The week of March 9th-15 was a pretty busy one. In music class we have been studying a lot of African musical instruments and music produced under the Apartheid. The music we studying is called Nguni which is a collective term referring to the Zulu, Swazi, and Xhosa tribes. Some of the bows they play on are called Umrhubhe, Uhadi, Umqangi, and Ikatari. I’d had a lot of fun studying for the test this past week because where ever a “q” is found in Xhosa words a click is done while speaking. I’m not exactly sure how good I am at doing the click, but it is a lot of fun! A lot of the music played during that period was jazz and we listen to a lot of that in class.
This week instead of having Senior Seminar we instead went to a town near by and listen to Bradley Lavack speak. Bradley is an activist in the area and we’ve seen quite a bit of him. Our entire group really just loves him. He’s a really great guy! I might have talked about him before, but Bradley’s ancestors are San people or Bush people. He would be classified as colored, but he really doesn’t look like it to us. In the U.S. he would just look like a naturally tan guy. Bradley grew up in a township nearby and that morning he told us a lot of stories of what they did when they were growing up. As a young boy, he often made petrol bombs out of glass bottles. It sounds like he got into a lot of other mischief too. He did tell us some pretty real stories about the violence that was committed under the Apartheid. He told us about some of the torture tactics too. One torture technique they used was called necklacing, which is where they put a rubber tire filled with gas around a person’s neck and then set them on fire. Listening to him was really good. It gave us an opportunity to really hear personal stories and really understand the atrocities that had gone on. Bradley was telling us that a lot of people are really psychologically damaged now though for all that they saw during that time period.
On Friday, our whole group took an excursion to Grahamstown and other various towns. We left about 7 am, hopped in a coach bus with Bradley and headed out. Grahamstown was about an hour away and was originally tribal land. The tribes moved around a bit would let their animals graze the lands and would share the land with each other. When the Dutch and British came through the tribes, as usual, shared their land, until they realized the Dutch and British weren’t moving on. Eventually there was a battle and the Europeans won and took over the land, as was the case in many other places in South Africa. The Europeans continued to hold majority of the land under the Apartheid government. Currently, the land is something the government is still struggling with. The government is trying to return land to the tribes, yet they still face a lot of problems. The government can buy the land, but it can never own the land, so the land needs to be found, bought, negotiated and handed over within a very short period of time. Also, much of the original land can’t be given back because towns and cities are now built on it. Additionally, many of the descendants from these tribes also have now been living in townships for years and many do not have the skill to work the land once they receive it. Those are just a few problems, but there are many many more. We left Grahamstown and on our way up to another tiny little village we stopped at Outreach project funded by Rhodes University for artists to make artwork and sell it. All of these artists made prints where they carve out a scene in wood and then they paint the wood with ink and roll it down onto a piece of paper. Their artwork was beautiful and told a lot of stories of what life was like under Apartheid. We all bought something and that was pretty awesome to support local artists. After that we headed up to the tiny little village where we talked with the mayor, who is also the head of the ANC for their area. They talked to us for a while and then we got to ask the mayor and other chair people questions. Then they made us a really yummy meal including dessert! Then we took off in our bus again and stopped at a small school in another small village. This school has only four teachers, but needed at least five. It was severely needing help and resources, but it wasn’t even registered under the government as a school. The whole day we had been driving through beautiful hilly countryside. The little villages seem so cool to live it because it seems so awesome to live so far anyway from the industrialized cities and work off the land. Sadly, though these villages are very poor. None of them know how to pull themselves out of this poverty because they aren’t educated and the ones who do get educated leave and don’t come back. Our last stop for the day was King Williams Town to see Steve Biko’s childhood family home. Steve Biko is a very important figure in South Africa. He started what is called the Black Consciousness Movement, a movement that encouraged and inspired blacks under the Apartheid that they had dignity, worth, and they need to stand up for their rights. The BCM fought the lie taught which many blacks believed that blacks were inferior to whites. I probably don’t do any justice trying to explain this movement, but it was a very important one in South Africa and Steve Biko’s legacy still lives on through the foundation established in his name. The sad thing is the story of how he died. Steve was imprisoned under the Apartheid just like many other political leaders. The only facts known are that he was transferred from the prison in Port Elizabeth to Pretoria. He was transferred naked and had a head injury, which the officers claimed he received when he hit his head while fighting restraints during the move. He died not long after he arrived in Pretoria. Much of the facts provided by the police are pretty sketchy and sadly none of the truth came out under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but it is believed by most that he was tortured and beaten in prison by the guards. Looking at his house was the last stop, so we climbing back in our bus for the long ride home. We were driving through pineapple country, so we did pull over to buy pineapples from a woman on the side of the road. Boy, did we make her day. We bought every single one of her pineapples. They were only 6 Rand (60 cents apiece)! A group of us were traveling to Hogsback Mountains for the weekend, so we got dropped off at Grahamstown to stay the night. Our hostel was soooo awesome! It’s called Old Gaol, which means Old Jail. It used to be a jail in the 1800’s! Laura and I had made our reservation separately from the rest of the group. They all slept in rooms with 6-8 beds in them, but we actually slept in an old cell. Crazy! It seemed a little creepy too. It kinda put a good perspective on what Nelson Mandela lived in for half a decade. We went out for dinner that night and stopped at a restaurant with some authentic Xhosa food. I got ostrich and it was really good! The only thing was that it was really fatty and I would chew each piece for long time. I’m sure that was good for my arteries.
I ended up sleeping really well in the jail cell even though Laura and Jenny said their beds were extremely uncomfortable with a huge indent right where your butt was supposed to go. The next morning we headed out around 8:30ish and took a taxi up to Hogsback, which I kept calling Hogsmead (it’s the name of the village in the Harry Potter books). We passed Fort Hare, one of the universities that Nelson Mandela went to. The trip took about two hours and brought us up to the mountains. It was an absolutely beautiful trip. These mountains are said to be the inspiration of the Lord of the Rings books. Our hostel was called Away with the Fairies and was right at the top of a smaller mountain or maybe it was a foothill, I’m a bit confused with how to clarify them. It was bit foggy that first day, so we couldn’t really see the great view, but it was still awesome to experience. Soon as we got there we headed out on a five hour hike. The hike took us past three waterfalls which were amazing, but one was extremely hard to get too. We were basically climbing on our hands and knees up rocks. We did see a huge tree that was eight hundred years old and a monkey too! One of the dogs from the hostel came with us too and guided us along. We decided to name him Frodo, even though a few members of our group insisted that his name was Seamus. That night we had another traditional Xhosa meal, which was basically a meat stew with rice and bread. Then most of us headed off to bed early since we were so exhausted.
Sunday morning we woke up by eight, so we would have enough time to fit in one more hike. We hiked all the way up to the top of another waterfall, which flowed straight off the edge of a cliff. I felt like Pocahontas. That was bit scary up there, but it was an awesome view. We came home around lunch time and I had time to climb up into the “scariest” tree house in South Africa. It was honestly scary. The ladder was the worst part because it’s just tiny. Then when you got to the top you just stand on a wood floor 15 meters above the ground. At about 1:30, our taxi finally came and brought us to this town called Alice, where we switched into another taxi that took us to Grahamstown. From Grahamstown we took a bus, after one girl in our group chased down a bus that took off and we thought was ours, but turns out it wasn’t. Then we endured an hour and a half on a cramped, hot bus to Port Elizabeth where we caught our last taxi to our flats. In all it was a great first weekend traveling and extremely beautiful.
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