Robben Island (a.k.a. Christmas in Cape Town pt. 2)

Note: This first intro was written by TED - not me: During our visit to Cape Town, we visited Robin Island. I did not see a single Robin. In fact, I did not see any Cardinals or Blue Jays (known accomplices of Robins). I did see a Penguin. Go figure...

Now, a more serious intro: Robben Island is just off the coast of Cape Town, in an Alkatraz-like manner. It has been home to a number of different types of things, most of them not good. The most famous is the prison where the apartheid govt. of South Africa imprisoned leaders and activists of the African National Congress. The most famous of these is of course Nelson Mandela. He spent 27 (or so) years there. The boat ride to the island is about 45 minutes long. We were on one of the boats they actually used to use to haul prisoners back and forth. After arriving, they take you on a quick bus ride around the whole island. You see the prison from the outside, as well as the mines where the prisoners worked. They worked digging limestone out of the side of a big hole every day. They were not allowed sunglasses, and the stone was so bright it was hard to look at for just a few minutes. Needless to say, it ruined the eyesight of many of the men, including Mandela.

Below is one of the more moving scenes from the island. Some years back, Mandela and many of the former "residents" of the island went back for a reunion of sorts. When they visited the mine, Mandela took a stone and dropped it on the ground, followed by the others. A makeshift memorial to so many years of pain and suffering.

Our tour guide is standing in the doorway in the pink shirt. He, and all the other tour guides, are all former "residents", which is the highlight of the experience as far as I am concerned. The room we are in here was his cell - that he shared with 30-40 other men. He talked about his experiences and how they continually worked to keep each other's spirits up and to undermine the prison authorities. One thing that stands out in my mind is that they all shared everything they had. The guards would try to divide them by allowing some more favors and books and such than others, but they were all so committed to each other that when one person got something, it became group property immediately. He referred to his fellow residents as "comrades". They also kept each other's spirits up by playing soccer. Our guide said his team was referred to as the "international squad" because they happened to have 2 men from Botswana and 1 man from Zimbabwe on the team.

All of the ANC leadership, including Mandela of course, were kept separate from the rank & file ANC members, in a (futile) effort to keep the ANC from continuing its work from inside the prison. Our guide said he saw Mandela once in the prison, and talked about how gracious Mandela was, he asked how our guide was doing and seeming genuinely concerned. Below is Mandela's cell - an individual cell in the maximum secuirty section of the prison. Unfortunately, you just had to file through and look at it quickly - not a lot of time to stand and reflect on it.

Below is the last room of the tour. Previously, it was the Study Room and Guard station for the Maximum Security portion of the prison. Mandela was able to write letters and read in this area for an hour a day during his confinement. It is now used to allow visitors to ask questions before the boat ride back.

Below is us with our guide. I hate that we never got his name. Ted would like to point out that he and Trey also met two other former prisoners when they had to walk through the prison to find a bathroom for Trey.

And, last and also least in this case: Ted's penguin. This one was hanging out inside the prison grounds. Not sure how it survives. I guess the penguin is sort of metaphorical now that I think about it.

It's Official: Centre for the Study of HIV & AIDS

Although the Fulbright award I applied for was to work at the Centre for the Study of HIV and AIDS (CSHA) at UB, the Centre was just getting off the ground over the past year, and had not officially been launched. After much work on the part of a large number of people, the Centre was launched last Friday. It was a nice big event in the library auditorium, with over 200 people in attendance. People in this country are very proud of their university, and they turn out to celebrate and honor its successes.

The Centre was developed with a great deal of support (intellectual and financial) from the University of Pennsylvania. U Penn has a major AIDS research center: The Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). The director of that Center - Dr. Jim Hoxie, is a physician who has been instrumental in helping Esther and UB develop the Centre here. He came all the way to Botswana just for the launch, and seemed genuinely delighted to have done so. U Penn and Baylor and Harvard all have medical research and direct service programs here in Botswana, but Penn seems to have the most direct relationship with the university. Their support of the Centre has been impressive to me.

The picture below is from the reception immediately following the formal speeches and such. It was nice - food and wine and my personal favorite: a marimba band. You can see the marimbas in the background. In case you were wondering, the fact that my shirt matches the tablecloths is not an accident. The director wanted the theme to be green, and told me to wear "that one green shirt that I have", so I did. I was surprised how precisely I matched...

With me is Dr. Charles Gossett, the other Fulbright who was appointed to the Centre this year. Charles is a political scientist from Cal Poly Pomona (California State Polytechnic - Pomona) - I think I got that right -sorry if I didn't, Charles. Charles also completed another Fulbright and taught at UB in the 1970s, when the University was just separating from Lesotho and Swaziland.

The CSHA banner in the middle shows the new UB logo at the top. It represents cattle (as valuable as money here), books/knowledge, and sorghum, a major crop. Can you make all that out in the abstract design? Random detail: the young woman standing up in the picture (in the orange top) was one of my students last semester.

The evening after the launch, the Centre Director, Dr. Esther Seloilwe, also hosted an informal reception at her home. It was a well-earned celebration for Esther, who worked incredibly hard to pull the launch off successfully. It was also, sadly, a goodbye party for Charles who was here on a six month Fulbright only. He is now traveling in Tanzania and Dubai before heading back home to California.

The kids adore Charles. He brought back nestle chocolate chips from a trip home to the states and made cookies with the kids - can't beat that!. Trey picks up the phone and has imaginary conversations with him. They will miss him a great deal.

The picture below is from the informal reception at Esther's place. From the left is Harriet Okatch, a chemistry professor and member of the CSHA management committee, followed by Charles. Next is Bagele Chilisa, a professor of education who has become a great colleague. She has a major (5 million dollar) NIH grant in conjunction with Penn to study HIV prevention among adolescents. She invited me to help her analyze some of the data and collaborate on an article for a local journal. That work sparked the idea for another article for a journal in the U.S. - we submitted a proposal for that one and hope to hear back in February. I am enjoying and learning a great deal from working with her.


Below is (at present) the entire staff of CSHA - From left to right is Charles (who is technically gone now, but I am choosing to not really accept that) followed by Esther Seloilwe (the Centre director). Esther is a nurse who got her Ph.D. at Univ. of California San Francisco. Coincidently, in one of those very small world experiences, my mother's cousin, Dr. Charlene Harrington, is a professor of nursing and sociology at UCSF and worked with Esther there. I think I was here about 2 months before I connected the dots on that. Anyway, next to Esther is Queen Seleka (I may be misspelling her last name) our dear secretary. Not a very big staff. U Penn has donated some money, to be matched by UB, for the hiring of a manager for the Centre - someone to oversee day-to-day operations. They have offered that position to someone, who hopefully will be joining us in March.

So, the Centre is off and running. Hooray! I am posting a link to the Centre's webpage on the right under the "Other Sites of Interest" column if you want to check it out.

Freedom for Hope

Ted here: Hope is free of her cast! It was cut away this week. Here are some pictures of the doctor's office and procedure.

They cleaned her leg up pretty well. They also did an x-ray. The doctor says she is not allowed to jump, run or participate in gym class for 30 days but she can walk and swim. After that, another check up and likely complete recovery.

To celebrate, we are going to a new water park in Gaborone this weekend. A water park in the middle of the desert... For Hope, it is certain to be better than our beach efforts in Cape Town:

Christmas in Cape Town - Part I.

Because the Christmas break here is also the summer end-of-the-school-year break, it is about 6 weeks long. Even in the extreme heat we were all getting cabin fever. Plus, without family or the other familiar surroundings of Christmas time, we decided it would be best to just get away. So, we spent 9 days in Cape Town, South Africa over the week of Christmas. Before we left a Muslim colleague of mine said that if a person didn't believe in God before visiting Cape Town, they certainly would after visiting Cape Town, because nothing as beautiful as Cape Town could have been created by accident.


It was beautiful, very beautiful. The contrast between Gaborone and Cape Town could not be greater. The coast, the mountains, the weather, the dense population (there are almost twice as many people in Cape Town as in the whole country of Botswana), the wide variety of activities... It was hands down the best vacation we have ever taken. Below is a sample of some of our favorite things.

1. The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront - a working shipping harbor that is also full of shopping, restaurants, and tourist attractions. Our hotel was very close, and we went several times. Below is Hope from the top of a ferris wheel, with the harbor in the background.


More activities at the Waterfront: Giant hamster-like balls that you get in and try to navigate through a large wading pool. Eden is in the middle one.

2. Cape Point. The very tip of the Western Cape, where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet. This was a very beautiful and amazing place to visit. We took a cable car-type thing to the top of the cliff. The view is to the south, where the next land is Antartica. The drive down the peninsula to the point was quite interesting. As it got narrower and narrower, we could see the two oceans on either side of us. Check out the video below for Ted's demonstration of this effect.

There were signs all over the peninsula warning about the Chacma baboons. The signs said the baboons had become very skilled at stealing food from people, from parked cars, and from cars with the people in them (they could open car doors). We did see several of them. The baboon below is is sitting on top of one of the signs with a warning about the baboons. He did not steal our food.

The picture below just makes us laugh - for obvious reasons. (Look closely - Trey's mouth is covered in some unidentified food substance.)
3. The Beach at Simon's Town (Indian Ocean). Simon's Town is a port/base for the South African navy. It was a neat little town, sort of felt like we were on Cape Cod or something. The kids had a lot of fun exploring the rocky beach there - they found live starfish and sea anemones and such. There was also a groovy little Tibetan Tea House that overlooked the water, but I was not successful in convincing everyone else that it was worth some time away from the beach to check it out.

The other highlight of Simon's Town was the wild penguin colony. They are African Penguins, also known as black-footed penguins or jack-ass penguins. They are only found on the southwest coast of Africa. They created their own colony on the beach here in the 1980s. Since then, the town has dedicated some space to them and built some wooden walkways and staircases to allow people to get very close to them. They appear to be a very popular attraction.

The one below had strayed a bit far from the colony. It appears to be having fun playing hide-and-seek with Eden.

5. Kirstenbosch Gardens. This is a huge botanical gardens that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. At the risk of repeating myself, this was an absolutely beautiful and amazing place. It had two outdoor restaurants and shops, along with lots of open spaces for picnicking, birthday parties, etc. It sits on the side of Table Mountain, making the views just stunning everywhere you looked.

Within the gardens there were several different gardens dedicated to different types of plants. My favorite was the "useful garden" where all the plants were useful as medicines and treatments or for other purposes. The bush below was in the "endangered and extinct species" garden - the concept is self-explanatory. The sign says this particular bush is extinct in the wild.

In the picture above, Trey is sitting on a fossilized Dadoxylon tree section. You could clearly make out the growth rings - they seemed much wider than modern trees. The nearby sign indicated the tree fossil was 200 - 300 million years old. Trey did not damage the specimin during our visit.

We had so much fun on this trip that my husband suggested we try to extend our stay by a few days. For any of you who know how hard my husband works, you will understand what a big deal it was for HIM to suggest we extend our vacation. Unfortunately, the travel agent was also on vacation, so we were not successful in extending our stay. But, it has quickly become one of our very favorite places - somehow we will have to arrange to come back some day.

There was actually much more to our trip than this - Christmas in Cape Town Part II is coming soon...

A Notable Discrepancy

A recent report by some international agency listed Botswana as among the countries in the world with the largest income discrepancy between rich and poor. That is something that has been strikely evident to us since we arrived. In Gaborone, you see a lot of Mercedes, BMWs, and Jaguars on the road - definitely more per capita than in someplace like Fort Wayne. But these expensive "status cars" drive right by some incredibly poor looking areas where people clearly struggle to even meet their basic needs. Below is a brief video clip of one of these areas that we took from the car. It goes quickly - you may need to watch it more than once to get the full effect.

There are obviously very rich and very poor people in every city, but for some reason it stands out so much more here. As best we can tell, there are two main reasons for this. First, the money in Botswana is very new relative to some other places. Before Botswana gained independence in the 1960s, it was one of the 10 poorest countries in the world. Then, they found the diamonds. This money has generally been invested well in both people and services. Botswana pays for students to go to college, and sends people to other countries to get advanced degrees. The government provides a lot of other services to its people, and the government itself is also one of the biggest employers in the country. (Actually, I think it is the biggest employer but I am hesitant to assert that since I can not verify it. I need some sort of fact checker for this blog. Hey George, how about it?).

Anyway, this leads to point number two, which is that since the generation of people with money is new, the people with money are not removed and disconnected from those without money. There seem to be big income variations even within families. In Botswana, people generally identify their "home" as the village they were born in. Since Gaborone was built up to be the capital, no one is really "from" Gaborone. People with money in Gaborone still go to their home villages regularly, where the family may still be quite poor. Even in Gaborone itself, the town is not completely segregated between rich and poor areas, with a few exceptions, like the area in the video above. There are not a bunch of suburbs where all the people with money flee too, leaving an abandonded inner city for the poor (although there are signs that this might be coming). So, it seems as though those with and without money interact more regularly, making the income disparity stand out more.

On another point, some of you have asked how you could help support S.O.S. - the orphanage we posted about previously. We actually made a trip out there several weekends ago and while we were there I asked about this. I was told we had to check at the main office in Gaborone, so I will try to find that office and visit soon. When I do, I will post info about how you can donate to them or otherwise support their work.

A Series of Random Events

There is no coherent theme to this post, just a bunch of random things.

Random Topic One: The Weaver Bird.

We have all been fascinated by the range of bird life here. Ted has been doing his best to turn the backyard into a bird sanctuary, and high on his list of things he hoped to attract was a weaver bird. They are very fascinating creatures. We first saw them when we were staying at the Sun Hotel when we first arrived in Gaborone, before we were able to move into our flat. We saw dozens of nests there, which peaked Ted's interest.


Pictured above and below is the Masked Weaver (there are several kinds throughout Africa). They craft these intricate hanging nests, with the opening in the bottom. We still aren't sure how the eggs manage to not fall out. Sometimes they build a new nest hanging from the bottom of the nest from the previous year.

And finally, we succeeded. Below is a weaver bird nest from our own back yard.

Random Topic Two: Thanksgiving.

We have seen virtually no turkey of any kind the entire time we have been here. There is no turkey in any deli section of any grocery, and no turkey on the menu at restaurants. So, we assumed we were not going to be able to have a turkey on Thanksgiving. Then, the Sunday before Thanksgiving we went to the grocery store, and much to our surprise there were two freezers full of whole turkeys. Apparently there are enough American ex-pats here to justify the importing of a truckload of turkeys each November. We bought one, and planned an impromptu Thanksgiving celebration with our familyand my mother; Charles, my Fulbright colleague from California; Julia, another professor from the U.S. who happened to be here for a week doing some research, and Keb, a Motswana professor of political science who is a friend of Charles. We ate at Charles' place because he is here by himself and thus has much more space in his flat. On the menu:

*Turkey (see the photo below)

*Dressing (made by Mom - almost like home except the only sage she could find also had rosemary in it - not too bad)

*Scalloped Potatoes (not mashed because we had nothing to mash with)
*Sweet Potatoes (which are white here, not orange)

*Green Bean Casserole

*Cranberry Relish

*Apple Pie (made by Julia)

**Corn on the cob - This was Ted's contribution. He decided he wanted to buy some corn from the street vendors and grill it and serve for Thanksgiving dinner. He worked on this project most of the afternoon. Depending on who you asked, this was either a huge success (Ted) or an unfortunate failure (everyone else). Something was off. We are not sure what, but it didn't taste like corn on the cob in the traditional sense. Charles suspected maybe the corn the vendor was selling was meant for cattle feed not for human consumption.

**Watermelon (also Ted's contribution - from the same street vendor. Ted wants to say that he redeemed himself with the watermelon. It did not get eaten on Thanksgiving because we were too full, but when we did eat it, it tasted just fine.)

Random Topic Three: Belated Halloween and other Care Packages

They do not celebrate Halloween in Botswana, so that evening we went to see High School Musical 3 at the theater instead. We just didn't mention it much, and the kids didn't seem too disappointed. However, when Ted returned from his trip back to the States in November, thanks to the thoughtfulness of his colleague Gina, he came bearing three pumpkins FULL of halloween candy. The kids were thrilled (Thanks, Gina). It actually worked out well. All of the sugar rush, none of the hassle of costumes and the whole trick-or-treating thing.

Thanks also to everyone else who sent gifts and treats for the kids back with Ted, and/or have sent care packages. They have all been a welcome touch of home: Alice, Abbey (and the entire PDS department), Debbie and the Kennedys, the 2402 Nitzas, Aunt Heidi and the Cripe family, and Grandma Kathy.

Random Topic Four: Caterpillar in Botswana (Will, this is for you).

The city spent the past couple of months re-paving the road next to our house (the one between our house and Choppies and the old prison). Ted and the kids had fun watching all the big machinery - although much of the work was also done by hand with pick and shovel - I have no idea how they managed to do that in the intense heat and sun on the blacktop. The pictures below are of the big machines. My brother Will is a long-time Caterpillar employee who was - well - let's just say less than thrilled with the idea of me taking his nieces and nephew to live in Africa. See Will, this place can't be that bad...

Hope Trivia

A quick guessing game: Before you scroll down any further, can you guess what is depicted in the photo below?
a. Ted's new blue sledgehammer that has toes
b. An ancient Tswana artifact we found in the back yard
c. Hope's broken leg
(now scroll down)




If you guessed (c), you are correct. I got a call a week ago from the school nurse that Hope had fallen from the jungle gym and bruised her leg, asking permission to give her Tylenol. By the time we got there to pick her up, she would not put any weight on the leg, but there was still no actual bruise to be seen. By the next morning she was still in a great deal of pain, but still no bruise. We took her to the doctor who ordered an x-ray. We were told there was no fracture and she would be walking on it by the end of the weekend. Five long days (three of which we had sent Hope to school encouraging her to try to walk on it) and five almost sleepless nights later (because she would continually wake up in pain), we called the doctor back. He sent us to an orthopedic specialist who examined Hope's leg, looked at the EXACT same x-ray, and said "Of course it's broken" and pointed to the spot on the x-ray that we were told was a blood vessel the first time. He immediately put her in a full leg cast for six weeks. She picked the blue color herself - see below. Thank goodness the pain is nearly gone, as you can tell by the smile on her face. However, her frustration with the limitations of the cast is high. I have to say she has been an absolute trooper given that she went almost a week on a broken leg without the cast. She went back to school today for the first time with the cast and did well, but was thoroughly exhausted when she got home, and slept the rest of the afternoon. School is out for the year on Friday, so fortunately most of the six weeks will take place over Christmas break.


Despite the major diagnostic error, we have been very impressed with the medical system here through this process. We called, got an appointment the same day, waited in the waiting room for about 5 minutes, and the doctor himself came to call us back to the exam room. He later sent a text message to my phone asking how she was. When I called back after she was not getting any better, the receptionist said the doctor wasn't in so I should just call him on his cell phone. I think I responded by saying something like "Are you serious?". And, I should add that for the WHOLE experience, office visits to two different doctors, x-rays, putting on the cast, buying crutches and pain meds, and everything else, cost us a total of around 300 dollars. I have no idea what the right answer is to the health care situation in the States, but the simplicity and low cost of the experience here suggests to me there has to be a better way to do it.