Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Fossils and our earliest ancestors
We had the chance to visit a fossil site today in what they
call the Cradle of Humankind. The area
around Johannesburg has a number of major fossil sites with evidence of early
hominids going back more than 3 million years.
The site we visited, Drimolen, has produced fossils from 5 different
kinds of early hominid species. We drove
out to the site, about an hour out of Johannesburg, through golden savannahs
with gentle hills and small rocky rises.
The land where the site was is also an animal preserve, so as we got
closer, we starting seeing wild animals, almost like a drive-through safari
park. We saw all kinds of bok, zebras,
giraffes, rhinos, buffalo, and a jackal.
We also saw several warthog families complete with babies (and yes, they
were adorable!). The road to the site
narrowed and got rougher and rougher until we reached a point where our bus
couldn’t continue. We thought we might
walk the rest of the way (just a mile or two), but the idea of those animals
out there made us call for help from the wildlife preserve rangers. They showed up with a giant open-sided safari
vehicle, and bumped us along the road until we got there.
When we arrived, we sat out under a grove of graceful trees
and had some tea and coffee while we listened to one of the experts who excavates
at the site. Dr. Morris Sutton told us
about the geography that makes this are particularly fossil-rich, with ancient
caves filled with millions of years of sediment that has compacted into a kind
of concrete-like rock called breccia.
Fossilized bones get compounded into the breccia and are accessible via
digging and drilling. The Drimolen site
we visited has hominid fossils, including homo erectus, dating from 3.2 million
years ago. Dr. Sutton also told us how
they identify different species and gather information from the fossils about
how these hominids lived. We had the
chance to see and handle a number of plaster casts of hominid skulls so we
could see their similarities and differences, and see how small differences in
jawlines, teeth, and spinal stems allow scientists to understand species
differentiation. One of the most
interesting fossils from the site is a piece of the back of a skull of an
adolescent male. It has two round
puncture marks, which perfectly match the teeth of a now-extinct animal called
a false saber toothed tiger. We also got
to see a piece of breccia, which was heavy and in which smaller stones and
fossils were easily visible.
After the open-air lecture, Dr. Sutton took us down into the
excavation site. They are currently
working in a small cave where the roof has collapsed, so it looks more like a
deep pit or grotto. Down the walls of
the cave, we could see layers of breccia and actual fossils in the
stone—including an elephant tusk! This
cave is part of a large system of caves in the area, although they are mostly
filled in with hardened sediment that deposited there over millions of
years. This sedimentation is what washed
bones and other debris into the caves, which then fossilized over time. We had the chance to explore the site, and
then Dr. Sutton took us higher up on the hill, where there was another cave,
with its mouth hidden in a small grove of trees. This cave is connected to the first
underground, although its all filled in and not passable. They have not begun serious excavation in the
second cave yet, although initial investigation suggests that they will have to
go deep before they hit fossil layers.
Apparently, the small grove of trees at the mouth are a particular kind
of tree that thrives on some of the minerals that are exposed by these caves,
and one way to find cave mouths is to look for groves of these trees. We looked around us on the rolling
hills and spotted several small stands of these trees—so this particular cave
system is huge! Dr. Sutton suggested
that for this area, the old-fashioned tree grove method of finding caves is
more reliable even than the modern usage of Google Earth (which apparently is
being used more and more by archeologists these days).
We walked back down to the lecture site and had a really
lovely picnic lunch, and had the chance to examine all the skulls. We also had the chance to take photos of some
of the animals around us: sheep on the
farm near us, and a friendly family of warthogs that happened by while we were
there. The sound of birds was all around
us, the sun was out, and there was a gently breeze that ruffled the small
leaves on our charming grove of trees. With the rolling hills and the golden
grass covered slopes, it was an absolutely gorgeous time. It was easy to get the sense of why our
earliest ancestors would have lived—and thrived—in this area.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Soweto and Johannesburg
This morning we started out bright and early, even if many of us are still jet-lagged. We drove from the beautiful palm-lined streets of our suburb into the city. As we drove, it got grittier and dirtier and significantly more industrial. Johannesburg is the industrial and financial capital of the country, built at the site of significant gold deposits. It's a working city, with a lot of money moving through it, but not much investment sticking around for city beautification. The modern new buildings rise up behind the low-slung well-worn older street-level buildings, and people line the streets with small makeshift shops selling everything from clothes to fruit to household goods. Along the sides of the highway were occasional giant piles of mine tailings, literally just dumped in huge unmanaged mounds. Eroded canyons on these giant piles were visible in the gold-colored dirt (literally gold colored because of the tiny bits of gold still left in it). It takes five tons of dirt to find one ounce of gold, and this was one of the richest gold mines in the world, so you can imagine the sheer amount of displaced dirt. And it is just dumped wherever it landed, including right in the middle of the city. To be fair, the city obviously grew up around the giant mounds, but still, it seems very out of place in a city. Worse, cyanide was used to extract the gold, so much of the dirt is significantly contaminated and windstorms will disturb the cyanide dust, leading to a serious public health problem. The government has recently announced a major project to remove the tailings and rebury most of it, but that project hasn't yet begun, leaving us to see Johannesburg's mining legacy in the full glory of it all.
We had the chance to stop at Nelson Mandela's first law office, in Johannesburg, when he initially began his law practice with O.R. Tambo as the only African lawyers in the area. Most of his legal work focused on criminal defense, and his office was continually busy. They were right across the street from the main Johannesburg court house.
We also visited the Apartheid Museum, one of the best social history museums I've ever seen. Our entry tickets randomly assigned us a race, and as we entered the museum, we had two separate entrances and saw two different sets of exhibits about what it meant to be assigned a particular race, and the full impact it had on a person's life. The museum traces the rise of Afrikaner (Boer) nationalism and how it had its roots in war with the English and in attempts to take and farm land from the Africans who already lived here. Full apartheid did not come into effect until 1948, with the rise of a far-right Nazi influenced extreme Afrikaner nationalist party that dominated the elections. By 1950, full racial apartheid was the law of the land, and people were racially restricted by the control of movement and travel. Everyone had to carry a pass card which listed where they could travel, live or work. A prison sentence was automatic if you were out of your assigned spaces. By controlling the space where people could be, the state could control people absolutely, separating families, preventing the possibility of work, or even literally confining you to your house full time. Both Nelson Mandela and Stephen Biko, as well as many other anti-apartheid activists, were convicted of pass-law violations. The Apartheid Museum does not shy away from the difficult history, and serves to both preserve the historical objects--the special riot tanks used by the police, racially-designated park benches, bloody and torn protest signs--and it serves to preserve the memories and experiences of the people affected by the injustices of apartheid. One room simply lists the names and the "official cause of death" of all of the political prisoners who died while in police custody. It is shocking and horrific, and there is a strong sense of all that was lost. As a contrast, the museum ends with a celebration of South Africa's first real democratic election in 1994. There were amazing photos of lines of people, thousands of persons deep, waiting to vote for the first time in their lives. There was a copy of the first ballot, which featured not just words but photos as well (as so many voters were not literate). The newly elected democratic government, led by Nelson Mandela, pursued a policy of what they called truth and reconciliation. Instead of prosecuting the instigators and architects of apartheid, amnesty was offered to the perpetrators if they were willing to stand and take responsibility for their crimes, and for the first time, tell the truth to the victims, families, and the world about the specific crimes of apartheid. It was a powerful way to move forward. After such a history of oppression, murder, and brutality, the story of the new South Africa is one of a triumph of the possibility of good over what could have been a very brutal but much deserved repayment in kind. Justice didn't win here; grace did.
In the afternoon, we went to Soweto, the huge township just outside of Johannesburg. This was the largest black township under apartheid, and it was the home of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and millions of others Africans. Under apartheid, only those with work passes could leave, there was almost no electricity, there were few schools or hospitals, and no water or sanitation system. Millions of legal residents were packed into small houses (if they were lucky) while millions more lived in makeshift shantytowns (now called 'informal settlements').
Soweto is a booming place, filled with people and life, poverty and wealth. Even a few white people live here now, although mostly it is still African. The historic middle class area of Soweto, where Mandela and Tutu lived in small houses, is now filled with people who have seized the opportunity to hustle for a living. And the small houses on the block are mostly now shops or restaurants, and young people dance for show, or sing for money, and peddlers sell all kinds of gifts and clothes on the street. Literally right next door to Archbishop Tutu's house--where he still lives sometimes!--is a large and busy restaurant and bar. That somehow doesn't seem in the spirit of things...nor can it be the best neighbor for such an elderly and distinguished Nobel Peace Prize winner.
We had lunch at that restaurant, beside Desmond Tutu's house, and it was our first chance to try all kinds of interesting African foods. The food here is meat and vegetable based. Most of the meat is stewed because it is not the best cuts and needs to be cooked longer. It's served in spicy sauce, all very flavorful. Most things are served with what they call pap, which is a kind of white cornmeal polenta that looks like mashed potatoes. And they always serve peri peri sauce, which is their version of salsa; it's a tomato, onion, and sweet pepper sauce that has varying degrees of heat, and it's quite unique and delicious.
After lunch, we walked a block up to Nelson Mandela's house, just the typical township small brick 4 room house. Mandela's wife Winnie was restricted to this tiny house for years while he was in prison. There was one small bedroom for all the children, one bedroom with bookcases along the wall for Mandela, and a very tiny kitchen and common room. The restoration of the house pulled down the wall between the kitchen and living room because the spaces were so small they wouldn't be able to fit groups of people in to see the house, which is a memorial now and open to the public. Outside the house there is a remarkable tree, the family tree, where, as in Xhosa tradition, all the umbilical cords of the children are buried at the roots of the tree that Mandela himself planted for his family. The tree still stands, with a twisted trunk and a hand-lettered sign grieving the sudden death of Mandela's 13-year old granddaughter in a car accident a few years ago.
While in Soweto, we also visited the famous Regina Mundi Catholic Church, historically the largest meeting space in Soweto, and the site of secret political meetings and brutal police crackdowns. There are still bullet holes in the walls and ceiling, and the alter itself was broken by a police officer who slammed the barrel of his gun to stop a religious service in progress. The church is also known as the home of the famous 'Black Madonna painting, which showed the mother and child as black, not white, and was controversial and inspiring all over the world when it was first painted. We had a tour of the church by one of the priests, Father Sebastian, a young African priest who was just as excited to tell us the political history of the church as he was to tell us about the religious iconography.
We ended our time in Soweto by seeing the other side. It's hard to imagine there could be worse poverty that the endless miles of tiny 4-room brick houses, but there are slums within the regular normal poverty as well. We visited one of the oldest informal settlements, Kliptown. There were no streets, only dirt paths strewn with garbage and marked by little streams or puddles of foul water. The houses here were really shacks, with plywood or corrugated metal walls and makeshift roofs. Several rather dirty dogs were running free, and little kids spotted us and ran up to us laughing and hugging and wanting their photos taken. We visited Kliptown to see the Kliptown Youth Project, which is a small community center that is working to provide food, education, tutoring, computers and internet, and sports to the kids of the area. Kliptown is especially poor, with unemployment up to 80%. These are some of the most vulnerable people in Soweto, and this center works to support kids and their families. It is run by people who grew up in Kliptown, and our guide Thulani grew up as one of 9 kids in a small 1-room shack--which he took us to visit (and where his sister and her family still lives). Thulani is the director of the KYP, and he just got back from a trip to the US, where several funders hosted a visit from some of the kids from the project. There are a number of US and corporate donors to the project, and we had a chance to see a computer room donated by CNN, and got to see the solar laptops created and donated by a lab at MIT--they were really interesting, simple, solid, and colorful, and apparently, really inexpensive and really useful. MIT donated almost 200 of them and is in the process of developing and will donate a scaled down tablet as well. It was very cool to see them.
Before we headed back to the hotel, we stopped for dinner. We also needed to get water and some students needed to get a few things, so instead of a restaurant, we stopped at a mall. This was a giant gleaming thriving mall, filled with American shops, African shops, and European ones. Truly a world mix in quite a modern space. Let's just say it put the local Arnot Mall in Elmira to shame.
We are in the hotel for the night, and we are out the door early again tomorrow for a trip to Pretoria with a stop at a major fossil site along the way. Hopefully tonight is the night everyone is finally over the last of the jet lag...
We had the chance to stop at Nelson Mandela's first law office, in Johannesburg, when he initially began his law practice with O.R. Tambo as the only African lawyers in the area. Most of his legal work focused on criminal defense, and his office was continually busy. They were right across the street from the main Johannesburg court house.
We also visited the Apartheid Museum, one of the best social history museums I've ever seen. Our entry tickets randomly assigned us a race, and as we entered the museum, we had two separate entrances and saw two different sets of exhibits about what it meant to be assigned a particular race, and the full impact it had on a person's life. The museum traces the rise of Afrikaner (Boer) nationalism and how it had its roots in war with the English and in attempts to take and farm land from the Africans who already lived here. Full apartheid did not come into effect until 1948, with the rise of a far-right Nazi influenced extreme Afrikaner nationalist party that dominated the elections. By 1950, full racial apartheid was the law of the land, and people were racially restricted by the control of movement and travel. Everyone had to carry a pass card which listed where they could travel, live or work. A prison sentence was automatic if you were out of your assigned spaces. By controlling the space where people could be, the state could control people absolutely, separating families, preventing the possibility of work, or even literally confining you to your house full time. Both Nelson Mandela and Stephen Biko, as well as many other anti-apartheid activists, were convicted of pass-law violations. The Apartheid Museum does not shy away from the difficult history, and serves to both preserve the historical objects--the special riot tanks used by the police, racially-designated park benches, bloody and torn protest signs--and it serves to preserve the memories and experiences of the people affected by the injustices of apartheid. One room simply lists the names and the "official cause of death" of all of the political prisoners who died while in police custody. It is shocking and horrific, and there is a strong sense of all that was lost. As a contrast, the museum ends with a celebration of South Africa's first real democratic election in 1994. There were amazing photos of lines of people, thousands of persons deep, waiting to vote for the first time in their lives. There was a copy of the first ballot, which featured not just words but photos as well (as so many voters were not literate). The newly elected democratic government, led by Nelson Mandela, pursued a policy of what they called truth and reconciliation. Instead of prosecuting the instigators and architects of apartheid, amnesty was offered to the perpetrators if they were willing to stand and take responsibility for their crimes, and for the first time, tell the truth to the victims, families, and the world about the specific crimes of apartheid. It was a powerful way to move forward. After such a history of oppression, murder, and brutality, the story of the new South Africa is one of a triumph of the possibility of good over what could have been a very brutal but much deserved repayment in kind. Justice didn't win here; grace did.
In the afternoon, we went to Soweto, the huge township just outside of Johannesburg. This was the largest black township under apartheid, and it was the home of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and millions of others Africans. Under apartheid, only those with work passes could leave, there was almost no electricity, there were few schools or hospitals, and no water or sanitation system. Millions of legal residents were packed into small houses (if they were lucky) while millions more lived in makeshift shantytowns (now called 'informal settlements').
Soweto is a booming place, filled with people and life, poverty and wealth. Even a few white people live here now, although mostly it is still African. The historic middle class area of Soweto, where Mandela and Tutu lived in small houses, is now filled with people who have seized the opportunity to hustle for a living. And the small houses on the block are mostly now shops or restaurants, and young people dance for show, or sing for money, and peddlers sell all kinds of gifts and clothes on the street. Literally right next door to Archbishop Tutu's house--where he still lives sometimes!--is a large and busy restaurant and bar. That somehow doesn't seem in the spirit of things...nor can it be the best neighbor for such an elderly and distinguished Nobel Peace Prize winner.
We had lunch at that restaurant, beside Desmond Tutu's house, and it was our first chance to try all kinds of interesting African foods. The food here is meat and vegetable based. Most of the meat is stewed because it is not the best cuts and needs to be cooked longer. It's served in spicy sauce, all very flavorful. Most things are served with what they call pap, which is a kind of white cornmeal polenta that looks like mashed potatoes. And they always serve peri peri sauce, which is their version of salsa; it's a tomato, onion, and sweet pepper sauce that has varying degrees of heat, and it's quite unique and delicious.
After lunch, we walked a block up to Nelson Mandela's house, just the typical township small brick 4 room house. Mandela's wife Winnie was restricted to this tiny house for years while he was in prison. There was one small bedroom for all the children, one bedroom with bookcases along the wall for Mandela, and a very tiny kitchen and common room. The restoration of the house pulled down the wall between the kitchen and living room because the spaces were so small they wouldn't be able to fit groups of people in to see the house, which is a memorial now and open to the public. Outside the house there is a remarkable tree, the family tree, where, as in Xhosa tradition, all the umbilical cords of the children are buried at the roots of the tree that Mandela himself planted for his family. The tree still stands, with a twisted trunk and a hand-lettered sign grieving the sudden death of Mandela's 13-year old granddaughter in a car accident a few years ago.
While in Soweto, we also visited the famous Regina Mundi Catholic Church, historically the largest meeting space in Soweto, and the site of secret political meetings and brutal police crackdowns. There are still bullet holes in the walls and ceiling, and the alter itself was broken by a police officer who slammed the barrel of his gun to stop a religious service in progress. The church is also known as the home of the famous 'Black Madonna painting, which showed the mother and child as black, not white, and was controversial and inspiring all over the world when it was first painted. We had a tour of the church by one of the priests, Father Sebastian, a young African priest who was just as excited to tell us the political history of the church as he was to tell us about the religious iconography.
We ended our time in Soweto by seeing the other side. It's hard to imagine there could be worse poverty that the endless miles of tiny 4-room brick houses, but there are slums within the regular normal poverty as well. We visited one of the oldest informal settlements, Kliptown. There were no streets, only dirt paths strewn with garbage and marked by little streams or puddles of foul water. The houses here were really shacks, with plywood or corrugated metal walls and makeshift roofs. Several rather dirty dogs were running free, and little kids spotted us and ran up to us laughing and hugging and wanting their photos taken. We visited Kliptown to see the Kliptown Youth Project, which is a small community center that is working to provide food, education, tutoring, computers and internet, and sports to the kids of the area. Kliptown is especially poor, with unemployment up to 80%. These are some of the most vulnerable people in Soweto, and this center works to support kids and their families. It is run by people who grew up in Kliptown, and our guide Thulani grew up as one of 9 kids in a small 1-room shack--which he took us to visit (and where his sister and her family still lives). Thulani is the director of the KYP, and he just got back from a trip to the US, where several funders hosted a visit from some of the kids from the project. There are a number of US and corporate donors to the project, and we had a chance to see a computer room donated by CNN, and got to see the solar laptops created and donated by a lab at MIT--they were really interesting, simple, solid, and colorful, and apparently, really inexpensive and really useful. MIT donated almost 200 of them and is in the process of developing and will donate a scaled down tablet as well. It was very cool to see them.
Before we headed back to the hotel, we stopped for dinner. We also needed to get water and some students needed to get a few things, so instead of a restaurant, we stopped at a mall. This was a giant gleaming thriving mall, filled with American shops, African shops, and European ones. Truly a world mix in quite a modern space. Let's just say it put the local Arnot Mall in Elmira to shame.
We are in the hotel for the night, and we are out the door early again tomorrow for a trip to Pretoria with a stop at a major fossil site along the way. Hopefully tonight is the night everyone is finally over the last of the jet lag...
Monday, April 28, 2014
We made it!
The last leg of our journey, the flight from Amsterdam to Johannesburg, was almost 11 hours long, but it was smooth and easy. It seems like they kept on feeding us on the plane, so we just finished eating something when they brought us something new. Most of us tried to sleep, and some of us even managed to get a few good hours of sleep in. Going through passport control and getting our luggage was fairly quick, and we all managed to change some money in the airport. We met our guide, Joe, an older man who has been working as a guide for 16 years. He got us on the bus to our hotel, where they had some sandwiches for us--egg salad and tomato with butter. The hotel is in a suburban neighborhood, Benoni, just outside of Johannesburg. This area is gated and fenced, and is mainly residential, with charming houses and lovely landscaping and gardens, with palm trees lining the avenues. And of course, each yard has a very high fence, many topped with razor wire. This was a relatively wealthy white-only neighborhood during the apartheid years, and there are still quite a few visual reminder of that legacy. Our hotel was once a grand house, built around quite a large pool area. I'm not sure it will be warm enough to swim while we're here, but hopefully we'll have some nice sun around the pool tomorrow afternoon.
We start early tomorrow, spending the day in Soweto, the famous and important township that was home to Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and was the scene of so much of the resistance to the apartheid state. Hopefully everyone is going to be able to get into this time zone quickly and get some decent sleep tonight. As I write this, it's quite late, and I'm hearing plenty of laughter from the rooms near mine...
We start early tomorrow, spending the day in Soweto, the famous and important township that was home to Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and was the scene of so much of the resistance to the apartheid state. Hopefully everyone is going to be able to get into this time zone quickly and get some decent sleep tonight. As I write this, it's quite late, and I'm hearing plenty of laughter from the rooms near mine...
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Schipol Airport in transit
We have three hours between our flights. We discovered free Internet in the terminal and suddenly now everyone has their phones out...
Thursday, April 17, 2014
We're Going to South Africa!
We will leave Elmira on Sunday, April 27th, fly through Detroit and Amsterdam, and arrive in Johannesburg after 9:00 PM on the 28th.
We'll be in the Johannesburg area for 4 days, visiting the township of Soweto, learning about Apartheid, and having the chance to participate in a fossil dig at Drimolen (where fossils of some of humankind's earliest ancestors have been discovered). On May 1st, we will drive to Kruger Park, the largest wildlife preserve in South Africa, where we'll be on safari for 3 days. Leaving Kruger Park, we will spend a day in Graskop, a historic Voortrekker town on the edge of the Blyde River Canyon. On May 5th, we'll fly to the East Cape, and stay overnight close to Nelson Mandela's small home village (Quno), which we'll have the chance to visit. From there, we'll drive out to the coast to the tiny Xhosa village where we'll stay for the next three days. On May 9th, we'll fly to Cape Town, where, over the next 4 days, we'll visit the prison on Robben Island, spend a day working in a local township's community garden, teach in a school in Khayletisha township, and learn about Cape Malay culture. We'll also have a free day in Cape Town. On May 14th, we'll start traveling towards the East Coast, staying overnight in Oudtshoorn where we'll visit an ostrich ranch and a meerkat colony in the wild. We'll end our trip in Tsitsikamma Park, and start heading for home on May 16th.
Our return flight has us starting in George, flying through Johannesburg, Paris, and Detroit before arriving back in Elmira after 9:00 PM on the May 17th.
We'll be in the Johannesburg area for 4 days, visiting the township of Soweto, learning about Apartheid, and having the chance to participate in a fossil dig at Drimolen (where fossils of some of humankind's earliest ancestors have been discovered). On May 1st, we will drive to Kruger Park, the largest wildlife preserve in South Africa, where we'll be on safari for 3 days. Leaving Kruger Park, we will spend a day in Graskop, a historic Voortrekker town on the edge of the Blyde River Canyon. On May 5th, we'll fly to the East Cape, and stay overnight close to Nelson Mandela's small home village (Quno), which we'll have the chance to visit. From there, we'll drive out to the coast to the tiny Xhosa village where we'll stay for the next three days. On May 9th, we'll fly to Cape Town, where, over the next 4 days, we'll visit the prison on Robben Island, spend a day working in a local township's community garden, teach in a school in Khayletisha township, and learn about Cape Malay culture. We'll also have a free day in Cape Town. On May 14th, we'll start traveling towards the East Coast, staying overnight in Oudtshoorn where we'll visit an ostrich ranch and a meerkat colony in the wild. We'll end our trip in Tsitsikamma Park, and start heading for home on May 16th.
Our return flight has us starting in George, flying through Johannesburg, Paris, and Detroit before arriving back in Elmira after 9:00 PM on the May 17th.
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