My trip to Africa July/Aug. 2005

Out of Africa and into the Frying Pan

These are the email journals I sent from the motherland...

Week 1: There's a Zulu on my Stoep!

I arrived in Johannesburg last Thursday night. A gloriously coolevening that also brought with it my 32nd birthday. Indira and I settled in and planned our next day which would include the Apartheid museum.When you enter the museum you are given a pass. The non-whites get a whites pass and the whites get a non-whites pass. Each enters throughthe specific gate marked on their pass card and you walk down a hallway past blown up versions of passport type ID cards. During Apartheid, each non-white person must have this card on them at al ltimes. If their passcards were not in order they were jailed. They were restricted from traveling. They were routinely made to pack all their belongings and "redistributed" to outer parts of the city into black only townships.For three hours we walked through the museum watching videos and reading histories. The most potent and shocking lesson for me were 3 large screens side by side depicting video footage of the early 90'swhen Apartheid was finally dissolving. The riots against Police...the chaos in the city. Constant mobs. Gunfire. Decades of anger boiling to the surface culminating in many many deaths. The white South Africans created their own militia and there was footage of older women and mothers in polos and khaki pants running line drills with handguns.

It's amazing to me that it happened only 10 years ago. But the cities and towns are still somewhat segregated. The white suburbs have beautiful houses with tall fences and barbed wire. They still live in fear of the constant crime. We are routinely told to avoid going out at night. I think they make it sound much worse than it is but we are cautious.
I know...heavy stuff. Go watch Cry freedom and learn for yourself.

Let's move on...you must hear about Safari!

On Saturday we left Johannesburg and booked a 4 day tour into Kruger National Park for
game spotting plus a morning and night bush walk. The best part? We stayed in treehouses! The treehouse was a bamboo and thatched roof hutabout 2 stories off the ground with a balcony. So cold at night!Indira and I don't necessarily like to 'camp" but I mean...come on..A treehouse?! It Had to be done. Plus! It was in the middle of a privategame reserve and we were cautioned to be aware of the roaming buffalo,rhino's and leopards!!??
Those are three of the Big Five!

Whats the Big Five, Lola?

The Big Five are the most dangerous of all the animals. They are the"trophy" animals that everyone wants to see. They are: Elephants, Lions, Rhinos, Buffalo and Leopards.

Can you say, "Sign here for Insurance waiver?"

So you can imagine our girlish screaming when using the outdoorbathroom in the middle of the night and hearing things go bump in thedark. Indira swears there was a Buffalo rubbing its head and bodyagainst our treehouse trunk/stilts one night. I was,thankfully,asleep.

Anyway...morning comes and we drive into the park in open air vehicles. Basically a Toyota pick up truck with a raised seating canopy on the flatbed. From our perch we drove all day through the park and saw...(at super close range)...( I'm talking a meter or two...)(And when I say meters... I mean meters- cause our Americaneducational system has failed us and we can no longer ignore the restof the world. We must herald the metric system!)

Anyway...we saw...Herds of Elephants, Zebras, Giraffes, Lions and cubs, Rhinos, Hippos,Buffalo, Cheetahs, Hyenas, Springboks, Impalas, Nyalas, Crocodiles,Ostriches...Eagles, Beautiful Birds, etc etc. OH! and a leopard!Walking right down the road alongside our vehicle for like 5 minutes!Incredible!Oh Wait till you see my pictures. I got all National Geographic!"

I mean..I've been through Six Flags Safari park...but this was crazy!Cause you're like...in Africa! The park is the size of Israel forgoodness sake. And then...just to make it more interesting...something about a ball bearing or brake pad.... and our tire flew offand we broke down in the middle of the park! Oh how we laughed!...Cause that's what you do when you're in the middle of extreme danger.

So two full days of driving and searching for animals and finding them and hoping they don't crush you or eat you. Exhilirating.At night we would come back to camp and settle in round the bonfire with tea or beer and shoot the shit. Then dinner outside. You've seen 'Out of Africa' or those old Tarzan movies where they have a spread laid out in the middle of the jungle, right? yea. Like that.

Oh my God and the soup. The soup is so friggin good. Split pea.Butternut Squash. Sweet Corn chowder. Delish! Then meats and mealiepap. Mealie pap is their staple. It's like polenta meets Grits but really smooth. Not gritty.After the Braai (BBQ), we would procure more drinks from the bar and return to our seats around the fire. Someone had an ipod with speakers and they entrusted the music selection to me -(seeing as I had thatever useful DJ'ing background.)

After a few choice cuts from Marvin, Stevie and Chi-Lites, The African bartender, Ronald says to me..."Ahhh...so you are a black-white girl."A finer compliment I could not have hoped for in the Motherland.

Anyway- Our last night, Ronald was adamant about showing us a movie.We were content to sit around the fire and sleepily stare at the zillions of stars or bonfire but he was so gung-ho. So he brings out a TV and DVD player and a few hundred feet of extension cord and proceeds to set everything up on a bench by thefire as we shake our heads and try not to let him see us laughing."

Long story short it was a South African movie akin to the GeneWilder/Richard Pryor movies called "There's a Zulu on my Stoep!" Funny as it was, I was exhausted and begged off after 30 minutes of slapstick and headed to the treehouse. (Where my leopard print flannelPJ's fit in smashingly with the decor, mind you.)

Today I'm sitting in CapeTown with the immense Table Mountain looming over the city majestically. We are taking a day off from sightseeingand schedules. We flew in last night from Jo'burg and will spend three days here. Day trips to whale watch. Climb that Table Moutain. Hit the clubs and pubs. Then rent a car and drive the Southern African coast.

We've seen the somewhat intergrated cities, the Dutch/Boer/ whitecountry towns, the Safari and the Bush...but I think we're both hoping to see old school tribal villages as well.The White South Africans are kind of Like Brave New World. I've neverseen so many Blondes in my life...it's like that horror movie...Village of the damned. These perfect little blonde children and their (Editors Note:) jerk grandparents.

Apart from the Apartheid museum, We haven't seen or heard much about racism yet. We've been in the Park or traveling, but both us us are anxious to talk to some folks who can give us the low down. perhaps tonight. I hear the people here are very open with their views. Indira is African American and we heard about a restaurant inStellenbosch (wine country) that refused to serve blacks 2 weeks ago.So we're headed there this week. Oh were gunning for a fight!Anyway.This doesn't suck.More to come.

Whats the latest with Jude and Sienna??!
Love to all.
Miss Lola Belle world traveler

Week 2: ROAD TRIP!!
Still alive. No signs of malaria. Not even a bug bite.I write to you as I sip a delicious Cider beer from the Wild Coast. Indira and I had hung out in Cape town for 2 days and were prepared to climb Table Mountain when we heard that the cable car that brings youdown was broken. Climbing up is scary and exhausting enough... we're not so much hikers/climbers...so we figured we'd swing back through Capetown to tackle it when the cable car was fixed and after visiting the South African Coast. We rented a car and set off.

Ahhh the Garden Route. We planned on sandboarding or skydiving, kayaking, whale watching, etc. along the different coastal towns. Lovely scenic drive. Monkeys on the side ofthe road!(And Driving on the Left side of the road was very easy to pick up.)Anyway, We headed to Hermanus first -about 2 hours from Cape town.Nice enough. Whales off the coast. Wine tasting at at beautiful winery in the hills. Comfy backpackers with a jacuzzi under shooting star milky way skies.But we were getting restless after only half a day. It's super Anglo. Afrikaners everywhere. We wanted some....ummm color? A moreAFRICAN..errrr...NATIVE experience!So we consulted our Lonely Planet book and saw that the XHosa/Zulu tribes are a mere 10 hour drive North. We stared at each othermischievously over white wine and calamari....FUCK IT !ROAD TRIP!So we put the pedal to the medal.

Intially, We didn't think we would have enough time to head that far north when making our itinerary prior to arrival in Cape Town. But we decided to make time...cause when is the next time we'll be here?!Time is almost up!So we drive the 10 hours to Cintsa over a day and a half where a backpackers offers Tribal tours. We arrived yesterday and settled in. Took a walk on the beach then hung by the pool and watched the Londoners play Volleyball.

That night we could see (from our perch at the bar) the small fires burning in the hills around us. Apparantly, the Xhosa people believe that lighting a fire will make the Gods bring rain. Ummm...right..or burn down the county cause it's the dry season?A few of the guys that worked here ran for the hills and put the fire out by the time we went to bed.

(p.s. EVERYONE that we've met here has gotten mugged. ok well not EVERYONE. But like 7 out of 10).

(Whoops. Sorry Mom. Information you might have wanted AFTER I got home, huh?) Anyway. We're safe round these parts. Relatively. As long as they put the fires out.

So! Up at 7am for our tour. 5 of us and our Xhosa guide headed to theTranskeii region in a Landover over some serious rocky and dusty roads. At one point we crossed the Great Kei River by driving thetruck on to a ferry.Out first stop was a typical Xhosa villages. Their brightly painted huts are round and made from twigs and mud. They are farmers and live off the land. Cattle and sheep and pigs and chickens run around their yards and along the dusty roads. We learned how to make the mealie papfrom the maize, drank some foamy stuff that a medicine woman made from herbs and roots, and danced around to some drums and singing.

The women often wear a white clay on their face to reflect the sun and to keep their skin smooth. They also wear very pretty beaded necklaces. The men get circumcised at 18. Most tribe members havethere left pinkie finger chopped off when young to stave off evil spirits. Their language includes a series of clicks and clucks that sound so cool and I've been practicing.

Our next stop was cliff jump into a river down the road. The young boys ran along with our truck and I tossed them apples from the window. They watched our truck in exchange for a bag of Doritos while we walked down a path to the lake/river. We rowed a boat through a beautiful rock ravine and climbed up past the waterfall to jump 30 feet into the (cold!) water.

Then on to lunch on the beach in front of a huge shipwreck. The best for last of course...drinks at the shebeen. A shebeen is a hut/house in a village that sells beers. It's often painted pink(!!!!!). They were illegal during apartheid because blacks couldn't own businesses or drink beer for that matter. So they were very popular. They still are. It's basically a room with two tables and a"bar" at the end. The bar is covered with chicken wire with a hole bigenough to exchange money for beer. We got a few ciders and noticed the local kids peeking in at us so Indira and I headed out to make some new friends which happened easily and quickly.

The music from the shebeen blared from inside and we learned some new dance moves and took lots of pictures. It is IMPERATIVE that you show them the picture you just took. They are so down with the new digital technology. 15-20 kids crowd around you and the small screen laughing at their caught expressions. One village girl even asked me if I came to Africa to "Chillax." The slang of American teens makes its way to Africa?!

It was sad to say goodbye...one young admirer of mine pushed something into my hand as I was leaving. Unwrapping the cloth as we were pulling away...I discovered a ....bottlecap.

I love thoughts that count.

We're back at the hostel now and it's our last night. We've got to head back to Cape Town. We'll drive as much as we can tommorow then drive the rest on Wednesday and get back into town around Noon to FINALLY climb Table mountain. Thursday we fly to Jo'burg and Friday I take the dreaded 18 hour flight back to NY...Should be back in Brooklyn around 9am on saturday morning.

Would have written more but I forget how keyboards work and being round computers just doesn't make sense in this environment. You got the cliff notes. Pictures at Kickball next sunday.

xoxoxoxoxMiss L. Belle