Kofi's Proverbs

Ghana has a rich traditional culture, from the tales of Anansi the spider, to rigid customs, to a reverence for wisdom. Between South Africa and Ghana, we had a guest lecturer on board the ship named Kofi Opuko, a professor who has written several books on Ghanaian proverbs. They’re sort of like Aesop’s Fables stripped down to the punch line, with an African twist. I attended several lectures by this very charming man and would like to share some of the Ghanaian proverbs he told us:

• Plant a tree when you are young, so you will have shade when you are old. (Plan for the future.)
• Until the lion is the historian, the glory will always go to the hunter.
• Proverbs put salt into speech.
• One head does not make a decision. (Ghanaians thinks groups make the best decisions.)
• Truth may become skinny but will never perish.
• Words are like bullets--once they leave the mouth, they can’t come back.
• If a person thinks cooperation is not possible, let him speak with one lip.
• When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.
• Together, sugar ants can carry an elephant.
• It’s the heart that gives; the hand only lets go.
• A letter from the heart is read in the face.

And my absolute favorite:

• With patience, you can skin an ant and obtain its liver. (The value of persistence.)

 

Cape Town Ramblings and Factoids

Trying to fit Cape Town into any overall pattern is very difficult. The guide on our wine tour said Cape Town is unlike any other South African city and is more like a European city. Since he was born in S. Africa, is retired from being an insurance executive and lived most of his life in Johannesburg, I’ll take his word for it. We only saw the Cape Town area and loved it, despite its obvious problems, such as poverty, lack of adequate housing and crime.

Cape Town is the most cosmopolitan of South African cities. First the Dutch colonized the area. They brought in French Huguenot settlers who established the wine industry. People from India were brought in as indentured servants. The British ruled here starting in 1795. Apartheid was set up by whites in an independent South Africa in 1948. Now, of course, black African people are finally getting to run their own country.

Having seen all the major port cities of the world, I would say Cape Town ranks as the second most beautiful, behind only Rio. Others in the top 5 would be San Francisco, Vancouver, B.C., and Hong Kong, with Hong Kong probably the most beautiful at night. New York rates its own special category, both beautiful and ugly at the same time. Cape Town has done a great job limiting development to the lower slopes of the mountains surrounding the city. Otherwise, there would be tons of ugly high-rises covering the hills. (This picture shows the "tablecloth" on Table Mountain.)

Cape Town must have the cleanest air of any major city. (Cape Town has 4 million people. South Africa has about 50 million.) The prevailing winds blow all the air pollution out to sea. Reportedly, nearby whales have a high incidence of lung cancer. Just kidding!

South Africa has had four winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. (See photo of 4 statues.) Of course there was Nelson Mandela (1993) and Desmond Tutu (1984). Also winning it with Mandela was De Klerk, the South African president who compromised with Mandela and worked out an agreement for black South Africans to get the vote. The fourth winner was in 1960 -- Albert Luthuli, who was head of the African National Congress Party before Nelson Mandela, and in that role fought against apartheid. (Over the years, some 97 individuals and 23 organizations have won this prize.)

The food in Cape Town was great, both the sea food and the South African game. There is a cape salmon that is delicious; it’s a white fish. The wine in South Africa is said to be great; I can’t remember drinking any. In fact, I can’t remember much about South Africa …..

The road system is good, although traffic is a problem at rush hour. A couple of major freeways are in the city. For some reason, unlike India and Vietnam, the poorer people don’t ride motorbikes. Saw none of them. This is surprising, since the public transport system is not good. Even in the one squatter camp we visited, a few of the people had beater cars and kept them in ramshackle garages next to their ramshackle houses. Gas is about $4 a gallon.

South Africa ranks very high in the GINI income inequality scale (Social scientists have a scale for everything.) -- second in the world behind Brazil. The scale ranks countries from 0 to 1, with 1 being complete inequality (one guy owns everything) and 0 being complete equality. South Africa’s score is .58. The U.S. score is .45 and trending toward greater inequality (although national health care is expected to reverse that trend.) Most European countries and Japan are in the .3 to .4 range. The countries with the most equality are the Scandinavian ones, ranking in the .2 to .3 range. ANYBODY STILL AWAKE OUT THERE? Outside the downtown area and in the local beach areas, there are scores of multimillion-dollar homes and condos in a lot of gated communities. Farther out are the townships and shack housing for the poor. The GNP per capita for South Africa is almost $10,000, a good number for Africa, but 43 percent of South Africans are living on less than $2 U.S. per day, according to the United Nations.

The percentage of people with HIV/AIDS in South Africa is about 18 percent of the population between the ages of 15 and 49. That’s one of the major reasons life expectancy in South Africa is only 52, about 25 years less than in the U.S.

Cape Town has the only nuclear power plant in the whole continent of Africa. Much of South Africa’s power comes from coal; it has sizable reserves.

The large big game parks in South Africa are in the north part of the country, about a 14-hour drive or 2-hour flight from Cape Town. There is also said to be a luxury, old-style classic train that runs from Pretoria in the north to Cape Town. Big game (elephants and lions) used to roam in the Cape Town area, but they were all killed in the 1800s. The government is trying to reintroduce the zebra and some similar animals in some of the Cape Town park areas.

The shopping in Cape Town is good for African crafts, although many are brought in from other African countries, and they are not cheap. Nothing in Cape Town is cheap.

Geraniums originated in Cape Town and spread to the rest of the world a couple of centuries ago.

When people glance at a world map, they tend to think the tip of Africa and the tip of South America are at the same latitude. In fact, South America extends much farther south -- to about 56 degrees of latitude -- while Cape Town is at about 34 degrees latitude. (As a comparison, Salem is at 45 degrees north latitude.) So Cape Town’s climate is more like that of central or southern California. Yet there are penguin colonies at coastal parks just outside the city, and we saw penguins on Robben Island. (Thanks to our friend Alex for sharing her penguin picture, which we missed.) The water is cold at Cape Town.

Cape Town harbor must have the most seals of any major harbor; they are everywhere.

The president of South Africa has 4 wives and 20 children. That’s probably why he approved Viagra as an official sponsor of the World Cup. That last sentence was to see if you were still paying attention.

You Be the Judge

Overall, I think capitalism is the best economic system available, as long as there are controls to prevent what caused the current recession.

But there are those “Let them eat cake” moments which cause one to wonder what appropriate controls are and if people can be so stupid as to not understand how their conspicuous consumption looks.

Take the little plaything pictured with this story. It was berthed right next to our ship in Cape Town. It’s the private yacht “Rising Sun,” among the five most expensive in the world. Its value is in the $200 million to $300 million range. It supposedly has a crew of 50 and can accommodate about 50 passengers in splendor. It’s a shiny, gleaming example of excess in every sense of the word. Even the big spools that hold the ship's lines were heavily chromed.

It’s owned by Larry Elligson, CEO of Oracle, and David Geffen, one of the heads of Dreamworks. Now I don’t know how much these gentlemen contribute to worthy causes; it could be a substantial amount. I certainly praise the efforts of other corporate bigwigs such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and all they are doing to fight disease in the undeveloped world.

But this yacht is berthed in Cape Town, at a cost of several thousand dollars a day, and will stay there through the World Cup in June and July so its owners and their friends will have a nice place to stay during the games. There are several beautiful luxury hotels within a stone’s throw of where that yacht is tied up, by the way.

What kind of message does it send to bring this yacht and have it on display for several months in a country such as South Africa with all the abject poverty, AIDS, crime, unemployment, lack of adequate housing and a government struggling to meet all these needs? It’s one thing to have this yacht in Monaco or Bermuda or even Fort Lauderdale, but it’s another thing to bring it to Cape Town.

I think the owners of “toys” such as this would be wise to remember what happened to Marie.

Hakuna Matata!

Hundreds of people on our ship went on 3-day safaris that involved flying and hotels, but Bob and I both wanted to concentrate our South African experiences around Cape Town, as we had heard the city itself was simply amazing. (And it was…) Instead, I ended my time in South Africa by going on a 1-day safari at the Inverdoorn Game Reserve near Ceres, about 2½ hours east of Cape Town. Good choice, if I do say so myself! The trip packed a lot of wildlife viewing into one day and it was a great way to have the safari experience without having to catch airplanes and fly to the other end of the country. By the way, I realize the cheetah picture looks like it has a painted background, but that's really what the countryside looked like. The mountains in South Africa are some of the most beautiful I've ever seen, so the bus ride alone, through valley after valley of table grapes and wineries, was drop-dead gorgeous.

Our group arrived at Inverdoorn, had a great Easter brunch of local foods, and then split up into 2 big 4x4 open-air vehicles that could take the rough trails. First our ranger took us to see some cheetahs that have been part of a restoration project; the park plans to move two of them into the wild portion of the park next week. (Bye-bye, albino springbok! They say you‘ll be the first to go, since you show up so well.) We also saw a male and 2 female lions, plus giraffes, zebras, impalas, kudus, wildebeests, a hippo, millions of birds, and a red Botswanan deer. About the only thing missing (besides Bob, who went to a botanical garden and a wine store in Cape Town) was the elephant; it’s too dry in this region, called the Karoo. We also never tracked down the black rhino.

With the Lion King soundtrack playing in my head, we headed back to the ship, which was scheduled for departure at 8 p.m., but the bus got stuck in traffic. Even though it was Easter, full road crews were out paving the freeway in preparation for the FIFA World Cup that starts in June. We got back to the ship nearly at sailing time--only to find that the harbor was too windy and we couldn’t leave! We nearly were blown into the water while walking the short distance to the ship, but once we were aboard Customs closed our entry, and then the ship sat in the harbor for another 21 hours, in full view of all the great shops and restaurants we had come to love during our 5-day stay. Many a sad soul lamented our return to iceberg lettuce, bland pasta, and classes, when such tantalizing possibilities were right off our decks. Now we are hauling ass for Ghana, trying to make up for lost time. Meanwhile, Bob and I are plotting a strategy for our return to this wonderful country.

Touring with the Fuskies

We spent one of our days in South Africa touring the wine country outside of Cape Town. We went on a tour in a van with a guide/driver, Mervyn Davidson. We had a fantastic time. Two other couples were on the tour, one that we knew from the ship and one we met on the wine tour -- a doctor and a public health educator, both of whom work at a new hospital in Botswana, the country north of South Africa where our Julia worked as an intern for the United Nations last summer. They had many interesting stories about opening a new hospital. The doctor, Edmond, was from Zimbabwe and the woman, Julie, was from California.

Now, those of you who know me won’t believe this, but the couple from the ship that we spent the whole day with are Washington Husky fans -- not just fans, mind you, but they are both UofW employees. Not in the Athletic Department, thank God, but both work in administration and they are about our age.

I know some of you may have fainted or are catching your breath at the thought of me socializing with avid Huskies. Perhaps a few of you are saying, “Well, Bob was just being kind to the less fortunate.” I do have a few friends who are Husky fans, but with those people I have always held out hope that they might be converted to right thinking. There is no hope of that with Eric and Georgia; but they are still wonderful people. There, I’ve said it. I can’t believe it, but I’ve said it. I guess I’m just going soft in my old age.

We’ve even suggested that they come and stay overnight at our house this fall when the Huskies travel to Autzen for their annual drubbing. I said we would supply the crying towels. And I said I probably wouldn’t wear my “Huck the Fuskies” shirt. They haven’t responded yet, but I would enjoy having them visit -- if we win.

Anyway, to return to the tour, we traveled about an hour outside of Cape Town to the chief wine-growing region, based in the towns of Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl. About half the drive was on a freeway and half over wide, 2-lane country roads. The countryside is idyllic, with rocky hills looming in the background over acres of vineyards. The area is fantastically beautiful. The harvest had just been completed.

We visited four vineyards in a wide geographic area and had tastings at each -- I think we counted about 26 samples in all, those of us who could still count. At one, where they do sparkling wine, we got a full 2-hour tour given by the vineyard owner, where Luana was one of the featured stars, as described below.

Tasting rooms tend to be more elaborate affairs than in Oregon, more on the Napa Valley scale. Many have restaurants. We ate at one which had absolutely delicious food, including African game, beef and Cape salmon, which is a delicious white fish that I chose for my meal. Franschhoek, at the center of the vineyard area, is considered the gourmet capital of the country, with one of the restaurants rated among the top 35 in the world.

The tour of the sparkling wine facility -- the winery is Haute Cabriere but the brand name is Pierre Jourdan -- included a lot on the history of sparkling wine and concluded with the owner calling onstage a person from the audience -- Luana -- to perform an old French ceremony, sabrage, where a saber is used to open a bottle of sparkling wine by slicing off the top of the bottle. She did it most successfully on the first try. The owner then “knighted” Luana, who performed a beautiful curtsy as part of the ceremony. Fortunately, he gave her a souvenir -- the bottle top she sliced off -- and didn’t give her the saber, or I really would have had to watch my tongue for the rest of the voyage. (Note from Luana: Malik, I’m bringing you a toy, kitty!!)

Luana and I each bought two bottles of wine -- the limit the ship allows us to bring on board in each port. That’s too bad, because we would have liked to purchase many more. There were many wonderful wines, and a number of them were at very good prices, both whites and reds. The Sauvignon Blanc seems especially good at several different wineries.

But the best part of the day was the good fellowship, even withhhhhhh (spit it out, Bob) Husky fans. There, I’ve said it again. It’s getting easier.

Table Mountain Terrorists

Looming above Cape Town is the imposing rock formation of Table Rock. It’s part of an immense national park that includes other rock formations and extends several miles down to the Cape of Good Hope. It’s beautiful. Development is limited to areas lower down on the mountains and a few coastal towns that nestle along the shorelines with fantastic beaches.

Of course, one of the chief things to do in Cape Town is to go up on top of Table Mountain to see the views -- other than the days when it is enveloped in clouds, which are known as the Table Cloth (seriously).

There are two ways to get to the top of the mountain: hike on one of several nice but steep trails or take an aerial cable car, which costs about $20 per person round trip. The cable-car journey is quick -- just a few minutes. But Luana and I, being the avid physical fitness buffs that we are, had planned to hike it. It’s a little more challenging, but we were sure we could handle it without bickering or whining: “How much farther is it? Don’t drink all the water! This trail is really steep. I have to go to the bathroom. It’s really hot!”

But that was before we heard about the pirates, or some might call them terrorists -- particularly if you were worried about headline alliteration with Table Mountain.

The night before our long-planned hike, after my 17th glass of good South African wine in a bar, I was under this table in the bar when I heard some guy with a patch over his eye whisper: “We’ll take that table tomorrow.” Well, immediately I surmised (I often surmise after several glasses of wine.) that he was part of a gang of pirates intent on capturing Table Mountain. So I knew that we had to get up the mountain early the next day to see it before the pirates took over, and perhaps to help sound a warning. So we had to take the cable car, even though we would have much rather hiked.

We made it up there in the morning, saw many beautiful views, hiked around on top -- it’s quite big up there with about 2 miles of flat hiking trails, and even had lunch at the park restaurant, all while keeping a wary eye out for pirates, of course. Somehow, they must have been delayed.

But we didn’t want to take any chances so we took the cable car down, too. You don’t want to run into pirates on hiking trails; that’s for sure.

Table Mountain was fantastic, and we’re glad we saw it before the pirates got there.

We took the open-top red tour bus down from the mountain and stopped at a luxury hotel at one of the beach towns to check and make sure the pirates hadn’t landed there. In South Africa, it seems they call Happy Hour drinks “Sundowners.” We decided to take part in this pleasant custom in the hotel while keeping our pirate watch. We spent some time there, but never did see any pirates, at least I didn’t from under that table in the hotel.

South Africa appears safe for now, but we also kept a close watch the next day -- on our wine tour.

Working with Operation Hunger

When apartheid held its ugly grip on South Africa, the white government forced black and colored families to relocate outside of Cape Town, primarily to the barren Cape Flats area to the east. One entire neighborhood at the heart of Cape Town called District 6 has a museum dedicated to the forced relocations and evictions that were intended to completely separate the races and clear out the city for whites. Due to ongoing land disputes, 45 years after District 6 was declared a white area, it still lies mostly empty and weed-choked, and the razed homes have never been replaced. It’s one of many sad chapters in the book of South Africa, with later installments on topics such as poverty, hunger, and AIDs.

But people have to live somewhere, so townships sprang up in the Cape Flats, with names like Khayelitsha and Mitchellsplain. You can see the rainbow stages of poverty here--everything from wretched rows of shack upon shack made of rippled scraps of metal, to suburban-style homes of stucco over cement blocks, pretty western in appearance. Through Semester at Sea, we had signed up for a day visiting sites in this area that are served by a nonprofit called Operation Hunger. The trip promised an opportunity to roll up our sleeves and help people in danger of malnourishment (the polite word for starvation).

Our first stop was at an AIDs/HIV clinic in Khayelitsha called Site C, where we dropped off some food supplies to a soup kitchen that provides meals to people who have come for treatment. This visit would have felt a bit voyeuristic had we stayed longer without pitching in to cook or do something -- imagine having 40 people come and stare at you while you sat in chairs in a parking lot waiting for a meal -- but it was a really quick stop.

Then we were off to a squatters’ camp called, interestingly enough, Los Angeles. LA doesn’t even qualify as a township; it has no electricity, no police services, no streets, but at least a couple of public water spigots where wells have been drilled. Eventually it may become a township when the government finally admits it can‘t just displace the residents, most of whom came to the Cape Town area 15 years ago from rural areas in search of work or health care. For now, the people who live here have pirated live wires from the next township over the hill, and the only thing keeping their barefoot children from getting shocked is the fact that the current is pretty weak by the time it travels all that distance. Little electricity means little refrigeration, so not much in the way of fresh food; no streetlights, so not much in the way of safety; not much of anything. And yet the people appeared to have a sense of hope and a desire to make things work. After seeing the filth of northern India, we were impressed at the cleanliness and the minimal trash. Some of the shacks had fresh coats of paint. The kids walk to school on the other side of the freeway, about 2 miles away. It wasn’t perfect, but we definitely felt comfortable there, and very welcome.

Operation Hunger had just received a grant from the Spar grocery chain to fund a soup kitchen in Los Angeles to feed the children five meals a week, so they wanted to do an age/weight assessment of every child in the village. The soup kitchen is inside an old shipping container. Another container houses a church. Everyone in the settlement wanted to come see who we were. With our 40 people, 37 of them about age 21, we were able to set up three scales and make quick work of weighing about 100 children and plotting their weights by age on a progress chart. The Operation Hunger folks said they love Semester at Sea because they can do in one day what it normally takes them months to do. Some of the kids tried to help in the soup kitchen, but the ladies in charge didn’t want much help and quickly reclaimed their territory. But the kids who weren’t busy weighing or plotting or going door to door to round up all the children just played with the little guys, and everyone had a wonderful time.

At lunchtime, our group went offsite to a freeway convenience store to eat our boxed lunches from the ship. Many people bought lunch there so we could supplement the soup kitchen meal with all our sandwiches, fried chicken, hard boiled eggs and apples from the ship meals. It’s amazing how much food the ship provides in a boxed lunch. We returned in time to help serve the kids their soup, which is made with a protein powder for supplemental nutrition, and then the kids did some dancing for us and just played and took pictures with our cameras.

Operation Hunger had interesting information about malnourishment. For instance, boys are more likely to be under-weight because parents keep girls at home (when not in school) to protect them. Thus, the girls are in the kitchens a lot and can eat more. Boys go off all day and play soccer, so they eat less.

I’m so impressed with the attitudes of some of our students. This neighborhood could clearly use electricity, and two of the students who went on the trip are already planning fundraisers when they return to their campuses to raise the money needed to bring electricity to LA. All I could think of after we left was how much red tape would be involved and how it might be impossible to do it, but they don’t see those obstacles at all -- they just see an opportunity to try. Good lesson to me: Stop thinking about barriers!

A side note: We made this trip on our 32nd anniversary.