Chopsicles

If something themes a little different, then it prob is. and before you give me any credit, its all completely original, just not _my_ original. its the ‘connections’ theme stolen from some wordpress library, and the nice green pic is also from that.

The last couple of days have been a somewhat frustrating battle against the forces of technology. Trevor is involved in a project called Songs Worth Singing, part of a series including Stories Worth Telling, Instruments Worth Playing etc.. which have a focus on documenting for future generations the traditional sounds of the Cape and South Africa in general. As part of this work, Trevor earlier conducted interviews with various local musicians of significance and recorded these onto DV tapes so there are about 8 tapes on long play which I think is about 8 x 80 minutes, i.e. roughly 11 hours of footage that we need to get down to DVD or CD for review and then edit. I don’t think my little iBook knows what hit it and the processing is taking forever. I’m currently trying to research how I might do this in a timeframe that aligns better with my life expectancy.

I’ve uploaded some more pics to flickr. Quite an eclectic set this time, a result of having my camera with me most of the time.

On a brighter note, I think I may have found love. Following the old saying about the mountain and Mohammed, I now have coffee making equipment, and it was even on special. We’re very happy together and I think that this may be the one. Now all I just need to get some regular internet access and I’ll be quite content. I’m also thinking about trying to get a motorised scooter to get around while I’m here so I can take full advantage of the time. Apparently push bikes aren’t so safe.

I realise I haven’t put up a whole lot of detail about the project itself at this point but I’mn still figuring out exactly what I’m doing. Every day is quite varied and I end up doing a mixture of video editing, web development, photography and playing music on the breaks. Its really quite incredible to be doing such a combination of things I love doing and even though I’ve come to offer my services, in many ways it feels like a holiday. I guess its like that saying that if you find something you love doing and you’ll never work another day in your life. I’m cogitating about how I might turn it into a sustainable business back in Australia. Maybe if I could work commerically 50% of the time to fund other activities like the projects I’ve visited so far. There is, however, less certainty in a lifestyle that relies more on creativity than the clinical application of methodologies, and that freaks me out a bit. I’ve found the trip so far has been good for getting beyond comfort though, like when I was told in the morning at Lavenda that they’d like me to share some words of wisdom for their graduating students that evening. I really didn’t want to do it but was glad that I did, life is a bit too short to be ruled by fear. I can’t send emails from this particular internet spot so will have to make my replies tomorrow. For now, its back to wrestling the video monster.

Well, its been a bit of a musical smorgasboard so far. Is that how you spell it? What is a smorgas anyway? Ok, so here’s a taste:

Some would say that the following just proves that I have too much time on my hands, but I would argue that it proves much more, none of it particularly good. If you can’t see the youtube video below, it might be blocked for you, but try here instead - its a quicktime movie so may be fiddly for PC users. It relates to the previous post found here.

btw, I have a mobile for the duration of my stay, the number is +27 7918 39908 if you want to prank me.

Ok, since I’ve left things a while without any posts, I need to put up a real hotch potch of snippets and media. Not very professional at all A traveller’s tip to start.. although I’ve found many similarities between Melbourne and Cape Town, ‘thongs’ is one term that doesn’t carry across. I remembered this when I was trying to work out what footwear would be appropriate one evening and I commented to Johan, who I am staying with, that I would be cold if I went out in just my thongs. His startled look triggered the realisation that not all was well.

A similarly awkward moment occurred in Kenya where one of the local accents seems to pronounce the letter ‘l’ as an ‘r’ (Cathy, I’m sure you’d know why this is!). It made for some very confusing conversations about the upcoming elections. The electioneering was something to behold in itself. Throughout the town in Nyeri you’d see trucks, vans and cars loaded with people cheering for one party or another, with speakers strapped on top blaring out their distorted messages. My hosts indicated that these people were generally paid by the party and, sometimes, supplied with alcohol. It seems that, although democractic, the election process is still largely fueled by emotion and biased by monetary incentives, though I’m not sure whether its all that different in our ‘developed’ nation. I fear that the Kenyan people are in such need of basic things that they might be easily persuaded to vote for a short term solution. Very loosely connected, but I was pondering a common currency for Africa (like the Euro) and was wondering if they’d call it the afro. Perhaps not.

Yesterday was Trevor’s birthday and I was very fortunate to be invited to join the family for celebrations, though a little embarassed to receive a rendition of the song ‘welcome to Cape Town’ - and fearful that it may have involved me dancing, but fortunately it didn’t. In the backyard the guys gathered around the braai (bbq) and played music on guitars, drums and shakers. It was great to see.

Finally, the random media collection is as follows, consume responsibly:

Photos:
Lavenda photos
Cape Town photos

Videos:
Buying bananas in rural Kenya
Nigerian preacher doing interesting singing
Congo wrap up by Cliff
Dancing in Congo

Its my last day at Lavenda today and I’m looking forward to meeting up with Trevor again for the project in Cape Town. The stay at Lavenda has been interesting and I think there’s been a lot to learn even if it wasn’t as productive as I’d expected in terms of the computer set up. The major challenge at the moment is electricity, with no ready supply being available. Solar panels are installed on many of the buildings but they are not of sufficient capacity to provide the ongoing 240V supply required. There are also a number of generators available but they are generally only turned on in response to specific requirements and are moved about accordingly. All in all, it’s meant that my time has been spent more on a crash course in electronics than in my geeky specialities. After some googling and chatting to people in town, it seems that a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) is needed for each couple of machines (about $65 AUD each) to make the generator power safe to use, so I’ve purchased one of these and set up a model work station (I should call it Blue Steel) to demonstrate the configuration required. Today I’ll be trying to get the wireless internet configured on a couple of machines which I think should help tremendously with communication to the school. I’ll also be preparing a report on the environment so that any one coming to do further work on setting up the computer labs can do preparation beforehand to ensure that all the necessary power generation and regulation is in place.
Its evident that there is a lot of western aid coming in to Africa, but it also seems that there is a lack of coordination both between the donors and the recipients, and also between agencies which are working over here. For example, a lot of the goods that have been shipped over are things like electric guitars, microwaves etc which are obviously of limited use in the current environment, which could have been avoided with a clearer communication to the donors of the needs being addressed. The other point is that, although such goods are not currently of much use here, I’m sure there are other agencies who would be desperate for these things. It occurred to me that the ideal solution might be something like a central web site and forum where agencies can be registered and can nominate the sorts of donations that they require. This could then be referenced by potential donors to ensure a better match between the donation and the need. Of course, since many of the agencies working here don’t have regular internet access, you’d need to supplement this with some sort of local hotline and possibly an office. Given the workload of many agencies, it would be best if the office was proactive so that, once registered, an agency is contacted regularly to confirm their current needs. Another very useful extension would be to include services in this register, so that an agency can say “we’d like an electrician/music teacher etc for 3 months”. The site could possibly allow people with experience of the agency to give ratings and comments, like Amazon.com and you could also allow agencies to submit videos, photos and a bio. I suspect that there are probably some sites around that do this sort of thing, but from my brief time here I get the feeling that there could be a lot more collaboration and it would be great to see preference to agencies which empower the local communities, rather than just addressing short term needs.
Ok, enough of that particular rant, its now the next day and I’m in Cape Town but I’ll just wrap up for Kenya first. You know when you get a lift with someone to a party and you get stuck hanging around while they are stuck in a conversation or saying goodbyes for an hour or so? That’s sort of what I’ve felt like in the past week. I guess its what people meant when they warned me about ‘African time’, meaning that not much happens in a hurry, so someone meeting me “at 10am” might mean midday. I think the day starts on schedule, but then all sorts of things come up that, culturally, can’t be bypassed. Its good to see people place such value on family and community but it was something of an adjustment for me as I can get pretty task oriented. Though I couldn’t get the wireless activated before I left yesterday, I received a call to say that it had eventually been activated by Telkom and now the computer that was set up is successfully accessing the net. Its a minor victory but I was very glad to hear it, as it paves the way for the lab to be set up. I’ve had a thousand other thoughts running around my brain looking for a friend but I’m sure they’ll become blog fodder in the coming months. More on Cape Town shortly.

Probably won’t be a long post as we’ve just popped into the nearest town, Nyeri, and I’m taking a moment to feed my internet addiction.

After Charlie picked me up from the hotel it started to rain and he mentioned that his windscreen wipers had broken that morning. After driving for some distance he pulled off to the side into a service station and spoke briefly to the attendant before a group of guys who had been sitting on the curb walked over towards the van and quickly struck some sort of agreement with Charlie. About 5 of them set to work on the van, completely pulling the dash off the vehicle to expose the wiper motor, doing a bit of a fix and putting the dash back together. This took about 3 hours and after some negotiation Charlie paid them about 600 Kenyan Shillings which is about $10 AUD. It was quite extraordinary. Being kind of foolish I didn’t want to look like a sissy and sit in the car while this went on and sat outside chatting and throwing rocks at a can with some of the guys. I picked up some colour in the process, unfortunately most of it was red.

A lot of other stuff has happened which I’ll no doubt write further on but another stand out was probably going through a container load of stuff and testing out some PCs that have been sent over from Australia. Amongst these were a number of old macintosh computers that we set up next to the container on a table and ran off the generator. I even got to play a game of Buzzard Blizzard on the Apple IIC.
In other news, I was reflecting on the way that the guys in Nigeria would start moving as soon as any music started, like dancing is more of a reflex here than any conscious decision. I’m living in fear that something will happen that will cause me to go to a doctor’s and I’ll be there and instead of using his little mallet to test my knee-jerk reaction, he’ll walk over to a stereo and press play. When I don’t move, he looks at me with some consternation and leaves the room. He returns with someone else and demonstrates to them, and the consternation spreads. By the third or fourth person, I’ve realised that I should be dancing and so I bust out some moves, at which point they throw their arms up in horror and cover their eyes. The next thing I know I’m hurtling along on a stretcher headed for the emergency ward.

I had a good conversation with Sido today about what he sees as the major issues facing Kenya and Africa in general. It was interesting and I’m still processing a lot of stuff that he said and that I’ve heard previously on the trip. I think I was having something like culture shock earlier in the day, getting annoyed at not being able to understand most of the conversations (Swahili) and particularly at people saying ‘yes’ when they mean something else. Its really quite different here and a little frustrating at times not knowing how to do things, if that makes sense. I feel very dependent which makes it difficult to see how I would contribute effectively.

Have to head now, I’m sorry for not responding to any emails but I have really appreciated the contact. I’m seriously online in about a week when I get to Cape Town and promise to be a better son/friend/brother/father!

Update: uploaded some photos to flickr.

Well, back in Nairobi after 3 days out in the Maasai Mara on safari. We left Nigeria last Saturday after an all night service at the church, partially because of the curfew. Flew into Nairobi and stayed the night at the Safari Park Hotel which, as you might have guessed, is safari themed. Rose early on Sunday and caught a light plane out to the Maasai Mara where we were greeted by a tribesman in traditional dress and with the very traditional Maasai name of Jackson. On safari, there are the ‘big 5′ which people hope to spot - the lion, elephant, leopard, water buffalo and the rhino. I thought that if Jackson could achieve this, we’d have made a Jackson 5. We visited a Maasai village where our guide, Moses, explained various aspects of the Maasai life, including that the jumping was used by the males to impress the women in the village. After seeing the village, I wasn’t in a hurry to jump particularly high. He also introduced us to the chief of the village, James (?!), who had the distinction of having killed a lion, something which was formerly a rite of passage to manhood for Maasai warriors. We saw inside a traditional hut, formed mainly from cow dung and sticks, and watched some of the young guys start a fire from two pieces of wood. We also learned about various natural remedies, including a tea-like drink made by boiling and straining elephant dung.. uh, that makes it sound really awful, but it didn’t look so bad.
The safari camp was at an ‘eco lodge’ which was great. All power is solar and much of the water is recylced. The rooms are basically permanent tents but they include running water and a flushable toilet. The food was ridiculously good and I had some great afternoon naps between games drives and other activities. One morning we went on a balloon safari which was pretty amazing. I’ve never been up in a hot air balloon before and the pilot was pretty outstanding, it wasn’t at all scary (though I was holding the hand grips pretty tight for the first 5 minutes!) She took the balloon incredibly low so that we actually dipped below the level of the bank when going over some of the rivers. Over the couple of days we saw heaps of different animals but highlights were probably seeing some male lions at very close proximity, the elephants, a hippo out of the water and maybe the giraffes. I hadn’t realised that all the animals dwelt in such close proximity but they were all very close to each other.
So, anyways, tomorrow the rest of the crew head to various other parts of Africa and the world and I head up to Lavenda Springs with Sido and Charlie to start the work at the school there, so its a pretty distinctly different phase of the trip. I should probably be asleep now but wanted to upload some of the photos and get back in touch with my geeky side (no computer for 3 days!). I’m really looking forward to the next couple of weeks in Kenya and then further in Cape Town though it would be very nice to be able to pop home for a little for a coffee and to say hi to everyone (get well mum) but you can’t have everything so I’ll make the most of the time here.