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Africa

Today the old man was in London, unveiling a statue of himself in Parliament Square. Zefrog was there and posts some photos of the event on Flickr.

The photograph above is from earlier in the year when Graça Machel (pictured with her husband) was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University in South Africa.

This is a short clip showing the famous Domba - an initiation dance of the vhaVenda cultural tradition in Southern Africa. A government website for the region describes it thus:

The python is the god of fertility in the vhaVhenda tradition and the legend tells us that a vhaVhenda man had a broken heart because of the loss of a great love. In his sorrow he walked into Lake Fundudzi at which time he turned into a python. Young virgin Venda maidens still perform the famous Domba-python dance in this area to honour this god of fertility. We can further speculate about the white crocodile (as described previously) which the vhaVenda’s belief lives in this Lake. This crocodile might have really existed because this Lake is still today inhabited by large crocodiles, and an albino crocodile might have once lived in the lake where young, virgin Venda maidens were once offered to them. Lake Fundudzi is surrounded by mountains and special permission has to be obtained to visit this sacred Lake. No-one washes or swims in this lake.

The lake is apparently regarded with some suspicion because it is fed by the Mutale River, but has no apparent outlet.  Traditionally the Doomba was the initiation attended by both young men and women, as the final rite before marriage and after having already attended separate single-sex initiation ceremonies. However Christian missionaries changed the tradition after deciding it was immoral for girls and boys to attend the same ceremony. As a result, now only girls attend the Domba which teaches young women how to prepare themselves for marriage: sexual reproduction, birth planning, giving birth, child care, maintaining good relations with her husband, and the teaching of HIV prevention (a recent innovation).

I filmed a cultural group from Soweto performing this dance at the Folklore Festival in Haguenau, France in 2002.

I spent a bit of time over the weekend browsing through the flickr photo pool of Swaziland and was struck by chancer’s photos of Phophonyane. I remember spending many happy hours here as a child fishing for tadpoles, both in the pools at the top and at the bottom of the falls. I also recall being responsible for sending some of the tadpoles on the journey from the top pools to the bottom pools.  I was also interested in the Execution Rock, which gave me the heebie-jeebies as a young child. I was told that the ground below the rock is littered with old skeletons and bones.
Credit: the photo is from Chancer!

This is a photograph I took in Point Road, Durban, last year that I have submitted for Photo Friday (theme: Poverty).

According to a The Childrens’ Institute at the University of Cape Town:

Child poverty is a major issue of concern in South Africa, and a legacy of Apartheid policies of underdevelopment. The lack of resources to adequately care for children and provide for their development has significant policy implications. Poverty not only aggravates the consequences of illnesses such as HIV-infections and AIDS, but also places great demands on the State to deliver basic services that address poverty and reduce inequity. The State’s capacity and will to reduce poverty and create jobs has serious implications for children.

The Department of Social Development released a first draft baseline document in July 2003 for the development of a national policy for families. The document states that 59% of children aged 0 – 17 are poor, and that:
Poverty affects children by reducing their chances of living beyond their first five years, by stunting their growth, rendering them vulnerable to infectious diseases and disabling injury, reducing their confidence and hope in the future, and limit (sic) their education capacity for developing to their full intellectual potential.
This poverty rate is based on estimates of household income using the Income and Expenditure Survey of 1999. However, according to Streak (2001, 23) “These child poverty estimates are conservative. An alternative analysis suggests that when income poverty is defined in the absolute sense – as a situation in which a child does not have the income needed to meet his or her basic needs - the child poverty rate in South Africa is even higher – about 70%.”

Not only is poverty widespread but inequality is also marked and growing. Inequality between and within provinces is marked with African families, families headed by women, families affected by HIV, and families in rural areas being most impoverished.

The children in my photograph live on the street, and would presumably not be included in any statistics on household poverty.

There are a number of places in the world known as Mitchell Park: a park in Milwaukee (and various other parts of the USA); a suburb of Adelaide, Australia; and this park in eThekweni (Durban, South Africa).

According to the official city website:

Mitchell Park, once an ostrich farm was named after Sir Charles Bullen Hugh Mitchell who came to Natal as Colonial Secretary in 1877 and 1889 became Governor of Natal for 15 years.

Displays of amaryllis may be seen in season and refreshment facilities, bird aviaries and children’s play facilities attract the visitors. Park rangers are on duty with a security guard service during the night. There is a small charge to enter the zoo, with group tour concessions available.

I added the link to a rather sparse article on Charles Mitchell at wikipedia. There’s a photo of him here. It seems that the park is about 105 years old this year.

I don’t know why, but the moment I saw this large carving in a shop window (on holiday in December in Cape Town) the phrase Ngubani lo? came to mind.

Checking the spelling of this question (which means who is there?) I came across this account of an incident in Swaziland when the King met with church leaders:

The king had arrived and everybody was attentively listening to the speakers when suddenly a dull but sharp sound broke the silence&an unidentified priest had just released his stomach gas just a little too loudly.

It happened after lunch yesterday at Ngabezweni Royal Residence when the church leaders had been served with free food of hard porridge and offal meat. The dull sound of farting seemed to irritate those who were within hearing range because for a few seconds there was murmuring and questions about who has done that. Hheyi ngubani lo? (Hey who was that?),other priests were heard saying. Others, including some members of the security forces were amused by the episode as they chuckled silently.

Many heads turned to the back row, where the farting came from, but the culprit could not be spotted. Like everyone, he probably looked around and asked who did that in an irritated tone. Meanwhile, the event, that is, king meeting church leaders at the royal residence ended late in the afternoon.

This is another view of Camps Bay in Cape Town, taken at sunset from the rock in Fresnaye.

I had a strange experience three nights ago - that is if I can claim the experience for my own: a friend in Cape Town dreamed my dream. It was about her, me, my family and my thoughts. Some of the most obvious imagery was pretty clear to her (even then I don’t think she necessarily understood all the details and symbolism).  The rest, except for the final image was instantly clear.  I was astonished when she told me of the dream because I had been thinking the same thoughts that evening (and took them to my pillow).

I did a bit of research and there are two main ideas about the final, missing, link:

1. The passage of life

The buffalo sacrifice is important in many Southeast Asian cultures in royal and chiefly ritual, and in funerary rites. The buffalo and horse are commonly viewed as animals that carry the dead to the afterlife.

2. The coming of Spring (representing abundance, new life, etc)

On this day in 1960, the police at Sharpville in South Africa opened fire on a peaceful demonstration, killing 69 people and injuring 189.  Of the dead 8 were women and 10 were children.

Contemporary Report from the BBC
Conclusions of the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission
zaBlogger’s commemorative blog entry from last year

This is the famous 200 year old Elephant Tree on the Berea of Durban, or what is left of it.  The tree stood on the corner of Havelock and Ferndale Roads until it collapsed in March last year despite a 30 year effort to preserve and prop it up.  The species of tree is known locally as an umkhuhlu tree (forest mahogany or Trichelia dregena), and most local wood carvings bought at the side of the road are made from it.

This specific tree is apparently called the elephant tree because

it was one of the last remnants of the dense indigenous forests on Durban’s Berea that were once inhabited by elephant herds, lions and other wild animals.

... It’s very likely that elephants used to rub themselves against that tree as they wandered down to the Umgeni River for a drink.

According to an article in the local rag the tree was supposed to come back to life when a local academic, Pitika Ntuli, decided to carve the fallen tree into an art exhibition which could tour the country. Ntuli is quoted as saying:

my project also embodies the spirits of some of the animals which are inextricably linked to the history of Nguni people. Each and every one of us have animal totems. I have two clan names: Sompisi (the mark of the hyena) and Inhloko yemamba (head of the mamba).

If you are expecting only typically African sculptures to be produced from this you might be disappointed:

Ntuli’s idea is to transform the logs into a time-linked series of sculptures which depict historical happenings and eras between 1805 and 2005.

For example, he has chosen a uniquely shaped configuration of branches to depict the 1870s and the Berlin Conference, where major European powers carved up Africa into preferred colonies.

One log has been specially chosen to depict the Industrial Revolution because it contains remnants of the metal bolts and steel cables which were placed around some of the branches of the ageing elephant tree by the Parks Department to prevent it collapsing.

According to the article Ntuli was hoping to complete his ambitious project by the end of 2005. Unfortunately there was no sign of this when we were there at the end of December.

The local suburb of Essenwood is presumably named after the umkhulu tree, as its Afrikaans name is rooi essenhout (red essenwood).  The leaves of the tree are used in traditional medicine to treat backache, stomach problems, and as an enema.

Anne, of Routes and Roots has blogged about the tree falling down here.

This is the Crocokraal Restaurant at PheZulu Safari Park.

The house seems to be the old colonial farm house, replete with wrap-around Victorian verandah, broekie lace cast iron trimmings, and corrogated iron roof.  Strangely a tree has been left to grow through the one end of the verandah.  More strangely to me however, the restaurant serves such delicacies as crocodile steak. It reminded me of the Thai zoo that put exotic animals on the zoo restaurant menu, but took them off again under pressure. Except nobody seems to see any problem in this case. Perhaps Nile crocodiles are not sexy as lion, buffalo, elephant and giraffe?

We visited two reptile parks in South Africa, and a private house who seemed to have their own private reptile park in their back garden. I am not very into snakes and monitors and leguvaans and at the private house we saw the stacks of rat cages (for breeding their food), which was off-putting for squeamish types like me.  Therefore I was interested to read yesterday via Rebecca Blood about the snake and hamster that are friends.  Hollywood couldn’t make it up.  Actually they could.

This is a leaf of the Monstera deliciosa (delicious monster) plant. The plant originates in Mexico and South America, but is a popular house-plant.  It also grows very well in the climate of KwaZulu Natal, where I took this photo.

It bears a tasty fruit (often not when grown as a house-plant) that tastes something like a misture of banana and a pineapple. It is essentially a sort of creeper, and an interesting fact about the plant is that when the seeds germinate in the wild the young plants grow away in the direction of the darkest area until they find a tree trunk. They then grow up the tree towards the canopy.  Another delicious monster leaf is visible in the background of the photograph I posted yesterday.

This is a Burmese Python at the reptile park at PheZulu. A nearby notice advises that this snake

is a common pet snake that is unfortunately often released into the wild. It has larger scales than the Rock Python and has a light orange in its patterns. All pythons have a small claw on either side of the cloaca (this is the area between the tail and the body where the private parts are situated, under a large scale under the body).
Its diet includes ground birds, deer, boar and domestic animals.
Average length: about 6 metres
Locality: Bhutan, Burma, Vietnam and India.
This exotic snake is not indiginous to South Africa.

The guide took the snake out of its enclosure and several of us had turns holding it (over the shoulders). 

This is the view in the opposite direction. The beach actually opens onto a small fishing harbour, so there are no waves and the water can become relatively warmer than the open sea. When the boats come in it is possible to buy fresh fish in the harbour. There are many excellent restaurants in the vicinity where the seafood can also be sampled, but I would recommend The Harbour Music Club at the Acoustic Cafe.

The aim of the Harbour Music Club is to promote good acoustic and rock music in Cape Town, a place for established musicians to play in an informal atmosphere and also try out new material or for new artists to get their performing sea legs.

You are not really going there for the food, which is simple and cheap, but for the Wednesday and Friday night live music, or the Saturday afternoon jam sessions. 

If it is food you are after then you would be better off at The Harbour House, with its excellent views.  If you are interested in theatre, you could try The Kalk Bay Kitchen. Meals are (deliberately) served cold, and it has more interesting vegetarian options (as does Olympia Cafe which is where the theatre started out).

I also found a nice little site showcasing Kalk Bay here.

Kalk is the Afrikaans word for lime, and this place gets its name from the mine and kiln here in times past. 

The railway that cuts the beach off from the high street and village is the Cape Town/Simonstown line.  Just on the other side of the railway line (almost beneath it) is the Haven Night Shelter, which opened in 1994

after numerous discussions with the relevant parties and having overcome various obstacles with opposing ratepayers.

According to their website, they not only provide shelter to the homeless of Kalk Bay but also provide food aid to 2000 people in the area.

On the Kalk Bay main road are the antique shops and fancy restaurants which pull in tourists and locals alike.  For breakfast, it should be Olympia Cafe. Bookings are not taken so you should get there early and join the queue (put your name on the white board at the entrance, and don’t be put off by the brusqueness of the staff who can’t seem to handle the pressure.  If you decide to foresake the buzz of Olympia Cafe for one of the emptier restaurant next door then you have made a mistake.

This is a Rotary sign above a lucky frog, inviting you to make donations to Rotary. The frog doubles as a money box. It is situated in Mitchell Park in Durban. I know that I can’t spell, and I am not wanting to gloat, but I do know the difference between the words peer and seer.