Refugees welcome

A man lived with his wife and two dogs and three cats in a village in the north of Germany. He ran a small business and in his spare time he took out his pony and trap, driving the long straight field tracks among cows and corn.

When he found out that his village of 500 inhabitants was going to house 27 refugees in a house next door, instead of worrying about terrorists and crime and headscarves he volunteered to organise a donation drive. The council would provide the house with beds and refrigerators and wardrobes, the bare minimum, and the village would provide the rest.

Within two weeks the villagers had collected crockery, TVs, sofas, towels, games and mops, coffee machines and bedside lamps and blankets and spare bedding. Everything in fact that makes a dormitory into a home. One evening twenty people arrived to unpack and sort, to carry furniture and stock kitchen cupboards, to hang pictures and set up stereos. By the end of the evening the three flats in the house had been made homely, welcoming. They are now organising German lessons, driving rotas and legal help. The man is my brother. I am very proud of him.

I am currently writing a book about my mother's wartime experience. The centre piece is turning out to be their fearful evacuation to the east of Germany and her return home in flight ahead of the Russian army.

In 1945 she walked, separated from her parents and sister, hundreds of kilometres to escape the devastation, dependent on the kindness of strangers. She was twelve. She died last year. I like to think our support for refugees today is also done in her memory.

An Easter outing

We pick up Heather at 9am. The sun is blazing, the long weekend is upon us, it's time to get out of town. Hartebespoort Dam is easy to get to, so that's our aim for today. Everyone else seemed to have the same idea, so the little town is busy by the time we get there, the main road clogged with visitors. As the closest resort to both Jozi and Pretoria, Hartebespoort consists of holiday homes and retirement communities. It's all very Afrikaans, as Heather points out, although I can't really tell, a white South African looks like another to me.

The signs of autumn are upon us

We have two destinations in mind today, perfect and easily digestible both: the newly renovated cablecar going up the Magaliesberg and the film set of the comedy musical Pretville (Afrikaans link).

Hartie's Cable Car

Cable car first, to avoid the after lunch crush. But when we get there, a queue is already building, the car park full of SUVs and bakkies. Stuart gets tickets while we start queuing up the stairs. The lift was built in 1973 with Swiss equipment and know-how, but closed down in the 80's, only re-opening last year. It's a pretty nice renovation, with a few shops and cafes, clean toilets and an organised system to maximise passengers. A ticket collector checks the queue to match groups to always fill each carriage with six people. Everyone is happy to jump the queue. We wind our way up the ramp until we enter the station hall, a big room open at the end where the carriages slide in and out on overhead wires.



The lift cars are small, green and glassed in. They keep moving as passengers get out and in. We have to swap seats to balance each other's weight, then the car slides off with a big whoosh like a fairground ride. Suddenly, at great speed, we are above the car park, and then above the wild hills. Underneath is a thicket of green trees, red earth, yellow rocks. We gain height and the valley unfolds below us. In the distance the green-blue of the dam blazes in the sun. Behind it low hills point the way to Joburg, while to our right and left the eroded slopes of the Magaliesberg step away from us in geometric uniformity. Below me I can make out a thin path winding uphill. Above me the slack lines of the cable connection hold us in the air.

The threesome opposite us, a couple and their lady friend visiting form Cape Town, smile at our excited exclamations at the view. The visitor was not impressed. Having the table mountain cable car on your doorstep, this must be a comedown. I am intrigued: by the sheer cliffs we pass and the trees growing stubbornly out of a tiny crack in the rocks; by the possibility of seeing animals; by the loud fresh green against the harsh dry red soil.

The ride is over too soon, and we step off the moving cart at the top station. A walkway guides us around and up the hill with pointers along the way. It's hot, with children jostling to climb the rocks on the edge of the hill, nervous parents holding on to their hands to prevent fatal falls. Haartebespoort spreads below us in a hot haze. We can just make out the sailing marina, the main road and blotches of retirement estates.

Pretville

Pretville's hairdresser set

Next we backtrack to Pretville, the film set for a 50s Afrikaans musical. It's an incongruous place, a fake ice-cream coloured confection used to film an all-singing, all-dancing spectacle of history white-washing. While the Group Areas Act was being designed to force families from their homes, the diner served milk shakes and the pharmacy treated babies with colic.

An innocuous-looking police car is parked in the square, dinky and cute. I have the overwhelming sense that it is missing a black offender of the pass laws in the back. The car repair shop lacks an oily labourer, and the tiny prison tucked away behind the children's clothing store really should have been staffed with ANC supporters. The place feels like a lie, all of us white people (unlike the cable car, there are no actual black faces at Pretville) wandering about this movie-glossed version of a reality that never was.

the sweet shop

Unlike the photos in a photo book I saw recently, where the poverty of mind and life, the harsh conditions of the Karoo, the wiry stubbornness and hateful relationships with blacks was clear and unmistakeable, here all the issues have just been airbrushed out of the picture. I guess the 50s in South Africa is just not a a historical period that lends itself to bubblegum entertainment.

On the way home, by way of irony, we passed Diepsloot, one of the biggest 'informal settlements' just north of Joburg. This woman was cutting straw from a fallow field across the township to sell as roofing material. No pink here.

You can see more photos on Flickr:

www.flickr.com

Has John Cleese been moonlighting?

Looking at the endless roadside portraits of former and current heroes of Syria, which appeared in regular intervals along the motorways, we couldn't help but be weirded out by the strange resemblance between former Syrian president Hafez Al Assad (father of the current president) and comic genius John Cleese - it got us to wondering about the opportunities for hilarity that Cleese would have undoubtedly found in the American accusation of Syria as part of the Axis of Evil or the local destruction of Danish cheese during the demonstrations against the Mohammed cartoons. Plus, one of Assad's sons was called Basil, so there has to be a connection there somewhere, surely? Judge for yourself:

John Cleese

Hafez Al Assad, or is he?

Ethiopia Roundup

Arriving in Ethiopia, after the Marsabit road ordeal, was like returning to the real world from a wild and (potentially) dangerous frontier. On the Ethiopian side of the border there were hotels and tarred roads, and the metropolis of Addis Ababa beckoned. We had not made it to Lake Turkana - another time - but we had got as far as the remote and mysterious land of Abyssinia. And it defied all our expectations. We had heard conflicting views from fellow travellers coming south: it's amazing, beautiful, exotic, with friendly people and delicious food. Or: Ethiopians are horrid, they hate foreigners, stone throwing and pushy begging is the norm. Ok, so everyone either loved or hated Ethiopia, everyone had a strong opinion. What was it going to be for us? From Moyale with its dreary hotel we drove straight up north, not looking left (Omo valley) or right (Bale mountains), and finally stopped at Awassa, a workaday town on the edge of a Rift valley lake. Another few hours hop took us to Lake Langano (there is a sting of lakes following the Rift Valley south), where we finally found a place we wanted to stay for a few days. After getting the car fixed up in Addis Ababa and procuring more cash in preparation for ATM-less Sudan (http://rabbitproductions.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-money-lessons.html) we left for our version of the historic northern loop, and the mystical rock-hewn churches of Lalibela (http://rabbitproductions.blogspot.com/2009/11/lalibela.html). Leaving the Rift Valley behind us for the last time we scaled the highlands to Gonder and a few quiet days at Lake Tana with Tim and Kim (www.timandkimvillage.com).

And that was Ethiopia. We spent almost three weeks, but it felt like days. As it turned out the people were stunningly helpful once we got to talk to them, but if we just stopped by the road to look at the view or dive into a shop, we would be crowded, people staring with no sense of allowing for personal space, and once we did have a stone thrown at us from nowhere, and good shots that the Ethiopians are (they use slingshots to keep the birds out of the fields) they hit one of our new solar panels. So there is a weird disconnect between people who couldn't do enough for us (hello, Global Hotel), people who gave us their insight into Ethiopia (Thanks, Tim and Kim, Getaye, Alex, Zabene, Zegaye, Daniel) and the anonymous stone thrower together with the never-ending phalanx of children shouting "Gimme Money!" Like many other things in Ethiopia, it remains a mystery.

Ethiopia was surprising vistas of mountains, endless hills and valleys covered with fields and grazing; it was eroded volcanic plugs sitting in the midst of fertile lands like squatting giants; it was another beginning for the Nile (the Blue Nile this time) from Lake Tana, which carries 90% of the water that keeps Egypt alive; it was tea coloured lakes languishing placidly in the valley of the Northern Rift, surrounded by nothing much more than silence. Ethiopia was the last we saw of the Rift Valley, a geographical feature we had followed north ever since we arrived at the slice of water that is Lake Malawi, and what a goodbye it was: twisting Italian-built roads took us up and up and up to the cool and windswept highlands, looming mountainsides tamed by the need for farm land with terraces and small irrigation projects, coffee farms with their drying frames, and endless villages along the road, houses fenced by cactus or acacia hedges, herders with goats, donkeys, humpbacked cows, camel caravans and the ever present women carrying water containers from the pump to their homes.


Ethiopia was also surprisingly developed. The road infrastructure was new and well-maintained and where the road was unfinished we saw constant work: graders preparing surfaces for new tar; men and women tightly wrapped against the wind and dust carrying large rocks to the side of the road; diggers far below chomping holes for drainage and culverts - a strange mix of high and low tech. Most of the country seemed electrified, judging by the ever present cables running alongside the roads and into the hills. In fact, when we were in Lalibela, it was a surprise to see the outline of the village by the lamps shining in the windows, a sight we had forgotten since the long-ago days of Namibia. The mobile network is so-so, but considering the remoteness of many places it's amazing it exists at all. Since the internet relies on mobile networks, we were cut off from our web fix for ten days, giving us a nicely disinterested view of the world for a while. We saw school children in uniforms every day (although we found out that schools teach in two shifts, which can't be good for the quality of teaching). As opposed to most of Africa we found that pretty much anywhere had running water, but in keeping with most of Africa, hot water was erratic and water pressure, well let's just say it was not all that.

Ethiopia is unique in Africa: a script with 200 characters that looks like something JRR Tolkien might have invented; octagonal churches topped by elaborate crosses and filled with fantastical frescoes like involved comic book stories; very varied building styles, from huge rondavels to two storey Tukuls, from groups of neat square huts surrounded by high walls with elaborately painted front gates to peaked reed domes topping the central house in a compound, as well as faded Italianate rows of flats and glass fronted skyscrapers in Addis Ababa. Its people, half African, half Arabic with a different look altogether: lighter skinned with angular features, tall and handsome in a new way; a long long history (dating all the way back to King Solomon) intersecting with the empires of Egypt, the rise of Christianity, with Portuguese as well as Indian influences, mentioned by the Greeks and Romans as the faraway land of Punt or Abyssinia. Ethiopia has a palpable identity we have missed in previous countries with their indelible impression of colonialism and not much remembered history before that. Here there is a church that has been keeping records for a thousand years, there are artefacts from former glorious times, there was a royalty until recently that counted its (imaginary, but nevertheless respected) roots from the mystical love affair of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Like Egypt, Iraq and China, there is a pride in having been one of the first great civilisations, and in this case we had the added pleasure in finding a culture that has not been turned into clichés (it's hard to look at Pharaonic culture and not see The Mummy).

Kenya roundup

At one point it seemed as if we would never leave Kenya, as if we would bounce back and forth from Jungle Junction campsite in Nairobi in ever decreasing circles, attached by a rubber band to the little bit of easy living we could find in East Africa.

We arrived from Tanzania on a car repair mission, then, suspension repaired and with an improved double suspension, we headed out to Maasai Mara and on to Uganda. We returned to Nairobi to meet up with Mark and Martina (and to say goodbye to Merryl, who left us for the other side of the World), left again for a short visit to Lake Elementaita north of Nairobi. Then we returned again on our way through to the South, for a lost week at the beach, diving and dozing. Returning for the last time to Jungle Junction we finally got ourselves ready to move on to Ethiopia (which was not without its hiccups) but we finally got out of Kenya, despite all signs to the contrary.

Why was it that we drifted round this country for such a long time? We stayed here longer than anywhere else, criss crossed the country in an aimless pattern, spent the a whole week in one place, the longest time on the trip so far, and returned to some places multiple times, something we hadn't done anywhere else. Was it that we were glad to be somewhere we liked, as opposed to the unpleasantness of Tanzania? Did we lose our way halfway through the trip? Was Kenya just so fascinating that we couldn't leave?

What is certain is that Kenya turned out to be an eye opener. One of the better regarded, more well-off, more stable countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is a place that wears its problems on its sleeve. Kenya has a terrible infrastructure: In Nairobi most houses, if they have electricity at all, only get switched on every other day. Big cities like Kisumu, Mombasa, Nakuru have the worst roads we have seen in any country. Everywhere we went there were signs of the current drought, from starving cattle to grey and dusty game parks, and not all of it can be put down to it being an El Nino year. Deforestation is turning hillsides into scrubby deserts that fail to support the subsistence farmers scrabbling to make a living there, and government support in the form of road maintenance and power or water supply is non-existent. The most exclusive neighbourhoods and most expensive tourist lodges in the most expensive game parks we have come across in East Africa are in Kenya, so ready cash can't be the problem. Kenya is the first place where recent history is still palpable to the casual visitor, and it's depressing to think how far a small place like Malawi might have to go when even a relatively well-positioned country like Kenya can't get its act together. It didn't help that I was reading a book about Kenyan corruption scandals (It’s Our Turn to Eat by Michaela Wrong), which put much of these problems into a political context.

Then again, the preconceptions we had about Kenya, where Nairobi is called Nairobbery and we were urged to lock up absolutely everything in and on the car lest it was ripped off, turned out not to be applicable to us. We even left our car parked outside a hotel in Nakuru overnight (nervously, and only because of a lack of off-street parking) without having so much as a fingerprint in the deep dust covering the door handles in the morning. Coming from Tanzania we found Kenyans to be more restrained and friendly, taking no for an answer even in very touristy places, although we were still very aware of being quoted mzungu prices. Bargaining hasn't stopped, it's just that our counterparty has been a lot more amenable to reason.

Kenya is potholed roads and nonexistent signage, suicidal matatus (what counts for public transport here, broken down mini busses painted with hopeful slogans and apparently totally unaware of road rules) and crawl-slow lorries; it's a street that suddenly disappears in the middle of Nairobi, leaving nothing but deep holes and mud and oncoming mini busses in a typically unlit part of town; it's witnessing two serious accidents and two obviously drunk drivers in the space of one night time trip - and being involved in our own little accident, taking four hours to extricate ourselves from the financial fallout of replacing a scratched door on a Nissan (not so) Hardbody; it was visiting the mythical beauty of the Masaai Mara only to find that the Masaai who are supposed to care for it don't and the rangers seem to care only for the tips from photographing tourists, in the process ruining the environment their livelihoods depend on, and it was left to us to restrain our guide from harassing the wild animals; it was the sorry sight of a parched savannah and deforested mountains, and wondering where all the money goes when a visit to a game park can cost US$250 per day.

Kenya was Nairobi, which saved our sanity, civilisation at last, when we were desperate for a bit of familiarity (although Marabou storks glaring from the lamp posts and slums next to posh malls kept the affinity in check): we relished in breakfast at Java Junction, dinner at a proper Italian restaurant with proper service, supermarkets selling prosciutto and parmigiano and a real Land Rover repair shop, a national museum that hadn't been thrown together in a day, some thoughtful historical and art projects and the sense of it being a real cultural centre.

Then there were the cool people we met: Joseph the Cambridge-educated ornithologist Masaai, obsessed with birds, who had met David Attenborough and Angelina Jolie (not at the same time), had cool stories of colonial life in Happy Valley and who revised my accumulated resentment of 'guides' who often have been more clueless than we are about their 'area of expertise'; Kiwi and the Mango Man and the other guys on Tiwi Beach who kept us in fresh fish and prawns and fruit and cashew nuts and without whom we would not have eaten so well without having to actually get out of the hammock; Christoph from Jungle Junction, about whom I have raved once already, and who is doing a much better job than I even know in keeping overlanders on the road North or South, and who does all this amongst the craziness that is Nairobi and Kenyan bureaucracy and a raving community of colour-conscious website crazies; Mildred the ape researcher in Kakamega, we had too little time to find out everything she knows about blue and Colobus monkeys, although we realised it must be much when she can recognise them by name in the dusk at a distance of twenty meters; and lastly (but only because we met them on our last days, on the way out of Kenya) there were Peter and Rita the Dutch couple running Gadissa Lodge and a centre for disabled children in the Wild West of Isiolo, Swiss Henry who provided us with two new roof rack brackets and a cottage as a pit stop on the dreaded Marsabit road, and Mr Mangia, who sold us a deep cycle battery when we least expected it.

I have not mentioned the diving on an incredible reef in the Indian Ocean, the wildebeest we watched crossing the Mara river in the face of crocodile attacks, the romantic plains around Lake Elementaita where I finally understood how one can fall for Africa despite all the craziness, the total paradiseness of palm trees on a white sandy beach, the forgotten beauty of North East Kenya where the remote desert belongs to the Samburu and the cattle rustlers and that might be the only way it will stay as untouched as it is right now. I haven't mentioned them because the pictures will describe them better than I ever could.

Pictures from the road

Literary bend or political comment?

The Ankole of Uganda breed cows for the size of their horns and have 100 different names for the colour of their cows' skin. They don't raise cattle for dairy or meat, but for social status, and cattle are the currency attached to the bride price, a hot topic in Uganda today (there was a whole page article about the formalities of bride price in the paper last weekend). Unfortunately this little obsession results in overgrazing and soil erosion. Nowadays there are efforts to interbreed the Ankole cows to make them yield more milk so that they have some practical use.

I wonder how often people who have checked in actually check out again. Very Hotel California.

The Ugandan border town of Busia is obsessed with uniforming the border staff. The colour scheme is cool. Money changers wear yellow jackets on the Ugandan and purple jackets on the Kenyan side, and the bicycle taxi drivers (?riders?) wear a fetching shade of pink. Fab.

Public Awareness

"Causes of high spread of HIV/AIDS on border points"

(from a leaflet on display at the Tanzanian border)

"Young officers at border points find it a matter of pride to have sexual contact with foreigners -- not knowing that they endanger their lives by contracting HIV/AIDS

Sex is used as one of the means of corruption from people who criss-cross the border on business missions. This causes the respective staff ti have an array of lovers and hence run the risk of contracting the killer virus. Wrong notions on the use of condoms to the effect that it renders men impotent also greatly contribute to the infection rate. There are also people who pour petrol on theis sexual organs immediately after having sexual sessions believing that the liquid could stiffle (sic) any infection. This (sic) people end up damaging their private parts.

Remember:

Avoid staying jobless. There are people who find themselves with nothing to do and hence go for drinking sprees which ultimately tempt them into having sex...."

Geography and Politics

Funny how geography can reflect recent political realities. On a drive South of Joburg though the countryside I noticed that many of the small towns with Afrikaans or English names (Petrusburg, Kestell, Reddersburg, Smithfield) had another town nearby with a name that definitely didn't come from a European root (Mofulatshepe, Qhoweng, Bolokanang). Then I realised: segregation during Apartheid meant that, since people weren't allowed to live together, but were still required to work together, the whole country developed mini-Berlin-before-the-wall-came-down's, where there was always a definite 'wrong side of the tracks'. Here are some examples:

Petrusburg

Warrenton

Kestell

Bethlehem- no, not that one...

Fouriesburg

Incongruous signage in Cape Town

Going through my photos from the trip to Cape Town a few weeks ago I came across these. The race debate here is informed from a different place, it seems:

Nelson Mandela, political prisoner for decades, remembered in the same place as Cecil Rhodes, imperialist and racist.

A hipper than hip boutique on Long Street.

Dubai bashing

I haven't lived in Dubai for years now, but left with great difficulty and judging by my continuing interest in Dubai news I guess I still love the place. There is much Dubai bashing going on lately, fuelled by this article in the New York Times, it seems. While some of the facts are disputed already (apparently the figure of 3000 cars abandoned at Dubai airport is misrepresented and the number of cancelled visas is not offset by the number of new visas granted) it is most interesting to me to find this tone of Schadenfreude levelled at a Middle Eastern success story. As if it was somehow just that one of the few Arab economic successes should fail. Do we prefer the alternatives of repressive financial basket cases such as Egypt and Pakistan? This article is another rant at the perceived shallowness of Dubai and it's inherent unsustainability, entertaining even if I disagree, but with the best commenting I have ever read in a blog, ever.

Blast from the Past: Dubai construction workers

Once I wanted to make a film about a day in the life of a labourer in Dubai. All around us where we lived on Sheikh Zayed Rd were new construction sites and every morning, lunch time and evening we saw endless groups of blue/green/orange-clad young men either appearing from dusty buses or waiting to board them to go back to wherever they spent their nights. It turned out to be impossibly difficult to make contact, find willing subjects or gain access to the sites and hostels where they live. Most documentaries I saw about Dubai mentioned the poor working and living conditions of imported labour on construction in the UAE, but even the BBC didn't seem to be able to get access to show real live footage.

Now a Guardian reporter seems to have been able to do the impossible, and report on it without condescension or hand-wringing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/08/middleeast.construction

It makes me feel better that this injustice is finally being made visible.

Three Soweto Entrepreneurs

All throughout my youth I had heard of Soweto, the South Western Township on the outskirts of Johannesburg, hotbed of ANC activity and location of frequent uprisings and clashes with the Apartheid regime. So I was pretty excited to finally be going to see it. I had heard all sorts of descriptions and been given advice, from the "you can't go on your own, you'll get mugged" to "why do you want to go, it's just a slum" to "you'll love it, it's such a hip and happening place". So thoroughly confused, I took a drive there with George, the father of a friend of a colleague of Stuart's. George is my first entrepreneur. He is 70 and retired from a job at a bank. He took a course with the Tourism Authority and now drives tourists through his home suburb. Apart from his in-depth knowledge of the area, having lived there since the 70's he also has some interesting stories about life under Apartheid and some pretty definite political views: "I don't give a man food, I give him the means to get his own food." I met my second entrepreneur (or rather both of them) as we were driving through Pimville, a small part of Southern Soweto. As we were driving along, I saw a large red elephant by the side of the road. It turns out that Lebo and Isaac had collected steel reinforcing rods, wire and red onion bags and were building a life-sized elephant. They had based it on a photo found in a magazine and drawn designs based on this to decide where the steel rods should go to form the base of the elephant. After covering the frame with onion sacks there were going to smooth it with cement to make a realistic-looking animal. These were then for sale. Pretty cool. If you want to buy one for your garden let me know and I'll give you their mobile number. I met my third entrepreneur at lunch. A cousin of George's (who seems to know everyone in the neighbourhood) Robby runs a B&B/restaurant/marketing firm. He co-ordinates with the large car companies such as Mercedes, Audi and Lexus to showcase their new models to potential buyers in Soweto. Despite it's large and increasingly well-off population and the building of many shopping malls in the last decade, Soweto still misses out on car showrooms. So Robby fills that gap by putting on a party and drawing in the customers.

The Constitutional Court

This court has been deciding such important human rights issues as the right of gay people to marry and adopt children; the duty of the government to provide pregnant mothers with retroviral drugs to prevent infection of their babies at birth; abolition of the death penalty... South Africa has the most modern constitution in the World, forbidding discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and disability, for example.

All the justices of the first court inscribed their names into the concrete of the new building.

Nelson Mandela said this about a democratic and free society at the Rivonia treason trial:

"It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

He then proceeded to spend 27 years in prison. The days of his and other political prisoners' incarceration are marked on these slabs.

Each of the articles of the constitution is carved into the front door of the court, in all the official languages of South Africa, as well as Braille and sign language.

More pictures from Constitution Hill

One of the remaining staircases from the Awaiting Trial Block

This is the layout of the sheds built to deal with overcrowding at the women's prison. 4-6 non-White women would spend up to 23 hours a day in a cell built for 2.

The inside of the women's prison. Prisoners were not allowed to cross the central space.

Crockery was shared and cleaned once a month

The isolation cells at Number 4, the non-White men's prison