A Good Thick Skirt

The restaurant at our hotel perches over the river bank…there is something wonderful about eating fresh mango and pineapple and watching the Zambezi river flow by.  Even though we are only about 1 km above Victoria Falls here, the river is quite lazy.  It’s very wide and weaves its way between several low islands.  The quiet munching of warthogs eating the grass blends softly into the background.  The Beware of Crocodiles sign seems unnecessary.

After breakfast we went to Victoria Falls.  It was very different than the last tir me I was here; then it was the end of the rainy season, now it is nearing the end of the dry season.  Even though there is much less water going over the falls, it is still an awe inspiring sight, and the constant rainbows add a magical touch.  Last time I was here it seemed full of German tourists here, this time they all seem to be British. We saw two elephants on one of the islands in the middle of the falls; sometimes they swim over there, and sometimes they get caught by the current and end up there. They looked very peaceful.

We ended up the day at a lodge that overlooks the savannah and a watering hole.  Sometimes big animals come there to drink, but tonight it seemed that it was only storks and vultures.  There is a hiding place dug into the ground right next to the waterhole and for a tidy sum of money you can spend the evening there.  There are no guarantees though, you might spend the money and see  a few birds, or you might see elephants, water buffalo and the occasional lion.  There are also crocodiles in the waterhole, so you might be right next to an impromptu meal as well.

Yesterday an elephant killed a tourist, so crocodiles aren’t the only things to worry about.  The only animal we saw was a hyena…the first one I’ve ever seen. I thought he was quite pretty, reddish brown with dark spots, but my African friends assured me that he was very very ugly.

We had a really interesting discussion today about why we say that Livingstone “discovered” Victoria Falls, when it was here long before he was.  He showed up here November 16, 1855  and landed on the same island where we saw the elephant. It would be more accurate to say that he became aware of it, or even that he stumbled upon it.  I looked it up and found that this is an ongoing debate, but the recognition of someone as a “discoverer” in Victorian England had a slightly different meaning than we use it today…it was heavily based on being the first person to get information about it into print.

This led to a discussion of post-colonial education, and why children in Zimbabwe had to learn the names of Canadian provinces.  All I learned about Africa was odds and ends: the Nile river,  Livingstone, the Tuaregs and  Mount Kilimanjaro.  I also learned about the Limpopo River from bedtime stories, and it was with some amazement that I realized that we had crossed it on our way here.  If you don’t know the story, it’s The Elephant’s Child, by Rudyard Kipling, “Then Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, ‘Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out.’

We left this morning for the 450 km drive to Victoria Falls. It  was chilly, but bright and sunny, a perfect day for a drive.   Along the way there is a lot of land that used to be farms, and is now either lying fallow or in smallholdings.  I asked about that, and the explanation sort of makes sense.  In 1980 at independence, land was taken away from white landowners and given to indigenous people.  Unfortunately there was no particular plan for doing this, and the people who got the land were not necessarily ones who were familiar with farming practice.  The workers from the large farms did not get land as they had been tainted by their long association with white people.  The people who got the land had been subsistence farmers who had been driven off the land by Cecil Rhodes.  Therefore, their dream was to go back to smallholding, which they have done.  The problem with this is that they don’t produce any extra food to sell to people living in the city and there have been serious food shortages here. The other people who got farms during the reallocation of land were friends of the government who lived in the city and had no interest in, or capability for, farming. The government is trying to solve this now by taking over land ownership, and leasing to people.

In many ways driving across the countryside reminded me of driving across parts of Canada.  Miles and miles with no people, and then small settlements.  We stopped for a picnic beside the road and only one bus and three cars passed while we were there.  Much of the road runs alongside a nature reserve. It was set up by Cecil Rhodes, and many of the poor farmers have regarded it as a white thing…therefore they steal the wire from the fences to fence their own kraals. It’s quite odd to drive along and see the stiles climbing up and over nothing.  The problem is that the wire kept the animals in, and now it’s gone, they wander about and eat people’s cattle, and occasionally their children.

We are staying at a wonderful lodge overlooking the Zambezi River just above Victoria Falls.  There are warthogs grazing on the lawn below and keeping it neatly cut.  There is a hippo named Sebastian who apparently appears some nights and wanders about.  We sat out on our balcony watching the river go by and eating the remains of our picnic because we were just too lazy to walk over to the restaurant.

Best new expression I learned today, “I went to your office and I met your absence”.

Bulawayo

We had a lazy day. Ray brought all of us coffee or tea in bed, and I told him that with that kind of service I might never leave.  Buhle and Helena went to church and I helped Ray to put away the things we had carried from South Africa, and then we went to the market.  First stop, a street market to buy vegetables – sweet potatoes, bananas and tomatoes.  Then on to the supermarket to buy some other odds and ends.  There is a small white community here, and they all seemed to be at one supermarket, Food Lovers.  We did get a couple of strange looks from people…perhaps mixed couples are not common.  We also went to the TM market, with very few white people, but we didn’t get any looks there.

Ray drove me around town so I could see the university, the courthouse, the city hall and some other parts of the city.  The streets are very wide  – enough so that there is angle parking down both sides, and a row of angle parking down the middle, and still enough room for two driving lanes in each direction.  Many of the buildings were build in the 1930s and are really attractive single story buildings covered with stucco and painted white.  Some of them have run down since independence (in 1980) but you can see that there has been some effort to begin to refurbish some of them.

Best sign seen while driving around town, “Male circumcisions available at the eye clinic”. I wonder if they check your eyesight at the same time?

When we got back to the house, I cooked brunch for everyone, and then we sat around on the verandah and read, and generally did nothing at all. Helena is from Ghana, and she cooked a Ghanaian dish for dinner – chicken groundnut soup.  It is essentially a stew made with chicken, onions, chilies and peanut butter.  It goes with balls made out of pounded rice.  The whole thing was delicious, and I will try to make it at home, but perhaps without the chicken feet.  I watched her cut the toenails off, and thought that chicken pedicures were perhaps not my forte.

We didn’t actually set off at 5 as we had planned; we had to mill and for a while first and then look for all the things we had forgotten, and get  ourselves organized, and then check if we’d actually packed all the things we needed, and lock the house, and then go back in the house for pillows and blankets, and then set off.  We still left in time to see the sun rise: a perfect orange ball.

We started north on the Capetown to Cairo highway.  It  was proposed in the 1860s to tie all of the British colonies together but large parts of it were never completed. The British Empire collapsed faster than the road could be built.  The first guy who tried to complete the drive was killed in 1913 by a leopard in Rhodesia, so he didn’t make it all the way.  Now you can apparently make it all the way with a four wheel drive, as parts of the road, especially across the desert, are still very poor. According to Google it takes 188 hours to drive.  From Pretoria to Bulawayo is just over 800 km, so I feel like I’ve had a brief introduction to it.

We stopped along the way for a picnic breakfast and a stretch.  Just before we got to the South Africa – Zimbabwe border I noticed a lot of car dealerships.  Apparently they sell o used cars from Japan, but the powerful lobby of car manufacturers in South Africa have made it so you’re not allowed to drive them in South Africa.  After you buy the car, it is trucked to the border, and there is an office there to get licence plates and buy insurance.  The cars can’t even be towed, they have to be carried, so there is a whole other industry  of trucks to carry the cars a distance of less than 5 km.  One of the main advantages of travelling with friends from other  countries is that they don’t mind all my questions, or mind explaining things to me.

When we arrived at the border, my heart sank.  The line up was over 1 km…I got in line with the other two women while Ray went to get the documentation for the car.  Then he said that we should follow him, but Helena decided to stay in the line while we went to see what was going on, so we wouldn’t lose our place in the line.  Ray is a tall and imposing man, and somehow he found another place for us to get to a desk, and sent me back to collect Helena, who was already melting in the sun.  We walked back to the front of the line, and somehow into the middle of a line and out the other side.  Helena was worried about losing me (not likely due to my colour, but perhaps possible that I could get left behind due to my Canadian inability to push through lines).  She kept calling me, and finally a young woman turned to me and asked, “Are you Margaret?”; when I said that I was she just put her had on my back and pushed me firmly up ahead.

We ended up in a room and by some kind of clustering (I couldn’t describe it as a line up) we got to the desk and got our passports stamped.  When it was my turn Ray stood beside me to make sure no one would push in front of me.  As we went back out to get the car, I realized that I had only seen part of the line outside– it actually curled all the way around the building before it entered.  When we got the car, we still had a couple more checks of our passports and documents.  Throughout all of the offices, the South African immigration auth aorities had posted their mission statement, “To provide world class immigration services.”

All of this was just to leave South Africa. Next step, entering Zimbabwe.  I was the only one who needed a visa, so I had to go in that line by myself.  It was much more like a line up and less like a crowd.  The procedure was a little odd, however, and it explained why at any one time there appeared to be three people being served.  The first time you go to the counter, the officer gives you a form to fill in, and tells you not to go back in the line, but to come back to the counter.  Back with my form, I am standing there with another person who is just getting their form.  The officer takes my form, and tells me it is $75 USD, even though their website says 50.  I had just checked the night before,  to make sure that I had enough cash.  When I mentioned it, she said that had just raised it, and the web site would get updated…She took my money and gave it to another guy and told me to stand at the side.  From there I could watch the other guy:  he filled in a form with a carbon copy, with all of my passport information on it – all of the information that I had just written on the form that I completed, plus the serial numbers of the $20 bills that I had paid.  Then he wrote all of the same information in a ledger, and went to the safe to get my change.

When this was all done, he told me to back to the counter to get my visa.  So I was getting my visa, the person who had filled his form was paying and someone else was getting their form.  Thus, three people being served at the same time at the same counter.  The first officer then filled in the visa, with a carbon copy, with some of the same information as  the ledger, the receipt form, and my original form, and stuck it in my passport.  Once everything was thoroughly stamped, I was free to go. I wonder if they’ve ever considered using the computers that are sitting on every desk?

Back at the truck, we just had one  more step to go.  The customs officials looked at our declaration forms, looked in the back of the truck, and let us go.  Perhaps the sight of three sweating women made him cautious.  Other vehicles had to unpack all over the parking lot.  Many of them were very full, as vendors go to South Africa to buy goods to sell in Zimbabwe.  Perhaps the most surprising thing to me were the many four foot long bags of Cheezies…The best sign I saw in this customs process was one over a counter that said TIP PROCESSING.  I have no idea what that means.

Formalities completed, we set off again northwards. Surprisingly, the whole thing only took us about two hours, but without Ray, I would still be in the first line to leave South Africa.

We had an uneventful trip the rest of the way.  Zimbabwe is much poorer than South Africa, and we saw many donkeys and donkey carts beside the road.  One of the carts was pulled by four donkeys, and appeared to be made out of an old car chassis. The young boy driving it was standing up, and seemed to be having fun racing along beside the road.

We drove into Bulawayo just as the sun set – the same orange ball that we had seen rise in the morning.  Stiff and tired, we ate and fell into bed.

Pretoria

A lazy morning packing, a walk in the sun, and then off to the airport to return to Johannesburg.

The man next to me was an engineering manager for Marlborough tobacco.  We had a great conversation while he explained to be the problems of untaxed tobacco and how it gets into South Africa.  Apparently bad guys set up small factories in containers, and then set up somewhere and make cigarettes.  If the authorities are getting too close they just load the container-factory on the back of a truck and take it somewhere else.

He told me that their biggest selling product in South Africa is pipe tobacco, which surprised me because while I’ve seen lots of people smoking, I haven’t seen any smoking pipes.  He explained that it is mostly purchased by poor people who roll it in newspaper to smoke it.  Their second best selling product is snuff…mostly used by women whose husbands don’t want them to smoke.

He was on his way to Turkey to take over the management of a factory that the company had just purchased.  The strangest thing of all, however, was that he looked like a Marlborough man – and I didn’t have the nerve to ask him if that was a bona fide employment condition.

When we arrived at the airport, three of us walked out together, Helena, Buhle (both African)  and me.  Even though we were walking closely, the taxi touts singled me out to pursue…obviously even if equality is the law here, there are still some things colour related.  I wondered how back women get taxis here, and Helena said they have to yell at them.

Finally at Buhle’s house of the night – we set off tomorrow for a week’s travel in Zimbabwe. It will be fun, once we get over the shock of starting off at 5 am.  Apparently we have to leave that early in order to get to the border before the immigration people knock off for lunch, in order to be sure to get through the border.   A new adventure awaits!

Pretoria

Yesterday was one of those days that a person will remember forever.  After my early morning meeting, I set off with a friend on a journey of discovery.  I hired a car and driver for the day, made a list of three places I really wanted to see, and we set off for a drive in the countryside. Even the weather co-operated: warm and breezy with a clear blue sky.

Driving down the coast was amazing.  The small towns perch between the mountains and the sea. They’re not really mountains, more like big piles of rock and flattened on the top.  Many of them are reddish and you can clearly see the layers in them.  Muizenberg was one of the first ones we came to – a nice mix of old houses and new ones.  Many of the old ones date back to the early 1900s and have thatched roofs and are finished with a kind of stucco and painted white. From a distance, the scenery looks strangely Mediterranean. We passed a couple of new ones perched halfway up the mountain with their own private cable car!  Easy to see that it doesn’t snow or ice up here.

There’s lots of surfing along here, but lots of sharks too.  For people who want to swim, there are concrete swimming pools that fill up with water when the tide is high, and then the water stays there when the tide goes out.

Best sign seen along the road, “You’re not stuck in traffic, you are traffic”

Next stop: the south coast at a penguin breeding ground.  It’s the first time I’ve ever seen them not in a zoo and they are every bit as cute in the wild.  There were lots of babies too, many of them brown and fuzzy. I didn’t even know that penguins lived in Africa.  These are African penguins, formerly known as Jackass penguins because their call sounds pretty much like a donkey.  There were lots of gulls too, apparently because gulls eat baby penguins, another reason not to like them.  There were many adult penguins sitting on nests, and more or less sitting on their babies.  Their nests are more or less holes in the sand filled with dried grass.  In one of the nests there were two babies, and the adult seemed to be fairly precariously perched on top.

I thought the day couldn’t get any better, but then we went to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. It’s a strange feeling to stand in a place that you have heard about all of your life, and read about, and heard stories about.  Cape Point is where the warm water from the Pacific side meets the cold water from the Atlantic side, and it’s one of the windiest places I’ve ever been in my life.  The original lighthouse was erected in 1860, but the weather was so bad that it was frequently hidden by fog.  After many shipwrecks, they built another lighthouse lower down.

I climbed up to the old lighthouse – it was prefabricated and then moved into position.  I would really like to know how they got it up there.  It’s so steep and windy that the lighthouse keeper lived in a little house down below.  The Cape of Good Hope is not actually the furthest south point in Africa, but it was the point where early sailors travelling south turned eastwards, and the beginning of really rough water. It’s hard to believe when you face south that the next stop is Antarctica, and it’s over 6000 km away.

When I was completely windblown, we went to a winery in Constantia. They’ve been making wine there for over 350 years, and it was absolutely beautiful to see the miles of vineyards spreading up and over the hills.  There was a restaurant there so we stopped to eat, and enjoy a glass of wine (or two).  We were able to eat outside, the sun was just warm enough and we were protected from the wind by the buildings.  There’s something magical about eating a good meal with friend, looking out over the countryside.

Last step of the day was to drive back to Cape Town on the western side of the Cape. This is where the rich people seem to  gather, judging by the houses and cars.  It’s easy to see why – long curving white sand beaches in small bays, less wind, and a more gentle slope to the mountain so houses can be built higher and higher and guarantee a view. As usual, it was the older houses that interested me – some of them looking like castles.

Finally back to the hotel.  I lay down on the bed, intending to get up and write in a few minutes; woke up when it was dark to crawl into bed, and had a luxurious sleep.

Cape Town

Today was the AGM, an event that I used to try to avoid.  Unfortunately, I know far too many people now, and so it’s hard to slip out unnoticed.  The meeting was as tedious as always…most of the things that have to be done are legal requirements of the Dutch government,  and don’t contribute much to anything.  I know very little about the Dutch government, but if the rules that this organization runs by are any example, it may be a little overly zealous in its regulatory function.

The best part of the meeting was actually watching the translators.  IFLA operates in seven languages, so all of its big meetings have a lot of simultaneous translation going on.  From where I was sitting, I could see into the translation booths, which were perched high up above the podium. There were 12 translators, so I was trying to watch their lips to figure out the relationship between 7 languages and 12 translators…are some languages easier?  is it harder to get translators for some languages?  Enquiring minds want to know.

Dinner tonight, with the Copyright committee, was at a very classy restaurant in a gated area of Cape Town, at the Cape Grace Hotel.  It’s quite expensive, as hotels go, but the meal was very reasonable.  The menu included some local options: springbok, kingklip, extremely large calamari and something that looked like a small orange mussel. I had chicken.

Generally when committees go out for dinner, we just split the bill, but tonight we were treated by the librarian from Johns Hopkins University, which was really a treat. He said it was because it was so reasonable…but there were 15 of us, so it was still quite a stretch.  Food is remarkably reasonable priced here…most of the entrees at dinner were between 150 and 200 Rand, which translates to about 15 to 20 USD.  South African wine is also remarkably cheap…often about 100 Rand for a bottle, so about $10. Taxis are also cheap – I don’t think I’ve taken one for more than $5, except for the ride in from the airport.  I have no idea, however, how much money people make. I just looked up librarians’ salaries, however, and they average 170,000 per year, or$17,000.  They must find it a shock when they travel to North America for meetings.

Cape Town

The day was the usual round of meetings.  Between committee meetings that I have to go to, and catching up with colleagues from other countries who want to update me on projects that we are involved with, the days go by very quickly.  It would all be improved with better tasting coffee.

This evening was the cultural evening – a regular event at these conferences.  There are about 4000 delegates from all around the world, and the hosting country likes to showcase local talent.  This evening started with a parade of men in silver suits playing various instruments and dancing, leading everyone into the hall.  It wasn’t something that I would normally identify with Africa, it seemed more like New Orleans, but I remember that they had the same kind of music last time I was here.

The entire ground floor of the conference centre was set up like a fairground with different things happening in different places. In one area they had the “Big Five”: Africa’s most famous wild animals, reputedly the five most dangerous, presented by actors on stilts.  They were lots of fun and were there for photo ops…I had my picture taken with the leopard.

In another area they had drumming.  There were three guys who brought about 50 drums.  The audience had all different sizes of drums.  One of the guys set the rhythm and got the audiences all going together.  Sometimes this took a lot more time than others- it seems that librarians don’t necessarily have a good sense of rhythm.  Once all the drummers were going in the same rhythm, the three guys played their drums in completely different rhythms; it was very compelling, and it’s easy to see why so many cultures use drumming traditionally.  It is a much different feeling to be part of it than it is to listen to it – with very little effort, the group pulled together.

There was also a main stage with three “traditionally built” women singing American hits of the 70s and 80s.  They were dressed to impress: red sequinned dressed, red feather boas, red over the elbow gloves with large jewelled rings, and enormous Afros.  Their lipstick, naturally, matched their dresses.  It had a very Motown feel to it, but engaged the audience – there were lots of people dancing.

The food was a good reflection of Cape Town – different buffets with Cape Malay, seafood, Indian and traditional African food.  The only problem was that it was quite dark in the hall and buffet dining in the dark brings the potential for surprises.  Much of the time people had no idea what they were eating, particularly if they were not familiar with Cape Town or African food.  Plenty of South African wine made it all work…

Cape Town

I’ve spent the past two days watching the progress of the men across the street painting a building.  The building is finished in something that looks like stucco. It’s three storeys high, and is quite long…it has at least four separate businesses in it.  The amazing thing about the painting is that they are doing it with brushes!  They are actually making surprisingly good progress, but it is strange to watch their progress…set up a ladder, climb up the ladder with a large bucket of paint, paint everything within reach, climb down the ladder, move the ladder over, climb up the ladder, repeat.  Today they have the ladders balanced on the second floor balconies so that they can reach the gable ends.  What makes it nerve wracking for me is that it’s quite windy out, and they are up above a busy street.  I am reminded again that safety is a luxury.

Best quote overheard  today, “The session taught in Spanish was in Portuguese.”

Cape Town

So I’m on my way to the conference centre this morning, strolling along at leisurely pace and enjoying the sunshine…and I’m not thinking about much. I’m keeping an eye out for anyone who might be a threat or a nuisance, but honestly those people seem to prefer to do their mugging at night.  All of a sudden the two women walking behind me start shouting in a threatening way so, and startled, I look around to realize that there is a man waggling his equipment at me.  If it hadn’t been for the ladies shouting, I probably wouldn’t have noticed at all…

As soon as the shouting started he gave it one more waggle and then put it away.  Being me, instead of feeling threatened, I ended up feeling sorry for him.  Imagine giving it all he had, and I’m walking on oblivious to the show.

Needless to say, the rest of the day held nothing so exciting.