Man, that was quick. The time in South Africa blinked by, and I'm once again settled quietly back into life at Oxford, preparing for the upcoming term. But though this was a quick trip it was also a full one, and in some ways it feels like I've been away from Oxford for much more than two and a half weeks.
I spent most of the day after arriving back in Cape Town from Zim with Matthew before rejoining my crew at the Zebra Crossings hostel. As alluded to in the last post, the time with my cousin was very significant relationally. It was an enormous blessing to learn a bit about this person who I've always looked up to from a distance, but with whom I'd never moved much beyond casual conversation. Matthew is sincere, warm-hearted, and well-spoken, and as we talked about everything from life goals and relationships to favorite beers I felt that we connected as friends. It was also good to speak about our common side of the family: where we come from shapes who we are, and over the course of the trip I was filled once again with deep appreciation for the extraordinary trials that my father and his sisters braved to become the caring, accomplished, intellectually-alive people that they are today. Polhami are strange folk, as well, and we spent about as much time joking about our foibles as reflecting on our trials.
The rest of the time in Cape Town was filled with more good things: trips to the townships, including lunch at Mzoli's in Guguletu after church, touring Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela wrote "Long Walk to Freedom" during his long tenure or imprisonment, and visiting an election day rally during a pitstop on a road trip to Knysna. We also had the honor of meeting Desmond Tutu the day before last Wednesday's elections. This remarkable man was the first black Archbishop of Cape Town, chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-Apartheid South Africa, and is a renowned advocate of peace and justice in the world. He recently came under fire from many of his colleagues when he denounced Jacob Zuma, head of the ANC and soon-to-be president of South Africa, as unfit to lead. The ANC and its founding fathers led South Africa to freedom, yet the party has been wracked by corruption and fraud in recent years, and many argue its leadership has been inept in meeting the country's most pressing challenges. Jacob Zuma--who has claimed that cold showers prevent HIV transmission and just recently succeeded in having charges of money laundering in a multi-billion dollar arms deal dropped on procedural grounds--represents the worst of what the ANC has to offer in the eyes of many South Africans. Though Tutu expressed no desire to see the ANC voted out of power, his hope was that the minority opposition parties could rally to prevent it from obtaining the two thirds majority necessary to unilaterally amend the constitution. Dissenting voices are essential to functioning of healthy democratic institution, and Tutu's view was that the ANC had grown lazy and corrupt over the course of its unchallenged stay in power.
But this little diversion into politics distracted me from what I wanted to say about the man himself. At age 77 he shows his age a little bit, yet his quick laugh, bright smile, and self-demeaning sense of humor reveal a warm and gentle spirit that has not hardened through years of trial. It was humbling to sit in the presence of this man, who three weeks earlier I had watched break down weeping on film as he listened to one of his African brothers describe how he had been tortured under apartheid. As we sat down together in his office he said "let us begin with a prayer," and invited the Holy Spirit to come and animate our hearts, giving us joy and inspiring us to love one another as Christ first loved us. That place in his heart where God's spirit dwells is the secret of the man's charisma, and though his political perspectives were helpful it was simply seeing his joyful spirit that moved me the most.
As in Rwanda, the limited amount of time spent with community leaders and servants in South Africa affirmed my belief that what the world needs more than anything else is men and women who are alive in their gifts, and having oriented their lives around a purpose beyond their own gratification. I met a lot of people in South Africa who exemplify this, and challenge me to consider whether I am doing the same. I believe that the most fulfilling purpose around which an individual life can be oriented is Christ, yet I am convinced that God smiles all of those who strive to live fully, sincerely, and selflessly, partnering together through his Spirit to bring about a renewed creation. And lofty theological musings aside, people like Desmond Tutu, Edwin Cameron, Lindela, Kanisua, Sindatenda from BEEP are incredible because they are down-to-earth, joyful, passionately-committed people who give more to their communities than they take.
Big words. Words come easy. The nagging question in the stillness and quiet of a lazy Sunday morning, though, is whether I live this way. Here, back at Oxford, exams a month away, I continue to pray for wisdom to make the most of this time, and for a heart that desires to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God in the world.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
zim, zam, make a plan (and go to botswana and back)
I'm back in Cape Town rushing to finish this post before this cafe closes, my jeans only just now dry from the time I spent at Victoria Falls on the Zambian side this morning--it's been a full several days...
After failing repeatedly to connect with my cousin Matthew Cooper late last week in Cape Town we finally managed to connect over gchat Monday night. My orders we to be waiting for him and Jess at the British Air counter at 6.30 am the following morning, ready to head fly to Zimbabwe until Friday.
After a bleary-eyed joyful reunion in the Cape Town airport we got right down to logistics: Jess and I had our tickets booked, but a mysterious anti-flight booking robot had deleted Matthew's registration the night before and the BA flight to Johannesburg, where we would catch our plane to Zimbabwe (here on referred to as Zim), was booked solid. A couple phone calls later Matthew found himself another flight, Jess and I only barely managed to get tickets on ours, and we reunited three hours later in Joburg. From there we had half an hour to pick up our boarding passes, change South African Rand into USD, clear customs, and in Matthew's case make a series of calls to his coworkers back in Dubai. The clearest mental image of that time was of Jess and I standing at the boarding gate pleading with the attendants to wait for Matthew--"he'll be here in 30 seconds, I swear!" "I'll give him one more minute"--and being elated to see him come hustling around the corner and run down the escalator just in time for us to make the final bus that would take us to our plane on the tarmac.
Sigh... So we'd made the flight to Zimbabwe. As I settled back into my seat to sleep off the drag of the early morning I wondered what we would find there. If you've been reading your African news these day you'd get a pretty bleak picture: 230 million percent inflation in 2008, the collapse of public services infrastructure, government-sponsored violence against white Zimbabweans, rigged elections, and the MDC's painful struggle with Mugabe's ZANU-PF have shaped the perceptions of outside Western observers, and I was no exception. I had this idea of our plane lurching to a halt on a pock-marked runway across from a rusty, tin-roofed terminal, and from there working our way through Harare in an armored jeep, weaving our way around burning tires and hordes of rioting, cholera-stricken civilians.
I was surprised, therefore, by the scene we encountered at the Zimbabwe airport, our first introduction to the country. The airport looked like it had been remodeled within the last 5 years or so. It was airy and clean, with stone paneling on the floor and even an advertisement posted by a company that may or may not have still been in business. It was also the only airport I'd ever been to where the citizens' line for entry was longer than for foreign visitors. We paid our entry fees in USD without any hassle, then proceeded to head out into the lobby where our friend, Karo, had planned to pick us up. The arrivals area was quiet, dimly-lit, and clean, with an airport employee or two shuffling around in the background and a couple stragglers from our flight milling around waiting for their rides. "It's a real country," Matthew noted. "Yeah, and a pretty quiet one, too," I thought. This overwhelming impression of stillness, lack of movement, ended up being my dominant association with our time spent in Zimbabwe.
We met Karo outside and piled into her light pickup with our luggage for the trip to the guest house no the outskirts of Harare where we would spend the night. We spent that evening with a family of white Zimbabweans, a mother and her two grown children, and simply recounting their narrative as I understood it would take up several pages. Suffice to say that they were remarkable, warm people, who's resourceful capacities had been honed to the highest degree under a set of extraordinary circumstances. After dropping off our bags we headed out with Karo and Tristan, the son of the family, for a ride around Harare. As in the airport, I was amazed at how quiet Harare was. I came to Zimbabwe expecting to find a place as ruined as Mogadishu or as chaotic as Baghdad (or at least the falsifiable images of these places that I have) but found instead a faded, well-ordered, formerly bustling city whose life blood had been drained by a combination of population flight and economic freefall. As we drove Tristin shared his perspectives on current events and Zimbabwe's people. Shona's, the dominant tribal group in the country, are a peaceful people, he said. Zimbabwean's want Mugabe and ZANU-PF to leave, but they are not willing to further decimate their county by fighting a civil war. Though we did not see the poorest areas of the city, we felt safe the entire time, and despite the small number of remaining white Zimbabweans we arouse little to no special interest on the streets or in the flea market we visited where Matthew picked up a couple of batik prints.
We returned to our house for the night and when on a quick run around the neighborhood. Though the lack of lighting on the streets made finding our footing a bit tricky at times, the darkness allowed the stars to shine brilliantly, with the milky way clearly observable overhead. After the run Jess and I headed out with Tristan and one of the house helps to buy some scud, so-named after the first Gulf War, from a nearby corner store. We'd heard this home-grown brew of fermented mealy meal had the taste of bile and consistency of vomit, and were anxious to see for ourselves if it could really be that bad. We found out later that evening, after a fantastic meal of steak and potatoes, that no, it wasn't quite that bad, but disgusting nonetheless. After chugging around a quarter of a gallon of the stuff I felt full more than anything else--the mealy meal kind of expands in your stomach, and the bile-ish tang is fairly unpleasant. Having killed the scud we settled down on the outside patio to listen to Tristan and his siter recount stories of life in Zimbabwe. We learned that the government had just discontinued the official currency the day before, which had been essentially been inflating so quickly that they could not run the presses fast enough to generate any revenue. It creates a bizarre set of incentives when the government tells the market that they are only allowed to trade in such a currency, with a small number of exceptions, and Tristin was happy to regale us with tales of his black market exploits. Until that week, just about everyone had been required to pay salaries, charge prices, and make purchases using zim dollars. If you broke the rules you could end up in prison or have your business expropriated, something that had happened to far too many people over the last several years. My favorite story was of Tristan changing of a couple truck beds of zim dollars for a suitcase of USD. We learned a bit about the timing of these exchanges as well. Apparently the government would give the presses a break over the weekends, but the hyper-inflationary cycle would begin again in earnest on Monday. If you changed your zim at the beginning of the week you might do all right, but if you held on to it till Friday you could lose a fortune. We'd also been surprised to see BMWs and Mercedes around Harare. According to Tristan many of the officials in the Finance Ministry had grown fabulously wealthy buying outrageous amounts of zim on the black market with USD, and then changing that zim back to USD at the official, criminally-overvalued rate that only the elites had access to.
We retired for the evening full of steak, potatoes, scud, and beer, and got an early start back to the airport the next morning for our trip to Victoria Falls. Our brief sojourn in Harare hadn't felt like nearly long enough, and I would have loved to have stayed for longer chatting a bit more with Zimbabweans in the city about their lives under ZANU and hope for the future. Yet with such a short amount of time at our disposal we had to do the best we could. Victoria Falls is supposedly one of the more impressive scenes that one can see in nature, certainly one of the more incredible waterfalls, and we were eager to visit for ourselves. Perhaps the most informative conversation of my time in Zim came out of our flight there, as well, when I set next to a young guy about my age named Cain who had completed his Computer Science degree in Bulowayo and now worked for an IT company in Harare. As he introduced himself I marveled internally at what a testimony it is to the resilience of Zimbabwe's people and economy that an enterprise that does tech audits for domestic firms could have possibly continued to operate over the years. It hadn't been east, he said. Throughout 2008 the company, which had been legally obligated to pay its employees in zim, had opted instead to pay with foodstuffs imported from its South African partner organization, if it paid at all, and had taken IOUs from trusted clients or accepted bartered goods as payment rather than cash. We spoke of Western perceptions of Zimbabwe, and I told him how surprised I'd been by what I'd encountered so far. I asked what he thought of the MDC and recent events, and he expressed optimism that things would get better. He hoped that the U.S. would support the lifting of economic sanctions sooner or later, which in his view only served to punish helpless Zimbabweans while entrenching ZANU and undermining the MDC's economic reform agenda (the MDC has at least nominal control of economic and social service ministries since ZANU-PF grudgingly accepted a power-sharing agreement). Cain was sharp, kind, well-spoken, apparently quite resourceful, and a generally a personification of all I'd encountered that was positive in Zimbabwe in under 24 hours. Hopefully men and women like him will have a voice in how their country is run in the years to come. From what we could see and the conversations I've had since getting back to South Africa is seems that Zim is at a crossroads right now, and nobody is really sure how things will pan out. If I took nothing else away from our short stay around Harare it was that it is easy to create caricatures in your mind of what a place is or isn't, but that human contact with people outside the political melee or media filters can totally reinvent your perspective.
The phrase "make a plan" came up repeatedly in these conversations, and embodies the enterprising spirit of the people who have scraped by in Zimbabwe under the most adverse set of circumstances. When times get tough strong people get tougher, and employ as much creative energy as they can muster to the business of getting by. No time for self-sympathy or regrets: plan, execute, live, repeat. Of course this only gets you so far, and the tragic reality of Zimbabwe's economic collapse is that thousands of people have gone hungry, died from cholera, been arbitrarily imprisoned, or fled the country. It is also true that much of the hard currency and tradeable commodities that keep the informal economy running flow in from the Zimbabwean diaspora abroad. Yet where I expected to find utter devesation I was humbled and inspired to encounter people getting along by making the most of things as they were, rather than dwelling on how they wished them to be, hopefully anticipating a brighter future.
The Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, where we would stay for the next several nights, was a surprise as well. It had clearly been built during better times, with only a sparse showing of tourists and African business men to be found on a lovely, sprawling complex that meant to accommodate a bustling crowd of safari-goers and vacationers. Set right up against a waterhole in the Zimbabwean outback, the lodge is a wonderful collision of the wild and the cultivated: warthog root around in the grass, baboons troop across open roads, and elephants frequently wander into town. Yet the Lodge--an expansive central hotel with soaring thatched ceilings and a restaurant, pool, and bar, with guest houses scattered around the rest of the premises--is clean and tastefully-decorated, the staff are friendly and courteous, and the selections at the restaurant are excellent. This is where we would make our home base for the next several days of exploring the region. Over the course of a couple days we went "walking with the lions," visited Victoria Falls on both the Zimbabwe and Zambia side, went on a jeep safari in the Chobe game reserve, Botswana, and drank as varied a selection of southern African beers are we could manage. We were all agreed that Windhoek beer, a brew from Namibia, is the best the region has to offer. In my opinion Black Label, Zimbabwe ("America's lusty *something something* beer") came in second.
I think I speak for the three of as well when I say that our time spent at the Falls was the highlight of our time spent at the lodge. The water is higher now than it's been in several decades, and it is simply awe-inspiring to stand so close to nearly 500,000 cubic feet of water per second thundering into a massive 100 meter-deep trench. Visually I suppose the Falls would have been even more impressive during a lower-flow season, since the mist from the water pouring into the gorge obscures any long view one might otherwise have, but the trade off is that the experience of standing on the cliffs opposite the river is absolutely thrilling. The Zambezi river, which creates the natural border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, flows along through the Southern African plain until it tumbles abruptly into a massive gorge. From the air the gorge looks like what you might expect if God came down and made a cut in the grassy plain that the river flows through--it is an incredibly wide, unanticipated fissure in an otherwise quite flat landscape. Matthew speculated at the time, and I have since confirmed via Wikipedia, that the gorge is the result of the Zambezi steadily eroding away softer rock in the plain, in this case sandstone. Standing at a distance of a hundred meters or so from the falls inspired me to dwell on the power and majesty of God, and made me wonder if this was the kind of thing John struggled to describe in his visions of the end of the world set out in Revelation. Columns of water spray into the air before free falling to the gorge below, and tsunami waves dance about on the verge of that massive chasm, seemingly reaching for the opposite side but halted by vast, empty space. You have to yell to hear above the incessant thunder, and spray rockets up from the floor of the gorge as "inverted rain," stretching hundreds of meters into the sky before falling to the ground where you stand in a torrential downpour. As mentioned above you cannot see the falls when you are close, unless a gust of wind temporarily moves the mist in such a way that you catch a glimpse of the incredible span of water seemingly stretching toward the horizon on either side of you. On the Zimbabwe side Matthew and I climbed out onto a rocky outcropping with no fencing, as near to the thundering torrent as we could get, and stood for several moments in silence, arms and faces stretched upwards, taking in the moment. "He is mighty indeed," Matthew said, before we turned and stepped back into the gentle heat of the day. I feel so alive when I have a moving encounter with nature: not only does my spirit rejoice in the presence of something that speaks to me about who God is, but for that short period of time everything else that I am back home, and all the distractions and clutter of daily life get crowded out as I lose myself in the sheer sensory thrill of returning to the wilderness.
After just a couple long days and short nights it was time to return to Cape Town, where I would say goodbye to Jess and Matthew before rejoining my fellow rhodies. It's time to close this post, so I'll stay brief on the narrative of our border crossing experience and try to distill that time down to lessons learned:
-When using foreign currencies in country's where you don't know the exchange rate always carry small bills.
-Never tip a group of guys by giving one guy a lot of money and saying to the other two "split that up between the three of you." Those guys who took our photo on the Zim/Zam bridge crossing are probably still fightinging with each other of Matthew's 100R.
-Stay on your toes at backwater border crossings, but don't jump too quickly to the conclusion that border guards are trying to hassle you when they ask you for money--sometimes those visa fees are legit. I didn't make any friends when I all but told the Zambia border guards that I thought they were hussling us when they charged 50 USD for a transit visa...
-In Africa you often hear the phrase "Africa time," which generally means that schedules run 45 mins to a couple hours behind. Apparently this does not apply at airports. We showed up to the departures lobby three minutes after the first bording call in the Livingstone airport and found a scowling customs agent, irritated gate attendant, and angry stewardesses waving us on board as we ran out onto the tarmac. We were basically the last people to board every flight we took over our four days of travel :-P
As we sat at a pub in the JoBurg airport, watching our flight to Cape Town board while we finished up a late lunch and a couple pints, I felt satisfied with all that we'd seen, yet knew that those were places I might like to return to for much more time in the future. There are different ways to travel: widely verses intimately, on the cheap versus luxuriously, for business, pleasure, scholarship, or some combination of the three. The important thing, I guess, is to know why you go and be clear in your own mind about what you can accomplish given your chosen medium and the time available. In that sense I was satisfied to have seen and done about as much as anyone could reasonably hope for in four days, and richly blessed by the time to connect with my cousin. Yet it was everything that I just barely touched, the beauty and stark contradictions of a country wracked by turmoil but with so much to offer, that made me hope to return in the future.
As we were getting ready to take our bill and board our flight Matthew asked our waitress if there was anyway he could pay her for the Windhoek tumblers that we'd had our pints in. She glanced around furtively, then leaned in and, with a knowing look and quiet voice said "I will make a plan for you." "I love these people," I thought, as we got up to leave, tumblers tucked in our backpacks. Hopefully it won't be too long before I visit again.
After failing repeatedly to connect with my cousin Matthew Cooper late last week in Cape Town we finally managed to connect over gchat Monday night. My orders we to be waiting for him and Jess at the British Air counter at 6.30 am the following morning, ready to head fly to Zimbabwe until Friday.
After a bleary-eyed joyful reunion in the Cape Town airport we got right down to logistics: Jess and I had our tickets booked, but a mysterious anti-flight booking robot had deleted Matthew's registration the night before and the BA flight to Johannesburg, where we would catch our plane to Zimbabwe (here on referred to as Zim), was booked solid. A couple phone calls later Matthew found himself another flight, Jess and I only barely managed to get tickets on ours, and we reunited three hours later in Joburg. From there we had half an hour to pick up our boarding passes, change South African Rand into USD, clear customs, and in Matthew's case make a series of calls to his coworkers back in Dubai. The clearest mental image of that time was of Jess and I standing at the boarding gate pleading with the attendants to wait for Matthew--"he'll be here in 30 seconds, I swear!" "I'll give him one more minute"--and being elated to see him come hustling around the corner and run down the escalator just in time for us to make the final bus that would take us to our plane on the tarmac.
Sigh... So we'd made the flight to Zimbabwe. As I settled back into my seat to sleep off the drag of the early morning I wondered what we would find there. If you've been reading your African news these day you'd get a pretty bleak picture: 230 million percent inflation in 2008, the collapse of public services infrastructure, government-sponsored violence against white Zimbabweans, rigged elections, and the MDC's painful struggle with Mugabe's ZANU-PF have shaped the perceptions of outside Western observers, and I was no exception. I had this idea of our plane lurching to a halt on a pock-marked runway across from a rusty, tin-roofed terminal, and from there working our way through Harare in an armored jeep, weaving our way around burning tires and hordes of rioting, cholera-stricken civilians.
I was surprised, therefore, by the scene we encountered at the Zimbabwe airport, our first introduction to the country. The airport looked like it had been remodeled within the last 5 years or so. It was airy and clean, with stone paneling on the floor and even an advertisement posted by a company that may or may not have still been in business. It was also the only airport I'd ever been to where the citizens' line for entry was longer than for foreign visitors. We paid our entry fees in USD without any hassle, then proceeded to head out into the lobby where our friend, Karo, had planned to pick us up. The arrivals area was quiet, dimly-lit, and clean, with an airport employee or two shuffling around in the background and a couple stragglers from our flight milling around waiting for their rides. "It's a real country," Matthew noted. "Yeah, and a pretty quiet one, too," I thought. This overwhelming impression of stillness, lack of movement, ended up being my dominant association with our time spent in Zimbabwe.
We met Karo outside and piled into her light pickup with our luggage for the trip to the guest house no the outskirts of Harare where we would spend the night. We spent that evening with a family of white Zimbabweans, a mother and her two grown children, and simply recounting their narrative as I understood it would take up several pages. Suffice to say that they were remarkable, warm people, who's resourceful capacities had been honed to the highest degree under a set of extraordinary circumstances. After dropping off our bags we headed out with Karo and Tristan, the son of the family, for a ride around Harare. As in the airport, I was amazed at how quiet Harare was. I came to Zimbabwe expecting to find a place as ruined as Mogadishu or as chaotic as Baghdad (or at least the falsifiable images of these places that I have) but found instead a faded, well-ordered, formerly bustling city whose life blood had been drained by a combination of population flight and economic freefall. As we drove Tristin shared his perspectives on current events and Zimbabwe's people. Shona's, the dominant tribal group in the country, are a peaceful people, he said. Zimbabwean's want Mugabe and ZANU-PF to leave, but they are not willing to further decimate their county by fighting a civil war. Though we did not see the poorest areas of the city, we felt safe the entire time, and despite the small number of remaining white Zimbabweans we arouse little to no special interest on the streets or in the flea market we visited where Matthew picked up a couple of batik prints.
We returned to our house for the night and when on a quick run around the neighborhood. Though the lack of lighting on the streets made finding our footing a bit tricky at times, the darkness allowed the stars to shine brilliantly, with the milky way clearly observable overhead. After the run Jess and I headed out with Tristan and one of the house helps to buy some scud, so-named after the first Gulf War, from a nearby corner store. We'd heard this home-grown brew of fermented mealy meal had the taste of bile and consistency of vomit, and were anxious to see for ourselves if it could really be that bad. We found out later that evening, after a fantastic meal of steak and potatoes, that no, it wasn't quite that bad, but disgusting nonetheless. After chugging around a quarter of a gallon of the stuff I felt full more than anything else--the mealy meal kind of expands in your stomach, and the bile-ish tang is fairly unpleasant. Having killed the scud we settled down on the outside patio to listen to Tristan and his siter recount stories of life in Zimbabwe. We learned that the government had just discontinued the official currency the day before, which had been essentially been inflating so quickly that they could not run the presses fast enough to generate any revenue. It creates a bizarre set of incentives when the government tells the market that they are only allowed to trade in such a currency, with a small number of exceptions, and Tristin was happy to regale us with tales of his black market exploits. Until that week, just about everyone had been required to pay salaries, charge prices, and make purchases using zim dollars. If you broke the rules you could end up in prison or have your business expropriated, something that had happened to far too many people over the last several years. My favorite story was of Tristan changing of a couple truck beds of zim dollars for a suitcase of USD. We learned a bit about the timing of these exchanges as well. Apparently the government would give the presses a break over the weekends, but the hyper-inflationary cycle would begin again in earnest on Monday. If you changed your zim at the beginning of the week you might do all right, but if you held on to it till Friday you could lose a fortune. We'd also been surprised to see BMWs and Mercedes around Harare. According to Tristan many of the officials in the Finance Ministry had grown fabulously wealthy buying outrageous amounts of zim on the black market with USD, and then changing that zim back to USD at the official, criminally-overvalued rate that only the elites had access to.
We retired for the evening full of steak, potatoes, scud, and beer, and got an early start back to the airport the next morning for our trip to Victoria Falls. Our brief sojourn in Harare hadn't felt like nearly long enough, and I would have loved to have stayed for longer chatting a bit more with Zimbabweans in the city about their lives under ZANU and hope for the future. Yet with such a short amount of time at our disposal we had to do the best we could. Victoria Falls is supposedly one of the more impressive scenes that one can see in nature, certainly one of the more incredible waterfalls, and we were eager to visit for ourselves. Perhaps the most informative conversation of my time in Zim came out of our flight there, as well, when I set next to a young guy about my age named Cain who had completed his Computer Science degree in Bulowayo and now worked for an IT company in Harare. As he introduced himself I marveled internally at what a testimony it is to the resilience of Zimbabwe's people and economy that an enterprise that does tech audits for domestic firms could have possibly continued to operate over the years. It hadn't been east, he said. Throughout 2008 the company, which had been legally obligated to pay its employees in zim, had opted instead to pay with foodstuffs imported from its South African partner organization, if it paid at all, and had taken IOUs from trusted clients or accepted bartered goods as payment rather than cash. We spoke of Western perceptions of Zimbabwe, and I told him how surprised I'd been by what I'd encountered so far. I asked what he thought of the MDC and recent events, and he expressed optimism that things would get better. He hoped that the U.S. would support the lifting of economic sanctions sooner or later, which in his view only served to punish helpless Zimbabweans while entrenching ZANU and undermining the MDC's economic reform agenda (the MDC has at least nominal control of economic and social service ministries since ZANU-PF grudgingly accepted a power-sharing agreement). Cain was sharp, kind, well-spoken, apparently quite resourceful, and a generally a personification of all I'd encountered that was positive in Zimbabwe in under 24 hours. Hopefully men and women like him will have a voice in how their country is run in the years to come. From what we could see and the conversations I've had since getting back to South Africa is seems that Zim is at a crossroads right now, and nobody is really sure how things will pan out. If I took nothing else away from our short stay around Harare it was that it is easy to create caricatures in your mind of what a place is or isn't, but that human contact with people outside the political melee or media filters can totally reinvent your perspective.
The phrase "make a plan" came up repeatedly in these conversations, and embodies the enterprising spirit of the people who have scraped by in Zimbabwe under the most adverse set of circumstances. When times get tough strong people get tougher, and employ as much creative energy as they can muster to the business of getting by. No time for self-sympathy or regrets: plan, execute, live, repeat. Of course this only gets you so far, and the tragic reality of Zimbabwe's economic collapse is that thousands of people have gone hungry, died from cholera, been arbitrarily imprisoned, or fled the country. It is also true that much of the hard currency and tradeable commodities that keep the informal economy running flow in from the Zimbabwean diaspora abroad. Yet where I expected to find utter devesation I was humbled and inspired to encounter people getting along by making the most of things as they were, rather than dwelling on how they wished them to be, hopefully anticipating a brighter future.
The Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, where we would stay for the next several nights, was a surprise as well. It had clearly been built during better times, with only a sparse showing of tourists and African business men to be found on a lovely, sprawling complex that meant to accommodate a bustling crowd of safari-goers and vacationers. Set right up against a waterhole in the Zimbabwean outback, the lodge is a wonderful collision of the wild and the cultivated: warthog root around in the grass, baboons troop across open roads, and elephants frequently wander into town. Yet the Lodge--an expansive central hotel with soaring thatched ceilings and a restaurant, pool, and bar, with guest houses scattered around the rest of the premises--is clean and tastefully-decorated, the staff are friendly and courteous, and the selections at the restaurant are excellent. This is where we would make our home base for the next several days of exploring the region. Over the course of a couple days we went "walking with the lions," visited Victoria Falls on both the Zimbabwe and Zambia side, went on a jeep safari in the Chobe game reserve, Botswana, and drank as varied a selection of southern African beers are we could manage. We were all agreed that Windhoek beer, a brew from Namibia, is the best the region has to offer. In my opinion Black Label, Zimbabwe ("America's lusty *something something* beer") came in second.
I think I speak for the three of as well when I say that our time spent at the Falls was the highlight of our time spent at the lodge. The water is higher now than it's been in several decades, and it is simply awe-inspiring to stand so close to nearly 500,000 cubic feet of water per second thundering into a massive 100 meter-deep trench. Visually I suppose the Falls would have been even more impressive during a lower-flow season, since the mist from the water pouring into the gorge obscures any long view one might otherwise have, but the trade off is that the experience of standing on the cliffs opposite the river is absolutely thrilling. The Zambezi river, which creates the natural border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, flows along through the Southern African plain until it tumbles abruptly into a massive gorge. From the air the gorge looks like what you might expect if God came down and made a cut in the grassy plain that the river flows through--it is an incredibly wide, unanticipated fissure in an otherwise quite flat landscape. Matthew speculated at the time, and I have since confirmed via Wikipedia, that the gorge is the result of the Zambezi steadily eroding away softer rock in the plain, in this case sandstone. Standing at a distance of a hundred meters or so from the falls inspired me to dwell on the power and majesty of God, and made me wonder if this was the kind of thing John struggled to describe in his visions of the end of the world set out in Revelation. Columns of water spray into the air before free falling to the gorge below, and tsunami waves dance about on the verge of that massive chasm, seemingly reaching for the opposite side but halted by vast, empty space. You have to yell to hear above the incessant thunder, and spray rockets up from the floor of the gorge as "inverted rain," stretching hundreds of meters into the sky before falling to the ground where you stand in a torrential downpour. As mentioned above you cannot see the falls when you are close, unless a gust of wind temporarily moves the mist in such a way that you catch a glimpse of the incredible span of water seemingly stretching toward the horizon on either side of you. On the Zimbabwe side Matthew and I climbed out onto a rocky outcropping with no fencing, as near to the thundering torrent as we could get, and stood for several moments in silence, arms and faces stretched upwards, taking in the moment. "He is mighty indeed," Matthew said, before we turned and stepped back into the gentle heat of the day. I feel so alive when I have a moving encounter with nature: not only does my spirit rejoice in the presence of something that speaks to me about who God is, but for that short period of time everything else that I am back home, and all the distractions and clutter of daily life get crowded out as I lose myself in the sheer sensory thrill of returning to the wilderness.
After just a couple long days and short nights it was time to return to Cape Town, where I would say goodbye to Jess and Matthew before rejoining my fellow rhodies. It's time to close this post, so I'll stay brief on the narrative of our border crossing experience and try to distill that time down to lessons learned:
-When using foreign currencies in country's where you don't know the exchange rate always carry small bills.
-Never tip a group of guys by giving one guy a lot of money and saying to the other two "split that up between the three of you." Those guys who took our photo on the Zim/Zam bridge crossing are probably still fightinging with each other of Matthew's 100R.
-Stay on your toes at backwater border crossings, but don't jump too quickly to the conclusion that border guards are trying to hassle you when they ask you for money--sometimes those visa fees are legit. I didn't make any friends when I all but told the Zambia border guards that I thought they were hussling us when they charged 50 USD for a transit visa...
-In Africa you often hear the phrase "Africa time," which generally means that schedules run 45 mins to a couple hours behind. Apparently this does not apply at airports. We showed up to the departures lobby three minutes after the first bording call in the Livingstone airport and found a scowling customs agent, irritated gate attendant, and angry stewardesses waving us on board as we ran out onto the tarmac. We were basically the last people to board every flight we took over our four days of travel :-P
As we sat at a pub in the JoBurg airport, watching our flight to Cape Town board while we finished up a late lunch and a couple pints, I felt satisfied with all that we'd seen, yet knew that those were places I might like to return to for much more time in the future. There are different ways to travel: widely verses intimately, on the cheap versus luxuriously, for business, pleasure, scholarship, or some combination of the three. The important thing, I guess, is to know why you go and be clear in your own mind about what you can accomplish given your chosen medium and the time available. In that sense I was satisfied to have seen and done about as much as anyone could reasonably hope for in four days, and richly blessed by the time to connect with my cousin. Yet it was everything that I just barely touched, the beauty and stark contradictions of a country wracked by turmoil but with so much to offer, that made me hope to return in the future.
As we were getting ready to take our bill and board our flight Matthew asked our waitress if there was anyway he could pay her for the Windhoek tumblers that we'd had our pints in. She glanced around furtively, then leaned in and, with a knowing look and quiet voice said "I will make a plan for you." "I love these people," I thought, as we got up to leave, tumblers tucked in our backpacks. Hopefully it won't be too long before I visit again.
Monday, April 13, 2009
a night on table mountain
It's easy to see why people who come to Cape Town are almost always enamored with it. The city's palm-lined boulevards, vibey shops situated amongst beautiful colonial architecture, and colorful blend of people from all over the world lie right up against the slopes of Table Mountain, which stands like a majestic rocky guardian looking over its inhabitants. Of course you can over-romanticize a place--in addition to being beautiful Cape Town is a place of intense contrasts, and was one of the focal points for the decades-long struggle of black South Africans against the apartheid regime.
This weekend we had an opportunity to experience Cape Town from multiple angles at the same time, when we spent the night on top of Table Mountain with Beyond Expectations Environmental Project (BEEP). BEEP is an ogranization that an amazing man named Lindela started with several friends as an outreach to children in the shanty towns around Cape Town. Long story short, during Apartheid the shanties were places where dislocated and oppressed blacks were placed so that they could be controlled and kept out of sight by/from the Cape Town elite. Unsurprisngly, these places have continued to exist as zones of concentrated poverty and social disfunction, brought about by the crushing burdens of dislocation, discrimation, and poverty. Lindela caught a vision while working as a tour guide to take young people from these towns up on to the mountain, a sacred place for centuries to the Cape's native inhabitants, to confront the buried pain and high-stakes decisions of life in the shanties. Over the course of several excursions the children become leaders who guide their peers on new trips in the future. Lindela and his co-leaders are very much in a counselling/leading role throughout, their goal is to help the kids flourish in their gifts as they interact with each other.
This weekend we had an opportunity to experience Cape Town from multiple angles at the same time, when we spent the night on top of Table Mountain with Beyond Expectations Environmental Project (BEEP). BEEP is an ogranization that an amazing man named Lindela started with several friends as an outreach to children in the shanty towns around Cape Town. Long story short, during Apartheid the shanties were places where dislocated and oppressed blacks were placed so that they could be controlled and kept out of sight by/from the Cape Town elite. Unsurprisngly, these places have continued to exist as zones of concentrated poverty and social disfunction, brought about by the crushing burdens of dislocation, discrimation, and poverty. Lindela caught a vision while working as a tour guide to take young people from these towns up on to the mountain, a sacred place for centuries to the Cape's native inhabitants, to confront the buried pain and high-stakes decisions of life in the shanties. Over the course of several excursions the children become leaders who guide their peers on new trips in the future. Lindela and his co-leaders are very much in a counselling/leading role throughout, their goal is to help the kids flourish in their gifts as they interact with each other.
This weekend, however, we were the childrens' posy, and they were our guides up the mountain. There is inevitably some awkward friction when the predominately-white and absolutely privileged meet the black and disempowered, but with each step up the trail we warmed to each other, and by the time we reached the cabins up top it felt entirely natural to drop our packs and get right into a game of soccer. Like in Rwanda, I felt that there are some bridges that can be crossed in a moment, other that can be crossed in a couple of hours, others that take years, and some that simply don't exist. Yet when you back away from the goal of changing a young person's life in two days and simply focus on enjoying the moment for what it is you find that there's meaning enough in a game of soccer or cricket, shared tuna sandwiches, a walk along the bluffs, or scrubbing up dinner dishes together after a long day on the trial.
It was the first Easter that I've spent away from church, but the joy of being out with the kids in nature's cathedral was more than I could have asked for. Christ says that he came that we would have life and life to the fullest, not just in the life to come but welling up from within us today. I pray that BEEP will help foster rich fruit in these kids' minds and hearts for generations to come.
South Africa has been a joy so far, and I am looking forward to experiencing more of this place when I return from Zimbabwe next Saturday. Tomorrow morning I'm off to Harare and Victoria Falls with my cousin Matthew, who has generously offered to finance my share of the trip. So excited! Pray for safety, sound decision making, and meaningful interactions with Zimbabweans even as we seek to stay safe in the midst of a fairly volatile situation.
I would have liked more time to journal, but my friend Akosua needs her mac back--thanks for the mac, Kos!
Abrazos,
Aaron
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
an update for the panel
This morning, as I am just hours away from leaving for Cape Town, I finished this email that I wrote for the members of my selection committee. Some reflections on my academic journey, as well as a brief synopsis of what I'll be up to this summer. Life moves FAST FAST FAST! Unbelievable, man. To those of you reading still, I'll try and post something in the way of an update or two from Africa, and may send out an email as well (or I might just do one of those and copy it to the other!).
Much love,
Aaron
----
Dear Pat and Annette,
Greetings from Oxford! It's been a long time since you've heard anything from me so I thought I'd drop you a note to let you know what I'm doing now and what I've been up to since you last saw me. I don't know if either of you is still in contact with the other members of the selection panel, but if you have those emails and wouldn't mind either forwarding this message on or passing them to me I'd really appreciate it.
It's amazing to think that Hillary term has already come and gone, and that I'm only a little more than a month away from taking exams for my MSc of Applied Statistics. I've been on an interesting road academically since you we last saw each other in November 2007. Here's a summary:
It was my initial exposure to economics and political science that got me emotionally and intellectually engaged at university, as I realized that there was this thing called social science that could be used to tackle questions of poverty and injustice. This interest motivated my public policy and development studies at Stanford and led me to Peru to study rural microfinance. As I was in Peru drafting my Rhodes scholarship essay the most natural course choice was Development Studies, and when I needed to choose my internship in D.C. I lobbied for a position at Treasury, hoping for a first-hand view of how the U.S. leverages foreign economic policy in pursuit of development objectives. After a six month period of time in which I flew into Lima in June and out in September, completed my field work, won the scholarship, finished my internship at Treasury, and returned home in December, I was less convinced than I'd been before about continuing to pursue Development as an academic discipline. My motivations for seeking a Rhodes--to somehow play a part in promoting social and economic justice in the world--were unchanged, but I was now uncertain about the best means as I sifted through my application packet and considered what course I would apply for. It seemed to me after several months on the ground in Peru and on the 5th floor of Treasury that (a) economic development is an organic process that occurs largely independently of any concerted policy effort and (b) that to the extent policies matter, the domestic arena is far more important than the international. Though I still believe in much of the work that the Treasury does through technical economic/financial assistance, underwriting small-business lending in Latin America, and helping determine the American position at the World Bank and IMF, I was no longer convinced that a career in aid of foreign economic policy was the most direct means of pursuing the passions that got me interested in economic development in the first place.
I wasn't quite sure what I would do instead, though. I waffled for a while, and settled on the MSc of Global Governance and Diplomacy for a time. That lasted until I met up with Annette for coffee back at Stanford over the winter and she asked "Global Governance? What, uh, does that do?" Realizing that I had even less of an answer for that question than I had for Development Studies was a wake-up call, and I started second-guessing myself again. That's about the time I began considering Statistics. I've always been pretty decent at math, and the courses that I'd enjoyed the most at Stanford and had been the most math-intensive. Though stats has no "direct" application to the topics I'd dedicated myself to studying in undergrad I knew that it would be a rigorous course that would challenge me intellectually and be widely applicable to just about any field I would one day choose to enter. I didn't, and still don't, have much clarity about what the future holds, but I do believe that the world requires individuals who are developed in their talents, capable in their field, and desire deeply to do good.
So in late February, after I'd been accepted to Global Governance I filed a new application for a spot in the one-year MSc of Applied Statistics, and I've been very pleased with the choice. It's been challenging and I've had to learn a lot as I've gone along, but I feel that the course is helping me to become a more rigorous thinker in addition to equipping me with basic skills in data analysis. I'm trying to sort out a dissertation topic at the moment. Initially I thought that I would help a researcher here at the Centre for the Environment develop mortality models for rainforest trees, but it turns out that the innovative methodology that he was considering is not well-suited to the problem we're trying to solve, and several papers have already implemented the best alternative, logistic regression modeling. I'm also investigating a project with Opportunity International, a microfinance lender that is in the middle of a pioneering impact assessment study. The catch with this project, however, is that Opportunity will likely prefer any results at this stage to be in-house only! So we'll see: at the moment I'm very much on the market for a project with an interesting question and good data.
There's the brief on what I've been up to academically. Next year I'll read for the MSc of Environmental Change and Management, where I'll be most interested in questions of managing population pressure on the environment.
As far as my Oxford experience has gone so far, by and large it's been great. I ended up in Worcester College, which has lovely grounds, good food, very affordable housing, a lively MCR, and the most ostentatious chapel that I've seen so far. In addition to academics I rowed in Christ Church Regatta for Michaelmas Term and boxed during Hillary, which I will continue with in Trinity. I've enjoyed the company of good friends since arriving, especially that of my fellow Rhodies, and am living with Joe O'Shea (1st year from Florida) and Sherif Girgis (1st year from Delaware) in a flat we're renting in Jericho next year. Though I haven't traveled quite as much as several of my colleagues I've been taking advantage of my relative proximity to Africa: this winter I spent 5 weeks in Rwanda (email attached if you'd like to read a bit about that time) and am leaving this afternoon for a trip to Cape Town, South Africa, with the Rhodes Scholars South Africa Forum. I attend St Aldates Church, where I co-lead a men's small group and enjoy their tradition of intellectual and spiritual engagement with faith. This summer I will come back to the West Coast for two visits in June, one to see my little sister graduate and the other to attend a friend's wedding at Stanford, before coming back to Oxford to work on my dissertation and teach Politics and Economics through OxBridge in July. In August I will travel southern Europe with my little sister before returning to Oxford to finish and submit my statistics dissertation, and will visit Thailand with a good friend from high school in September before starting the new term.
Though weather occasionally gets me down and I struggle at times with my over-arching purpose for being here I'm enjoying this time of life immensely. Before I won the scholarship it seemed like such a lofty, all-surpassing achievement. Yet since I've arrived here I've been reminded that life continues on as usual, and that it is incumbent on me to make the most of the time at hand. In this more than anything I hope honor the faith you placed in me over a year ago: though I'm still seeking out my way through the future you can be confident that I am doing my best to live well and do right.
That Saturday in November was a beautiful day: there was something about returning to the city where I was born and to the area where I had grown up that was quite moving. I came back to a place that for me often symbolized limited possibilities, to walk through a door that opened to an even broader horizon. It was redemptive, in a way, and I'm thankful to you for being a part of that with me.
If you are inclined I would love to know a little bit about life on your end!
All the best,
Aaron Polhamus
Much love,
Aaron
----
Dear Pat and Annette,
Greetings from Oxford! It's been a long time since you've heard anything from me so I thought I'd drop you a note to let you know what I'm doing now and what I've been up to since you last saw me. I don't know if either of you is still in contact with the other members of the selection panel, but if you have those emails and wouldn't mind either forwarding this message on or passing them to me I'd really appreciate it.
It's amazing to think that Hillary term has already come and gone, and that I'm only a little more than a month away from taking exams for my MSc of Applied Statistics. I've been on an interesting road academically since you we last saw each other in November 2007. Here's a summary:
It was my initial exposure to economics and political science that got me emotionally and intellectually engaged at university, as I realized that there was this thing called social science that could be used to tackle questions of poverty and injustice. This interest motivated my public policy and development studies at Stanford and led me to Peru to study rural microfinance. As I was in Peru drafting my Rhodes scholarship essay the most natural course choice was Development Studies, and when I needed to choose my internship in D.C. I lobbied for a position at Treasury, hoping for a first-hand view of how the U.S. leverages foreign economic policy in pursuit of development objectives. After a six month period of time in which I flew into Lima in June and out in September, completed my field work, won the scholarship, finished my internship at Treasury, and returned home in December, I was less convinced than I'd been before about continuing to pursue Development as an academic discipline. My motivations for seeking a Rhodes--to somehow play a part in promoting social and economic justice in the world--were unchanged, but I was now uncertain about the best means as I sifted through my application packet and considered what course I would apply for. It seemed to me after several months on the ground in Peru and on the 5th floor of Treasury that (a) economic development is an organic process that occurs largely independently of any concerted policy effort and (b) that to the extent policies matter, the domestic arena is far more important than the international. Though I still believe in much of the work that the Treasury does through technical economic/financial assistance, underwriting small-business lending in Latin America, and helping determine the American position at the World Bank and IMF, I was no longer convinced that a career in aid of foreign economic policy was the most direct means of pursuing the passions that got me interested in economic development in the first place.
I wasn't quite sure what I would do instead, though. I waffled for a while, and settled on the MSc of Global Governance and Diplomacy for a time. That lasted until I met up with Annette for coffee back at Stanford over the winter and she asked "Global Governance? What, uh, does that do?" Realizing that I had even less of an answer for that question than I had for Development Studies was a wake-up call, and I started second-guessing myself again. That's about the time I began considering Statistics. I've always been pretty decent at math, and the courses that I'd enjoyed the most at Stanford and had been the most math-intensive. Though stats has no "direct" application to the topics I'd dedicated myself to studying in undergrad I knew that it would be a rigorous course that would challenge me intellectually and be widely applicable to just about any field I would one day choose to enter. I didn't, and still don't, have much clarity about what the future holds, but I do believe that the world requires individuals who are developed in their talents, capable in their field, and desire deeply to do good.
So in late February, after I'd been accepted to Global Governance I filed a new application for a spot in the one-year MSc of Applied Statistics, and I've been very pleased with the choice. It's been challenging and I've had to learn a lot as I've gone along, but I feel that the course is helping me to become a more rigorous thinker in addition to equipping me with basic skills in data analysis. I'm trying to sort out a dissertation topic at the moment. Initially I thought that I would help a researcher here at the Centre for the Environment develop mortality models for rainforest trees, but it turns out that the innovative methodology that he was considering is not well-suited to the problem we're trying to solve, and several papers have already implemented the best alternative, logistic regression modeling. I'm also investigating a project with Opportunity International, a microfinance lender that is in the middle of a pioneering impact assessment study. The catch with this project, however, is that Opportunity will likely prefer any results at this stage to be in-house only! So we'll see: at the moment I'm very much on the market for a project with an interesting question and good data.
There's the brief on what I've been up to academically. Next year I'll read for the MSc of Environmental Change and Management, where I'll be most interested in questions of managing population pressure on the environment.
As far as my Oxford experience has gone so far, by and large it's been great. I ended up in Worcester College, which has lovely grounds, good food, very affordable housing, a lively MCR, and the most ostentatious chapel that I've seen so far. In addition to academics I rowed in Christ Church Regatta for Michaelmas Term and boxed during Hillary, which I will continue with in Trinity. I've enjoyed the company of good friends since arriving, especially that of my fellow Rhodies, and am living with Joe O'Shea (1st year from Florida) and Sherif Girgis (1st year from Delaware) in a flat we're renting in Jericho next year. Though I haven't traveled quite as much as several of my colleagues I've been taking advantage of my relative proximity to Africa: this winter I spent 5 weeks in Rwanda (email attached if you'd like to read a bit about that time) and am leaving this afternoon for a trip to Cape Town, South Africa, with the Rhodes Scholars South Africa Forum. I attend St Aldates Church, where I co-lead a men's small group and enjoy their tradition of intellectual and spiritual engagement with faith. This summer I will come back to the West Coast for two visits in June, one to see my little sister graduate and the other to attend a friend's wedding at Stanford, before coming back to Oxford to work on my dissertation and teach Politics and Economics through OxBridge in July. In August I will travel southern Europe with my little sister before returning to Oxford to finish and submit my statistics dissertation, and will visit Thailand with a good friend from high school in September before starting the new term.
Though weather occasionally gets me down and I struggle at times with my over-arching purpose for being here I'm enjoying this time of life immensely. Before I won the scholarship it seemed like such a lofty, all-surpassing achievement. Yet since I've arrived here I've been reminded that life continues on as usual, and that it is incumbent on me to make the most of the time at hand. In this more than anything I hope honor the faith you placed in me over a year ago: though I'm still seeking out my way through the future you can be confident that I am doing my best to live well and do right.
That Saturday in November was a beautiful day: there was something about returning to the city where I was born and to the area where I had grown up that was quite moving. I came back to a place that for me often symbolized limited possibilities, to walk through a door that opened to an even broader horizon. It was redemptive, in a way, and I'm thankful to you for being a part of that with me.
If you are inclined I would love to know a little bit about life on your end!
All the best,
Aaron Polhamus
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