The Musings of a Wandering Stranger.

I recieved your letters today, and i plan on replying to each one individually, its just going to take me some time as i have 12 pages to write in the next 48 hours and a long entry on India.

I just wanted to let you know that i recieved your letters, and they are much appreciated.

p.s. Aunt Kelly, could you pass the previous post along to ryans class?

Dear Fourth graders of Forest,

Thanks for your letter; I received it on my cabin door today (March 30.) This trip has been fun, and has already changed my whole perspective on the world. In response to the questions you mailed me, the weather in general has been warm, if not blistering hot. Brazil was in the 80’s and mildly humid, it was mostly the hot sun that stood out in Brazil, it also rained a bit while I was there but only in the evening. In South Africa, it was an INTENSE dry heat, almost no humidity but temperatures that hit 110 and shade did not grant much relief from the heat. Mauritius was a lot like Florida, 80’s and high humidity, but there was almost always a cool breeze and we spent a fair amount of time near the beach with the cool sea air. India on the other hand, was a beast of a completely different nature, it was unbearably hot, easily topping 100 and humidity was very high, the heat was the most intense I have ever experienced, and air conditioning was hard to find. When we first reboarded the ship, it felt like an igloo even though it was in the 70’s onboard. I’ll keep you updated on the weather from the other parts of the world as I get there, I am currently set to arrive in Malaysia on the 2nd.
Cage Diving in South Africa was scary, we saw 9 sharks some of which neared 20ft long, a few rammed the cage while I was in it.
I’ll e-mail some pictures to my aunt so you can see them. They really are scary animals, and the teeth look like they could tear you to shreds.
The time changes, while the past few days have been interesting, as of this moment I am 9 and ½ hours ahead of Michigan, I am still on Indian time at the moment. Tonight at midnight I move my clock ahead ½ hour, and then 1 hour each night for the following two nights. This will put me exactly half way around the world from home!! Therefore, when the sun is setting here, it will be rising there!!!
The coolest thing I have experience so far, that’s a tough question to answer. A very tough question, so I’ll give you two answers. In South Africa, I went sky diving, which was the coolest physical experience I have ever had. We rolled out of the small 4 seater plane backwards and seeing it tear away from view as I fell for 6,000ft before the parachute opened. Although that was the coolest physical experience, I have had, by far the one experience that has had the most profound effect was working with handicapped and disabled children at a home for them. They were between the ages of 5-19 many of them around your ages. I will be posting pictures of it later. But we spent all day cleaning up the place and playing with the children. Then we brought them back on the ship, I had to carry several of them up the stairs in order to board the ship. It truly was a humbling experience.

Thanks for the letters, and I hope for more.

-Bryan

these cannot do justice to the thousands i can say.

…which has given more to me.
There is so much more, so much more I need to know.

So now my thoughts that I promised I’d commit to writing on South Africa.
Upon arrival in South Africa I was greeted by an extremely westernized waterfront, western dressing people, stores I was familiar with. All in all, it didn’t feel foreign, not at all what I was expecting. It wasn’t until I returned from safari that any of that truly changed. When I started talking to some locals in the bars and restaurants, and finding out how much different things are outside of the tourist area. I also learned quite bluntly, how deep harm from the past really is. One of the afternoons after safari, I randomly started talking to a taxi driver, and the townships came up and how I wish I had time to see them up close. I soon discovered that he lived in one, and wanted to show me how life really is for some South Africans. So, he drove us through almost every street of the township and what I saw was more than I expected. Among some of the poorest of the poor in South Africa, there was this overwhelming sense of pride. I had my camera in hand, but was too awestruck to even put the viewfinder to my eye. The utter poverty was apparent, yet everywhere he drove he pointed out friend’s shacks, and told their stories. Eventually we arrived at what seemed to be one of the most pitiful of dwelling I had ever seen, with a roof made out what looked to be old aluminum siding, and walls of corrugated steel and plywood. With an utterly overpowering sense of pride, he told me this was his home where he, his wife and his three kids live and that they hoped to one day have a house from the government. I began to realize that this is a side of the country tourists never see and I could no longer continue on this as a tourist, as then I am still a complete stranger to the diversity of the places I go and I have to make an effort to do more than visit. I have to see beyond the exotic landscapes and people.
There is so much more to the events and the experiences that I just cannot express in writing or even in coherent English. The contrast of the utter poverty and the waterfront side by side, the pride in his voice and his words, the sorrow of the past and yet his hope for his children’s generation all amount to a realization in me that this voyage has already begun to change me. It has begun to change way in which I view this world, its as if I was focused on something close up and the background is just starting to come into focus, with each passing day more and more does. Yet now as I sit writing this one day away from Chennai, struggling to put my thoughts into words, I honestly wonder if this extremely personalized tour of the township has had this much of an effect on me, what I am in for when we reach port tomorrow.

gonna live it up knowing
in this life you only get one go around
and i cant live it down
gonna live for places i aint been
make alot of good remember whens.
right up to the end…
-Dierks Bentley

Before i get into anything else, please visit my Flickr page to see more photos. There are more quite a few more up there then are posted here.
If i auctually get online in Mauritius i will update the photo page. Until then www.flickr.com/photos/gitgat/ Under the set called Semester At Sea

Cape Town.

It’s honestly hard to comprehend the fact that I just spent six days in South Africa. I have only begun to process the experience and the people I met. From the taxi driver who told us about life in the townships, to the Iraqis at Quay Four who were trying to get to Dearborn and the Irishman who was on business.
Since my own internal processing of the events of the past week has only begun and is having difficulty understanding how much more there is to this planet than I originally realized, I’ll try to make this anecdotal and entertaining, with a much deeper post to follow.

I’ll start with the 28th of February, two days before our arrival in Cape Town. We were honored to have Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak to us about his thoughts on South Africa and on his admiration for our generation’s commitment to service. The next day he had a question and answer session led by a panel, which was unfortunately semi-predictable in its choice of questions. I was lucky enough though to get a great seat.
The night of the 1st was a very long night where the anticipation was clearly present in the air and around the entire shipboard community. I spent the majority of the night polishing off a paper that was due, and I quote “before we arrive in Cape Town” which I took to mean, 8am on the 2nd. Around 12:30, I made my way to the side of the seventh deck to relax and possibly sleep outside. Well no sleeping actually took place as I was up all night talking with friends about every façade of life, from religion, to politics, to obtaining a “global perspective on events” and other topics that I am still trying to analyze in my head. (There will be another post hopefully before Mauritius of a much more philosophical nature. Once I get through he next three days of tests.) Around roughly 4:15am local time, they shut off the overhead lighting and the stars came into view. After wandering over to the starboard side of the ship, I finally located the Southern Cross, in the process I caught of slight glimmer out of the corner of my eye. After allowing my eyes to adjust to the light, I realized I was looking at Table Mountain on the horizon and Cape Town situated at its base. The concept of being this far from home and actually circumnavigating the planet finally began to take hold. We spend the next two hours or so unable to sleep because of excitement. Then at sunrise, we made our way to the front of the ship to watch the sunrise over the mountains and the ship dock in port. Then if was off for a short two-hour nap before the consulate’s briefing and a speech by the Premier of the Western Cape.

Second Day- Day Four

Up at 6:45 the second day in order to head out on Safari to Kawazulu Natal. We left for the airport at 7:45 and after a two hour flight and a three hour drive, plus a delay to fix the air-conditioning on the bus, we finally arrived at the tree lodge at around 6pm. Just in time for an evening game drive and dinner.
I’ll let the pictures sum up safari itself but, I’ll elaborate on the rest.
When at nights, when we had the little bit of free time that was available we spent relaxing by the pool and celebrating Tyler’s 21st birthday. Other than that, I made some new friends and met some interesting people.

Day Five
On the fourth night, after returning from Safari, I met some friends at the local Irish pub and called it an early night in order to catch up on sleep. (early night is 2am)
The next day, I slept in so I could function and not be in extreme sleep deprivation, as I had slept less than 12 hours in 3 days. After emptying my camera of all 800 some photos that I took on safari, I made my way with some friends down to Long Street to look around. That night I met up with Owen and we went to a local microbrewery and had Ostrich burgers, which were unbelievably good. We eventually made our way back the ship to play some cards, when I was greeted by another group who was going to Mitchell’s to watch a soccer game at the local pub.

Day Six
Waking up at 5am, I scrambled to get ready to catch the van that was going to take us on a two-hour drive to the north east coast of South Africa. The van was driven by one of the owners of sharkcagediving.net Two hours later we were in their office going over the details of the trip and having breakfast. The wind was near gale force that day and the seas were extremely rough, especially for the 36ft catamaran that we boarded. After a short boat ride to the spot, the crew began to chum for sharks.

Soon one shark after another appeared and began to bite at the bait that was being pulled away from them. They were monsters, some over 4 meters in length the largest one at an estimated at over 6 meters. As soon as the crew thought they had attracted enough of them, and by enough I mean five of them circling the boat at any given time, they lowered the five-person cage into the water and we managed to cram 6 of us into it. As the sharks swam around us, the crew tossed a tuna head on a rope over the cage and dragged it back to the boat. This made the sharks swim directly towards us who were cowering in the cage holding our breaths. Eventually some of them were angry enough that they rammed the cage once or twice, one with its mouth wide opened. The girls started feeling a bit nauseous and cold after roughly an hour.
I stayed in the cage because we had to wait for the tide to rise a bit more before we could enter the harbor again. While I was in there by myself I gained a much better perspective as I could now see them on every side of me. Occasionally they would rub up against the cage and once or twice putting their noses right up against it looking straight at me. Both the ride there and back from cage diving were eye opening into how much tension is still present, and to a South African’s view on the last 15 years, but more on that in the next post.
We arrived back in port at roughly 7, when I ran into Ally who was looking for someone to go to the Jazz club with. Unfortunately, when we got there all the tables were reserved until after 10pm. We eventually ran into Rhea and some others. Since none of us had eaten since lunch, we went to a Belgium restaurant called Das Ankor. Where we had the house specialty, South African oysters on the half shell, and 1kg (2.2lbs) of steamed muscles prepared “Belgium Style”. Between that and the bottle of South African wine (it was our shark diving guides best friends winery) it was an amazing meal, and came to a grand total of 128 Rand apiece (one of the most expensive bottles of wine on the list), that roughly converts to 18USD. After leaving the restaurant Rhea, Ally, and I made our way to Quay Four.
This is one of the highlights of the trip. We sat around, and talked to two Iraqi men, who were both trying to get to Dearborn to meet their families who had escaped several years ago. They had been in South Africa for four months. Then, out of nowhere an Irish man comes up to me and asks about the Detroit Tigers hat that I was wearing. Through the thick accent and broken English it eventually became clear that he was a hockey fan and recognized the English D and connected Detroit with the Wings. It is amazing the people you can meet when you go out, don’t stay in a resort or tourist central and mix in among the locals. It can be truly eye opening. After closing down Quay Four, we made our way back to the ship and called it a night.

Day Seven
Another early morning, another adventure; waking up at 8am for breakfast and then meeting down in Pursers Square, we were getting ready to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. We met another van at the aquarium and took a 45-minute drive to a private airstrip. After a very short briefing on how skydiving works, I was sitting in the back of a stripped down Cessna. We climbed to 9,000ft. They slid open the side door. Inching my way to the door with my tandem partner on my back, I hung my legs out of the plane, crossed my arms, and held my head back. We rolled out of the plane backwards and then this sense of falling and pure adrenaline kicked in as I saw the plane tear away from me and we rolled over for the remaining thirty seconds of freefall before the five minute parachute ride to the ground. It really is something that everyone should try to do once. It’s an amazing sensation.
For the rest of the day we wandered around the local market. Unfortunately, on ship time was 8:30 so Amanda and I had an early dinner at a place in port. While we were eating, we ran into her roommate, Jayme. We joined them at the cantina. There I met her boyfriend who flew into Cape Town to meet up with her, and was flying to Mauritius. After finishing out drinks, we made our way back to the ship to watch a township choir perform.

If I had one regret about South Africa, it’s that I could not stay longer. You really need two week or more to see everything. Even pulling 20 hour or more days will not allow you to see half of the sights. One day I’ll come back, hike Table Mountain, tour the wine lands, tour Robin Island, and visit the District 6 Museum. (Anyone looking for a very good read, and a very interesting topic, look up District 6. I highly recommend it. (You can use this as a starting point, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_6)
Also, I know the grammar in this post is horrible. But I am just typing the thoughts as it comes to mind. I was checking my e-mail earlier and received the daily digest for the Semester at Sea MSN board (hi to everyone out there) and stumbled upon a post by Gretchen, “A lot of what has happened will not and cannot make sense to you as it is neither a feeling, nor an event, nor even an outward experience. It may just be an emotion of the moment or a memory.” That is the closest description to what I have experienced that I can find.
But feel free to ask questions, in fact I welcome them especially from family, friends, the students in Shane and Ryan’s classes, or anyone else who happens to stumble upon this blog. Either post them here, or e-mail them to me. Either way I’ll respond via e-mail, or if I get enough questions, I’ll make a post out of it. I’ll respond the best I can.

P.S. I’m sorry for not responding to those of you who e-mailed me, Mrs. Doughty and Aunt Kelly. I don’t check my e-mail when I am in port because I don’t want to be spending my time behind a computer terminal. Even though I kept saying I’d find the time to get to the Internet café that was only a five-minute walk, I never found the time.
But when at sea I check my e-mail at least once a day. So it can be at least a day before you get a response, because I download my e-mail and sign off the internet as quickly as possible, then I reply and it gets sent the next time I sign on. If I check my e-mail in the morning like I did today, and then I don’t get online till the next night, it can be a while especially when taking into account the current 8-hour time difference.

Thanks, and I will post my personal thoughts on South Africa in a few days when I get the time to sit put into words what I saw and experienced.

-Bryan