Howzit??!!

Howzit? = Best greeting ever! Very good for yelling from far distances.

So I have fun weekend stories from adventures to Robben Island and other spots, but haven't loaded pictures yet so they will have to wait for next post.

Here is a quick look at an average day in the life of Ryan in South Africa during the work week:

7:30AM: Wake up, shower, toast & jam, catch a ride with Heloise & Pauline (fellow SAEP volunteers) to the SAEP office in Rondebosh (about 10 mins. from Observatory where I live)

8:30AM: Buy the morning paper, tea time, and emails! Also the best time to catch me available on gchat (11:30 PM California time, 1:30 AM Arkansas time.)

9:30 AM: Get down to work... I'm currently working on a few projects for SAEP. Furthest along is developing a system of program evaluation for the Gap Year Intern Program, a post-secondary preparatory year for high schoolers from the townships outside of Cape Town. Down the line is developing the initial projects and strategic plan for SAEP's Centre for Innovative Education, and contributing research to a general funding request presentation for the organization.

All day: Random breaks for iTunes duets by Ryan and Sanford, usually a mix of Chicago, Neil Diamond, and Motown's greatest...

5:00PM: Catch the train back to Observatory. Every other day I go for a run, which began as laps around the field hockey rectangle and has now evolved into exploration of the city. I recently accidentally ran into a psychiatric complex thinking it was a rich gated community with nice views of the city.

7:00PM-ish: Dinner at the house, which most every night is shared with Heloise and Pauline
and sometimes with our roommate Antoine. Antoine's cooking nights are glorious occasions, as he is our very own French master chef. Boots the cat usually makes at least 2-4 appearances during dinner, usually in the form of daredevil leaps over doors and windows trying to get inside.

10:0oPM: Various activities occur at this hour, but most common is reading. Coinciding with my reading the local paper every morning, I've been trying to fully immerse myself into South Africa and have been reading works on the current state of the country. I just finished "To the Brink: The State of Democracy in South Africa" by Xolela Mangcu, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the failings of the Thabo Mbeki administration and the implications they've had on South Africa's people, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Zimbabwe situation, and the current presidential elections. Other activities known to happen after 10pm are movies on Sarah's computer, emails, and catching up on baseball news...

Thats all for now, I'll post soon with stories and pictures and from recent adventures.

Also, a disclaimer: Most of the awesome pics I've been using are from the camera of Ms. Sarah Argue, the official SA photo guru.

much love to all,
Ryan

Braii Heaven

After spending most of our first weekend volunteering for the relief efforts, Team USA (Sanford, Sarah, & Ryan) set out for a weekend of exploration and fun in the “Mother City.” Here is a recap of the adventures:

Friday Lunch: African salad prepared by Asanda, a township favorite. The ingredients? Corn meal and sour milk. This will probably be the last time I ever consume African salad.

Friday Night: After two nights of salsa dancing training with Isabel and her “quick-quick-slow” gang, the moves were taken to the public for an evening at Fiesta (tapas, salsa dancing). Well not really… Sanford, who has become quite the salsa pro, got some dancing in. However, Sarah and I discovered from the previous night’s lesson that we should never be allowed to dance in public, and chose to enjoy the view from the table instead.

Saturday Afternoon: To the beaches with Heloise and Pauline! First stop was Muizenberg, the local surf spot and home to some amazing views of the town & water. Further south was Kalk Bay, where a stop for Cuban food was made. Through Fish Hoek and into Simon’s Town, a small beach village with tons of penguins roaming around the rocks and making very odd noises. All cameras were out of order, so only one shot of the penguins and scenery was obtained.

Saturday Evening: After a nice dinner at 12 Cambridge Rd., Sanford, Sarah, Heloise, Pauline, Antoine, and Ryan decide to stay in and draw miniature versions of themselves (on Flat Stanley’s.) For anyone not familiar with Flat Stanley, it is a little blank cutout of a person from a children’s book that you color and take pictures with across the world. Ginger Beebe, the first lady of Arkansas, gave them to each Clinton School student to take on their projects, with many blanks for sharing. Here are some of the participants and their flat counterparts (complete with Flat Stanley half-smile):

Sunday Afternoon: On Friday, Asanda told us that he really wanted to take us out for a day in the townships, and especially for braii at M’zoli’s Meat. Braii in South Africa means barbecue, and some research of M’zoli’s Meat turned up pictures of people sitting around tables eating from trays of barbecue. Sounds fantastic, right? What we had no idea about was the quantity of meat served on your tray. This is what our table of 7 ended up with:

Upon arriving and grabbing a table, you tell the meat counter approximately what you want. They then load piles of beef, pork, sausage, and chicken upon your tray and carry it to a room of 8 giant fire pits in the back. After, you are told to go across the street to a trailer to purchase six-packs of beer, and you sit in the sunshine all afternoon drinking beer and eating chunks of meat from the enormous barbecue platter. The whole block fills up with tables holding hundreds of people eating, drinking, dancing, and playing music. This was definitely not the most sanitary of eating experiences, and multiple meat comas were induced, but it was a truly awesome and one-of-a-kind day.

Sunday Night: Much-needed sleep.

Other fun developments of late:

12 Cambridge Rd. has a new mascot, Boots the Cat (he has little white feet.) Boots sits at our front or back door, depending on which side of the house we are making noise on, or in the closest window to where we are eating. Boots never leaves. Boots likes to run through our house when we don’t pay attention. Boots can also climb the bars on the outside of our windows to get in the top portion if it is open (about 8ft. high.) Usually a night of hanging out in the kitchen has about 3 occurrences where Boots must be forcefully removed, but we all still kinda love him anyway.

I have twice driven a car, and only once went down the wrong side of a major street (South Africans drive on the left side of the road.)

I hope all is well in your respective pockets of the world, more soon!

much love,

Ryan

Molweni

1. Lion's Head Peak, Cape Town

2. Sunset over Camp's Bay, Cape Town

3. Table Mountain, Cape Town

I know it has taken me a little bit to get this first post up, and for that I do apologize. We don’t have internet in our house yet so I have indeed been lazy about blogging. But this will be an extra long one to make up for it…

So this is the start of Day 9 in Cape Town and all 8 until this point have been action-packed. I’ll start with the small amount of bad news and move toward the better. The mood of the country is very dark right now. The violence and recent xenophobic attacks have cooled, but have left large scars. Refugee camps are being constructed outside of Cape Town to house the nearly 20,000 foreign-born Africans that have fled or been forced out of their communities in the southern portion of the country. Unfortunately, many of these families now want to leave South Africa as soon as possible. Until now, South Africa was known as “the Rainbow Nation” for its past acceptance of all peoples and extremely multicultural landscape. Many have speculated that this crisis speculates the end of the “honeymoon” of the fall of apartheid, when South Africa realizes that although equal by law, the country is still heavily and unequally divided by race. Many are frustrated, and a hotly contested presidential election awaits later this year. Some of the country’s largest papers are already calling for the current President’s resignation.

I recently attended a rally against the xenophobic attacks, in which some of the leaders in the Cape Town community spoke about the new challenges facing South Africa and the possibilities for reversing the inequalities that manifested themselves through the disgraceful actions of the last weeks. I hope this mood overpowers the feelings of hatred and frustration that currently hold such a toxic grip upon the country.

Other bad news thus far is that Sanford, Sarah, and I had a slight airport emergency when arriving in Johannesburg for our connection flight to Cape Town. The airline we were booked on went out of business a month and a half ago, but no one bothered to let us know. Luckily we found a rush flight into the Cape for $100, but it was a bit of a startling beginning to our stay here. So the lesson here for all world travelers: Double-check the existence of your airline company before leaving if you book a flight on Orbitz!

On to the good news! Cape Town is quite possibly one of the most beautiful cities in the world. (See sunset and Table Mountain pictures…) I have seen random sections of the city, but all have been equally breathtaking. Unfortunately it will soon be full-blown winter here, but the weather has been mild thus far. Walking out my front door every morning I can look up to see the peak of Lion’s Head, one of the many mountains towering over the city.

The people of South Africa are warm and welcoming, and the youth I have met thus far are so in tune with their country and its triumphs and struggles. I have a lot of exposure to the culture of people that live in and near Cape Town, the Xhosa (say it with a tongue click!)

Hard to ignore is the disparity between the beauty of the city and the terrible conditions in the townships of shacks that surround it. There are huge populations of incredibly impoverished people, commonly living without electricity or running water, within a 10 minute drive of the city’s edge. The schools in these communities are serviced by the organization I am working for.

Working with SAEP is fantastic, relaxed and challenging. I’m surrounded by a very positive environment of great and fun people. Right now the SAEP family of twenty-somethings includes myself, Sanford, Sarah, Liz, and Seychelle from the USA, Heloise & Pauline from France, Mark from the UK, Isabel from Germany, and Danielle, two Asandas, and Zandile from South Africa. Sanford and I have dubbed our office “The Nucleus” and can be heard singing Neil Diamond and Chicago tunes throughout the day.

12 Cambridge Rd: The house that Sarah, Sanford, and I are staying in is very nice, and has been home to a few appetizer and wine nights with Heloise, Pauline, and our French roommate Antoine (complete with French soundtrack.)

Other fun stuff about South Africa: traffic lights are called “robots,” great South African wine is about $4 a bottle, there are a lot of British accents, and Nando’s fast food chain serves amazing chicken & rice bowls.

I used most of my first weekend in the city driving out to the refugee mini-camps or at a donation center, but we slipped out to Camp’s Bay on Sunday evening (near the Cape of Good Hope, the southern-most tip of Africa) with Heloise and Pauline to see this amazing sunset and walk in the cold ocean. We also went to an Africa Day celebration to hear some good local music, enjoy the sunshine, and make ourselves targets for pigeon poop (Sanford got hit.)

So all in all, life is great and I am truly enjoying the adventure.

More stories soon!

much love,

ryan

1. Tiny Ryan & Tiny Heloise in a place that looks far more natural than it really was... Camp's Bay, Cape Town

2. Cold, swirly ocean

3. Dinner at 12 Cambridge Rd!

Leaving Tuesday 5/20

Hey all! I will try to keep this updated with pictures and adventure stories throughout my trip. I'm flying out of Little Rock on Tuesday afternoon and will be in Cape Town on Wednesday evening at 8:30pm South Africa time (I have no idea what time that will be in the States.) This is what is in my backpack for the next 3 months.

I won't have phone access for the summer, but you can contact me in one or all of the following ways:

email: rylewis@gmail.com
gmail/gchat: rylewis
skype: ryan.w.lewis
facebook
carrier pigeon

Sorry to everyone that I didn't get to chat with before leaving, send me fun emails!

much love,
RYAN