I wish I had more days where I could spend hours stuffing myself with delicious-and-slightly-unhealthy food with little to no consequences.

P.S. That's a cheetah in the picture, plus me creeping up on the unsuspecting feline (thus the shadow). Moments later, I had that thing in a headlock.

The Afrikaners' greatest accomplishment

The Findlays, my Scottish ancestors who settled in Wisconsin in the late 1800s, were a resourceful group of people. They had a little log cabin and, if the pictures are any indication, spent a lot of time sitting outside with sour looks on their faces. According to my great-uncle Joe, my great-great-great grandmother Jane, the one my mom's descended from, was intelligent and long lived. Still, let's not mince words here: the Findlays were ugly. Don't analyze that too much; after all, this is fairly recent history, and my mom sort of looks like Jane... and people tell me I look like my mom... if a = b and b = c-- ugh! Moving on.

The Dutch people who moved to South Africa in the 17th century, as I understand it, kind of came here because they didn't have any economic prospects back in the old country. They figured that starting over in a completely foreign place at least gave them an opportunity to live the American Dream. I get it. But as we all know, poor people are ugly, so I'm beginning to think there was another reason they migrated: they couldn't get any action back home. Even generations later, in the Boer War (Afrikaners vs. the British!), despite hopefully some genetic variation over time, it appears the Afrikaners were still ugmos.

That's kind of terrifying. And believe you me, if I saw that going to class every day, you can bet I'd be back in Houston's Bush International faster than you can say "was Rasputin part of the Boer army?"

And though people might rag on Rice for having unattractive people (nerds = unattractive), and this may have skewed my view of things, I highly doubt it. I read a lot of celebrity news. I watch a lot of TV. I'm bombarded with pretty faces constantly. The point is, I know what's hot and what's not. And the Afrikaners of today are hot. When I'm not drooling over the sweater-clad-and-brainy hottie in my modernism class or that sensitive-looking dude who plays guitar Sundays at the Irish pub, I'm amazed by how skinny, blond and pretty the girls are. Most of the guys, if you're into the surfer look/Abercrombie model sans pout, aren't too bad looking, either. So, I'm not sure what happened in that gene pool between the second Boer War (1879-1915) and now (2009), but miraculously, the Afrikaners of today bear absolutely no resemblance to their hirsute predecessors. I feel like there definitely needs to be some serious scientific research about this. Was everyone just ug back then? And how can you go from fugly to f-me in just a few generations?

And let me just say, I know Nelson Mandela is famous and basically universally liked; he seems he can do no wrong (let's ignore his "endorsement" of Zuma and blame it on senility), but I'm pretty sure South Africa's main point of pride, more than the aging Xhosa ex-pres, is the face I've seen on just about every tabloid here. Apparently, South Africa has just one celebrity (the tabloids also seem fascinated with the American "Ange and Brad"):

Charlize is from Benoni, a trashy area near Jo'burg. Yes. This is what South African white trash looks like.

America, we've got a lot of catching up to do. I'm pushing for Beauty Superpower by 2030.

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Jan. 2009 Dollar-to-Rand exchange rate:
$1 = R9.98

Feb.-Mar. 2009 DtR exchange rate:
More of the same (hello, $3 dinners)
High: 3/9. $1 = R10.64

Apr. 2009 DtR exchange rate:
4/6. $1 = R8.98
4/17. $1 = R8.96
4/20. $1 = R9.08

Ouch.

T.I.A.

I have an innate distrust of catchy slogans. Things put so simply are rarely true. They allow no room for nuance. M & Ms totally DO melt in your hand. Covergirl doesn't connote "easy" or "breezy" to me. Yet there's a recurring theme this semester that's brief and catchy and yes, manages to cover most of the horrific, hilarious and odd situations you're likely to run across in this country. During the Garden Route Tour this week, while on Tokyo-Sexwale township tour, after our tour guide shared a bit too much about his past, a girl muttered, "TMI."

"TIA," another American responded.

T.I.A. = This Is Africa. Basically it means "don't be surprised; anything goes here, since this place is car-azy!" or something. It's one of those lovely phrases that can be used anywhere, anytime, in either a positive or negative way. Oh, fried caterpillars? TIA. $3 dinners? TIA! (Side note: the dollar is getting weaker, at a mere R9.4/dollar. Tear.)

And "TIA" was perfect for our township tour outside of Jeffrey's Bay, where we spent the last two nights of our vacation. Our tour guide, Cass, started us out with a visit to a guy's home where we drank tea and ate bread. The tomato jam was surprisingly tasty. Then we went to a medicine woman who, Cass said, had been given healing powers from her ancestors. Though these days she's seeing only five patients a week since most in the townships go to doctors, he said she's even worked wonders with AIDS patients. He showed us some pink powder, which was supposed to make one "shine"; "shining", apparently, means able to be taken seriously by white people. I wonder if you can buy that in Stellenbosch...

Then he proceeded to tell us, in excruciating detail, about his circumcision procedure. In Xhosa culture, males at 18 get circumcised by an older male (read: not someone medically trained). Ouch. Then he started talking about his "papa", which turned out not to be his father. Additionally, there were Zuma posters throughout the township, which turned out to be sort of a joke: since Zuma is Zulu, he's uncircumcised and, as the Xhosa see him, still a boy. "We can't let a BOY run the country," Cass explained.

When we toured his house (a corrugated shack he proudly proclaimed he'd built himself) and he asked if we wanted to see his bedroom (the corner of the room), we said yes. Interesting enough. Then he just had to tell us, "This is where the magic happens", pointing at the small pink bed, while we tried futilely to keep gross mental images out of our heads. Of course, it didn't help that he'd pointed out his girlfriend five minutes earlier, an especially heavy woman in bright pink. Cass, by comparison, was stick-thin. And also, more than comfortable telling perfect strangers where he'd conceived his first two children.

We went to two shebeens (bars) where we attempted to drink away the information of the last couple hours. We'd at first gone into a shack where an 8-year-old girl (labor laws?) had poured us a paint can of Xhosa beer, umgomboti. Nevermind the fact that we'd seen beer fermenting in the backyard of a nearby shack with several chickens -- sometimes it's better to just not think about these things -- this beer was thick (no way you could see the bottom of that can) and kind of had random particles and bugs in it. The group of Americans smiled politely and, when Cass turned his back, made disgusted faces at each other, practically imploring, "just how are we supposed to drink this?"

My best friend when I was growing up was from a Cajun family, and so I went to plenty of crawfish boils. I was a picky kid -- I used to hate tomato sauce, so I just ate noodles when we had spaghetti -- and though I loved going to her house, I dreaded eating dinner there. 4:00 snacks were fine, and to this day I have a special fondness for Little Debbie cakes, but once 6:00 rolled around, the trouble began. The problem with them was, it was never just macaroni and cheese or tacos. It was always something weird and spicy, and I had to finish the overloaded plate with minimal (but preferably no) gagging and complaints. My mom actually is quite talented at this (something she'll blame on her poor upbringing), and I'd always swear she enjoyed dinner until later, when she'd wonder how people from Louisiana could eat such odd things. I was rarely successful at finishing the contents of my plate, and usually made up some lie about having eaten dinner already. Still, it's just a matter of politeness, polishing off food that's presented to you, no matter how disgusting the fare. The same with this beer.

The paint can went around the group of Americans, and, ignoring what I hoped were rocks below the surface, I took a swig. Well, a sip. A small sip. It was bitter and smoky, leaving one with the strange sensation of having consumed liquified bacon. Delicious? In one rotation, the contents of the paint can looked unchanged, and Cass was aghast: "Wait... is everyone drinking? This will f*&# you up, you know" as if assuring drunkenness was enough for us to overcome its offensive taste. We looked around, frightened. What next? A drinking game? Was he going to apportion the rest to each of us (accountability)? Finally, one of the group, Bridget (with clear Irish ancestry), squeezed her eyes shut and chugged a little more with the help of Jackie, who held her nose closed. She claimed that not being able to taste most of the beer was a big help.

Cass ended up finishing most of the beer.

And the informative part of the township tour was over, as it launched into bar hopping. I did learn, however, that townships serve 40s (about two or three times the size of a normal cider bottle) for the same price of a normal bottle, R15. Sweet. Somehow, we all made it back relatively unscathed.

The rest of the week was nice -- I saw the Indian Ocean and went to beaches, fulfilling my lifelong dream of reading a book on the beach. Since I was kind of limited in the amount of activities I could do, I had a relaxed vacation for once; this was kind of a foreign idea to me, since vacations with the family are usually kind of stressful. And also, the horses the group used for horseback riding turned out to be crazy and not tame. And the bungee jumping? Most reactions seemed positive, and the bungee company's slogan ("Fear is temporary; regret is forever") has now been adopted by several as their life mantra.

We also visited several ecologically artificial wildlife parks, Teniqua and Monkeyland. Teniqua, as we saw in the orientation video complete with an especially cheesy easy-listening version of "A Whole New World", is all about animals who "have known only human kindness" (translation: have been raised in the park to allow humans to pet them without biting their heads off). The cheetahs were pretty, the caracal was awesome and I attempted to pet a baby cheetah with about the same degree of success that I can dance, play the trumpet and avoid awkward conversations: none. He ran away from me, probably sensing that my five-week-old Beta fish had committed suicide just years earlier. (I'm sorry, Harry!)

Monkeyland was a "refuge" for monkeys from zoos and injured ones in the wild. I learned a few things: monkeys are like children and enjoy taking things from people, looking up at a monkey and smiling is a cue for said monkey to urinate, I'm still scared of suspension bridges.

The accommodation was nice, if by "nice" you mean that I'm going to be way less maintenance upon returning to the States. I don't even use a blow dryer these days! We stayed at several backpackers which turned out to be cabins in the woods four minutes away from the bathroom. Who knew Africa could be so cold at night?

I know when people go study abroad, within weeks they're proclaiming, "I'm so in love with [insert country here] right now!" or pledging allegiance to the beautiful/intelligent/kind/wonderful people of whatever nation. For me, I guess my fondness for South Africa has been slowly evolving over the course of the semester. I definitely was a little culture-shocked at first, and constantly, but I think I can say I love the place. Of course, this is "love" the way I imagine it to be with a person: you know he has flaws and bowel movements, perhaps he doesn't look so good in a bathing suit and forgets to put more than two ice cubes in your drink, maybe his political leader has been accused of 783 counts of corruption. But you still find his gap-toothed smile adorable and hope that he's not going to hell.

Please read: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1165473/He-wives-faced-783-corruption-charges-PETER-HITCHENS-South-Africas-president.html