9/29/11 South Africa

We are back on the ship after spending 6 wonderful days in South Africa.  Cape Town is a beautiful city that you can't wait to explore once you set eyes on it. 

Our first day there, we went on a sunset hike up Lion's Head, a mountain in Cape Town.  Our guide warned us that this was a true mountain climbing experience (and may not be a good idea for children under age 12), but I wasn't prepared for the ladders, foot- and hand-holds, and chains we had to use to get up the last part of the climb.  The kids scampered up like little mountain goats, making friends with all the college kids and guides on the trip, and proving that kids can not only do this hike, but can beat all the adults and college students up, no problem.  The dinner on top was simple, but nice, and the views were spectacular.  After sunset, we headed back down in the dark (with headlamps). I was certain that there must be a safer way down, since we were descending in the dark, but that was not the case. I did wonder what kind of a mother I was, exposing my children to possible dangers like falling off cliffs in the dark.  All of us made it back to the ship in one piece, I'm happy to report, my motherly reputation intact.

We had lots of memorable experiences in South Africa, including a wonderful, one-day safari, a scenic cable-car trip up to the top of Table Mountain to see the panoramic views, and a fancy dinner in a treehouse.  The most memorable day for me though, was the last.  We went on an FDP (faculty-directed practicum) to the Amy Biehl Foundation, which provides supplemental and after-school opportunities for children that would never have such opportunities.  It also provides a well-balanced meal once per day for the kids in it's program.  Amy Biehl was an activist against apartheid, who was stoned to death by 4 kids in a political rally.  Her parents, rather than looking for revenge, started a foundation to continue her work and help disadvantaged kids.  Two of the young men who killed Amy Biehl now work for her foundation.  It is a story of absolute forgiveness and generosity that can't help but amaze anyone who hears it. 

We spent a couple of hours driving through the townships that these disadvantaged children come from.  Picture hundreds and hundreds of corrugated steel and plywood shacks, all connected to each other, with narrow aisles between them and occasional concrete rectangular boxes that house the toilets.  Many of the people leave their doors open, so we could see inside some of the shacks as we drove by.  Some were tiny, with a small bed and table and not much else.  Others seemed to be bigger, with several connected shacks and a few separate rooms, and some seemed to have some modern appliances and TV's in them.  Some were in shambles, and others looked very neat inside. We were told that typically, when one person in the area gets a job and can pay for power, they let their neighbors splice into their power lines, and thus share resources.  Unemployment in some of these township is as high as 40%, and HIV rates are as high as 30%! 

I was just blown away by the mess that the founders of apartheid made of things.  They took housed black people from locations near work opportunities, and pushed them out of their housing without any compensation, away from sources of work, and made them start over with nothing -  thus the shanty-towns.  The vast consequences of this act were clearly not anticipated, and when apartheid was finally outlawed, the blacks had been reduced to poverty-sticken, uneducated populations.  Now the govenment must try to compensate the displaced blacks by providing them with proper housing, which it can only accomplish painfully slowly and with revenue from only 9.1% of the population that makes enough money to be taxed.  Public education, although provided by the government, is bare-bones, and many parents still can not pay the school and book fees required.  Therefore, many of the children still do not get educated.  Of note, I did not see one single white face in the townships we drove through.

Afterwards, our last evening in Cape Town, the staff, faculty and their families got the honor of getting to personally meet Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. If you check out my facebook "wall," you can see a picture of Tate giving a high-five to Desmond Tutu, with the rest of us looking on, behind him.  The reception for him was nice, but the speech that he gave to the entire shipboard community afterward was amazing.  He is clearly a deeply spiritual man, who recognizes the absurdity in distinctions between humans being based on physical attributes.  He made the point that you can not tell anything about a person's generosity of spirit, capacity for forgiveness, or anything else that matters at all, by looking at the color of their skin or size of their nose (yes, Phillips family, he did imply that our large noses do not necessarily make us superior beings :).  He was appalled that populations (such as the USA) have spent MILLIONS of dollars in a few seconds, testing nuclear warheads.  His words, and I paraphrase,  "Do you have ANY IDEA what we could have done with that amount of money to improve the lives of our people????"  He then spoke of how none of us (Semester at Sea participants) would come home the same people.  We would never again be able to ignore injustice, and we would fight for those less fortunate than us. He used very formative, compelling, inspiring language, and I had to fight back the tears.  You can just feel when you are in the presence of someone great.