South Africa -- Our favorite port so far!

South Africa, with its friendly people, spectacular scenery, and comforts of home, was our favorite port so far.  Luke has declared that he will live there someday and that it is better the US.  Time will tell, although we would certainly be happy to visit if he decides to spend some time there.  We are not sure what prompted such a definite statement, but we guess it was because he got to go on safari, hang out with cheetahs, climb Table Mountain, visit the aquarium with grandpa and meet many kids in the townships.

The port in Cape Town could not have been a nicer location.  We harbored at the main waterfront with 5-star hotels, restaurants, shops and entertainment right at the end of the pier.  It was very convenient to sleep on the ship and be at a coffee shop within minutes in the morning. 

We spent six days in South Africa and did our best to see the different sides of the country and learn as much as we could.   It is a country of extreme economic disparity and it is confronting an almost overwhelming range of challenges.   One of our friends described it best when he said, “South Africa is like a microcosm of the whole world.  If we can change things here, it will pave the way for the world to change.”

From the photos you can see that part of Cape Town is as advanced and wealthy as any city you’ll find in the world.  The Townships, which were created during the Apartheid-years as places for “blacks” and “colored people”, are a sharp contrast to the wealth of the formerly white areas.  The homes are made of every imaginable material, ranging from sheet metal and wood structures to more permanent concrete dwellings.  The government does a lot to subsidize the poor and has a massive home building program.  Most homes in the Townships have electricity, running water and trash removal.  The Township we visited was the largest in Cape Town and had more than 2 million people living in it.  Despite the size of the Townships, unofficial shantytowns are forming around the edges and in other places as people migrate to the cities from the countryside and other African countries.  Our pictures cannot convey the vastness of these poor settlements.

Through connections that Christy has with the Aspen Institute Global Leadership Network, we arranged a lunch with Karl Flowers and Ralph Freese.  They shared their views of what was happening in South Africa and talked about the NGOs they founded or are part of that are making positive change in the country.  They were so inspiring we wanted to move to South Africa and help them with the many changes they are trying to implement.

In addition to learning about the country, we also had lots of fun on safari at the Inverdoorn Game Preserve and saw lions, giraffes, rhinos and lots of antelopes.  The highlight of the safari was interacting with cheetahs that had been raised by the hotel owner.  They licked and drank from our hands and when we scratched their necks, ears and heads they purred like Harleys.  They are beautiful and awesome creatures.  The drive to and from the Reserve took us through some truly spectacular country, even by the standards of Coloradans!

Towering above Cape Town is Table Mountain.  Everyone we spoke to said Luke and Ryan were too young to climb up to the top and that we should take the cable car instead.  When we got there, the cable car line was very long so we decided to try the hike.  2 hours and 45 minutes later, the whole family arrived on top hungry and happy.  We were so proud of the boys.

We left Cape Town wishing we had more time to take in the natural beauty of the area and continue to learn about the past and bright future of this wonderful country.  We know we will return sometime!

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We have departed South Africa and are on our way to Mauritius.  Look for another post in the next couple of days.

The World's Friendliest People!

Luke and Ryan’s Perspective

For us, Ghana was an exciting and different place. There were two things that were really weird – people carried tons of stuff on their heads (platters full of things they wanted to sell, water, anything), and that people stood in between cars on the road and tried to sell things during stoplights! Some things were the same – pizza, chicken nuggets, kids played soccer – but mostly we saw things that were very different. The roads were very bad and bumpy and it took a long time to drive anywhere. When we got to the village, everything was different. Some people just slept in the grass, some houses were made of mud and the toilets were holes in wood over big pits in the ground. But the kids were very happy, and we had a lot of fun chasing tons of goats in the village and playing soccer with an old soccer ball on a dirt field. Except for the soccer ball, they had almost no toys. We are really lucky to have so many more things than they do. We gave the kids crayons, coloring books and Lego’s.

Jay and Christy’s Perspective

Well, we are six days out of Ghana and are just finishing digesting it (literally and figuratively – lots of tummy trouble aboard the MV Explorer!). We had a wonderful time and leave with very favorable impressions of this country and its people, although it’s not without its challenges. This is a very complex country. On the one hand it is the success story of West Africa, independent since the 1950’s and the poster child for democracy in the region. On the other hand, this is a very poor country, with abundant natural resources but virtually no infrastructure, with the wealthy shopping in Western style malls but the poor living in mud hut villages, and the world’s friendliest people but petty graft among its police force. Of course the real test is whether we would return and the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

We spend four days here. The first day we visited a private school in the capital city and shopped the stalls of the main market street. The school visit was impressive and provided a stark contrast to things we saw later in the trip. Shopping and bartering were entertaining and we will arrive home with numerous Ghanaian souvenirs and memories, including new "football" jerseys for the boys. The Ghanaians are proud to be the first African team to qualify for the World Cup next year in South Africa.

The second and third days provided the true highlights of the stay. We joined a Semester at Sea trip to a rural village called Tormonge for an overnight stay. This post will be a little longer than most since there is so much to record about that visit. When we arrived, hundreds of villagers welcomed us with drums and dancing that continued for over 3 hours in the stifling heat. Through various ceremonies, songs, dances and recitals, we were each given our African names (first name dictated by the day of the week you are born and the second name selected by our hosts). To help us with our short term memory issues, we each received a locally made pot with our new names written on them.
 

Luke and Ryan were huge entertainment for the villagers. We later learned that the village had seen about 20 tour visits over the last ten years – always by classes of university students. We were fairly certain that the village children had never seen white children before so they were very curious about Luke and Ryan. They wanted to touch them and followed them everywhere. When Luke and Ryan saw the baby goats in the village, they started a game of goat chasing. They would chase the goats and the village children would in turn chase Luke and Ryan. This provided hours of entertainment and thoroughly tired out our kids and their goats. We asked one dad whether the kids always chased goats and he paused, cocked his head and said “Not until your boys came here”. So Luke and Ryan have created a new sport, although one that we think may have been heartily discouraged once our bus left the village.

Tormonge was a fishing and pottery village. Their homes were mostly made out of clay – the same as their pots. While there were electrical wires strung throughout the village, it appeared usage was quite low. Grain was milled at the communal milling hut. They had very little and their way of life was a mix of space age and stone age, as one of our profs likes to say. They wore T-shirts with Western logos but wove their kente cloth by hand with crude looms, made their pots without pottery wheels, and fished from boats carved out of trees. In contrast to the school we saw in the city, the school here was bare – only desks and a blackboard in a concrete building. They had a library started by an African American but it appeared to be little used despite having children’s book in their native language. There were two flush toilets by the village center but it appeared they were reserved for visitors or leaders, as most of the village used the outhouse erected over a deep dark pit. The school kids played with a half deflated soccer ball, while the village team players each had their own ball.

In the afternoon of our visit we toured the village and saw everything in action. The boys continued their goat chasing, which resulted in a visit to the clinic for Ryan after he took a tumble. Then off to our family homestay, where we believe we may have had the nicest accommodations in the village. We had two rooms for the five of us, fans in the rooms and an open air shower in a detached structure. The highlight of the trip for Jay occurred in the shower as he stepped in with Luke. Luke spontaneously looked up at him and said “Daddy, we’re really lucky that we have so much - these kids have so little”. And so in a nutshell, Luke has already internalized what the highest goal of the entire trip is – we are very lucky to live in the place that we do, with the things that we have and none of us should lose sight of the advantages we have that most people in the world can never even aspire to.

That night we enjoyed a traditional Ghanaian dinner, accompanied by drumming and dancing. The slightly uncomfortable part of the evening occurred when we sat down to dinner in the center of the village and most of the villagers sat around the square watching us eat. While no one in the village seemed to be lacking the basic necessities, it had hard not to feel the huge divide between what we would consider a typical meal and what might be the usual dinner for most of those in the village.

On our third day, we ate breakfast with the villagers, and then returned to the ship.  On the way back, we made a pit stop in a national wildlife reserve, climbed a small peak, visited some caves, and saw two baboon troops and a herd of antelope.  A highlight was climbing through one of the caves to pop out the other end through a narrow opening.  The second highlight of the day was pushing our bus in order to get a rolling start after it refused to start!  The Shay Reserve is only about 2 hours drive from Accra and provided a lot of entertainment. 

Day four was a new adventure as we arranged a car and driver and headed to the beach. Ghana’s target is to multiply their tourism business in a matter of years and we got to see first-hand what they will have to work with. The natural setting was spectacular, although a little rocky for a swimming beach. The chief issue they will have is cleaning up the beaches and the water, as it was obvious that there is a very limited effort to do that at the current time.

All in all, we leave Ghana happy to have made the trip there and encouraged by possibilities of the country!

A Day in the Life Aboard our Ship - The MV Explorer

We love our life on the boat.  The days go by quickly and there is always something to do.

Learning
We are learning a lot from classes, reading books and visiting the different cultures.  Everyday on the boat we ALL go to classes.  Luke and Ryan do their schoolwork in the morning.  They get one-on-one tutoring from the college students, mom, dad or grandpa.  A child coordinator books the room, snack, student volunteers and provides general supervision.  From 2-4 pm every afternoon the kids play in the ball court, swim, make arts and crafts and have snack time.  There are 12 children under the age of 14 on the boat. 

Jay, Christy and Milton attend classes with the college students.  They are taking classes on global studies, sustainability and terrorism.  We are often called on to guest lecture in the classes.  Soon Jay will be lecturing on organic food and Christy will talk on supply chain management.  Milton puts on seminars almost every night on subjects ranging from Meditation to creative writing. 

Whenever we can find some extra time, we read books and watch movies on the regions we are visiting.  Christy is also trying to learn Spanish by using the Rosetta Stone software.

Exercise

We do not get much exercise in the ports, but we workout almost everyday on the boat.  There is an exercise room with treadmills, stairmasters, elliptical trainers, and weights.  Students and faculty also put on yoga and strength training classes.  The boys place kickball, volleyball and soccer in the ball court.

Eating

They have 2 dining rooms and a snack bar on ship.  They boys love the buffet style food and always talk about the “free” food.  We are getting a little tired of the food, but overall it is good.  On special occasions we’ll buy a hamburger from the snack bar or book a table at their “fancy” dining spot.  We are trying not to gain too much weight – which is hard with all the yummy croissants and sweets.

Other Activities

There is always something going on.  Before dinner the Life Long Learners (that is what we old folks are called) get together for a glass of wine and to hear guest lecturers on the upcoming ports. 

Special events include the talent show (no --we did not enter), Neptune Day (when we crossed the equator), Captains’ dinner, social hours, ice cream parties by the pool…