May 30th Back From The Farmer's/Last Day in P.E.

Hello again friends! And just like that we're back from the weekend and wrapping up a few things during our last day in Port Elizabeth. It seems like everything flew by so quickly.

To give you a quick update, the Farm was an interesting experience where we got to do a lot of really interesting things. We were able to get up close and personal with the cultural differences between us and traditional Afrikaans farmers. We shore sheep, learned to shoot, and even got to climb one of the mountains on their property. That was pretty amazing.

That right there is a picture of the mountain we climbed. Pretty cool huh? We also got to go on a canoeing trip down to a waterfall. A few of us swam which was a bit of a bad idea considering the water was maybe two degrees colder than solid ice. But never the less, we did it! We lived! I'll try to see if we can get some pictures of that up, but the water was so cold that not many of us got great shots. That happens when you're shivering. 

As for today, we are hanging out and catching up on work and interviews while we can. Both the Apartheid group and Nycea's financial aid documentary are in interviews for their docs that seem to be going very well. I can say that because Nycea's interview is actually being conducted about ten feet away from me. They seem like they're nailing it. The conservation crew returned to SAMREC for some b-roll on the penguin feedings and to visit Tungie again. I myself sit here, typing as furiously as I can to catch everyone up on our amazing adventures. 

It has truly been a whirlwind. It's unbelievable to think that we're only a week away from home. And I haven't even told you about our morning yet. 

This morning before we came to NMMU to wrap up some work, we took a tour of the Walmer Township with Glinda, the woman who heads the Walmer Township Angels Project which works with a  multitude of organizations in attempts to revitalize and build up one of the poorest communities in Port Elizabeth. We went with her to several day cares, touring the facilities the children stayed in and getting to play with and interact with them. 

This has easily been one of the most eye-opening experiences of the trip so far. It was unbelievable to see the way that the people in these communities lived. Glinda told us about her projects most recent focus, bringing actual functioning toilets into the township, and showed us where the children in day care used to go to the bathroom. It was a shambly piece of wood over a bucket. The buildings in the township alone were barely held together, pieces of tin making up most of the walls, and houses with rocks on top of them to hold the roof on. It was unbelievable. 

But all of the children we met were amazing. They skipped rope, played soccer with us, hugged and climbed on us and our professors. They were so genuinely excited to see us and play with us that we couldn't help but love them. 

It reminded me of our social work lecture at the beginning of our trip from Ms. Natalie Mansvelt. She stressed the fact that even though these people in these townships are living under ridiculous conditions, they're still people. Their lives are of no less value. We should help in any way we can, but they aren't all walking around in misery. They were just happy to have someone new to play with.  It made all of us take a moment to think of just how lucky and grateful we are. And maybe that we can learn one day to be as happy as the adorable friends we made. 

But on to Cape Town tomorrow and to new adventures! We'll never forget what we learned in PE and we can't wait to see what's next!

May 27th On Our Way To Farmers!

This will be my last post for a few days because the next two nights will be spent about three hours outside of Port Elizabeth with Winnie and Marnus, two contacts from NMMU who own and run a farm in the mountains. We're all excited for a relaxing weekend to learn about farm life, but our drive isn't so busy that we couldn't make a stop at the International Library of African Music.

We had a little too much fun playing with the drums and the marimbas and listening to our guide at the museum explain how the other tribal instruments worked. Many of the instruments are played in large groups with each person playing a different part to create one enormous melody. Because of this some of them can only play a few notes out of the scale instead of a full range of notes. Luckily, this was not so with the marimba that Nycea used to create a musical masterpiece dedicated to our grocery story here. "Meet Me At The Pick 'N Pay" will be the next great new single, dropping soon. Be on the lookout.

But for now, lunch and then on to the farmers! Talk to you on Monday guys!

May 26th Cultural Lessons

Molweni! Kunjani?

That translates to "Hello everybody, how are you?" in isiXhosa, which is one of South Africa's ELEVEN official languages. isiXhosa is a tribal language dependent on the clicking sound of your tongue. There are three different click sounds in the language. Whenever you see an 'x' it translates to side click of your tongue, a 'g' is a palette click of your tongue, and the 'q' is a frontal click with your lips. I took a lot of notes.

It's been a very cultural day for us here in Port Elizabeth. After our fascinating lecture on the basics of the isiXhosa language, we took a cultural tour of our little town, led by a very retired teacher names Mike who told us all about the history of the area. Mike led us around to beaches, sculptures, and a beautiful park over looking Nelson Mandela Bay filled with different public art work. 

Two of the most powerful things that we saw on the tour were the public art pieces that spoke about Apartheid. The first one we saw was along a main stairway in Port Elizabeth, blanketing the entire wall. At the bottom of the staircase was a metal sculpture of a book with blowing pages. The idea of the sculpture was that the pages were blowing out of the book and along the wall showing the injustices and destruction caused by Apartheid. Each page showed a different scene whether it was a protest, a police vehicle, or a quote from Nelson Mandela. One in particular scene showed "necklacing" something that often happened in the townships when informers were caught. It's involved putting a tire around someone's neck and lighting it on fire. It was extremely powerful to see such a thing immortalized in sculpture. 

One of the most uplifting though was a sculpture dedicated to the first democratic elections held after Apartheid. At the center of the park we visited there is a long wire sculpture encircling the base of a South African flag. The wire sculpture shows people of all cultures standing in line, isiXhosa, Muslim, old, young, all creating an enormous line leading up to a triumphant metal sculpture of Nelson Mandela with his hand in the air and the words "Nelson Mandela Changed the World" emblazoned into the metal. Mike told us that they had to keep polls open for two days just to handle the enormous influx of people who turned out to vote on that historic day. 

Something that I personally love about Port Elizabeth is their devotion to the memory of Nelson Mandela. I've never seen a town so dedicated to one man. It's beautiful. We ended the day with a visit to Aya's Ceramic Studio in one of the townships in PE. A woman there makes pottery and sells it out of her house. Each piece is completely unique. She prides herself in that. 

But now we have to head home and pack for the weekend! We'll be on the road tomorrow! Updates to come!

May 25th First Day at SAMREC

Guess who got to hang out with more penguins today? US.

Today was our first visit to the South African Marine Rehabilitation and Education Center, our second penguin stop. Unlike SANCCOB which functions strictly as a rehabilitation center, SAMREC has an education component to it as well allowing us to navigate more freely around the building and interact more with their center here in Port Elizabeth.

We had met with Thomas, one of the workers who tends to the penguins and other birds housed by SAMREC. The conservation group got a very good interview with him at SAMREC about the wildlife they save and what it's like interacting with the birds. There are a lot of similarities with SANCCOB when you hear the workers at SAMREC talk about birds. Workers at both places have incredibly deep passion for the work that they are doing as well as birds with personalities as diverse as ours. Though SANCCOB did not have Tungie. 

Meet Tungie, SAMREC's accidentally mascot and pet. They saved this little guy from a nest that he fell out of and now him and Thomas are best friends. Tungie also seemed to make friends with all of us pretty quickly. Specifically Alec's hair. He even followed us around while we got more shots of the penguins.

Some of us will be back on Monday for even more penguin glory. Fabulous day here in South Africa. 

May 24th Rest Day

Nothing to report! Who deserves a break? Us. After a long and productive week of jet lag and animals and filming we are all passing out at the Beacon for some well deserved rest. We'll be back with you on Wednesday folks! We have books to read and wifi to search for :)

May 23rd First Day of SANCCOB

Another great day for the conservation doc and all of us in general, because you know what we did all day? HUNG OUT WITH PENGUINS!

We got up today and went straight to SANCCOB (South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds). There was little bit of confusion at the beginning, but we soon hopped right into the average day of the staff, learning about the work they do towards penguin conservation, getting to witness some of the feedings, and of course getting to meet the birds.

SANCCOB seemed to me to have a great mindset as far as their treatment of the birds. Their passion for what they do was also very apparent. One of our guides told us about the chicks that she is in charge of, how the chicks actually don't require as much protection as the adults. Most of the adult penguins living at SANCCOB are either permanent birds or long term rehabilitation birds, for example, many of the birds have sight problems and one bird we met has a neurological disorder where the staff had to reteach her to swim in their rehabilitation pool. There is also a bird there named Bones who was in a motorboat accident where he lost both of his feet. Thanks to SANCCOB he can still get around all right, but it's likely that he will never be returned to the wild.

We also had two more fantastic interviews for the conservation group with the staff of SANCCOB. One of the things that stuck out to me most was the idea that all of these penguins have their own personalities and ticks. They have lovey penguins, aggressive penguins, sassy penguins. Exactly like the ones at the Newport Aquarium back home. Penguins also date. Juanita (our main contact) even told us an adorable story about how even when they released a particular penguin into the wild, he came back seventy-five times for his girlfriend. 

SANCCOB was an incredibly productive filming day and we can't wait to meet even more penguins along the way.

May 22nd Second Day of Gorah

After a delicious breakfast and a little bit of tea in front of our tents, we had one more game drive today around Addo, which proved to be just as fulfilling and wonderful as last night's drive was. Today not only were there more elephant sightings, but we ran across fighting zebras and some monkeys.

The conservation doc also got some incredible interviews with our game drivers Mike and Riann, two men that perfectly embody the hospitality and wondrous air of Gorah. While it was difficult to get any solid footage of the black rhino sighting last night (it was too dark out) the conservation group got lots of incredible footage here and they're very, very happy with how their interviews turned out. While it was hard to bid good bye to Gorah and our lovely drivers, we are all incredibly grateful we got to experience the beauty of this place even for just a night. 

Good bye Gorah, we will see you again one day. Next stop penguins :)