driving, driving, an unbelievable amount of driving

to get to Durban and back, Libby and I did an unbelievable amount of driving. cape town to durban is a long drive, but with all the wandering that lib and i did along the way, stopping at various places, we had done more than 50% more driving than we ‘needed’ to (it’s 1600km to durban, and when we pulled into our friend carey’s driveway there, we had done about 2500km). somehow every day we told ourselves that we would drive for say, 3 or 4 hours more, and get maybe 300km or more, and arrive before sunset. in fact, we often drove for like 5 or 6 hours, did only about 200km and arrived after dark. but then, even though we had a tight schedule due to school obligations and so forth, meandering along and seeing more of the country, together, was a big part of the goal, so no regrets about the extra kilometers.

also, on a number of occasions we chose to take the smaller, more windy road, and had some hilarious experiences picking up hitchhikers (out of fear, we only took women and children) and sometimes being flatly rejected by those hitchhiking. the best was a five year old boy who rode with us a few kilometers and shared some bananas and peanut butter, all the while without saying a single word.

it was, in all, good fun. we listened to cds out of a tiny little pink speaker, we read to each other about patrice lumumba and strippers and rick turner, curled up under our sleeping bags on the cold night drives, and when we were really exhausted and had to keep going through the rain we bought super sparkly water and used the momentum (and giggling) produced from our burps to stay awake and driving.

lots of breaks at random spots to pee…

we also made a few stops just to play, flipping upside down, having a coffee or a sandwhich, and so on…

we tried out a park for kids to learn about nature and so forth, but the level of the games there was a bit below our normally extremely childish desires…

we were driving doerte’s car, after she’d gone back up to berlin. she called the car “roxy,” and with us roxy crossed the amazing 100,000km mark. we had big celebrations, in the middle of the ‘big sky country’ outside of bloemfontein…

tasteless microwave popcorn…

…and that’s sparkling apple juice, if you’re wondering…

and all along the way we were reminded that south africa is a very beautiful country (speaking of the nature, of course, not of the human society)…

even the section of the country that i liked to mockingly call the afrikaner’s homeland (and therefore wanted to believe is ugly) was actually beautiful…

campfires, trampolines and amazing cliffs

libby and i wanted to go somewhere on the wild coast, but when frithjof and i had gone earlier in the year we were overwhelmed and even a bit depressed by the intensely fake-paradise of the backpackers that we stayed at. so, libby found us a much simpler and quieter campground in a place called morgan’s bay, which was just what we needed. it was a little grass hut, with a comfortable bed, but still we cooked by lamplight outside. we tried also to make a fire, but the wood we bought from them just simply wouldn’t burn. we tried lighting it multiple times, even pouring gas all over and wasting quite a bit of pages from our cool puzzle book to try to get a fire to stay lit, but no luck.

when we woke up, we played around in their fun playground…

and we invented a new style of videos, which is absolutely wonderfully hilarious…

libby was her usual playful, beautiful self, bouncing around in the little toy house…

and climbing on the rope (again with the great new video technique)…

then we went and explored these stunning cliffs that are right near the campsite. looking at these photos days and months later, i am still struck by how totally breathtaking the views are, the black of the rocks, the green of the grass, the roaring blue ocean, it gives only a small hint of how exciting it was to walk and run through there. next time in the wild coast, i learned, the point is not to drive from place to place (which takes hours on small roads, up and away from the coast and then back down again on another road) but instead to walk along these kinds of beautiful footpaths, which go for miles and miles and give unparalleled views.

libby captured the sounds and sight of these roaring waves through a secret little crack in the rocks, on video:

and up here it was best of all, and you could walk for miles like this. we would have, if we had time enough…

as it was, we had just enough time to take some of our clothes off and soak in the amazing sun and ocean and cliffs…

the heroes of the cape argus cycle tour

since i completed the cape argus in 2008, libby had held a strong desire to do it as well, if she could. by the time the race actually came around we were at the height of our most stressed out time period in cape town, feeling totally ravaged by two robberies in one week, and deeply ambivalent about what to do with our next months, our relationship, and so on and so on… in fact, emotionally at least, we were damn close to just buying a ticket together and running away from south africa as fast as we possibly could…

so, the cape argus gained a special significance. we came to feel like we must try and complete it, and that we must try together, even if it would be our last act together in cape town…

we got ourselves together and registered for the race at the last possible moment. we somehow scrambled together a couple of helmets from friends and did some emergency repairs on libby’s relatively clunkerish bike. then we got a couple of hours of sleep and woke up to the sound of pounding, brutally pounding, wind…

yup, it was one of the windiest days of the whole year, amid a week in which every other day was completely just hot and dry, not a bit of wind in the air. just for the race day, the wind was gusting up to 100km/h and more, and keeping a steady pace of 50km/h. the wind was so bad that when we got to the starting line, everyone had been delayed nearly two hours, and the MC was saying that it was the worst ever race that he could remember.

we pushed forward, insanely, with our crazy outfits, and with libby doing all kinds of crazy tricks to try and keep me motivated, like pretending to be pulling me along on my bike with an imaginary rope, singing crazy songs loudly, and so on and so on…

at simon’s town i again took a break to feel the ocean on my feet and to reflect. but unlike last year, i was already defeated feeling. already i had gone through multiple sections where i had to walk my bike, peddle on steep downhills, struggle to breathe because the wind was so strong that my mouth was being flooded with air, and being pelted with sand all over my face and body being whipped up in big clouds from the beach… since simon’s town is the last place to catch a train home, i was ready to just give up and go home. but somehow libby convinced me to carry on.

but it didn’t get much better. the wind continued, and even got worse nearer to cape point. at some point we calculated that we were going so slowly, as a result of the wind, that it would take another sixteen hours to get to cape town…

going across the peninsula was a breeze, in the best sense of the word, zooming 15 kilometres in less than half an hour, with the wind at our backs. but as we moved back up the coast towards cape town, the wind was again against us, and eventually the race organizers simply canceled the race and told everyone to stop cycling. so, just before chapman’s peak, we had to get off our bikes and wait for a big bus to take us home.

technically, then, we failed. but then again, we biked 75km in some of the worst wind imaginable. that’s not a small accomplishment. and actually, it was probably exactly fitting for where libby and i were really at in our ‘cosmic’ relationship with cape town. the city was spitting us out, flooding us with every difficulty it could throw at us. and we weren’t quite overcoming those difficulties, but we weren’t quite totally knocked out either…

and, we kept smiling and laughing…

dad n bro: crazy caves

the other thing, besides mini golf, that i was really sure i wanted to do when my brother and dad visited was to take my brother down to the caves near kalk bay. aj hesitated to make the plan with me quite a bit because my dad wouldn’t be able to make the walk and he didn’t want to do anything that would split us up. i really admire my brother’s desire to do as much as possible for us to spend time together as a family, and i think my dad really appreciated it, too. but as it was, i think we made the right choice to hike up to the caves together. one of my favorite thing about this visit was that my brother and i got time to spend together as brothers, and even, almost like as peers. we rarely see each other in recent years, and when we do we don’t usually get much time to just enjoy one another. so, it was a really unique opportunity for me to be a host for him, and to show him a part of the world that i love and have come to really enjoy.

we checked out on the internet a path that i had never before walked, where multiple caves could be found, and where you could see both oceans at once from the top. it was really cool. we weren’t the most adventurous cave explorers but we had a hilarious time checking them out, even if we only went in for a few meters, and even if libby accidentally made it impossible for us to use our flashlight…

birthday party ends at europe

libby’s friends erin & amanda:

libby & doerte:

i played some music for us and for a beautiful hawk flying above:

Jam Session with Osun Art and friends

probably my favorite part of the cape town birthday celebrations was the first night at the house of the maths family. noncedo and floyd made a wonderful dinner which we ate on the grass outside in the beautiful night air. we relaxed and talked, and then had a wild and free music night together, with special guest musician osun art. it was hilarious and beautiful.

New Year’s Eve in Marsabit, with Wingman and Bear

Mama Jean: Conquers Table Mountain

We walked from my house up through city streets till we reached the entrance of the national park. At this point my mom was asking me to check her pulse and telling me her fears of dying.

still, we relaxed a bit in beautiful deer park:

as we got further up, my mom was ready to demonstrate her tremendous strength:

by the time we reached tafelberg, the paved road that leads to the cable car, my mom was so relaxed that she was just whistling and strutting along:

some strange things we found along the way:

i had to have a moment of glory, too:

“Here we have met a Father and Son while walking on the top of Table Mountain. The Father had been born in Capetown, and they now live near the Silver Spring/Takoma Park border in Maryland, exactly where my brother Tiger lives. What a small world. The Father was saying he had not been to South Africa for 50 years, but you have to admit “South Africa has everything”. He was holding a salamander which he caught, so we took a picture of it, and them.”

our last overlook on the way down:

Hiking and Biking: The Great Cave Adventure

Libby and I looked up a hike on the internet, which took us up an amazing route from St. James station, (one past Muizenburg) winding up a small mountain (with valleys which seemed really surreal – see above) till we got to a cool cave.

Here was the view of the coastline:

amazing rock formations:

the bit-more-than-halfway sign:

more cool rocks:

finally, the cave:

and libby hamming it up inside, as usual:

we had to use a candle to find our way in the damp, dark of the cave:

coming down we wound through this forest, on a boardwalk:

and caught another view of the ocean:

before going back down the zig-zag ramp/steps down to st. james again:

wanna see the last portion in motion, and with “home made” soundtrack?

The Worst City in the World: African Leadership Academy

Putting aside for a moment my biggest critique of the school (which is that it is located in the worst city in the world, Johannesburg) there are some good things to be said about the school that Mohamed works for. The school has brought together 100 students (last two years of High School) from throughout the continent of Africa (some 30+ countries) and is teaching them a rigorous curriculum with a strong focus on social change and pan-African values. The students are brilliant, and very motivated, and so the classroom environment is much more vibrant than the average school that I’ve ever witnessed.

Of course, this is very much an elitist project (not all in the sense of being wealthy, but certainly all must be excelling amongst their peers). Wrongly, in my opinion, the students must all commit to attending the world’s “best” universities upon graduating (which are necessarily outside of Africa). Correctly, they must also commit to return to Africa to be a “leader” in their home country (or at least continent). Questionably, the assumption is that the best way to bring about positive change in Africa is through influencing the best and the brightest youth. Yeah, even theoretically, top-down methods of social change are just not that convincing. But as for the education of these 100 youths, I have no doubt that the schooling they’re getting at ALA is excellent – enviable to say the least.

And in some ways, teaching for a bunch of brilliant, motivated youth is also great. But our days with mohamed also taught us that the teachers are overworked and struggle to have any viable “life” outside of ALA. Mohamed signs his work emails, “the funky faculty phantom, the fighter with no life,” and I believe it. The campus is in a sterile industrial area, in a completely drab suburb outside of the Johannesburg beltway, totally inconvenient for pretty much absolutely everything and aesthetically offensive. They really should get the hell out of jo’burg asap, if they want the project to thrive.

anyway, the campus does have some very cute (if a bit annoying) peacocks as permanent guests:

and, at least when we were there, the teachers did make a bit of time to party:

if that photo is not convincing, check out mohamed’s incredible dance moves (remember, he’s the head of the ALA “rap” club):