Sunday, November 22, 2015

Ghana Update #13 - Cape Town, South Africa

November 22, 2015

hi there folks and sorry once again it has taken me so long to get this update out, but we are now in the busy, busy, busy season....the semester is ramping up for the end - assessments and comments and performances and such, plus, my choir is performing in three events this year...and the holiday events have started - parties and functions and such.....it a wonderful time of the year....anyway...it has now been a month since i was actually in cape town....and i have to say....what a place.....

cape town is in the southern hemisphere, so i hit it as it was headed into spring in october...which was amazing....i was able to wear jeans and shorts and shoes with socks and sandals...i know, i know...the small things are the ones that matter....but it was great to not be sweating all the time and getting to experience some chilly nights....i loved that....i really have decided that year round heat is not for me....wherever i end up next, i hope it is not tropical 24-7 all year long...i miss seasons and leaves changing and flowers blooming....i really do....and cape town had it....yay....so here are some pictures from this very progressive city and a bit about it and its amazing history, that is still very present today....and really, if this city is not on your bucket list....it should be....but if you are traveling through africa....i would save it for last....it really does have much of its proverbial act together and would be a perfect place to end a trip on this continent in my opinion.....



Literally the first thing i did after i got to the place i was staying was head up table mountain.....i did an air bnb stay and the guy who runs the house told me to not take a nap, not relax and chill, but instead, get myself up table mountain because it was a perfect day....so with only two hours of sleep under my belt, up i went....and what a spectacular day it turned into....he was totally right to send me up, as the rest of the week there were issues of wind and clouds...and when its windy, they close the top....


due to having the two hours of sleep, i opted to take the cable car up and down....but i watched other folks climb both up and down....this was an interesting cable car in that as it went up and down, it turned 360 degrees and as you can see, there were two spots where the windows were open....what a view...but not easy for those afraid of heights....i had two folks in my cable car up who dealt with that....kudos to them for doing it....but as you can see in the background - blue skies and beautiful weather....


this shot is one of my favorites....the clouds in cape town were amazing!!!!! they would get to the edge of table mountain and literally fall over the edge and then disappear....it was wild....and i have never seen anything like it....so in this shot, they are falling towards the city and the ocean and then literally just disappear.....these clouds are known as the "table cloth"....they say the table cloth is formed from a smoking contest between the devil and a pirate who lives on table mountain....but i wanted to really know why this happened, so i did some research...these are known as an orographic cloud formation....where as the clouds come over the mountain they encounter warmer air, and therefore evaporate...not as poetic, but still really cool to see....i loved it and learning something new....


the perfect day for me ended at camps bay...where the wealthy come to play....with a sundowner meal & beer and a beautiful sunset to boot....i think one of the reasons i really liked cape town was you literally could be on a mountain and then at the beach in less than thirty minutes....kind of perfect for all types of people....but this part of beach....way expensive these days....still nice to hang at and watch the sunset :)


of course one of the main things i had to do while in cape town was head to the most southern part of the continent...cape hope...and on the way we stopped to hang with the african penguins...they used to be called the jackass penguins....but i guess the local south africans took offense....i know it wasn't the penguins taking offense....they hang at a place called boulders...although i did run into them in another place later in the trip...robben island...more on that further down....


and here they are....man, i love penguins...i could just watch them for hours...i really tried to get a good shot of them coming out of the water, but was rather unsuccessful...and unfortunately this is where my real camera decided to stop working vertically...lucky for me, my phone takes a darn good picture too...they really reminded me of adelies from antarctica....it was fun to watch them....


here i am on the walk up to the southern most light house on the continent....you can see it over my left shoulder in the distance...there were baboons along this walk....and guards to chase them....they are very cheeky monkeys in that they will steal your bag and jump in your car and run with the goods they take....so we were warned...carry nothing you would not want them to take....


and here it is...the southern most point of the african continent...cape of good hope....you will see more of it in the next picture....but the view from the light house was pretty spectacular....i ran into a ton of tourists at the top and almost missed my ride because i offered to take all of their pictures....crazy tourists....but wow, what a view....


and here i am....on the cape of good hope...the view above is around the corner from this shot...the woman in the picture is from my tour...veronica....she was from cape town and had never been to the cape of good hope or saw the penguins or the other things we did....she and her friend were the first folks i heard speaking the "click" language of the area...it is soooooooo cool to listen too....i asked her to teach me a few words...let's just say, click language is not my forte and i gave her and her friend a huge laugh.....i thought it was cool they decided to take the trip with us to check out the things in their home town they had never seen....


the next day i was off to robben island.....this is the place where nelson mandela was kept imprisoned for 18 years of his 27 years of prison time.....this is the view you have from the boat ride out from cape town to robben island....you can see the city and table mountain behind it....a beautiful sight and mandela said this was one of the things that kept him going...he could see where he wanted to return home to....


this is the entrance to the prison once you get on the island....and such history and men who were here...i never realized so many were imprisoned for their political views and i always find it interesting that so many things have happened in my lifetime that i just didn't know were going on...i really did live in a protected bubble when i was growing up....which i am thankful for...i do find these days with kids having access to everything, they see it all...the good, the bad and the disgusting.....this is the later....


one of the things cape town has done is put up these pictures frames in the important spots of their city, which you can climb on and take a picture of....very creative....i of course had just returned from watching the penguins on this island and was a bit behind...so no climbing for me...as right after this i had to run for the bus ;)


another thing on this island that blows my mind is that the guides are all ex-political prisoners...and that some of the prisoners have opted to move onto the island with their families....i asked the guide i had, in the picture above, why he opted to come back to the place he wanted to get away from as soon as he was free....one reason he gave me was this was better than unemployment....which i was confused by....he then explained the was first imprisoned at the age of 16....he never finished high school...he ended up on robben island at 19....so he never went back to school...as he was here for 7 years....when all of the prisoners were freed they then needed to join the "real world" as he put it, and he had neither the skills, education or money to get an education....so he was unemployed or doing manual labor....when mandela and the other prisoners decided to turn this island into a museum...he jumped at the chance to return and educate people about what happened here and he knew he could succeed at explaining the place.....hence, why he works there now....he was a great tour guide and very knowledgeable about things that had happened there....so i guess in the end, this was a good option....


this is mandela's cell...you may have heard him being called madiba....which is what most folks in south africa call him....this is his clan's name, and any one from this clan, the Thembu can have this name...it is given to him out of respect and love.....he lived in this cell for 18 years in D block...which was for the lowest-of-the-low....or the most influential political prisoners....it was here he wrote his autobiography and what would later become the documents to help rule the south african nation after apartheid was over and he was the first president...he endured many hardships, but did not lose faith....his story is one that should not be forgotten...this island and it being a museum is doing just this....


one of the things i really loved about cape town was its public art and cool art venues...this is a rhino that has been made out of recycled materials....they were doing some awareness of the rhino's plight and i saw many different artist renditions of rhinos around the city...but i liked this one the best, because it also was covered in flowers made by kids.....


the area i stayed in cape town was the area known previously as district six...so i went to visit the district six museum....the district does not really exist anymore...as the government sent everyone who lived here to a township outside of the city, or to a part of the city that was not in this area of prime real estate and tore down their apartment buildings....to this day nothing has replaced those apartment buildings...it is open fields, in the city, where many of the city's homeless have taken up residence....its not a pretty story...and the thing that blew my mind was that this district was composed of people from all over the world, different races and colors, and they got along...but the government wanted the land for white folks to be able to have nice houses and lawns....which never happened....so all of these folks were displaced for no reason....simply amazing....


while i was in the harbour of cape town, i took a harbour cruise....and look what was docked in harbour....cape town's antarctica research ship and ice breaker....it made me smile of course, to be reminded that this is the jumping off point for folks to get to the other side of the continent where i was....love their logo :)


I also saw a lot of lazy harbour seals while in the harbour....just chillin' out where they could find space and some sun to lie in...here is clump of them up close and personal from the harbour boat...


one evening i went up to signal hill for the sunset and got this cool shot of the "table cloth" on top of table mountain....off to the right...you are also looking at the downtown of cape town itself....it was quite a windy day, but we got to see an amazing sunset....as you can see from the next shot....


this is the sunset from signal hill....it was quite cool and windy while we were up top...but it was also a beautiful view....the other funny thing that was happening the entire time we were on top of the hill was that a group of guinea fowl just kept running around groups of people, checking them out and then moving on....i tried to get a good shot of them, but was unsuccessful....next time....i like the shot i did take with the tree limbs and the sunset...very artsy....ha :)


while in cape town i took the time to go to a township and see where colored people (by this i mean anyone who was considered a different color than white) had been relocated during apartheid....these still exist...and interestingly enough, in every township there are two or three chinese shops that are there now too....this particular shot is the section of the township that is not organized and was not built by the government...people are living in corrugated shack houses....and we wandered through a few of the alleys of these shacks...these folks have some forms of electricity, but no one in these dwellings has running water....and man, are they crammed in....the man who was my guide was very bitter about the townships and said to me that i had probably never seen anything like them....i told him i have something very similar to where i live, not 10 minutes down the road....so then he asked me where i lived...and i said ghana....he said - west africa...that's worse than here but does not have the same history.....i am not sure i agree with him...but the townships are like the spot down the street from me called nima....


this was the original part of the township...where houses were actually built for the residents and they have electricity - as you can see from the street light, which he said worked...and these residents have running water their houses as well....the people who live in these houses were the original displaced peoples and they were provided for by the government....they are in a much better living arrangement than the others...i am not saying it is good, but it is better than the corrugated shack houses...of which there five times the number of these types of houses, if not more.....it was interesting to walk around and see what life was like there....


cape town has a beautiful landscape to it...the mountains, the ocean, the surf...its just incredible...as you can see from this picture...this is from the top deck of a bus on the way back into the city....


plus, there is some funky architecture in the city...i loved this building...it was on long street....the place where everyone goes at some point to shop or have diner or have a drink...it has a bourbon street feel to it, as the building are two and three stories and some are victorian style and all have balconies....this one is a backpacker....in other words, long street is the party street....


the last full day i was in town i went on the most amazing winery tour....south africa has some amazing vineyards...and the tour i took was INCREDIBLE.....at each of the five wineries we tasted anywhere from 6 - 10 wines or champagnes and for each place we did a food pairing...the spot we stopped for lunch was a farm that had incredible food....the other four each had their "thing"...the first place used ducks to keep insects at bay in the vineyard....so they had a duck parade....the second place paired each of the wines with a specific chocolate....that the chocolatier and the wine master put together....the third place was lunch, the fourth place specialized in champagne and breads...and the last place did a wine and cheese pairing....oh. my. goodness....it was amazing!!!! and it was a beautiful day and the vineyards were stunning to be in.....loved it!!!!


so i figured i would have to post the last shot with a bottle of bubbly from this amazing vineyard....i was hanging with cool people and having tasty treats all along the way...it was the perfect way to end my outstanding trip to cape town...and really, if it is not on your list, you should add it...i didn't have the chance to get out on a safari, or kayak, or go great white shark cage diving, or swim with seals, or sooooooo many more things....so i will need to get back at some point, as it is an incredible place....

i hope you enjoyed the explanation of the trip and the pictures, as much as i enjoyed living the trip....i am now heading into my craziest time of the year with concerts, and holiday festivities, and grading, and writing comments, and getting ready for the next big holiday trip....where you ask????  this is a big one...maybe the biggest one of all...madagascar and kenya....i will be traveling with my friend sandy for 2 weeks in madagascar....yes, we are seeing a couple of types of lemurs while there......and then i head to kenya to see my friends sandy and jeff and head to maasai mara......both of which are bucket list places....so i am sooooooooo excited.....

but until then...i hope you are all well and enjoy the beginning of the crazy holiday season whether you celebrate diwali, or thanksgiving, or winter/summer solstice, or xmas, or hanukah, or kwanza, or chinese new year....or all of them....happy holidays to you and yours and all the best in 2016...i will be in touch again after the new year....

Monday, September 21, 2015

Ghana Update #12 - Back in Ghana

September 21, 2015

hey there folks....well i am back in west africa and man, what a difference a year makes....everything, as most folks would tell you, is so much easier....internet hooked up, cell phone working, know a taxi driver who can take me wherever, new apartment with a pool, new classroom design (better for science), and the weather has been amazing - and believe me, i am enjoying it :) but as of this coming week, they are predicting the temperatures to go higher and higher....the rainy season may be coming to an end....bummer.....

i figured i would send my first blog out with some pictures from my time here so far in ghana....my new apt, my newly refurbished classroom and of some fun things i have been up to....what a difference a year makes....but this has also been a lesson in how to use technology....as iphone 6 does not work with iphoto anymore....so i have been trying to upload pictures from different storage sources....i think i have now got this thing figured out and am using google photos....we'll see if i actually get this post finished today...as it has taken me a few weeks to get this working....so really i have been trying to get this update out to you....on with the pictures....fingers crossed :) 

it actually took three tries because the generator kept having problems going on and going off...meaning, i would be in the middle of a download and would lose everything.....but FINALLY, things are now working....some people have asked about power....and up until this past weekend, things were going well...but yesterday we had the generator on for close to 30 hours....and at one point it was rumored that ghana had no power in the country....who knows if that is true though...as it is a stressful situation for all involved....but so far things have been better power wise....


so i figured i would start with my "new" classroom....over the summer the middle school science classrooms were refurbished....had something to do with the three teachers complaining quite a bit and from kids falling off the stools we had, on a daily basis and from the admin looking and realizing it was not the best set up...now we have these cool moveable tables and the lab benches are along the window walls...they even gave us gas hook-up....which means one thing...bunsen burners & FIRE!!!! it is a much better space for the kids and me and i am soooo happy the school came through on this....woot!!!
 

and here is my "new" apartment...all of these things new....the place i lived in last year is no longer rented by the school....so two of the four of us moved up the hill...and one of us moved down the hill...and sadly, one of us left ghana of the four single ladies of melrose...i went up the hill....this is my living room....and check out all of those windows...great light amount....
 

and this is my kitchen....which is bit smaller than the last one....but at least i have a working oven this year....very exciting....and its electric...not good with the power problems...but no lighting the gas in the oven (very tricky by the way) this year for me....woot....i still have a gas stove, which is great....but check out the cool tile....it has a very modern feel....


this is my view from the front balcony & living room....looks over some green and the tall building farther out is a steeple of a church...i do have to say they have an amazing choir....although services on sunday are really long....starting at 8:30 and going until after 1pm most sundays.....the little yellow building in the front is a guard station....and across the street is a lottery booth and taxi that has been abandoned and written all over....colorful neighborhood....
 

this is the pool, before it was cleaned...much prettier now...and i have been in a few times...but the weather here has actually been chilly at night with winds....so when i get home from school, it is not so appealing....today is looking like a hot afternoon though, so maybe i will go hang with a book and go for a dip....sooooooooo nice to have this available out my front door this year....the building in the back is the one i am in....far side, second floor....
 

this is the front of my building....i am on the second floor closest to the camera...its a two bedroom, 2.5 baths....perfect for one person...and since it has not flooded in about a month now....everything is going well :)  this place had not been lived in by someone from the school before, so there were a lot of issues when i first got here...but now...smooth sailing...fingers crossed.....
 

last year one of my updates had pictures from my walk to work, so i figured i would include that again...if you walked all the way down this street, you would be at my old apartment...this is the big street i cross to get to the alley...


there really is some cool art here in accra (see below for the chale wote festival)....and in the alley i walk everyday, i see this a few times on the wall...kind of perfect for me i think....great question to ponder as i walk to school....
 

this is the alley i take where that question above lies...not always the nicest of experiences, as people use it as a bathroom....but its a shortcut i am grateful for....
 

over the summer accra named all of its streets with these blue street signs...they have been wild to see, and local folks say they were named specific names based on who paid to have their name as a street name....confusing, but there are two streets around the school named for the school...so i think this is probably true...no one really calls the streets by the street sign names....so ghana.....i do find it funny that the alley i walk through is called ashitey road...not funny for the professor, but at times that alley is a public toilet....
 

once i cross the big street and walk through the alley, i am in the land of the manicured gardens and big houses.....still open sewers and weird things on the side of the road...but this neighborhood is quite swanky in my opinion...i kind of like that i am on the edge of it though....as i have one foot in the real aspects of ghanian life and one foot not....this is a pretty sight on the walk to school though....


so chale wote has happened again here in ghana....and its focus was an electronic theme....this is a street festival for performance art and visual art....as you can see above...i went early in the day before things went crazy and got very warm....so it was not so crowded and i could get great shots of the art....


this is a modern day take on adinkra symbols of ghana....which was a written language of the past between tribes....these are not the real symbols, but ones that have an old feel, but a new meaning...i really loved this piece of art....am thinking i need to get something made in its form....we'll see...


bands were also playing in chale wote....these guys were a bunch of fun....with many of their instruments made from recycled materials....hence their head gear as well....
 


and this is a perfect sign for chale wote, as this is what the organizers really want people to do here in ghana....think...it has a very artistic feel, recycled art feel and an awareness....glad i went....
 

from one recycled story to the next....this year during one of our faculty meetings, we opted to go do some service for places around the school....and i got to go to this house across the street from school that i have been seeing everyday....its called the wheel story house (http://www.lamudi.com.gh/journal/wheel-story-making-old-new-accra/) and has been in the process of being built and changed for 30 years....by a gentleman by the name of sammy ansah....
 

sammy has been collecting garbage from folks who are throwing things away....he says that everything can be used again....as you can see from this interesting conglomeration of buildings and art on his property....and yes, people live there....
 

he finds things or is given things by people and re-purposes them....and he is always seeing something new....the day we were there we are putting together a "tree house" structure for kids to play in...not sure it was up to code, but we had fun making it....
 

all of the parts of the house are made from something that someone else has thrown away....from shipping containers to trash bins to picnic tables....there were even things he collected from our school that we were throwing away that he remade into something new and useable....
 

 for instance, the hat on this guy's head, it is the lid of a trash can from lincoln school....he uses this figure to represent how people of ghana should be recycling and reusing..he has made up a story of this guy as an elder, who talks with kids who come to the house about treating the environment better and producing less waste...sammy's house is a testament to show that he really walks the walk and talks the talk....
 

its a pretty big space and can accommodate 7 families....we actually had some families from the school stay here before their house here in ghana was finalized....


this is how our piece turned out....he even moved it outside of the complex so we can see it every day when we walk past....it was great to go to this place and experience what he is trying to accomplish and experience how he is trying to change a mindset of the culture here....


a different group of teachers went to an eco-space, that is a park for kids called mmofra....a park that features things to do and play outside and in a sustainable manner....this past week we took the 8th grade there for a morning to have some bonding and team-building time....it was a great adventure for the kids....who swung on ropes, climbed trees, used a reclamation toilet and examined a hydroponics set up for native plants.....it was great to be away from school, even if it was only 5 minutes away....
 

i loved this mancala board they had created from a few tree trunks....they had a few of these scattered around....we also contributed wishing symbol stones the kids painted to thank mmofra (http://mmofraghana.org/) for letting us use their space....it was a fun time and the kids got to play outside, not including soccer for once in a blue moon, and experience ways to become stronger, cooperative learners....what a blast :)
 

and here are those kids....this is my 8th grade crew this year....i work with all of them....we are small in number, but strong in heart....this is actually the smallest bunch of kids in the middle school at the moment, so we really wanted to focus on how they could be the leaders of a middle school where the 7th grade and 6th grade has many more students than the 8th....the kids come from about 35 different countries and many of them have a hard time answering where they are from, as they have lived all over the world....great variety and diversity :)


i went on an adventure this past weekend to find the chinese grocery store...it was successful as you can see from the products above and i was sooooooooo happy to find it...they have my favorite crackers from china...baby bok choy, chinese eggplant and spices/sauces i cannot find anywhere else here in ghana....plus, majority of the patrons were speaking chinese....so it was fun to say hello and thanks and yea! in chinese again....hauda, hauda, hauda......it was an A for effort and an A for accra's chinese community....such a great find....i will go back :)
 

this last shot is from a celebration of life party this past weekend for dutch friends of mine...they have moved into a new house, the wife has a new job that makes her happy at school, and they are expecting their first child...and being dutch, the husband's boss brought a cooler filled with different tasty belgian beers (ok - not really sure how this shows they are dutch, but....)....so of course i had to try a few....it was a great night of music (as you can see from the stage behind me), friends and fun!!!! and the beer was pretty, darn tasty....

and so you have it....my first 6 weeks in ghana has been jam-packed and busy with fun things and work....things have started much better this year....what a difference a year makes....i may try and get out another update soon, but our october break is just around the corner and i am off to country number 72 - south africa...i am in cape town for a week, and i cannot wait!!!!!  plus, my xmas is shaping up to be an extravaganza of a trip.....madagascar and kenya.....so big trips planned with exciting adventures ahead....

i hope you are well and happy, as is your family....feel free to drop any questions my way if you have them and visit the two websites above to learn more about places here in accra that are trying to make a difference.....i will be back in touch sometime soon.....i hope....happy start to fall in the northern hemisphere and spring in the southern hemisphere...and let's go all blacks in rugby world cup :)

peace out and have a fab day :)
dani