Katherine Writes

Why Field Study?

2011-01-31T09:51:00.005-07:00

I'm still kind of amazed that I actually went through with my field study to South Africa. This time last year I was still skeptical about it, trying to figure out something to study, wondering how I'd get the money and approval necessary to go, questioning whether it would actually be the best thing for me to do at this stage in my studies. Then somehow I made it through the prep class, got a passport and a bunch of vaccinations, found a flight, flew to Africa, lived there for three months, and came home. Crazy. Through all of it I had a lot of second thoughts and worries, but in the end they were all unfounded, and I had an amazing experience.

The thing about a BYU Field Study, as opposed to a Study Abroad, is that it's entirely student-driven. On a study abroad you travel with a group of students and at least one professor, and you take classes and tests just like usual, but in a different cultural setting and with a more centric cultural focus. On a field study, you're with a group of students, but what you do is entirely up to you. I was there in an unusually small group, with only four girls, one of whom (Macrae, the facilitator) had been there before and was able to show us how to get around and what to do, or not to do, to make it in East London. We did a lot of things as a group and were constantly learning from each other, but each of us had our own projects and course work, and had to be entirely self-motivated to complete it. This allowed for near complete freedom in what we chose to study and do each day, which is both liberating and frightening. It was exciting to direct my own learning, but there was always the worry that I was focusing on the wrong things, not doing enough, or trying to do too much. It was definitely stressful, but what I really appreciate is that it taught me how to do things for myself. I chose my own topic, created my own project, found my own contacts, and did my own analysis. I had loads of help along the way from professors, facilitators and organizations, but any help that I wanted, I had to seek out on my own. After having to do all of this for my field study, I feel as though I know how to get things done in the real world. I feel comfortable approaching professionals and experts on topics that I'm interested in, and I feel as though I have something valuable to give back to them, whether it's expertise, opinions or just enthusiasm. This field study has been an incredible cultural experience, giving me a new perspective of the world and the ability to live in a different country, but even more importantly it's been an amazing educational opportunity, which has taught me how to direct my own learning, do my own research, and have the confidence to make it work.

That Good Old Sublime

2011-01-26T15:27:00.003-07:00

For those of you who have been following my blog for very long, you know that I have a real fascination with the concept of the sublime (for definitions, click here). Before I left for South Africa, I'd put a lot of effort into understanding this concept and making connections between it and various other aspects of my studies, especially through my exploration of the modern technological sublime. I hung onto this concept as I prepared for my Field Study and then throughout my time in South Africa, and as it turned out a huge proportion of what I learned and saw in the field related back to this idea of the sublime that I love so much. I realized that my project on ecotourism related directly to the sublime, and the more I learned about each of them, the more connections I saw. These posts show my progress in discovering these connections:

The more I looked at it, the more I realized that the whole tourism industry is really dependent on people's desire to have sublime experiences. The brochures I collected for South African game reserves, parks, lodges and adventure companies all advertised the fact that they were giving you something different, as far from home and familiarity as you can get, where you can experience seclusion, adventure, and/or untouched nature. They say they can transport you to a distant past, through forests yet to be explored and cultures unchanged by time. People want their world to be stretched; they want to find some hidden part of themselves through travel to far-off lands (think Eat, Pray, Love); they want to reassure themselves that something exists outside of human creation, which is greater than anything humans can create. Tourism companies and lodges offer all this, without the challenges that come from seeking it out on your own. They bring you to the edge of the cliff, allow you to see the sublime view, and give you a commemorative t-shirt. I may sound cynical, but the truth is that some of my own favorite experiences in South Africa were just like this; in fact, at Cape Point, either a wide, well-paved path or a rail car takes you quite literally to the edge of a cliff overlooking an incredible expanse of ocean. Maybe not a very impressive journey, but I consider this to be one of the most mind-bendingly amazing sights I've ever seen, and in combination with the feel of standing there blown by the fresh wind (according to some, this point has the healthiest air in the world) and encompassed by the perfect silence coming off of the ocean and all the way up from Antarctica, it was really a sublime experience. I think this is what every tourist and traveler is looking for. And that's why ecotourism works: it offers up amazing, authentic natural and cultural experiences, along with the promise that everything's going to stay just as it is.

People

2011-01-26T08:57:00.007-07:00

It's been two whole months now since I came home from South Africa, and looking back it's amazing how much I feel like my time there has affected me, my education, and my plans for the future. I'm still working on the formal analysis of my research, but however that turns out I think what made this Field Study worth the money, time and challenges was the incredible experiences and people I was able to find there. The most amazing thing about South Africa, which I know I've mentioned over and over again, was the people. Not just my host family and close friends, but the strangers who talked to me on the street or in the mall, the amazing people I was able to interview, all the talkative/confused/flirtatious/helpful taxi drivers, and of course the wonderful people of the East London 3rd Ward, where I attended church every week. These people taught me so much; welcomed me into their country, their homes and their lives; and never ceased to amaze me with their strength, knowledge and friendliness. If you want to get some idea of the kinds of people I met and what made them so amazing, these are the posts to read:

Conversations: my first day in East London
The pageant at the Zamani Daycare Center
Kevin Cole, the natural scientist at the East London Museum
7de Laan and my first braai
Friends
Library Boys
Chicken Livers with Auntie P.
Aidan

The great thing about all these interactions with people (besides the opportunity I had to become part of a new, South African family) is how much it helped me understand the culture of South Africa, and how I could be a part of it. In the prep course for this Field Study I was told that South Africa was a dangerous place not just because of its crime rates, but because of how familiar it feels. Students tend to feel comfortable there, much more at home than in other countries like Ghana or India, and then get themselves into trouble when they forget to be cautious and overlook subtle but deep-rooted cultural differences. This is something that, initially, I struggled with. On the surface East London seemed just like an American city - people dressed the same, most spoke the same language (at least to me), they generally acted the same, and they talked about the same things. I felt comfortable almost all the time, but then occasionally my ease and comfort would be shattered when I suddenly realized that the situation I thought I was in was not at all the reality. This led to some awkward and confused moments where I doubted my ability to get by in this country. Thankfully, though I didn't notice it as it was happening, as time went by I began to understand and, more importantly, accept the things that were different. They weren't things I had to write down and memorize - in fact, I don't know if I could have written them down - rather, my cultural understanding came gradually and naturally, from my constant interactions with the people of South Africa. And this understanding is something that will stick with me far beyond my next exams.

Crossing the Street

2010-12-16T00:05:00.002-07:00

I've been back from South Africa for three weeks now, and for the most part have entirely readjusted to good old American life, with the exception of one thing: crossing the street. This is one thing that is so vastly different between American and South African culture that I just can't get used to it. First there's the issue of the cars driving on the wrong side of the road. It took me ages to get used to cars driving on the left in SA - having to look right, left, right before crossing, and getting into the passenger seat of the car on the left side. Since I spent so much time convincing myself that the direction of traffic that seems right is wrong, now I'm just confused nearly every time I get to an intersection. In the end I just look each way several times and expect cars to come at me from every direction at once. It seems like it would be so easy to figure out, but it confuses me endlessly as I walk and bike through town.

Then there's the actual crossing of the road. In East London, you can't just walk up to a crosswalk, watch the cars slow and stop for you, then take your time walking calmly across. It doesn't take long living there to realize that the pedestrian right-of-way does not apply. Cars will not stop for you, under any circumstances. If you're in a parking lot and walk in the way of a car, it will not stop and let you pass. It won't even slow down to give you a chance to get out of the way; instead, it will most likely speed up, honk, and you'd better be out of the way before it hits you. If you're on one side of the street and decide you want to be on the other side, you have to wait until there's a gap in the traffic in the lane nearest to you, rush across, and wait on the line in the middle of the road until there's a gap in the next lane. I spent a lot of time worrying about my toes, standing in such close proximity to so many speeding tires. If you're at an actual crosswalk, and the cross traffic has a red light, you have to make sure you're entirely across before the light turns green, because they will go whether or not you're in the middle of the lane. And you always have to be watching in every direction, to make sure no cars are about to turn into you as you cross. It makes crossing the street a challenge, often a terrifying one, but it certainly keeps things interesting.

In King City, California, cars will always stop. They stop for me before I even reach the crosswalk, and just wait. They don't creep forward or honk, or suddenly hit the gas when I'm right in front of them. They just wait. I honestly don't know what to do with them. Every time I cross the street, after having my mental debate about which direction the cars are going, I keep watching the traffic, waiting for someone to make a move in my direction, ready to jump out of the way at any second. But they never do, and I never have to. You'd think it would be a relief, but instead I just get that eerie feeling when things are just TOO easy or TOO quiet, like all the cars are plotting something. It's really quite unsettling.

Leaving

2010-12-02T00:16:00.003-07:00

They tell us that Field Studies are difficult, but they don’t prepare us for the things that are the hardest. In the prep course I learned about culture shock, safety concerns, project challenges, susceptibility to disease, traffic accidents. They warn us that we’re set up to fail: that almost none of the projects that students plan and prepare for actually work as anticipated, and that we just have to be flexible and willing to accept changes and failures. We were cautioned not to take on too many class credits for the time we’re there, because it will be far more difficult than we think to get everything done, and we don’t want to spend too much time on class work when we could be out interacting with the culture or spending time with our host families. We’re told to be prepared for challenges in our living situations, to be clear about our roles within the host family, and to communicate with our group members, to avoid disagreements or harboring grudges while living in such close quarters for so long. So I left the United States prepared for all of these possible setbacks and difficulties, but not at all prepared for East London.

Almost none of the issues that we covered in the prep course affected me, at least not to a degree worth mentioning. The second I landed in East London I knew I was going to love it. I’d just suffered through 36 long, sleepless, nervous, uncomfortable hours in airplanes and airports, fretting the whole time about what I was getting myself into, worried about my project and being on the other side of the world. In the airport in Johannesburg I felt exhausted and isolated, distant from anything and anyone I knew and loved and unsure of whether I’d make it through the following months. But a couple hours later, stepping off the plane at the East London airport, staring around me at the incredibly green trees and breathing in the salty coastal air, everything felt right. It was such an intense and unexpected sensation after so many miserable hours travelling, but I knew then and there that this was exactly where I needed to be. I never lost that feeling in my entire time in South Africa. I missed my family and friends, but no more than I ever miss the one when I’m with the other. I faced frustrations with my project, but never anything I couldn’t work around. I had my disagreements with roommates, but never over anything very important, and never anything that lasted. None of the problems I had been warned about and had prepared myself for showed up as problems. Nearly everything was perfect.

In my first week I wrote a post to this blog, in which I described some of the first people I’d met, how they shaped my impressions of East London and South Africa, and how they welcomed me immediately into their lives and families. Later I wrote about how even the ocean and the forest seemed to offer me an invitation accompanied by total acceptance, willing to take in this total outsider. Everything and everyone that I saw and met in South Africa welcomed me and shared with me. So many people were happy to help me with my research, and then so often wanted to do more, to share their lives, their culture, their friendship and their country with me. I was able to spend so much time with incredible and inspiring people and organizations, learning so much from them constantly, and learning just as much about myself in the process. The people of South Africa really did shape my whole experience and make everything I did possible.

This is where the problem arises, the one that the prep course and all my preliminary research and preparations could never have prepared me for. I had to leave. After all of the connections and unbelievable people and experiences I found in and around East London, after putting all of myself into making these connections and getting to know these people and seeking out these experiences, after finding my niche in this community and feeling entirely whole and accomplished and ready to live life and make things happen with all of it together, I had to pull the plug and fly away, leaving all of it behind.

Standing in the East London airport the second time was so much the same, but in such a bittersweet way. I could feel so strongly that same sensation I felt on my arrival, the feeling of welcoming and rightness, but twisted on itself, because this time I was going in the wrong direction. Glancing back from the waiting area I could still see the crowd on the other side of the security check, my huge extended family that had come to wave and cry and say goodbye. Why was I leaving again? And then I had to breath my last breath of East London and step onto the plane. I don't know where those three months went, but they weren't nearly long enough.

The Trouble with Interviews

2010-12-01T18:32:00.002-07:00

No matter how good interview methods might be, they don't do any good without people to interview. This was the biggest challenge I faced in my project, and was a huge issue, because a study on people is worthless unless you have people to study. The main reason that this was so difficult for me was that my population was too broad for me to find them easily from one organization or location. I wanted to interview men and women between 18 and 30, from various backgrounds and education levels, to give me an overall perspective from the up-and-coming generation - those who will have the most control over the near future, and who have lived most of their lives in the New South Africa outside of Apartheid. It seems like it should be easy to find a bunch of people around my own age, which is what I thought initially, until I tried to actually do it.

My first batch of people came from Fort Hare University, where I was able to pass around a sign-up sheet to a couple classes for those students willing to be interviewed. It wasn't hard to find some people who were happy to participate, but I had some serious challenges actually meeting with these students - mostly scheduling issues. There were a number of them who I tried to meet with many times, setting up a time, checking multiple times to make sure that time worked, arriving at the agreed-upon meeting place and then finding out that they had to change the time . . . over and over again. This got old very quickly. Another problem was the method of contacting. I quickly learned that email didn't work well, since a lot of people don't check their emails regularly, if ever, but I spent a lot of time making calls before I figured out that texting was the way to go. Most people respond pretty quickly to texts, and written no one has trouble understanding another's accent through text. Those people I did manage to meet with from Fort Hare were great though, and some even connected me with other people to talk to, which was a big help.

Unfortunately, Fort Hare does not have a very diverse population - everyone there is educated beyond high school, and the majority of the student body is black. Also, once exams started in October, there were no regularly scheduled classes for me to pass sign-up sheets around in, and it became more difficult for students to find time for interviews. So I had to turn to other sources.

An easy fallback was always members of my church, since I saw them twice a week, but I didn't like to abuse that population too much (or introduce that additional bias into my data), and one of my fellow students interviewed most of the women (17-29) from our church for her project. I felt it would be too much to ask of them to be interviewed again, and it seems wrong to have exactly the same study participants, so I kept my church-gathered population to a few of the men.

Other than those two sources, my participants came from random acquaintance or referral. I interviewed one worker from the internet cafe I frequented, two men who talked to me on the street, two friends/acquaintances of men who talked to me on the street, one co-worker of someone from church, and a number of other very diversely gathered people.

Besides the issue of finding participants and working around schedules, the biggest problem I met was in communication. Most people I interviewed had a first language other than English, and though they were usually fluent enough that it didn't pose any problems, occasionally I found someone who just couldn't quite understand me, or who I couldn't understand, and that would lead to a very awkward and usually painfully short interview. It also made it more difficult when I wanted to ask questions having to do with environmental issues or conservation, because my participants were unfamiliar with a lot of the terms I wanted to use in these questions (like conservation, or environmental), and it was hard to see whether it was the terms or the concepts that people were unfamiliar with. For all of these issues, I just had to do my best to work around them, and try to learn something new from every interview I completed.

The Evolution of Interviews

2010-12-01T17:02:00.003-07:00

A huge part of what I was doing during my time in South Africa was interviewing young adults to determine their perceptions of tourism and natural protected areas in South Africa, and particularly the Eastern Cape (piece 3 in Shaping my Field Study). I initially wanted more of a central focus around ecotourism (defined in A New Direction or the TIES website), but very few of the people I talked to knew about ecotourism (outside of those people who are involved in some way in the tourism industry), and even fewer had very well-formed opinions about it. In fact, bringing ecotourism into the equation, even if I tried to explain it simply and thoroughly, usually just confused my interviewees and made them less confident in their answers to my following questions. So, after the first few interviews, I shifted my questions to more general tourism, with a focus on community benefits/consequences and nature-based tourism. I also moved from asking about their opinions for the whole of South Africa and centered in on the Eastern Cape, the province East London is in and the poorest South African province.

One of the first lessons I learned in my interviews was that the less I talked, the better. I had a list of questions I wanted answered, and initially I would focus in on this list, asking the questions one at a time, with awkward attempts to transition from one to another and little deviation in the order. I usually found what I wanted, but the interviews were choppy and there was too much pressure to stick to the topics and points that I'd selected, without much room for things that might be more interesting to them, which is really much more important. In the end what worked really well was for me to just ask, "What do you think about tourism in the Eastern Cape?" and let them take it away from there. I still had the same main points I wanted to hit, having to do with community, positive and negative aspects, environmental effects/sustainability, challenges, and so on, but when I let them start the direction of the conversation, I was always able to find a natural place to fit those questions in, and a surprising majority of the time they brought up these issues on their own, without me having to ask. Asking such a general question also allowed for the interview to stay at much more of a conversational level, shaped by each individual and free from the pressure to have the 'right' response that can become such a problem when asking specifics. My first few interviews were really stressful, and initially I tried too hard to get the answers I wanted (in some cases I really wanted to get a 'for' or 'against,' when really they just didn't care), but once I was able to relax I genuinely enjoyed hearing each person's perspectives and opinions.

There were some challenges with the actual gathering of the interviews that always kept things interesting (and frustrating), which I'm going to address in my next post.

Stylistic Imitations: Conrad

2010-12-01T16:01:00.002-07:00

In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad proves himself a master of creating intense moods through his strong imagery and detailed descriptions. In this way he's able to drag the reader into the Heart of Darkness the title refers to: both the literal depth of the jungle and the figurative darkness at the heart of Mr. Kurtz. I took a short passage from this novel and closely imitated it for two different situations. I enjoy this kind of imitation, though it was difficult to get the same single-minded direction Conrad achieved while combining separate images like this.

Original: from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, page 14.

A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones, imposing carriage archways right and left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through one of these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a desert, and opened the first door I came to.

Imitation 1 (Oxford Street taxi):
A rickety and crowded taxi in a busy street, dirty windows, seats filled with sweating bodies, a jarring racket, groceries crammed beneath the seats, fat laughing mamas on every side, cracked windows introducing blessedly breathable air. Another man ducked through the open doorway, struggled past the obstructive and vocal occupants, as immovable as the seats themselves, and squeezed into the largest space he could find.

Imitation 2 (Near Nahoon Beach):
A wide and smooth beach in bright sunlight, clear water, expansive sky without a cloud, a stinging wind, shells scattered across the sand, confident gulls strutting just out of reach, barely visible footprints pensively shifting shape. I stepped into one of these footprints, followed its fellows on a winding and hurried path, as unpredictable as the surf, and sought the child who had walked there.

Stylistic Imitations: Hemingway

2010-12-01T14:03:00.003-07:00

Another author whose style I experimented with in my writing was Ernest Hemingway, after reading his journal/memoir Green Hills of Africa. In this book Hemingway often employs a somewhat rambling stream-of-consciousness, creating a meshing of his actions, the setting around him, and the thoughts or emotions he has to create one emotive portrait of a scene. The following passage is an example of this from page 58 of Green Hills of Africa.

So in the dark, following this ideal line, we descended into steep ravines that showed only as wooded patches until you were in them, slid down, clung to vines, stumbled and climbed and slid again, down and down, then steeply, impossibly, up, hearing the rustle of night things and the cough of a leopard hunting baboons; me scared of snakes and touching each root and branch with snake fear in the dark. To go down and up two hands-and-knee-climbing ravines and then out into the moonlight and the long, too-steep shoulder of mountain that you climbed one foot up to the other, one foot after the other, one stride at a time, leaning forward against the grade and the altitude, dead tired and gun weary, single file in the moonlight across the slope, on up and to the top where it was easy, the country spread in the moonlight, then up and down and on, through the small hills, tired but now in sight of the fires and on into camp.

Again I didn't closely imitate this particular passage, but I did try to implement some of the same stylistic methods Hemingway used in my post The Trouble With Africa, especially in the portion below:

Though the city may disguise them, the big open spaces are here as well. Drive six kilometers to the beach and you’ll find yourself on giant cliffs embedded with ancient life, coated with recent life, crawling with new life, overlooking huge untamable waves crashing in from an endless blue ocean which, far in the distance, touches an equally endless, arching blue sky. Drive an hour inland through the dry, cow-spotted fields and you’ll find yourself suddenly surrounded by a thousand shades of green, climbing over immense moss-covered boulders beside towering waterfalls, staring toward ghostly canopies floating in a near-impenetrable mist, becoming engulfed by the hums and clicks and warbles and shrieks and croaks and drips and whoops that create the symphony of the forest, feeling small and foolish standing there with your worn tackies and half-filled pack and diminishing fantasy that you could conquer all this greatness, realizing the indifferent acceptance and quiet invitation that the land offers you and losing the feeling of self-importance with which you entered the forest.

I'm not sure that the resemblance is very clear, but my stylistic inspiration for this post was definitely Hemingway. This is a style I like a lot; I have a lot of fun with long, multi-directional sentences and the liberal use of commas and semicolons. The image is part of the scene in Hogsback that I was trying to describe in this passage, photographed by Britt Smith when we were hiking there together. It's really an incredible place, which I described more in another post.

Stylistic Imitations: Chatwin

2010-12-01T00:53:00.007-07:00

As part of my Travel Writing course, I've been experimenting with different styles of writing and recording experiences, partly through imitations of the literature I've been reading. One of the first books I attempted to imitate was Bruce Chatwin's What am I Doing Here, a collection of Chatwin's various travel experiences. The interesting thing about this collection is that Chatwin expresses his experiences through the conversations and interactions he has with people: very heavy on dialogue and description but without a lot of his own thoughts or impressions, thus leaving the reader to come to his/her own conclusions based on Chatwin's observations and dialogue. Rather than choosing a specific passage to imitate, I took that dialogue-rich and personal commentary-free style Chatwin uses to record a number of my own experiences and interactions in South Africa. The first of these was Conversations, my first post in East London, in which I recorded a few of my initial interactions with South Africans. At the time, it had seemed extremely strange and almost unsettling to me that total strangers, who I didn't know and didn't expect to see again, were so immediately friendly and talkative. It was these conversations with strangers, and even the fact that strangers were having conversations with me, that really stuck with me from that first day. This was also my first experience with Africa Time: Diana had an appointment with Rachel at nine, which at nine (when we arrived) was moved to eleven, then we had time to hear the life story of a random man in Rachel's office before she was actually ready to see us. She wasn't being rude, she was just busy with other people too. That flexibility with time and schedules was something that took some getting used to.

I used this style again to about the same effect in the first half of my post on Friends and Sindiwe Magona, where I recorded a conversation with the owner of the cafe Friends. I ended up going back there a number of times. Also, interestingly enough, this conversation was also the result of a last-minute schedule change. Coincidence?

The final Chatwin-esque post I wrote was Library Boys, about some boys who came to talk to me one day in the library. This conversation had a lot of really interesting elements to it that I thought were worth drawing attention to: themes that I encountered daily, and that I think say a lot about South African culture. First was the obvious fact that I stood out wherever I went, as a white American, which motivated these boys to talk to me in the first place. Then the unending friendliness of everyone, and their eagerness to make conversation, no matter how inappropriate it may seem in a given setting or situation (like a library). The language barrier was there as well, something I had to wrestle with daily, and conversely the impressive multilingualism of many South Africans: this boy spoke 4 languages fluently (I met another young man from Zimbabwe who spoke 6: 5 African tongues and English, with plans to tackle Afrikaans next). Two more subtle elements to this conversation were the racial awareness that is always there in South Africa - this boy explained to me that he was coloured without my asking, as he considered it an important enough part of his identity that he included it in even this casual introduction - and the concern that people always expressed for my safety, especially when I was traveling in non-white areas of town (as he left he told me to be careful on the public taxis). To have all these elements thrown into this conversation without accompanying analysis and explanation I think is a far better representation of the way they exist in the cultural context of South Africa. Things like the racial awareness are constantly there, but not in such a way that it's shocking or calling attention to itself - it's just there and it feels natural.

The difficult thing with writing in Chatwin's style was the dialogue. I haven't used dialogue in my writing since my last creative writing course in 7th grade, and it's far more difficult than I expected. I had a very hard time making the conversations sound natural, and it was impossible to capture the unique accents and different ways of speaking that these people had. It would be much easier if I could say, "Read with a black South African accent, strong fluency in English" or "Read with a British white South African accent" before each line. I certainly have a new appreciation for writers of novels and other dialogue-rich literature.

The Sublime and Ecotourism: Richard Bangs

2010-11-30T18:30:00.005-07:00

Apparently I'm not the only one who's been making connections between ecotourism and the sublime. Richard Bangs, an old man who's called "the father of modern adventure travel" by www.smarttravels.tv/adventure.htm, has produced a TV series called Adventures with Purpose in conjunction with KCTS (the Seattle PBS station I grew up with), and in one segment of this show he traveled to Switzerland in search of the sublime. Though I'm a little bitter that he stole my idea shortly before I came up with it, this trailer is a nice overview of the sublime side of ecotourism. He even brings in Percy Shelley, who I quoted months ago in my exploration of the sublime. I'd be interested to see the whole video.

Experience through Wordle

2010-11-30T17:27:00.004-07:00

I've compiled all the text from 26 randomly chosen travel brochures I picked up in gas stations, tourist information centers and park offices from East London to Cape Town and put them into a Wordle to show the most common words found in these brochures. The big winner? 'Experience,' which was used 45 times in these 26 brochures. This was closely followed by 'game,' at 41. Some other top scorers: Africa (27), African (21), safari (22), unique (20), free (19), forest (15), nature (14), enjoy (13), wild (13), wildlife (12), great (12), and conservation (11). The top animals were elephant (17), cheetah (15) and ostrich (14).

This is a very small sampling of brochures, even out of my own collection, but I did find it interesting that the top word was Experience. They're not advertising just to see or do things, but to experience them. There is also clearly an emphasis on game and nature based tourism, which greatly dominate the mainstream South African tourism industry.

I'm sure there must be a way to make this Wordle image bigger without it looking blurry, but it's not working for me. If someone knows the trick, please share. As is, you can click on it to see the full-size image.

Eco-Schools (LOVE)

2010-11-30T12:14:00.005-07:00

One of the most exciting things I was able to find in my time in South Africa was the Eco-Schools Programme, an international awards program for environmental management, certification, and sustainable development in schools, clubs and education centers. It is overseen by the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) in Europe, and implemented in South Africa by WESSA, so in my short time volunteering with them I was able to get a glimpse into this wonderful program. As a whole-hearted, vehement supporter of environmental education in every shape and form, I think Eco-Schools is exactly the kind of program that should be in schools around the world; and frankly, that's the direction they're headed: as of October 2009, the program was being implemented in 47 countries around the world, involving 30,000 schools, 8 million students, 400,000 teachers and 4,000 local authorities (according to Eco-Schools USA). The U.S. is a new-comer to the program, hosted by the National Wildlife Federation since December 2008, with about 380 participating schools. South Africa has been involved in Eco-Schools since 2003, and has nearly 1,150 schools participating.

Here's an overview of how the program works, according to the Evaluation of the Eco-Schools South Africa Programme, prepared by Eureta Rosenberg on behalf of WESSA, WWF-SA and C.A.P.E. (Cape Action for People and the Environment):

In South Africa, schools which register with the Programme must:
· Audit environmental conditions and resource use at their school
· Implement projects to improve their environmental conditions and resource use
· Conduct environmental education lessons; and
· Report annually on their progress to the Eco-Schools coordinators, who convene panels of experts to assess the schools’ work.
Lessons can be conducted in any subject and topics include wise use of resources, habits for healthy living, and caring for each other and the earth. Popular projects in rural and urban areas are food gardens, bringing back indigenous biodiversity, wetland - or soil rehabilitation, recycling and measures to conserve water and energy. Each environmental improvement must be maintained, even as new ones are introduced in subsequent years of registration.

I had the opportunity to help evaluate some of the Eco-Schools portfolios to help determine whether they merited an award for their work throughout the year, and I was really impressed by the efforts some of these schools were making toward environmental sustainability and awareness. One small, rural school I evaluated had done a project focused around a river which ran alongside their school. The water from this river was gathered by some people for drinking or cooking, but women also washed clothes in it and some students were spotted using it as a toilet, while pollution and litter were inhibiting the water's flow and causing stagnancy. Teachers in the school recognized the health risks the current state of the river could cause to the students, wildlife and the whole community, and they decided to use the Eco-Schools program to do something about it. The students took a field trip to the river and worked together with teachers to identify pollutants and their sources, then determine ways to reduce pollution and rehabilitate the river and its habitats. They incorporated lessons in biology, math, health and other subjects to take an interdisciplinary approach to the problem, and then the students took what they learned home to their parents, and as a result to the whole community. This becomes so much more than a school lesson or a quick project by a few community members: it spreads awareness and reform through the entire community and makes real, tangible change a possibility.

That's what really makes me excited about the Eco-Schools program: it teaches environmental education through practice. It shows students, schools and the community that taking steps to help the environment actually helps themselves, by saving money, improving health, and allowing them to become more self-sustaining. It encourages students and teachers to undertake projects themselves, giving them ownership and increasing the likelihood that the projects will continue for years to come. It requires commitment and drive from all those involved, but has really amazing benefits for those who are willing to do the work.

Take Only Pictures, Leave Only Footprints

2010-11-29T13:51:00.005-07:00

In my perusal of Aidan's collections I paid special attention to nature brochures, and found a number from the 1970s or '80s advertising nature reserves. Two carried the tag-line "take only pictures, leave only footprints," which I've found in a number of modern pamphlets and brochures, including one for the Nahoon Estuary Nature Reserve ("take only pictures and memories, leave only footprints") and which is even mentioned in my Ecotourism and Sustainable Development textbook by Martha Honey as a "catchy phrase" often used in "mainstream ecotourism" or "ecotourism lite" (page 62). These kinds of phrases invoke a feeling of preservation and of having a low impact, but without actually committing to anything specific. It brings up a common issue that arises in nature tourism, which is distinguishing between the organizations and facilities that sound green and responsible, and those that actually are. This doesn't mean that all organizations using these "catchy phrases" should be immediately mistrusted - the Nahoon Estuary has done a really great job, for instance - but they also shouldn't be immediately labeled as shining examples of sustainability. I'm going to address this issue more fully in a future post.

I kept my eyes open for anything that might be classified as ecotourism in Aidan's collection, but other than some "ecotourism lite" like that mentioned above I didn't see anything. The emphasis on community benefit, involvement and empowerment which is so essential to ecotourism is something that even today can be difficult to find in marketing materials, and environmental effects and efforts beyond general nature conservation (which is essential for the survival of nature tourism) can be difficult to determine.

One booklet that caught my interest went into detail about a nature reserve's battles for conservation, their failures due to poor management, and their final victory through a collaboration of scientists, managers and community members. What it described was the same kind of environmental challenge being faced today by many natural areas in South Africa and around the world: struggles against development and poor land use, political battles for funding and recognition, fights to save endangered species and diminished/diminishing habitats, and efforts to get the community to care and to become involved. It's encouraging to know that East London was already taking such strides for conservation so many years ago, but it's also a bit discouraging to see how many of these same problems are faced today, and how many remain without solutions.

Aidan: A Link to the Past

2010-11-24T21:37:00.006-07:00

Image source: http://metromediasa.com. This is a 1925 image of Orient Beach, which is adjacent to Eastern Beach. You can find more pictures like this at their website. I was unable to find any online images from the 1950s like the one I've described below.
Image 2: Eastern Beach in 1907
Image 3: a man selling candy on the esplanade above Eastern Beach. Source: blogs.dispatch.co.za
Image 4: Eastern Beach in 2008. Source: ilsebatten, flickr.com

I found Aidan one day when I was sitting in Wendy's Book Lounge, reading, writing and talking to Cornelius as I so often do. Cornelius introduced me as one of his girls, as he always does, and Aidan and I started talking about my research. As it turns out, Aidan is quite involved in the nature tourism industry: his family owns a tour operation in the northern part of the country and he's put considerable effort into following what's happening in it, and is even looking into starting some sort of a tour company of his own. We talked while he browsed the shelves around us: about how the Eastern Cape has a lot of under-utilized potential for tourism; how there's a lack of continuity between areas of the province, left over from the Apartheid-era homeland separation; and how the marketing in the Eastern Cape just hasn't been as effective as in other parts of the country. He also brought up the issue of safety, how many people still have misgivings about traveling to South Africa because of its reputation of being dangerous and crime-ridden -- though if you just take the right precautions, he says, it can be as safe as anywhere else. He had a lot to say and clearly could say more, so he told me I could stop by some day and talk to him again.

A week later I was able to go to Aidan's home to talk to him further, along with Diana, who had met Aidan independently, and wanted to see his collection of old postcards of Oxford Street. He invited us right into his home and introduced us to his wife and two children, the older of whom was 10, about my sister's age. Diana and I were offered tea and muffins as Aidan went into the back to find us what might interest us in his collections. He came back with books and boxes full of postcards and business information for Diana and travel brochures for me. These were really fascinating: pamphlets and brochures from the 70s, 50s and earlier, advertising East London and the surrounding area. The brochures for EL itself displayed a city drastically different from the one I've gotten to know so well. One brochure that looked as though it must have been from around 1950 gushed about the thousands of tourists that visited the city each year, drawn by what they termed "the safest beaches in the southern hemisphere," the "charming, bustling downtown," and the overall "family-friendly atmosphere." The pictures showed Orient and Eastern Beaches, beaches I've visited many times, covered with beach towels, umbrellas, and bikini-clad sunbathers, next to waters filled with laughing children and their proud and watchful parents. I wonder what those people would think if they were to see these places today. Eastern Beach is often covered with people, but they're mostly local and all black, except for the occasional white surfer or tourist from Sugarshack Backpacker's. This beach gives off the immediate sense of a party: everyone laughing and yelling, laying on the sand just in front of the surf and waiting for the waves to bowl them over, dressed in whatever they have at hand - jeans and t-shirts, dresses, underwear, once in a while an actual swimsuit. Tell-tale bottles and cans are typically strewn across the sand and boardwalk, signs of the last night's revelry and a preview for the upcoming evening. It's loud and eager and invigorating and alive, but certainly not the tame, tourist- and family-friendly site of 60 years ago. And not at all white like those picture-perfect families on the brochure.

I was also intrigued by the claims these brochures made about East London being a tourist hot-spot and favorite vacation destination for travelers from all over the world. Unless they were greatly exaggerating EL's popularity, something must have happened to take this city off the map. Or maybe nothing happened, and that's the problem - it just didn't keep up with the modernization and marketing happening in other parts of the country, and with nothing new or unique to offer, it eventually lost its draw. Now I'm curious to see the numbers for East London tourism. I've already tried to find them online to no avail, so I'll have to try emailing the tourism information office and see if they have anything to tell me.

The Journey to WESSA

2010-11-10T01:45:00.005-07:00

Images: Above: Map of East London. Source: http://sa-venues.com.
Below: the Boxer taxi rank. Source: http://brabysproperty.co.za

Within a few days of emailing WESSA I received a message back from Catherine Andersson, their project manager for environmental education, saying that she’d be interested in meeting me. We set up a date and I went about finding the way to Beacon Bay, where their office is located. For this I was able to use the expertise of Matt, who was here last year and was one of our teachers for the prep course. He used to stay in Beacon Bay, so he knew its taxi system well, and sent me a really helpful Google Map with stops labeled. I plotted out my route from the nearest stop to the WESSA office, about a 20 minute walk, and went through the whole route on the map until I was sure I could work it. Just in case any of you ever need to find your way from Devereux to WESSA, I’m going to take you through the step-by-step directions. You can also follow along on the Google Map.

1. Leave the house a couple hours before your appointment. Walk from home to Devereux street, wait until you see a taxi or hear one honking and point toward town (to the right). Listen for them to yell “Townie.” If they say “Mdantsane,” it’s going the other way. Don't get on that one.
2. When one pulls over, hop in. You may have to give the mamas a chance to shift over if it’s one of the smaller taxis; just squash in alongside them.
3. Pass up 6 rand to the yeller if you’re in a van or the driver in a car. It’s best to have exact change. If you’re in the back, just tap the person in front of you and they’ll pass your change forward.
4. The taxi takes you along Oxford Street. A couple streets before Gladstone, around City Hall, call out “Absa 2” or “2nd Absa,” and they’ll stop at the corner of Gladstone, next to an Absa bank. Cross Oxford and head down Gladstone until you find a store called Boxer, surrounded by taxis going in all directions. This is the Boxer taxi rank.
5. Right across from the Boxer there’s a parking lot with a few rows of taxis. If you stand there for a moment, someone will ask you where you’re headed, or you can just go up to one of the men who are yelling and pointing authoritatively. Tell him Bonza, Bonza Bay, or Beacon Bay (or a combination of the three until he gets what you mean), and he’ll point you where you need to go. It should be the van nearest the street. Jump in and hope it fills quickly. Avoid the vendors trying to sell you sweets, sunglasses and cell phones.
6. Once the taxi starts moving pass up your 6 rand, then just enjoy the trip. You’ll cross the Buffalo River, which is nice. When you’ve been going for a good while the caller or driver will ask something about Pick n Pay or Spargs, and you’ll want to say Spargs. Keep your eyes open for a retail park or mall with the sign that says Spargs, with a Super Spar inside it. This is your stop.
7. Cross the street to Spargs then continue in the direction you were driving until you reach Beaconhurst, then turn right.
8. Walk a while. This is a relatively quiet residential area, so you may feel uncomfortable after spending so much time on Oxford and Devereux. Just try to relax and enjoy the walk.
9. Turn left on Blue Bend road, and you’ll see the sign for WESSA, within the Nahoon Estuary Nature Reserve, which is called the Dassie Trail by most locals. Tell the people at the booth that you’re going to WESSA and you won’t have to sign in. You’ve arrived!

My meeting with Catherine went very well. I immediately felt at home in her office, surrounded by environmental messages and recycling bins. Unfortunately most of their activities are finished for the year, since schools were busy with exams, but she had a few things I could become involved with, including assessments of the Eco-Schools portfolios. She also got me in touch with Jakob and Paula, two young German volunteers who are working on setting up an environmental club at Inkwenkwezi High School in Mdantsane. I left very happy, but again wishing that I’d found WESSA sooner.

Discovering WESSA

2010-11-09T07:07:00.005-07:00

Image credit: www.wessa.org.za

I was walking through VP one day, minding my own business, when I saw a glowing radiance in front of me, in the form of a booth that WESSA, the Wilderness and Environment Society of South Africa, had set up. It was covered with beautiful posters and pamphlets about environmental education, stewardship, alternative energy, ecosystems, green efforts . . . all the things I love the most. I stood for a few minutes just admiring the booth and soaking up all its environmental goodness, so proud of VP for holding something so beautiful and wonderful, then gathered up a variety of newsletters and pamphlets from the table and set out to enjoy them. This is when I learned about all the great conservation efforts that WESSA is involved with, including the Eco-Schools Programme, which encourages and helps to fund environmental education and sustainability programs within local schools. I had no idea that such a thing existed here in South Africa, but I immediately decided that I wanted to get involved. So I stopped off at the internet across from VP and emailed the local chapter of WESSA to show my interest, then went to their website to find out more.

As it turns out, WESSA has been around since 1926, and has the vision "to achieve a South Africa which is wisely managed by all to ensure long-term environmental sustainability" (www.wessa.org.za). They're involved in all kinds of projects from wetland protection to beach clean-ups to environmental education, and produce publications for adults and children which spread environmental awareness and give ways to get involved with community actions. It really is a wonderful organization. They're not small, either: there are 52 WESSA branches across South Africa, the nearest one in Beacon Bay, which is in East London just past Nahoon. This is exactly the kind of organization I'd been looking for since before I arrived in South Africa, and it just makes me so happy to know that one really exists, and has an office so close to where I stay. I only wish that I'd found them earlier.

Political Dealings

2010-11-08T07:36:00.005-07:00

Image: Zero Mostel as Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

There are a lot of things that are very similar between American and South African culture, but one thing that is distinctly different is politics. It’s always a challenge to understand what’s going on in politics in my own country, much less in other parts of the world, but I’m always eager to learn more about South African government and politics, and as such was excited when Kathy and Cornelius invited us to a meeting of the Unity Movement, a political movement they’re involved with. They have their issues with the movement, believing that they’re not moving anywhere, and will never get anything done unless they drastically change their approach. I’m not entirely sure about the principles upheld by this group, or what makes them different, but they are a bit socialist, and are against government corruption, inequality, and so on. When we arrived they told us that we were going to start off with a movie on slavery, so I quickly steeled myself for intense documentary of human trafficking, or History Channel special on the slave trade, or something heavy like that. Instead, when he put in the DVD it broke out in loud, cheesy music. We were watching A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a musical. Not at all what I was expecting. It does have to do with slavery – it follows a slave, Pseudolus, as he works out a wild plot to buy his freedom, and involves various people enslaved in different ways – in marriage, prostitution, and under the eyes of strict parents, as well as traditional enslavement. It was funny, though somewhat raunchy and terribly irreverent.

After the movie finished we had a long discussion about the themes it held and how they can apply to the members of the group, as students and professionals living, gaining an education, and working in South Africa. I was actually really impressed with the heavy themes and connections they made from this ridiculous movie, extracting very serious ideas about gender, enslavement and inequality from the most obscure scenes. The main idea of the discussion ended up being about how they as non-white South Africans face a kind of enslavement through the limitations that government, culture and even their own perceptions and psychological limitations have placed upon them. The conversation ranged from the definition of freedom within a democratic society and the question of whether personal freedoms have to be sacrificed for the good of the whole, to specific issues like the low quality of public education and health care, the ever-present issues of government corruption, and the need for bank reform. One of the men talked about how even though Apartheid had ended things had not necessarily improved – huge problems still exist within the government and people still don’t have equal opportunities, but the sense of community is lost. During Apartheid people came together in their protest against the government, unified and driven, but today they have become complacent, and simply accept government inadequacies rather than rising up against them. What I wanted through all of this was to hear the solutions, which is the same issue that Kathy and Cornelius have voiced about this group. Anyone can name off the problems that exist within government, and there are always plenty to choose from, but it doesn’t do you any good unless you have solutions to those problems, or alternatives that would lessen these problems in the future. And once you have those solutions and alternatives, you need to get them outside of your own group and into the public eye, so that you have the possibility of actually creating change.

After the discussion we moved into the other room and split up into separate tables, the official meeting over, though the conversations all around were still coming off of the same vein. I ended up talking to Cornelius and another man about American politics, describing the major differences between Democrats and Republicans but explaining that, in the end, we’re always in essentially the same place. It was a long night filled with a lot of heavy discussion – we had arrived at 7:30 and didn’t leave until midnight. I really enjoyed it though; I always like to talk politics.

Chicken Livers?!

2010-11-08T07:28:00.006-07:00

Image credit: Above: Chicken livers. Source: http://whatdidyoueat.typepad.com
Below: Freshpak, the least expensive and best rooibos tea (and the kind Janie bought).
Source: http://southafricanfood.ie/store/

One night we went out to see Auntie P. in Parkside, as we often do, and she made for us her specialty: chicken livers. It was one of those nights when I was very happy to be vegetarian. Actually, I have a lot of those nights. She heated a bit of vegetable curry for me while she cooked the livers. They’re not such an uncommon ingredient here in South Africa, and come in a plastic container like cottage cheese. AP poured a few cups of vegetable oil into a frying pan then added the reddish meat, letting it soak up the oil and slowly fry as she chopped up the pieces with a spatula. I didn’t watch too closely; I’ve never liked meat preparation. It makes the actual identity of the meat much too clear. A few minutes later, after constant stirring and simmering, she scooped the oily brown meat into bowls – a solid bowlful for each person – and set them on the table, along with a loaf of bread. Everyone got to work, scooping the juicy mince onto bread and eating it in big mouthfuls. I followed suit, eating my curry in the same way, though its soupier texture made it more difficult, and I occasionally resorted to a spoon. It took a good five or six slices of bread for each person to finish off their whole bowl, and of course it was not an option to leave any food behind. I was happy to have vegetables in my meal, instead of pure bread and protein. As we ate we talked about other ‘unique’ South African meat dishes: walkie talkies, made of chicken feet and heads, and smiley – a sheep’s head. Apparently when you cook it, the lips spread into a grotesque smile. Again, I like my vegetarianism. Some people say I’m missing out on important pieces of South African culture, but I say there are some aspects of culture that really aren’t necessary to experience firsthand.

Later in the night, Janey, Macrae, Auntie P. and I had a long discussion about 7 de Laan, which has seen a lot of intense drama the last few days. It’s pretty useful being caught up on South Africa’s most popular soap opera. And, of course, we have a special connection to the cast, after meeting them at VP. It’s nice to sit there in the uncomfortable stools at the tall counter in AP’s small kitchen, just chatting and laughing and arguing about who’s stalking who and whether so-and-so is too old for Annelie.

We had a brief intermission as I went with Janey to the corner shop to get more Rooibos tea. This shop is on the next corner over from their house, and has all the basic necessities. A dog and a small crowd of kids were standing in the doorway, the dog being shooed absentmindedly by a distracted-looking woman, though it clearly wasn’t going to move. It’s a small shop, maybe 20x20, with all the merchandise stacked on shelves behind a metal cage and a woman sitting at the counter within the cage, behind a gap just big enough to pass parcels through. A couple very small kids were buying individual cigarettes, for parents I’m sure, and a few other women were standing in the open area and chatting. Janey went up to the counter and asked for rooibos, which the woman pulled down from a shelf and handed to her in exchange for a 10 rand note.

After tea, which is a must for any visit (with anyone), we all cuddled together on the well-worn, comfortably sagging couches and watched a bit of SA’s Got Talent in the TV room. The TV is a new addition – Auntie P talked about how, a year ago, they all got on without any TV and would just sit and talk together, but now they can’t survive without it. We all sighed over an incredibly talented 14-year-old boy flawlessly singing Alicia Keys, and stared open-mouthed at the young woman singing a song she had written entitled “The Pain,” complete with some lyrics in the language she invented herself. That poor girl, so sincere but so misguided.

The Sublime and Ecotourism

2010-11-01T08:51:00.006-06:00

Images: Above: A B&B at Hogsback, South Africa. Source: aatravel.co.za
Image 2: Some of the South African nature-based tourism brochures I've collected.
Image 3: Young Zulus performing a traditional Zulu warrior dance. Source: south-africa-tours-and-travel.com

I have long been using this blog to explore the topics of ecotourism and the sublime individually, but have until now put little effort into connecting the two, though the connections are engrained into the very essence of ecotourism. The elements that define the sublime in nature – seclusion, Otherness, vastness, astonishment – are exactly the components that are offered, at least in theory, by ecotourism. This brand of travel offers access to remote, pristine natural places which have not been developed or degraded by the hand of man, accompanied by the promise that they never will meet such a fate. Essentially, it offers the sublime: immense distance from the familiar, physical and mental escape from the complexity and drudgery of everyday life, and the opportunity to experience an ancient, untamed and untamable world. The ecotourist expects experiences rivaling those of Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, Percy Shelley and other great travel writers: true adventure, filled with the excitement of novelty and discovery. The reality may not be quite as romantic as these expectations, but in theory, this is exactly what ecotourism offers.

Promotional materials for nature tourism and ecotourism draw on gently sublime imagery like that found in historical travel writing, using phrases such as “tranquil mountain surroundings” (Botlierskop Day Safaris), “breathtakingly beautiful” (Aquila Safaris), “unspoilt nature” (Nahoon Estuary Nature Reserve), “largest wilderness on earth” (Schotia Safaris), "unbelievably dramatic view" ("The Edge" Mountain Retreat) and “pilgrimage through time” (Cango Caves). Bhejane Adventures goes further by offering that imagery in the experience itself: “the Knysna forests conjure images from well read stories, of phantom elephants, wood-cutters, Italian settlers and lost travelers.” It goes on to say that the forest “has been off-limits to anybody . . . Bhejane Adventures has obtained the exclusive rights to take small groups of people . . . into the last remaining sections of the Knysna forests.” Martha Honey gave a similar example of the Cruise Company of Greenwich, which advertised “a visit to unknown lands, in this case in one of Costa Rica’s largest national parks: ‘The Corcovado area is so remote, inaccessible, and undisturbed that even most Costa Ricans have never visited.’ The notion that cruise ship passengers will machete their way through Corcovado’s dense, steep, and rain-drenched tropical forest is ludicrous, but the image is appealing” (Who Owns Paradise, 62). The tourist wants to experience something unique, authentic and as far from civilization and modern life as they can get; and in this distance, they have the chance to find that natural sublime that can only exist in such remote areas.

Although the advertising for these kinds of tours and experiences are often exaggerated, the conditions of ecotourism do provide an ideal setting for the sublime. Ecotourism requires the preservation of a natural area’s integrity, emphasizing the importance of leaving no impact on the environment. This means that the conditions are kept as pristine as possible, with less visible influence from man, and smaller numbers of people are allowed into vulnerable areas at one time, to minimize their negative impact. This allows the traveler to find greater seclusion and more authentic, unadulterated nature than in other forms of nature travel. Ecotourism’s inclusion of local culture can also encourage a sense of the sublime Other in the tourist. People are drawn by cultures that are distinctly different from their own, and especially enjoy seeing those that appear to be living pre-modern lifestyles, without modern technology and with a greater connection to nature. Not only does this give them that sense of separation and seclusion from the familiar that can facilitate the sense of the sublime, but it excites Romantic notions about the woes of industrialization and our loss of natural purity, which encouraged the original turn after the Industrial Revolution to the natural and sublime by Romantic poets. Thus cultural preservation becomes profitable to local people, encouraging them to resist Westernization or at least put on displays of traditional culture, which attracts greater tourist attention. When surrounded by a culture that seems rooted in an ancient past and by nature that has resisted any human impact, the tourist is taken far away from the familiar, and with the realization of their separateness and lack of control, and without the distractions of technology and modernity, they have the possibility of experiencing the sublime.

Sublime South Africa: Hogsback and Cape Point

2010-10-16T03:49:00.006-06:00

Photo credit: Britt Smith

My second brush with the South African sublime, after Nahoon, was in Hogsback, a portion of the Amathole mountains. Driving up the rough road to the trail I planned to hike, the trees on either side of me were leaning in almost as though they wanted to reclaim the road for the forest, and I realized that that was exactly what they were someday going to do. Men can clear trees, build roads and structures, and attempt to control all aspects of nature, but in the end none of it can last. Tree roots break through cement or asphalt, new plants grow up in the cracks, and with time all evidence of the road will be covered with fresh soil and life. Considering the war we are constantly waging against nature with our factories, pollution, buildings and machines, it is incredible that so much of it still survives with such perfection, not fighting but simply existing, strong in its own will and rightness. Hogsback is one of those places that fill you with absolute peace and tranquility, because unlike the city, these forests belong here, and they are exactly as they should be: eternal, self-renewing, and perfectly balanced. As much as we like to think it does, no land can ever belong to us like it does to itself, and Hogsback makes that clear. Walking in that majestic, powerful forest made me realize just how separate nature can be from ourselves, how outside of our control, and how indifferent to us. These mountains don’t care about me and my friends, or about the city nearby. It has itself figured out, and it runs perfectly without any outside help or intervention. I think the sense of the sublime that I felt in this place came from the recognition that no matter what we may do, we can’t affect the spirit of this forest, and no matter how hard we try, we can’t replicate the perfect balance and serenity that exists here. It is the world exactly as it’s intended to be.

The third was simpler, but no less sublime. At Cape Point, I found the most beautiful views I had ever seen, from the sharp cliffs directly beside me to the rough African coastline extending in the distance and the expansive ocean surrounding me on three sides. It was just perfect and beautiful and immense, and the air was sharp and fresh and invigorating, and it was hard to believe that something like this could just exist, but there it was. It was sublime because it was wonderful, one of those places that, once you've seen it, is always somewhere in the back of your mind.

Sublime South Africa: Nahoon

2010-10-16T03:39:00.003-06:00

The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it.
-Edmund Burke, "On the Sublime and the Beautiful"

At the Nahoon Point Nature Reserve the sublime sense I felt was aided by the information I found in the reserve’s visitor’s center. Here I read about the millions of years of life and death collected in the cliffs at Nahoon, the evidence of ancient creatures and humans embedded in the rock which had once been sand. A few minutes later, standing on those cliffs and imagining all of the years and lives that were collected into every inch of stone, and looking out into the ocean, focusing on the distant point where the sky and ocean seem to meet, but knowing that they both continue on, I couldn’t help relating the time and life collected beneath me to that constant and endless ocean and sky: so much happening in every square inch at every second, but all blended into this great, unreachable, forever blue-on-blue. It was a very powerful and overwhelming experience, one that made me feel tiny and insignificant, but also somehow greater because of my tie to this incomprehensible vastness, a vastness that I still can’t reason through and clearly can’t describe. I think that's the passion Burke described, where "the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it."

Finding a South African Sublime

2010-10-16T03:33:00.003-06:00

On the Road to Cape Town

2010-10-16T02:50:00.005-06:00

Photo Credit: Above: my own. Below: Britt Smith. Further below (Kathy, Cornelius, and the students): Macrae McDermott.

I’ve always enjoyed road trips, and as evidenced by my August post Road Trip Wisdom, and my more recent trip to Fort Hare, I take quite a lot of them. My recent trip to Cape Town was really wonderful, and just as enjoyable and enriching as the town itself was the journey there and back. We left just after five in the morning, so the sun rose as we drove, gradually changing the pitch darkness into shadowy outlines of hills and buildings before the world was brought into clear focus. The landscapes in the Eastern Cape change quickly, from city to field to forest to coast, interspersed by small villages and scattered herds of cattle and goats. As we crossed to the Western Cape, which is more developed than the Eastern, we started to see more of the expensive coastal properties where the wealthy vacation, live and retire, and the heavily touristic cities crawling with Bed and Breakfasts, modern boutiques, and expensive cafés. It’s easy to see why the tourists are drawn to the area: it’s naturally astounding, with perfect views, unique flora and interesting wildlife like baboons, ostriches and various antelope and birds. Outside the cities are signs pointing to game parks and reserves, which appear to be at every turn. Just a short ways inland, though, the rural farms and villages continue, unaffected by the heavy tourism on the coast. On the edges of the larger cities are the same types of shacks and lean-tos that collect in Duncan Village and the outskirts of Mdantsane; patchwork shelters of scrap wood and metal, barely sufficient for a family’s shelter, but often topped with satellite dishes. You can live without running water or indoor plumbing, but not without Oprah and 7 de Laan.
The really wonderful thing about traveling with Kathy and Cornelius is that it’s never a passive experience. Throughout the 14 hours to Cape Town (and back) I was able to learn an incredible amount about South African history, culture, and politics while watching the country pass me by through the window. Cornelius knows the history of every city that has a history, and as he drove was constantly sharing notable facts and stories about each place we passed. From him I’ve learned the diverse origins of the inhabitants of the Eastern and Western Capes, from German, English, Dutch, Indian, Malaysian, and of course African backgrounds, and of the shifts of power between them that have resulted from wars and political upheaval. Cornelius always pauses for questions and has answers for even those questions we don’t ask. Kathy keeps us updated on politics and the state of education, and fills us in on gossip (which can tell you quite a lot about culture). As a teacher, she constantly has to deal with strikes, corruption and under-funding, and has an insider view on where education is falling short. She is also very politically aware and active and has her own firm opinions, which aren’t necessarily the most popular, but are founded in fact and reason. For all of the problems that she sees and deals with daily, Kathy never gets discouraged, and is one to look for solutions, not just complaints. All of these hours spent with Kathy and Cornelius have given me such a better understanding of South Africa than I could have found on my own.

Library Boys

2010-10-13T02:05:00.002-06:00

I was sitting at one of the tables on the second floor of the East London library, writing in my field journal, when three boys, aged around 12, 15 and 17, came in and sat down at the table in front of mine, two facing me and one with his back to me. As in all of downtown, I stand out in this library: other than the librarians and the occasional old man or woman looking at the genealogical books, no one in this library is white. As I sat writing I could feel eyes on me, and when I glanced up I saw the oldest of these boys quickly looking away. I went back to my work, but could hear whispering from the table in front of me. The middle boy, who was sitting with his back to me, turned around, then quickly back to his work when I looked up. More whispering and twittering. I could feel the oldest watching me again. I looked up and this time gave him a little smile, to say, “Why are you looking at me and whispering?” and was rewarded by more whispering and twittering. The middle boy turned around once more for a quick look, then suddenly moved around to join his fellows on the other side of the table. They kept up the glancing-whispering game for a bit, and I had started to successfully block them out when I heard a “Ssst!” and saw the middle boy, clearly the bravest, waving at me.
“Pencil?” He mouthed, pointing to the pen in his hand, which had apparently (conveniently) run out of ink.
I nodded, rummaged through my bag, and pulled out a pen, which he ran around the table to take from me.
“Thank you!”
He flashed me a winning smile and handed the pen to the youngest boy, who was writing in a notebook. They went back to work for a few minutes, and I was just starting to think they’d given up on me when the same, middle boy appeared by my side. His friends were still at the table, waiting with hushed, watchful anticipation.
“Can you tell me where the toilet is? I’m not from here; I haven’t been to this library before.”
I pointed him down the hall and around the corner to where the bathrooms were, and he thanked me and walked out. His friends watched him go, clearly giving each other mental high fives. It was at least ten minutes later, as I was getting back into the swing of my writing, when I started to hear more noises other than pen scratches from their table – first coughs, then “Ssst!”s, accompanied by barely restrained laughter. I finally looked up when I couldn’t ignore them any longer, asking with my eyes what they wanted. The brave middle boy asked, in a low whisper,
“Why are you so quiet?"
That was a funny question for anyone in our situation to ask.
“It’s a library. That’s the point.”
He smiled sheepishly and shrugged, then quickly, before I could look down again, asked,
“Can I sit there?” He was pointing at my table.
I pointed at the seat next to me with a facial question mark, and when he nodded eagerly, shrugged and mouthed “Sure, why not,” then returned my attention to my notebook. A couple whisper-and-laughter-filled minutes later, he was pulling a chair up close to my side.
“What’s your name?”
“Katherine. And you are . . . ?”
He said his name, and those of his friends. I’m horrible with names, and forgot them instantly.
“We’re brothers. He’s the oldest.”
He pointed to his taller brother, who ducked his head shyly with a grin. I waved hello to the two still at their table, and shook the hand of my new friend.
“Nice to meet you.”
“So, Katherine. Where are you from?”
“America. Seattle.” I’ve stopped saying Washington State, it’s more confusing than helpful. I’ve been asked enough times whether I know Obama.
At the mention of America he made a funny kind of a gasp-jump, became really excited, and scooted his chair even closer, stage-whispering “America!” to his brothers. Their jaws dropped comically and they started hurriedly gathering their papers together. A moment later I had three eager boys at my table, leaning in close and staring at me intently. I laughed at their eagerness. The youngest now started to talk to me, trying to suppress a nervous smile.
“Did you always live . . .” He broke off into somewhat hysterical laughter after the example of his oldest brother, who was half falling out of his chair. The middle boy, who I could now see was the only one very fluent in English, shook his head exasperatedly and muttered, “They’re a little crazy.”
“It looks that way.” I said, shaking my head at all of them. The middle boy looked at his brothers and started to grin along with them. The conversation continued in this vein for near an hour, the middle boy, now their spokesperson, talking to me and occasionally translating for his brothers, the littlest starting the occasional question but never managing to finish before breaking into giggles, and the oldest grinning goofily in between fits of falling-over laughter. The speaker, who managed to keep his composure far better than his brothers, told me that he was from Cape Town and was coloured, which, he explained, means he is partly white and partly black. I thought it was interesting that he included that in his introduction of himself. He also told me that he speaks Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, and English, a very impressive combination. I told him I just spoke English and some French, so of course they asked me to speak French for them.
« D’accord . . . Des garçons étranges parlent à moi dans la bibliothèque. Je ne sais pas pourquoi. » Some strange boys are talking to me in the library. I don't know why.
Eventually, after everyone else on the floor had given us exasperated glares, the boys handed me back my pen and headed out. They warned me to be careful on the public transportation, and said they hoped to see me around. I replied in kind, with sincerity: they really did make my day more interesting, though certainly less productive. That’s the fun part about standing out: you can make a lot of random friends where and when you least expect.

To be a Tourist

2010-10-05T09:40:00.004-06:00

For the past week I've been in Cape Town with my South African family: Cornelius and Kathy Thomas, Macrae, Britt and Diana. This was intended to be a vacation for all of us, and an opportunity to see more of the country of South Africa, but I also was able to use it to build up my research. I spent the whole of the trip paying close attention and taking notes on tourism: my own experience, the things I noticed about other tourists, and what I picked up in conversations with locals. This constant awareness made it a very different kind of travel experience: instead of just seeing the sights, I was constantly analyzing my own actions and motivations, as well as those of the people I encountered. One thing I did was to pay attention to the advertising that parks and other tourism venues were using, trying in particular to find those that claimed or appeared to practice ecotourism, or that advertised their commitment to conservation and other environmental pursuits. I found two that were very explicitly committed to the principles behind ecotourism: Tsitsikamma Canopy Tours and the Aquila Game Reserve (details to come). These were out of the 40 pamphlets I collected and numerous billboards I passed.

Another thing that I tried to pay attention to was who benefits from tourists. One group of people who are a very loud, constant presence in the high-tourist areas of Cape Town are the street vendors, selling anything from carved wood souvenirs to cell phone chargers. I always thought that buying from these people was better than from a store, as it supports their mini-business and the money goes straight to locals; though of course you have to watch out for being charged "tourist prices," which can be more than triple what they charge locals. As it turns out my assumptions were very incorrect. Almost all of these vendors are Nigerians and other foreigners, and many are in South Africa illegally. The "authentic" jewelry and crafts (carved elephants, masks, bowls, etc.) are mass produced for cheap in Nigeria and other countries, then imported and sold for five times their value (or more) in South Africa. Buying these sorts of things thus benefits neither South Africans nor South African industries, and doesn't even get you a piece of traditional artwork or jewelry from the area.

One thing that really impacted me about Cape Town was the huge economic divide between people living in the city. This is a common theme throughout South Africa: this country has the world's greatest gap between rich and poor. Up on the mountainside and on the sea-facing slope live the very wealthy, and then the further you move down the mountain the poorer the people become. Within twenty minutes you can drive from the homes of millionaires, through the middle class, and into the very poor areas of Manenburg and Gugulethu. The tourists see Camps Bay with its picture-perfect, luxury beaches, which were so recently reserved for white people only, and they are told that now South Africa is a democracy and doesn't have the problems it used to, that now everyone has equal opportunity and everything is great. But they don't see the crime-ridden, gang-controlled streets only a few miles away. It's really shocking to go from such incredible poverty to such over-the-top opulence, and to know that most of the people who live in the huge mansions overlooking the picturesque views don't even realize the conditions people are living in in the shadow of their mountain.

Photo Credit: 1. Britt Smith; 2. Diana Pratt

The Trouble With Africa

2010-09-27T08:24:00.008-06:00

I wrote on this blog after my first week in South Africa, on why I am here and what I had seen in my first days in this country. It has now been five weeks since I arrived in East London, and after these weeks of cultural study and immersion, I am again looking at what it is that separates this country, and the African continent, from the rest of the world.

Africa as a continent has long been recognized for its scale: huge African skies; tall, far-reaching African grasses; large African cats and long-necked African giraffes: animals and lands worthy of exploration, study, discovery. To visit Africa has been marketed as an opportunity to leave the concrete maze of modern life and find something huge and real and wild, something that connects to the inner part of the soul which is constantly, quietly yearning for uncultivated earth and endless skies. People come to this continent to see what exists beyond office buildings, shopping malls and landscaped yards; they come to find the unconquered and unconquerable wilderness; and they come with the illusion that they will be the ones to conquer it.

These people look over East London. This city has shopping malls. It has paved roads and office buildings and landscaped yards and telephone wires and nine-to-five jobs and pigeons eating trash on sidewalks and KFC on the corner. But they don't understand that this is still Africa, that if you stop and breathe deeply, even in the middle of the city, you can feel the strength, resilience, and interconnectedness that is the unique essence of the continent. You can see it in the people: wherever they live and whoever they are, the people who live here all have Africa inside of them. As Vic Guhrs says in his book The Trouble With Africa, "The trouble with Africa is that once it is in your blood, like malaria, it is almost impossible to get rid of." South Africa has exemplified this concept in the whole of its history. People from all over the world have come to this country for their own reasons: missionaries from Germany, dockworkers from England, labourers from India, wives from Ireland, colonizers from the Netherlands -- and all of these have become Africans, just as the Xhosa and Zulu people are Africans. Instead of turning the country Dutch or English, the country turned them. You can only be in this place for so long before it adopts you as its own.

Though the city may disguise them, the big open spaces are here as well. Drive six kilometers to the beach and you’ll find yourself on giant cliffs embedded with ancient life, coated with recent life, crawling with new life, overlooking huge untamable waves crashing in from an endless blue ocean which, far in the distance, touches an equally endless, arching blue sky. Drive an hour inland through the dry, cow-spotted fields and you’ll find yourself suddenly surrounded by a thousand shades of green, climbing over immense moss-covered boulders beside towering waterfalls, staring toward ghostly canopies floating in a near-impenetrable mist, becoming engulfed by the hums and clicks and warbles and shrieks and croaks and drips and whoops that create the symphony of the forest, feeling small and foolish standing there with your worn tackies and half-filled pack and diminishing fantasy that you could conquer all this greatness, realizing the indifferent acceptance and quiet invitation that the land offers you and losing the feeling of self-importance with which you entered the forest. You may be an outsider now, it says, just as the people say, but you don't have to be one for long.

Prehistoric fish, footprints, and a dodo egg

2010-09-23T08:07:00.002-06:00

Images: Above - the Coelacanth at the East London Museum. Below - the Nahoon footprints.

I was at the East London Museum early in the morning (7:35) to go with Kevin to meet Yvette, only to find out that she had to cancel. I’ll have to find another time that works for her. Since I was already there Kevin offered to take me on a tour of the museum, which I still hadn’t seen despite the hours I’ve spent holed up in their upstairs library. It’s a great museum with a lot of natural and cultural history, which really shows how richly diverse this small section of the country is in both those areas. The museum also has a few famous highlights that really make it something special. First and foremost is the Coelacanth, the prehistoric fish believed to have been extinct for millions of years, but which suddenly showed up in the East London harbor in 1938. It was like finding a dinosaur. The actual fish is housed at the museum, along with photographs, newspaper clippings and models. Then are the Nahoon footprints, which were made 200,000 years ago and were discovered in an outcropping of rock at Nahoon beach in 1964. They were made when a small child walked across a wet sand dune, and somehow conditions were perfect enough that they maintained their form as new sand blew across them and turned to stone, allowing these footprints to remain for hundreds of thousands of years. Finally is the rather controversial dodo egg (pictured in my post on Kevin), which the museum is struggling to keep possession of, as the family who first donated it to the museum is trying to take it back. At this point they’re not even certain that it is actually from a dodo – Kevin wants to do genetic testing, which he says would be relatively simple, but the family is worried that it could damage the egg. Of course, I would be nervous that it would turn out to be the egg of an ostrich, which some have argued over the years, and which would make it worthless. Because of its value, fragility and legal controversy, the actual egg is kept locked in a safe upstairs, but Kevin took it out to let me see it – a bland white egg encased in a clear perspex box. It looks like it could belong to any large bird. Our final stop, and one of my favorites, was the budding meteorite collection Kevin keeps in his office. It was maybe a little cooler to me than I’d like to admit: I know they're not terribly rare, but think about it - they’re actual rocks from space! And I touched them! One was sliced cleanly through and you could see the very unique and intricate crisscrossing structure in the metal. It was neat. In all, it was a very interesting and enlightening morning at the museum, despite having to postpone the interview I had been hoping for.

Nature Guides

2010-09-23T08:00:00.005-06:00

Image credit: oneworld365.org.
(Monday, 20 September)

I was able to meet with Kevin again and he was once again very helpful. He talked to Yvette, who trains tourist/nature guides, and she said she would be happy to talk to me about the role of guides, the process of becoming one, their connection to ecotourism, and so on. Kevin says he can take me out to meet with her at Nahoon next week. Nature guides provide one of the essential components of ecotourism, which is environmental education. According to Ecotourism and Sustainable Development by Martha Honey, which I've been reading, “essential to good ecotourism are well-trained, multilingual naturalist guides with skills in natural and cultural history, environmental interpretation, ethical principles, and effective communication.” I’ve been thinking of specific questions I should ask Yvette. Outside of the basic background (what do you do, why do you do it) and my obligatory questions (what do you think of ecotourism?), this is what I have:

1. What is the purpose of guides at Nahoon and other Nature Reserves and parks? What do they teach, and what are they hoping to accomplish?

2. How much demand is there for trained guides?

3. Who benefits from the guides, and how available are they (are they mostly for school groups or tours or individuals, etc.)?

4. What is the process of becoming a guide? What is the focus of the training and the requirements for certification, if certification is required?

5. How important are guides to a reserve, park or tour?

If anyone has input on these, or other questions I’ve missed, I’d love to hear them. Kevin also talked to the owner of the Inkwenkwezi Game Reserve, which is about 30km away, who would also be happy to speak with me if we can find a time that he’s in town or Kevin has business out there. I have a lot of questions I could ask him, as an owner of a successful private game reserve, but haven’t written them out yet. These will both be really great people to talk to for background about ecotourism and nature tourism around East London, and I’m very excited to see what they can tell me.

Road Trip History

2010-09-20T05:34:00.003-06:00

(Thursday, September 16)

Cornelius decided to take us all out to Fort Hare in Alice, which is about an hour and a half away. I was really excited to take my first venture outside of the immediate vicinity of East London. As we passed by Mdantsane and the other townships, moving into rural countryside dotted with goats and cows, Cornelius told us stories and histories related to each place we drove past. It's amazing how much he knows. I hadn't realized how complete the segregation of people was under Apartheid government until he started to explain it: how everyone was restricted to their own "homeland," designated by the government, and could not move between them or enter white South Africa without a special pass. And it's always so strange to me how recent it all was - it's not ancient history like it seems it should be. Mdantsane was huge - the second largest township in South Africa - and is made up of old shacks and new RDP housing. The RDP housing is government-subsidized, part of the promise to give every South African family a home, but still substandard. These are identical (but differently colored) block houses, placed in neat rows, shaped like kindergarten drawings (rectangle, door, two windows, roof). The rest of the dwellings are old shacks of scrap metal and wood, some sturdier than others but all looking unsteady and undignified, scattered haphazardly across the dry ground. There are no yards or paved roads - the shacks and houses just look as though they were dropped from the sky.

We drove through deep Xhosa country, where Cornelius said 90% of people would be unable to speak or understand any English. Here were the same solid rectangular brick houses, plastered and painted bright pastels, that I've become very used to. Some have fences of sticks stuck in the ground with a few wires strung around them - none of the high walls topped by spikes, electric wire, or barbed wire that are all through the city. Everywhere are the small white goats and brown, furry, horned Nguni cattle. We could see the Amathole mountains in the near distance: big, green, rolling mountains. Out here government rules and regulations don't matter much, their loyalty is to the tribal chief. Don't start imagining people out in the bush, wearing grass skirts and carrying spears, because I know some of you are; they dress just the same as they do in the city.

When we made it to Fort Hare we were given a tour of the campus by Cornelius, who used to work there as historian and curator. The main attraction was the De Beers Centenary Art Gallery. It's filled with incredible and powerful art by South African artists. The paintings and photographs were beautiful and very intense - they really reflected the very colorful, culturally rich, and often painful history of South Africa. It was really a great exhibit.

After arriving back in East London we headed off to Auntie P.'s, where she served us samp (sp?) and beans and a kind of porridge with maas that I won't even try to spell. The beans were really good, and the maas porridge was very sour and somewhat inedible, but better with a lot of sugar. Auntie P. is going to give us the majority of our food-related cultural experiences; she cooks us all the traditional dishes. We chatted for a long time, watched SA's Got Talent with all the kids and cousins who were there, then headed home laden with leftovers.

Friends and Sindiwe Magona

2010-09-20T05:13:00.005-06:00

(Wednesday, September 15)

I had hoped to meet with Kevin from the museum again today, but had to shift it to Friday, which means I have more time to think of insightful things to say and meaningful questions to ask. It's hard work. I ended up going to Friends, a cute cafe next to the Fruit & Veg, to do some writing. They had a good grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. After sitting there writing steadily for an hour or two one of the servers, a friendly little British woman, approached me.
"Everyone keeps wondering who is this girl, who's just been writing away for hours! We thought you must be writing exams this week, or someone said you must be a journalist, and I said it's a good thing then that I wore my purple blouse today and not an older one!"
She went on and asked the usual questions, to which I gave the usual answers. Then she told me about a gentleman who used to frequent the cafe, who had traveled all around the world and wrote about each place. He had given her a copy of his complete writings, which she now showed to me: hundreds of pages of places, people, conversations and events, all around the world.
"I don't have nearly as much to say as all that."
"Don't worry, you're still young. You still have plenty of time to find things to write about."

In the evening there was a presentation on the author Sindiwe Magona at Wendy's, the book shop that Kathy and Cornelius own. It was given by an English professor from Canada who recently completed her doctorate and currently teaches at UNISA (The University of South Africa). It was a wonderful presentation. Sindiwe was born in a rural village in the Transkei in 1943, and while working as a domestic servant and raising three children on her own, she completed her BA by correspondence, and managed to get a scholarship to Columbia University in New York where she earned her Master's in Social Work. She became a very influential political activist, worked for the United Nations, and then finally began to write, with her first book published in 1990, when she was 47 years old. Her books sound absolutely amazing. They describe the life and struggles of South African women, facing Apartheid, AIDS, poverty, and oppression. I plan to get out and read them as soon as I can. It's really amazing just how much Sindiwe Magona has been able to accomplish in her life, and how much she had to overcome to make it to where she is now.

Radio Language

2010-09-20T04:36:00.003-06:00

(Tuesday, September 14)

"You can only really follow anything in places where you speak the language. That limits you of course. . . . When you can't overhear it's no good. All you get are handouts and sight-seeing."

As I was reading Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway this line really made me think about my own limitations here in South Africa. Although most people in East London and much of the country, apart fro mthe very rural areas, can speak and understand English, only a small percentage of them speak it as their primary language. Around the city, the majority of people are Xhosa, so walking around town, in shops and on the street, this is the language that is spoken. So although I can speak to most people, I cannot overhear their comments or conversations, and I am an outsider to them, so I, according to Hemingway, just get "handouts and sight-seeing." No one talks to an outsider the same way they talk to each other. Of course all my conversations are valuable, and as I build relationships with people I become less of an outsider, but there is still that true insider perspective missing.

One way I have found to at least partially fill this void is by listening to the radio. I pick up about eight radio stations on my Zune, including a couple in Xhosa or possibly Zulu and one or two in Afrikaans, which are fun to listen to but of course don't make much sense to me (Afrikaans is interesting; for some reason it reminds me of a reading of Beowulf in its original Gaelic that I once heard, which is a very strange connection) and about four in English, which broadcast to a more diverse audience. I love this because on the radio it is South Africans talking to South Africans, which I cannot hear otherwise, and this has given me all kinds of great new insights. It's also interesting to see what kind of music is popular today in South Africa, though it's disappointingly dominantly American: Rihanna, Beyonce, Chris Brown, Jay Z, Katy Perry, John Meyer, and so on. There is local music as well of course, notably a Braai song that could only be South African and some stations dedicated entirely to music by South African artists, but for the most part the popular music is American.

I was listening to Metro FM (107.7) and heard a really fascinating discussion about culture and language. In South Africa English is "the language of prestige, the language of education, the language of business," in the words of the radio host. If a South African is to succeed outside of his or her immediate community, they will almost certainly need to know English, and if they want to go to University they must be fluent. I believe this is really necessary because of the number of languages across South Africa - there has to be something to unify them, some language they all share. But this discussion was about the importance of the mother tongue, which is being lost to some degree as the younger generations in the cities depend more and more on English. During Apartheid, English was largely denied to black people, and it was not taught in their schools. Today schools in the city are taught in English, so the children are being educated largely in a language that is not their own.
"The most important language for a person is their mother tongue," she said, "but children are not sent to Zulu or Xhosa schools, because the schools taught in these languages are in the townships, and parents believe that township schools are of poorer quality. But why not work to improve these schools, instead of avoiding them and ignoring the problem?"
She made it all an issue of pride in who one is, pride and respect for one's culture, and placing value in language as a vital aspect of that culture. She thinks it is unreasonable and disrespectful of people to expect all South Africans to be able to speak English, even when it is not their mother tongue, and that it is a disgrace that people who cannot express themselves in English are looked down upon as uneducated or illiterate. And she fears that as children depend more on English they will begin to lose the complete understanding of their mother tongue, which means that they will lose the stories and traditions of their culture which cannot be translated with the complete meaning intact. She said that English should not be the only option for University study, that classes should be taught in both English and native African languages, and that public addresses should not cater to the English media, but should be in the first language of the speaker. The ironic part to me was that this entire discussion was broadcast in English, though it was clearly not the first language of the majority of the people involved in it. This radio station is English by necessity, so that it can reach people across the country, from different cultural backgrounds, who have no linguistic connections to each other other than English. It's an interesting dilemma. How do you connect such a diverse country while maintaining the cultural differences and barriers that produce that diversity?

7 de Laan and a Braai

2010-09-17T02:59:00.003-06:00

Image: Macrae with members of the cast of 7 de Laan

For some reason the cast of 7 de Laan, a pretty bad Afrikaans soap opera we sometimes watch (with subtitles), was at the Vincent Park mall the other day, just a few blocks from our house. Of course we went to see them – I figure meeting South African sort-of celebrities will be a great addition to my cultural experience. It was quite an event, with a great crowd of females ranging from pre-teen to adult. Diana and Macrae got photos taken with the cast, which was fun; I waited in line with them but didn’t want to spring the R30 (about $4) for the photo. I made Macrae promise to ask them to make faces, and was surprised and excited when she actually did, and even more excited when they agreed. I've posted the proof. While we were in line a couple girls started talking to us, one who had just turned sixteen and the other who was about to turn either 10 or 11. I was thinking how 16 must be so much less exciting when you can’t drive yet, since the driving age here is 18, and how different it must make the high school experience when only the oldest seniors can drive. There must be a lot more chaperoning by parents, and much less of that independence that high school students in the US enjoy (and often exploit) once they’ve turned 16. These two girls were very silly, but it was fun having someone to talk to while waiting.

Later in the evening I was able to experience my first braai, which is the South African equivalent of a barbeque/bonfire. Kathy and Cornelius’ daughter Theresa and her boyfriend Cam were in town (they go to school at Rhodes University), as well as Kathy’s cousin, in addition to K and C’s son Marcus, his wife Thuveshni, Kathy’s cousin’s son Chad and the four of us Americans, who all live in the house. Chad’s girlfriend Erin also joined us, making it a crowd of 13 plus two dogs, Rocky and Wednesday. It was a great event, with loads of people, food and noise. I didn’t eat any of the meat or drink any of the beer, two major components of a braai, but I did participate fully in the conversation, which is the best part anyway. We spent the evening and into the night talking about books and movies (and other things) and telling stories. Cornelius told us about a time he and Kathy had hitchhiked from Capetown to a wedding in Pretoria, complete with watching a storeowner cheat clients out of their money, claiming ‘sales-tax’ if they protested (sales tax was new at this point), and getting away with it because he was white, they were poor and black, and it was Apartheid; being in a car that was attacked by baboons, trying to lure them away with bologna and watching them throw it in the trash (he swears it actually happened); and riding in a truck with rotting apple peels and cores in the back, which he learned were being delivered to the factory to make Appletizer (their Martinelli’s). We heard a lot of injury stories and boyfriend/girlfriend stories and trip stories. It was a really great night, very relaxed and friendly. I’m sad that Cam and Theresa are only around until tomorrow; I really enjoy having more college students around, and Cam has Western Washington written all over him, except for his solid South African accent.

Kevin Cole

2010-09-11T05:02:00.005-06:00

Image: Kevin Cole with what is believed to be the only remaining dodo egg in the world, which is housed at the East London Museum.
Source: http://www.timeslive.co.za

This week I was extremely happy to be able to meet with Kevin Cole, who I introduced in an earlier post. He's the principle natural scientist at the East London Museum and has been very involved in the promotion and implementation of conservation measures and ecotourism around East London. I showed up at the museum on Thursday hoping to set up an appointment with him through Rachel, the librarian, who I've talked to a few times. She just walked right to his office and brought him back to the library, where we shook hands, sat down and talked for over an hour. It never ceases to surprise me how willing people are to work me into their schedule. Kevin told me a lot about the natural and cultural diversity of the area around East London, which gives it an incredible but underutilized potential for nature-based tourism. He is a big supporter of ecotourism efforts and thinks they could be very beneficial for East London and the Eastern Cape, but the problem is putting the area on the map. There isn't a very widespread recognition of what this area has to offer, and it will take a lot to get people to choose it over big names like Capetown, Johannesburg and Kruger National Park. Then, if people do decide to come, there are the issues of infrastructure. There isn't very reliable public transportation from the airport or between destinations, and there aren't roads that go right along the coast, so it takes much longer to get from one place to the next. Then of course there's the question of funding - when you have schools that are horribly under-financed (thus all the striking) and many other basic quality-of-life issues to think about, it's hard to see nature parks and reserves or enhancing tourism as a high priority.

Kevin told me this and a lot more, and also told me that I should talk to people who work with marketing and operating tourist destinations in the area. Of course he has all kinds of connections, so he said he would help connect me with them, which will be extremely helpful. He even offered to take me to some of the parks and reserves where he's worked on conservation and ecotourism projects, which will be wonderful. I left the museum nearly skipping. I know Kevin will be such a big help for my project, and I'm so happy that I was able to finally talk to him.

Shaping a Field Study

2010-09-08T07:07:00.002-06:00

As I'm adjusting to life in East London and my project is becoming clearer, I'm seeing three major pieces to make up my research experience. Here they are:

1. Cultural studies and immersion. This one is constantly present, shaping and being shaped by all my experiences. This is the part where I'm coming to understand and live within South African culture, and is what makes this a truly unique and rich research opportunity.
2. Background and experience. My study is focused around ecotourism, so it's important that I experience this myself while I'm here in South Africa, and also do my best to find out about the current state of nature tourism, environmental ecucation, and conservation in South Africa. I'll achieve the first piece through visits to parks and reserves such as the Nahoon Point Nature Reserve, and the second by talking to experts such as Kevin Cole (mentioned earlier) and volunteering with a park or organization (which I'm still working to set up).
3. My project. My actual project is to find out local young adult (18-30) perceptions of ecotourism, which I will do through semi-structured interviews. So far I'm finding contacts through Fort Hare University, and will snowball from there. Yesterday I was able to introduce my project to two lecture classes, and about 15 students said they'd be willing to participate in the interviews. I'll continue to go to Fort Hare to get more students, and will be seeking out young adults from other places as well, including my church and perhaps the internet cafe where I am now.

Maria Reiche

2010-09-08T06:03:00.002-06:00

I've been reading a lot of Bruce Chatwin, as you may have seen in my previous post. One of his stories in What am I Doing Here that especially intrigues me is that of Maria Reiche, a mathematician and geographer who spent forty years of her life studying the Nazca lines on the Peruvian Pampa. These lines were etched into the desert by ancient civilizations, making shapes visible only from the air. Reiche labored first to understand the lines, then to get others to recognize the Pampa's importance, and finally to protect it from tourists and developers. Chatwin effectively explains Reiche's intense commitment to the land and her distress as she watched more and more people coming to see it, driving over the vulnerable Pampa and altering the figures and the landscape forever. She personally saw and fought what too often happens to incredible and unique natural places as development threatens them. She first had to fight for recognition, so that the value of the Pampa itself would be seen as greater than the profits that could come from developing it. She then had to fight to keep the new streams of tourists from ignorantly ruining the lines by walking and driving across them, or even trying to etch their own additions to the ancient artwork in the desert. She made it her life's commitment to preserve these lines, and finally in 1995, three years before her death, she succeeded in gaining UNESCO protection for the Nazca plateau and the lines. It's amazing that this one woman was able to teach the world so much about the Nazca civilization, while also preserving the evidence of this civilization for future generations.

A Long Afternoon

2010-09-06T04:23:00.000-06:00

I have learned that a Zamani Daycare event requires the dedication of an entire day. On Saturday we went to Zamani, a daycare in impoverished Duncan Village where BYU students often volunteer, to watch their Mr. and Miss Zamani competition, one of their yearly fundraisers. It was incredibly cute – they had swimsuit, casual, and eveningwear segments filled with bewildered one- to five-year-olds, interspersed with dancing by older children. I was really impressed with the dancing – even the little kids can move in ways I could never manage. I sat in the audience next to a seven year old girl who quickly multiplied into ten, all fixing my hair, fighting over my camera, asking me questions, and singing along to Chris Brown, Rihanna and Usher (they knew all the words, which was impressive considering their limited English vocabularies). Partway through they pulled me outside and tried to teach me how to dance, which I can’t say was a success. They were a lot of fun, but bossy and “grown-up” in that 7 to 10-year-old way which is very exhausting and which I’m very familiar with, since my youngest sister is nine. The competition finally ended an incredible five hours after it began, at which point we were served KFC and Coke (I had some fries). That’s one thing about Zamani – the two times we’ve been there they’ve served us chicken, so as a vegetarian I’m left with mainly just Coke, which I don’t even like, but feel obligated to drink since I’m not eating the food. Other than this though I’ve been very happy with the vegetarian options in South Africa, which is something I was somewhat worried about coming here, as with any unfamiliar place. Vegetarian dishes have been clearly marked at the restaurants I’ve eaten at, no one seems particularly put off by my aversion to meat, and my host mother barely eats meat either, so when we eat together I can always share her vegetable curry. Even the fast food places have veggie patties on the menu, though I haven’t actually tried any of those. It’s definitely easier eating vegetarian here than in Utah. Anyway, after our meal, we sat and chatted with Mama Yoyo about nothing for a while, then finally got a ride home. I definitely still need to get used to the no-hurry attitude of South Africans, because I spend half my time lately feeling like I need to get a move on, but being trapped by endless going-nowhere chats, not to mention five-hour child pageants. Despite this it was a fun afternoon; I always enjoy spending time with kids.

P.S., I have a video of the dancing I'm trying to upload, which isn't working... but I'll try to add it in the future.

Nahoon Point Nature Reserve

2010-09-06T03:41:00.003-06:00

This Friday I finally found my way out to the Nahoon Point Nature Reserve, which means I have now had my first true South African ecotourism experience. It was surprisingly difficult getting there, considering it’s only 6 kilometers from where I’m staying. First I had a difficult time finding the address or other information for the reserve, since it’s small, only a few years old, and doesn’t have its own website. I ended up looking at the satellite image of Nahoon Point on Google Maps to find the visitor’s center, and then got directions to its coordinates. The next challenge was actually getting there. My fellow Field Studies students and I depend on public taxis for most of our transportation, but they don’t go toward Nahoon. I’ve been wanting to get a bike, but I have to ask the International Studies office first, and I’m not sure where I would find one. In the end I just walked there, which didn’t take too long (about an hour), especially since I got a ride from a concerned Real Estate man for the last mile or so. Incidentally, he has a friend who does environmental assessment for hotels and other businesses around the world, which is something I’m very interested in. When I got to Nahoon I went straight for the Mercedes-Benz Coastal Education and Visitors Centre, which is the major pull Nahoon has for me. Mercedes-Benz South Africa funded this centre after being approached by Kevin Cole, who helped establish the Nahoon Point Nature Reserve, and is the natural scientist for the East London Museum (Mercedes - Benz South Africa Puts It's Foot Down...). This centre was praised in one article as “an environmental ‘feather in the cap’ for East London,” and provides the benefits of “tourism; community upliftment; protecting the natural environment; and education in general.” This means that the reserve not only provides protection for indigenous species, but also provides environmental education to community members and tourists, creates job opportunities, and draws people to East London.

The center was small but very informative and well maintained. The boards around the walls explained unique aspects of East London’s coastal environment, the archaeological wealth of Nahoon (including the Nahoon footprints, the oldest human footprints ever found), the history of surfing at the Nahoon reef, and the importance of environmental stewardship. I also picked up a flyer on reducing personal impact, with lines like “You need to act NOW to save the earth!” and “There are times in human history where obligations to truth and the future of human society take precedence over personal wants, consumption and comfort. NOW is such a moment. Inside it described specific ways to be ‘green,’ such as using a clothesline, recycling and buying recycled products, avoiding heavily packaged products, using public transport – all the usual things. It always makes me happy to see these sorts of flyers, since I’ve made them and handed them out many times. There was also literature on the Buffalo City Municipality Integrated Environmental Management Plan, the Nahoon Estuary Nature Reserve, and the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa, all great resources for environmentally minded citizens such as myself.

The rest of Nahoon was wonderful. I ate at the Footprints Café to support the employees and the center, then walked on the boardwalk, which has beautiful views of the ocean and the life on the sand dunes. Some of the boardwalk was being repainted – another job provided by the reserve. I then walked along the beach for a ways. Scattered across the sand are millions of perfect seashells, a constant reminder of the incredible wealth of life that inhabits the reef and the surrounding waters. The shore is teeming with life as well – seabirds, small lizards, and carpets of coastal shrubs, grasses and wildflowers. Geologically the area is fantastic. The cliffs all along the shoreline are perfect layers of sandstone, worn down over millions of years to make clearly defined plates. Over and around these you can see the imprints and fossilized remains of ancient plant roots. It was really spectacular. I didn’t have my camera with me, so I plan to go back and bring Diana, the photographer.

When I returned from Nahoon I emailed Kevin Cole to find out whether he knows of ways I could volunteer at the reserve, and to ask him if we could talk sometime about the state of conservation and environmental awareness in East London. He appears to be the city’s greatest authority on nature conservation, nature reserves, and everything else encompassed by those, so he would be an incredible resource for me. Hopefully he’ll email back soon, but if not I can always try to use my connections with Rachel at the museum to get to him. He is exactly the person I need to show me what’s up with the natural environment around EL, and what’s being done to protect it.

What am I doing here

2010-09-01T04:47:00.003-06:00

Most of our lives are spent borrowing truths from other people. In school we trust our teachers to tell us what is true, and we trust that the sources they borrow from are accurate. We trust the papers and the news to let us know what’s happening in the world, and we trust books and articles to give us history and science. Most of what we know about the world, we know imperfectly, because we know it only through someone else. I came to South Africa to find out some truths, first-hand. I came to experience a small part of South Africa, to move outside of the familiar, and to find new people, landscapes, and realities. Specifically, I came to do a project on ecotourism, and the perceptions South Africans have of the industry and its implications for their country. Some experts say that South African people, communities, lands and wildlife can all benefit from carefully structured tourism in protected areas. Others say that those experts are dreaming, and that tourism can only benefit the tourist and the agency. I want to know what South Africans believe, because they are the ones who will be affected, and who will make decisions for the future. This is one thing that I will not find in books or articles, so here I am.

Travel tends to be, more than anything, a search for things that have nothing to do with us. People go to far-off places to learn about unfamiliar cultures and strange people, or to get away from whatever is familiar. Tourists go on vacation to escape their repetitive jobs and lives, and to replace them, for a short time, with something new, exciting, even sublime. And some people decide to spend their lives roaming the globe, never willing to settle into the ordinary. Bruce Chatwin was one of these. This British traveler and writer was constantly traveling to new places, meeting new people, doing anything to escape normality. His book “What am I Doing Here” is a kind of autobiography, presented through a collection of fragments, profiles, stories and travelogues that are essentially miniature biographies and portraits of people he knew or met. As Booklist reviewed, “the heart of this volume rests in Chatwin’s profiles of other people – often brief encounters that, amazingly, sketch entire lives and whole personalities in one sweeping stroke.” It is amazing how much you can learn about a person in five short pages, or in a ten minute conversation.

In my first short week in South Africa, it has been the people I’ve met who have shaped my experiences. They are the ones who are showing me what it means to be South African; what it means to be black, white, or coloured; and what it means for me to be here, as a visitor, as an American, and as an instant member of a family. The overly enthusiastic man at the Telkom store; Mechaellar from church who won't walk a block by herself, and who eagerly filled me in on all the gossip; Janeke, who laughed out loud (for an indecent amount of time) at my attempt to read Afrikaans; the taxi driver who was half-deaf, and missed four turns; the man at the East London Museum who shared his life story to four American students; the tiny girl who stared at me all the way to Duncan Village; Mama Yoyo, who took a picture with my hair draped over her head as though it was her own; Janey who went on and on about her favorite Afrikaans soap opera; her mother, who is a part of the teacher strikes and spoke of them with fire and ferocity; and endless others: These people are real, and they are East London, South Africa.

This Week in East London

2010-08-28T05:10:00.003-06:00

Photo credit: Diana Pratt. Diana is a photography student and one of my roommates here in South Africa.

East London is wonderful. I arrived Monday evening and have been very busy since then meeting the city and its people. Some highlights of the week, thus far:

Monday:
As soon as I stepped off the plane I knew I would like East London. It was windy, but just the right kind of windy - the kind with the ocean in it. I am always happiest when I'm near an ocean. The humidity was perfect, the sky blue, the trees green, and the people friendly. And it was so nice to know I didn't have to visit another airport until November. I had flown from San Francisco to South Africa with Brit, one of my fellow Field Studies students; it had been a very long 35 hours. We were met at the airport by Diana, another student who had arrived on Sunday, and Macrae, our facilitator. Macrae has spent a total of seven months in EL so far, and officially graduated from BYU yesterday. We also met Kathy Thomas, our new host mom, who was very talkative and welcoming. She showed us out to the cars, laughed when I almost got in on the wrong side, and drove away.
That first ride through the city was fabulous. It was rush hour, so people were jaywalking and hailing taxis all over the place. The area is absolutely beautiful, and I was stunned by the Buffalo River, which is wide and powerful and lined by incredibly green trees. Then it empties into the Indian ocean, which is an ocean, so of course it's wonderful. Downtown was bustling and the traffic a little frightening, but it was all beautifully real. Then we reached Kathy and Cornelius Thomas' home, where we'll be spending the next three months. The house is beautiful and tastefully decorated. The four of us (Brit, Diana, Macrae and I) have out own section of the house with two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. We have everything we would at home, except for Wi-fi and a shower. I'll have to get used to taking baths again.

Tuesday:
Macrae planned to take us around to familiarize us with East London: the taxis, the major streets, stores, culture. The day did not really go as planned. Diana had a meeting at 9am with a woman named Rachel from the East London Museum. Diana's project focuses around Oxford Street, one of the main streets through town, and she was using Rachel to learn some of the history of the street. Macrae, Diana and I went for the meeting and were told to come back at eleven. When we did, it was another hour before Rachel was able to talk with us. When she did she was very friendly. She showed us pictures of her recent hike through some caves at Nahoon, which were very interesting but didn't have much to do with what we'd come for. Then she showed Diana what she needed - books and pictures of Oxford Street's past. As Diana looked through them, Rachel shared stories and facts about East London's past and present, especially about the mix of cultural influences which have formed the city: English, German, Dutch, Irish, and of course Xhosa. Another staff member came in and talked to us about our projects. He talked to me about the incredible ecosystems within East London and along the coast, which survive largely on account of how inaccessible the coastline is. East London is unique in just how healthy these ecosystems are, despite the influence of the city. He said ecotourism is certainly a nice idea, but that it's all talk with no action; though he also said that the ability of tourists to add value to a natural area can certainly help to protect that area from development. And tourists, he said, are far less destructive than cement rollers. I was also able to talk to Rachel's boss, Geraldine, who said that the greatest thing about EL is that it has remained relatively undiscovered as a tourist destination. This has preserved its identity and integrity.

Thursday:
We visited some of Macrae's old friends in Parkside: Auntie P., her daughter Janie, and her son Jaleel. Parkside is a coloured area, and apparently isn't a place you'd want to be alone or at night. Coloured people are part-black and part-white, and speak Afrikaans. The Thomas's are also coloured. This family was very enthusiastic about meeting us, and Auntie was quite talkative. I think I'll like them. I talked to J- about my project, and he scoffed a bit when I explained ecotourism. He said it couldn't work, where tourism would actually benefit the local environment and people.
Auntie talked to us about the civil service strike which is going on now. So far it has included nurses and teachers, so many of the hospitals are horribly understaffed and the public schools have been closed. She said it has expanded to include some taxi drivers, and may spread to the police force as well. Auntie finds it very exciting. She's a teacher, and believes that it's an outrage how little they are paid. She sees this as a historic time, and that if people keep bonding together, striking and pushing their demands, the government will have to meet them. Her face got more and more excited as she talked about her part in the strike and the rallies, and her conviction that she was contributing to a changed South Africa. It was interesting hearing all this after talking to Kathy, who is also a teacher, about the same issue. Kathy hates the strikes. She thinks they will only hurt the students, and cannot accomplish anything for the teachers. The government will say they are willing to pay teachers more, but it will never happen, and the students will be left behind. She goes to work every day, is unable to do anything, and is sent home early.

Conversations

2010-08-27T02:48:00.005-06:00

This image is of the port in East London, South Africa. I hope to be able to upload my own photos soon; until then I'm relying on Google images.

The first person I met in East London, outside of my host family, was the desk clerk at the East London Museum. Diana, one of the girls in my field study group, had an appointment with Rachel, one of their historian/librarians (I'm not sure exactly which), at nine on Tuesday morning. The desk clerk called her and she said she had to move the appointment to eleven.

"Okay," he said, "but they are very disappointed. One of them is crying." We laughed. "The other two are laughing at the one who is crying."

Before we could leave, he asked us all where we are from, and we told him the U.S.

"So you will send me back there?"

"Well, we won't be there for another three months, and you couldn't go without us."

"Okay, when you go back then, you can bring me with you."

"Well, maybe I can fit you in my luggage. Then you can come."

He laughed.

"Fine, that's fine. I look forward to it."

Next was a salesman at the Telkom store, where we went to get phone cards. When Macrae, Brit, Diana and I walked in he grinned and spread his arms.

"It is four angels come to visit me!"

"I brought you some new friends!" Macrae had met this man before. He gave us each a hug in turn, then stood looking at us all proudly as Macrae chatted with him. We got our cards, then told him good-bye.

"You must come back to see me soon." We all assured him that we would.

"And then you will bring me with you, to America?"

"I can pack you in my bag," said Macrae, "but I already will have these three in there, so it will be a tight fit."

He grinned wider. "It will be fine. At least I will be traveling with angels."

We returned to the museum at eleven, and waited for Rachel to finish helping another man. He talked to us as she was busy on the computer. Somehow he ended up telling us about his life, his studies, his family, and his efforts to get his degree. Then he asked us about ourselves.

"America, that is a place I would like to see," he said. "Maybe you can take me back with you?"

"My bag is getting pretty full, I don't think there will be room."

He laughed.

"Oh no. Some other way then. When I was at the University in Capetown, I learned a very good lesson. When you go to a nice restaurant, you know they have wonderful food, and you can see what you want on the menu. You can want it and want it, but until you place your order, you will never have that food. It is the same for anything in life. Whatever you want, you must place your order, and that is the only way that you might get it. So I asked you if you could bring me to America, and even though you cannot give me that, at least I tried, I placed my order, and if I keep trying I will get what I want someday."

An Amazing Eco-lodge and an Airplane Bonus

2010-08-25T03:16:00.005-06:00

A few nights ago I was spending a typical evening online, surfing the web for everything related to ecotourism, national parks, and/or South Africa, when I stumbled upon the incredible Bulungula lodge. It’s only a couple hours from East London, where I’ll be spending the next three months, and appears to be a seamless example of ecotourism. They’re environmentally sustainable, using solar, wind and even bicycle power to generate their electricity. They’re very dedicated to the local community, providing them with jobs, educational programs, and training in organic farming. And they teach all visitors about the Nqileni village culture, and about the importance of being environmentally and socially responsible. I was very impressed with the mission of this lodge and their efforts to accomplish it. I contacted the owners (since that’s what I do these days) to express my enthusiasm and ask for more information about the establishment and management of this kind of an operation, and I’ll be adding it to the table as a possible mid-semester retreat. I don’t know about the other girls in my group, but I would love to see this place in action.

I made another happy discovery a couple hours ago, while on the flight to Joburg (which I’m still on, and have been on for 11 hours). Flipping through Sawubona, the South African Airways in-flight magazine (you run out of things to do after 11 hours), I found that they have a regular feature on my favorite kind of tourism! It’s always nice to see that something you think is a current issue in a certain place actually is a current issue. This week’s article is titled “Angels of the Dry Country” and tells the story of the women of Namaqualand, in Richtersveld. These women live in a traditional Nama community, and are very proud of their culture as well as their beautiful natural environment. They became concerned a number of years ago because of the increase of 4X4 traffic on their dirt roads, and the accompanying influx of people who would take cultural artifacts as souvenirs. The community banded together to apply for World Heritage status, the article says, “to protect their way of life and their land” and when they achieved the status as a World Heritage Site in 2007, “they started seeing an uptick in tourism and, even better, a genuine interest in the customs of this isolated population.” In this case, the community itself initiated ecotourism, and through it they have been able to protect their land, generate income and share their culture, while refreshing members of their own community with traditional aspects of their culture which many had forgotten. I love this as an example of how tourism can help and protect a community, and this case is especially pure because there is no third-party to work through: all profits go directly to the community.

Bulungula Lodge and Namaqualand are very different types of ecotourism, but both are great examples where efforts to benefit the environment, local community, and the tourist have been sincere and primarily successful. It’s very encouraging to see these, after many of the articles I’ve been reading have a very pessimistic outlook on the industry as a whole, calling it a lovely fantasy that’s already dying. But as long as I can find these kinds of positive examples, I’ll trust its potential. And I’ll soon be able to see whether South Africans feel the same way.
(3:20 am, Monday, August 23rd)

What Time Is It?

2010-08-25T03:10:00.002-06:00

That isn’t usually a trick question. I’m currently flying over the ocean halfway between New York and Johannesburg, and reality is having a rough time sorting itself out. I left San Francisco at 10:30 last night. Seventeen hours have gone by, and it’s now 12:30 AM. Seventeen does not usually equal two. Or twenty-six. So the plane is dark, everyone around me is fast asleep, and I can’t decide whether I’m exhausted since it’s midnight and I haven’t slept since Friday night – whenever that was – or if I’m wide awake since it’s the middle of Sunday afternoon. This is all very disorienting. Of course, my nerves are all over the place too. I’m very anxious and excited to get to East London to meet my host family, explore the city and begin my project, but at the same time I’m not quite sure what I’ll find when I get there. It doesn’t help that I haven’t been out of the United States since 2002, when I dipped over the border to Canada. Not too great a feat when you live in Washington. As soon as I get to East London I know things will settle down and start to make sense, but for now, on this dark time-traveling plane, it’s hard to believe that I’ll ever make it back to the ground. And with 8 hours to go, I might need a little more Sudoku.
(12:30 am Monday, August 23)

Making it Social

2010-08-19T20:47:00.003-06:00

Today I set out to find others interested in and/or involved with ecotourism. What I thought would be a quick task involving a couple emails to some prominent people turned into a nearly all-day endeavor. Once I started looking in the right places I found a flood of blogs, Facebook groups, organizations and programs centered around ecotourism, and I've been trying to contact/contribute to/comment on as many as possible, while of course throwing the address of this blog around like rice at a wedding.

I first wrote an email to Ralph Buckley, the director of Griffith University (Australia)'s International Centre for Ecotourism Research. He's published a wealth of articles and books on ecotourism, so I'm hoping he will take some interest in what I'm doing, or help get me in contact with students majoring in ecotourism at his university.

Next I found Megan Epler Wood, director of The International Ecotourism Society (TIES). Her website, EplerWood International, provides information for the development of sustainable tourism and ecotourism and has all kinds of great links. From there I found my way to a University of Vermont blog that outlines, day by day, the lessons she taught in a course on ecotourism at the university this summer. She'll also be teaching a similar course at Harvard this fall, and the lectures will be streamed online, though I don't know whether I'll be able to access them without being a student. The more I find out about this woman the more impressed I am - she's been all over the world helping tourist operations become more sustainable, and aiding local communities while she's at it. I don't necessarily expect to hear back from her, but I will definitely keep following her blogs and website, from which I've already learned loads.

After these professionals, I tried to find other people like me: students and enthusiasts who have publicly expressed their interests in ecotourism and who I think would genuinely be interested in hearing about what I'm doing. I found the page for TIES on Facebook and responded to a few of the discussions on there, then did the same for a general Ecotourism page. I also found a great blog, Ecotourism: Taking Pictures and Leaving Footprints, by Guillaume Foutry of London, and directed him to my blog as well. I was really impressed by how many discussions and blogs I managed to find where people were asking the same kinds of questions as me. I just hope some of them decide to respond!

What I Plan to Read

2010-08-18T15:12:00.004-06:00

After an incredibly busy couple of weeks (moving out of my apartment in Provo, helping my family move from Washington to California, and getting ready to leave the country), I have just three more days to go until I leave for South Africa (so excited!), so now is the time for some last-minute explanations and background on what I'll be doing.

As many of you know, in the three months while I'm in East London, South Africa I'll be completing a Field Study on local perceptions of ecotourism, as I described in an earlier post, and earning University credit through courses from the International and Area Studies, English, and Plant and Wildlife Science departments at BYU. This blog will primarily document my experience for my Travel Writing course, overseen by Gideon Burton.

I'll be completing a number of readings for the Travel Writing course as well as my other courses, and to provide background for my research. Here is my reading list so far:

1. Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
Walden exemplifies many of the most basic principles behind ecotourism, especially separation from man's influence and communion with nature. Also, since it was a part of the American Romantic movement, I expect to find some great examples of the natural sublime that I like so much. I read this one a number of years ago, but feel like it will be beneficial to revisit it and see what from Thoreau I can take and apply to ecotourism.

2. The Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway.
This work of nonfiction documents Hemingway's month on safari in East Africa. This should serve as a great contrast to Walden and the principles of ecotourism, as safaris are exactly the type of destructive tourism that ecotourism seeks to eliminate. At the same time the two are very closely related - they both arise from the desire for an authentic wildlife/nature experience - so I think it will be fun to see what similarities and differences I can find between Hemingway's experience and attitude and that of an eco-tourist.

3. Selections by Bruce Chatwin
Chatwin and his writing has caught my interest lately. I'd like to read some more of his works primarily to look at his style of travel writing, though I'm sure I'll find elements of ecotourism and the sublime and all that, too.

4. Ecotourism and Sustainable Development: Who Owns Paradise? by Martha Honey.
This will be my primary textbook while in the field. It provides background information on ecotourism and describes the principles, future potential, and controversies of the industry. It should help me keep my facts straight and has great case studies, including a major section on South Africa.

5. Scholarly Articles
So that my project actually has merit in the academic world, I have been and will continue to be reading many (many many) scholarly articles on ecotourism, sustainability, South African parks and reserves, etc. These are what provide the background for what I'm doing and reassure me that someone cares about these things other than myself.

These are what I have so far; I'm sure the list will change and grow with time. If anyone has any feedback or suggestions I'd love to hear them!

Road Trip Wisdom

2010-08-04T18:26:00.002-06:00

As many of you know, I attend Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, but my home is Olympia, the beautiful, green, and very liberal capital of Washington State. The photo above is one I took in downtown Oly. I spent the past few weeks there and in the surrounding area, enjoying all that the Great Northwest has to offer, then last weekend returned (reluctantly, as always) to Provo. This return trip was actually much more complicated than it should have been. I’m used to being creative with my methods of travel between Washington and Utah, since I don’t have a car and don’t like to always have to depend on flights (which take a lot of coordination, what with rides to and from the airport, plus all the baggage restrictions, wait times and stress). I’ve had a lot of experiences with Greyhound, city buses, ride shares and bumming rides off friends. This time I had a ride set up with someone from school, but just three days before we were supposed to leave she texted me, letting me know that her plans had fallen through, and I had to somehow find a new way to get back to Provo. I didn’t expect to find much at such short notice, but I turned to a ride-share website with my fingers crossed, and at six the next morning I found myself on a bus to Seattle to meet David, who would be my companion for the 16-hour drive to Salt Lake City.

Despite my somewhat questionable method of finding David (though it is a step up from hitchhiking – at least we talked and I saw his Facebook before leaving), it was really a great drive. David is from Mexico City and has done quite a bit of traveling, so he had a lot of experiences and advice to share. We ended up talking about a lot of the things we covered in the prep class for my Field Study (which is explained in this post), like differences between cultures (especially Mexican and American) and the kinds of cultural misunderstandings that can come from something simple, like smiling at someone in a grocery store. It was really enlightening talking to him about his experiences with foreign cultures, especially since I have yet to travel far outside of the U.S. (does Canada count?), and it made me wonder how my experience in South Africa will compare with his in Canada and the U.S.

I was especially excited when David started talking about one of his favorite vacation spots in Mexico, because I could immediately relate what he was saying to both ecotourism (again, explained here) and the sublime. This place had clearly had a profound effect on him: he lit up as he talked about it, and even told me he hopes to someday get married there. What made this place so amazing, he said, wasn’t just its unsurpassed beauty, but its authenticity. This was no Cancun (pictured), no American resort which just happens to be a little further south. This was a true Mexican spot, free from the commercialism that quickly invades so many beautiful places. Going there, you could experience a real community and the true, natural beauty of the place. David described to me in vivid detail the view possible from one hill in the city, on a peninsula jutting into the ocean, from which, surrounded on three sides by water, visitors could gather with members of the community to watch the breathtaking sunset. This, he said, was one of the most incredible things he had experienced – the beautiful view, away from the lights of the city, surrounded by others sharing the wonder of the moment. David found something sublime there, in that image and the feel of the place which still awes and inspires him months (or years) and thousands of miles later.

Much of the wonder David felt came from the seclusion and realness of the place and the experience. He told me how, as the years go by, this place is slowly gaining more attention and attracting more tourists, which makes him concerned for its future. The more people arrive, the more focus will be placed on quantity rather than quality, the more tire marks will scar the hills, and the more it will become just another commercial gimmick, losing the soul of the place. This is one of the inevitable results of tourism, though one of the major things that advocates of ecotourism wish to avoid. When a place becomes a tourist destination, it stops existing for its own sake, instead gearing itself toward the tourists, shaping itself to fit them, and gradually becoming just a shadowy reflection of what it once was.

This is when David encouraged me, as I went to South Africa, to experience the true South Africa, not some version created for tourists or others who don’t call it home. He left me excited to go out there and discover just that, while being aware of my role as an outsider, learning from the locals, and continuing to explore this idea of tourism with an environmental and social conscience.

Paved Paradise

2010-07-25T12:56:00.006-06:00

In our American culture, we're inseparably connected to modern technology, and largely detached from the natural world. We rely completely on electricity, indoor plumbing, cars, computers, and cell phones to get us through each day; and we live and work in large, insulated, climate-controlled buildings that cut us off from the outside. Modern technology allows us to do things that not long ago would have seemed impossible, but to us have become essential pieces of everyday life. But the more in-tune we become with technology, the more isolated we become from the natural world, so that today nature is as unfamiliar and exciting to us as blogging would have been to the Founding Fathers. Compared to our complicated, fast-paced, multi-tasking lives, the simplicity and beauty of nature is a great, sublime escape, and although we would never want to give up our phones or computers, the idea of living on the land and away from the noise and pollution of the city can be very enticing. This is what brings us movies like Avatar, Pocahontas, and Fern Gully, where development is demonized and nature viewed as sacred. It also fuels ecotourism, which I introduced in my previous post, and brings some unexpected conflict into the picture.

In my research of ecotourism and South Africa I've found a number of studies done in the past two decades which attempt to determine the perceptions community members in South Africa have of national parks and the conservation measures enacted through them. One study by Emile Boonzaier looks specifically at the Richtersveld National Park to analyze local attitudes toward conservation and development, especially in the context of ecotourism. In his interviews with local people he found that many had a rather cynical view of tourists and the Richtersveld Park. These tourists, according to some of the locals who Boonzaier interviewed, believed in the importance of maintaining the integrity of natural areas, including the tribes living within or around them, which is a central tenet of ecotourism. But the tourists also disapproved of development and disliked seeing the incorporation of Western technology and influence in the local communities, believing it to be a corruption of the natural, wild Africa. Yet these developments were largely seen as advancements by members of the community, and so they viewed the tourists and the ideas of conservation held by the park to be in conflict with their goals and the advancement of the community.

In this case, the good of the community was not the highest priority, but rather the desires of the tourists in their search for the natural sublime. They see these traditional African cultures as sacred, natural, wild and uncorrupted, and they want their unique culture and traditions to be preserved; but in doing so they are refusing these people the modern conveniences and information that they, the tourists, have complete access to. While the tourists think they're helping the community by encouraging cultural preservation, they are in fact holding it back from modernity. Our culture may put nature on a pedestal, and dream of life without pollution, parking lots and complication (think Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell), but few of us would be able or willing to actually give up much of what we have. We just like to believe that other people are better off without.

A New Direction

2010-07-18T20:19:00.003-06:00

The initial purpose of this blog was to record my research processes and conclusions as I explored the literary idea of the sublime and its place in our increasingly digital world. I’m returning now with a shift in focus: though I will continue to explore things incredible, unfamiliar and sublime, I will look at these not in relation to modern technology, but to nature in its purest form (which, if you know me or have read certain of my previous posts, you know is my usual preference). For several months I have been researching the idea of ecotourism in preparation for a field study I’ll be conducting in East London, South Africa this coming fall. Throughout this study I will be interviewing adults in East London about their perceptions of ecotourism and its potential to benefit (or harm) their environment, economy and community. Ecotourism is defined as “purposeful travel to natural areas to understand the culture and natural history of the environment, taking care not to alter the integrity of the ecosystem, while producing economic opportunities that make the conservation of natural resources beneficial to local people” (Eva Garen, “Appraising Ecotourism in Conserving Biodiversity”). Ecotourism seeks to give tourists a pure view of nature, unaltered by industry or modern human intervention, while bringing some benefit to local people.

What the tourists themselves are looking for is, essentially, the sublime. They want to experience complete removal from the familiar; separation from the technologies and comforts to which they're accustomed; exposure to the wild, unconquerable spirit of nature. They want to see things they would never encounter in their own environment, which are outside of their own control and comprehension and have not been corrupted and suppressed by the influences of modernity. And yet they also want the safety and control found in professional, recognized organizations and parks, which (along with many other variables) helps create the sharp divide which exists between the romantic ideals fueling ecotourism and the reality of the practice. This is what has really fueled my interest in ecotourism, and what I hope to explore through my study this fall. In my next post I will more thoroughly explain the major issues behind this divide, and the problems and questions that they introduce.

Some Things I've Missed

2010-06-17T15:53:00.006-06:00

I've already talked about the new possibilities made available through this research blog as an alternative to more traditional academic writing, as well as some challenges that I've faced throughout the process. One thing I would further like to say is what I've missed in this term away from conventional research writing. First, the all-nighter before the final paper's due. You might think I'm being sarcastic, but I honestly love those super-focused, distraction-free nights where I can fully immerse myself in a paper. When written without breaks or opportunities for the mind to wander, my papers form so much more naturally and smoothly. In this blog I was able to spend much more time exploring and altering my project, but with each post I'd come in with a different mindset, different ideas, and often a different thesis. The fact that I actually miss severe procrastination may be a sign that I've become somewhat addicted to it, and that this blog can be the first step on my path to recovery, but it could also mean that blogging lacks the depth of focus of conventional research papers.

Another thing that I feel these blog projects lack is a clear and strong final result. Although you can insert the same information found in a research paper into a blog, through links and multiple posts, it lacks some of the cohesiveness of a printed paper. This is compounded by the fact that, for the most part, the members of our class were writing these posts separately, and in all cases each post had to be able to stand alone, causing the arguments to lose a lot of their flow and focus. I think it might be more useful to record the writing process on a blog, to allow for collaboration and the spreading of ideas, but to still produce a final result of a conventional Times New Roman double-spaced 12 pt. font printed and stapled paper.

Besides these details, though, I really don't see any ways in which our research blogs are weaker than conventional research papers, and in fact I think the social collaborative aspect that they provide really enhances the writing process, allowing for a freer spread of ideas and a more transparent process. As a whole, I think these projects (you can look at the side of the page to find links to the other students' blogs) have shown that the use of research blogs fully upholds the classroom and university objectives, perhaps even more so than conventional papers because of their added ability to spread information to a greater audience.

Becca's Cellular Gender Exploration: A Review

2010-06-17T15:17:00.003-06:00

I've been asked to review and critique my classmate Becca Hay's blog, The Best Things in Life Aren't Hard To Find, based on criteria for the literature course we're both taking.

Development:
Becca's posts begin without very clear focus beyond the hermaphrodite idea, and then as they progress you can see how she narrowed her topic in and found a clear thesis, which she built upon continually. This is exactly the kind of development we were aiming for. She always backs up her ideas and developments with clear allusions to her research and comments by her classmates.

Focus and Cohesion:
Although it was hard to find the focus in some of the earlier posts, and some of them don't stand well on their own, as her project progresses you can see much clearer allusions to her purpose, and better definitions of important terms and concepts. These are really essential since her topic is focused and difficult to understand without some background. Some posts are still a little difficult to understand, but Becca consistently links to more basic information that helps to clarify. There are a lot of posts, and they're pretty long, which might make it difficult to get a quick idea of her project and how it has taken shape if you're a first-timer to the blog.

Post Variety:
For the most part Becca's posts are a combination of exploration, with a lot of her personal thoughts, and expository. She incorporates a good amount of literature, some appropriate media, and mentions some events and some people in her posts. It would be nice to have some more media or lighter/shorter posts, to break up the heavy analysis, but she keeps a very friendly and casual tone despite the depth of her information, which keeps things interesting and makes the depth easier to get through. She does have to be careful of adopting too casual of a tone, since sometimes I felt like the tone drew away from the substance of the information.

Personality:
Becca's blog shows A LOT of personality, which is great, and while keeping it bright and fun you can see that her information is still very academic. It might help if she displayed her information a little more professionally, since I feel like this blog might not appeal at a glance to contain a lot of substance (it's very pink), but that could just be me.

Interactivity and Community:
Becca shows clear interactivity, linking to classmates' blogs and referencing ideas she's gotten from classmates. She also reached out to some other scholars she found through her research, though I'm not sure whether she got replies from them yet.

Some Strong Points:
This blog very thoroughly explores gender roles, and Becca's created a great amount of volume. Visitors to her blog can find out a lot of information. She did a great job linking to other students, and has incorporated a lot of great resources. She's also kept things interesting and casual while still including a lot of information.

Some Shortcomings:
As I said before, I think the blog may appear too "fluffy" for it to be taken seriously at a glance, though with some reading you quickly find substance. It's also way too pink for me to handle. Some of the blog posts are a little long and unmanageable, though this improves as time goes on. At times the content can also be a little confusing, especially since I don't know much of anything about her topic, but she has some good explanatory posts that she links to to keep things in context. Overall this is a great blog, with a lot of information and very effective strategies for keeping the reader's attention.

The Process

2010-06-17T08:00:00.002-06:00

This blog has been an experiment in modernizing the writing process and product. Instead of researching and writing in isolation, then turning my papers in to my professor, never to be seen by anyone else, my classmates and I have been keeping regularly updated blogs detailing the progression of our ideas. We have also been seeking out greater collaboration with our classmates and others in the academic and online community.

My project has seen a long and enlightening progression. I began with the idea of the sublime, which I'd studied in literature previously, and decided (with encouragement from my professor, Gideon Burton) to apply this concept to the digital age. I began with a few questions and ideas and jumped right in, scouring the web for information and content worth having. One of my first successes was early on, when I posted a simple question to my Facebook page: "Does access to limitless knowledge via the internet remove the sense of wonder for the world?" which managed to spark a mini-debate between three of my Facebook friends. They made some interesting points that gave me ideas for my research, but what I liked the most about this experience was the fact that none of them knew each other: one attends BYU like myself, one is a student at Western Washington University, and one is an old Sunday School teacher of mine, who I haven't seen since I was eight years old. Just through Facebook I was able to interact with three people from very different backgrounds and locations in the same conversation.

Another exciting moment of collaboration came after I found a great book review by Brent Aldrich on The Englewood Review of Books, which I wrote about in this previous post. I left a quick comment with a link to my blog, and within a few days he wrote back on my blog, and directed me to some of his work. This made me realize how easy it can be to find and communicate with other people online with my research interests. This sort of collaboration has the potential to really alter the dynamics of academic research, and I'm sure already has, by bringing in actual interaction with people rather than just articles and books.

One of the most useful things that I've gained from this experience is a love for the social bookmarking site Diigo, introduced to me by Professor Burton, which has been an amazing aid for my research both for this class and the other course I'm taking this term. Although we were introduced to a lot of really useful resources this term (Wordle is a fun one too, and I believe I've mastered the art of Google Scholar), this is one that I know I'll keep using, and often. This has also been my first blogging experience, and I've found it surprisingly fulfilling, though unexpectedly difficult.

This has been a new experience for all of us, and for me it has been very difficult to get used to publicizing my work in process and approaching others who I've discovered have similar research interests. It has also been a challenge to find an appropriate balance between academic and accessible writing, to make my work both academically viable and approachable for the typical, non-English-major blogger. But it has also opened my eyes to the possibilities of collaboration and open information that are now presented to academia, has introduced me to a whole new way of approaching the writing process, and has converted me, to some degree, to the art of blogging. It hasn't been a typical course, and has definitely been overwhelming and frustrating at times, but I think I've actually learned quite a few things that I'll be able to use in the future to improve my research and writing processes.

Wordsworth and the Modern Sublime

2010-06-16T13:45:00.004-06:00

I'm a sucker for all things natural. I love the outdoors; I dislike cars, cities and other polluters; I cried during both Fern Gully and Avatar when the trees were being destroyed (does anyone else see uncanny similarities between these movies?; And yes, I did choose a Fern Gully image over Avatar): as a whole, I willingly admit to having a very romantic idea of nature as pure, beautiful, and transcendent. In my mind, all our problems stem from industrialization and technology, no matter how naive and unreasonable this opinion may be (and how ironic that I've created a blog focused around the technological sublime). It's only natural, then, that William Wordsworth has always been one of my favorite poets. There's a time for abstract, deep, depressing poetry to make you think and feel horrible, but when I want something calming and fulfilling, I turn to Wordsworth and revel in his sublime depictions of the natural world. Now, since the purpose of this blog is to show how the sublime can be found in our modern, technology-driven world, and the ways in which this technological sublime is both similar to and differs from traditional perceptions of the sublime, I've decided to revisit one of Wordsworth's great poems, "Tintern Abbey*," and apply to it the technological sublime that I've been researching.

In the poem "Tintern Abbey," Wordsworth describes his second visit to the River Wye in Wales, describing the wonder he feels at the beauty of the area and relating his present experience to the memory of five years previous, when he had visited the same place "in the hour of thoughtless youth" (lines 86-87). Although Wordsworth describes a sublimity arising from nature, and surviving only in spite of humanity's impact, many aspects of the sublime that he describes can also be experienced through modern technology, especially the internet.

Wordsworth establishes the sense of the sublime within the first few lines of the poem, when he describes the "steep and lofty cliffs,/ That on a wild secluded scene impress/ Thoughts of more deep seclusion" (lines 5-8). This depiction shows where, in many cases, the sublime arises: from those things much greater than ourselves, in this case "steep and lofty cliffs." Because of their scale and separateness from civilization or the control of man, these cause in Wordsworth "thoughts of more deep seclusion," emphasizing for him how far he is from the familiar. Though he already is in a secluded area, this level of seclusion is something more, a mental as well as a physical separateness from humanity, which allows the sense of the sublime - the recognition of those things greater than the mind can comprehend - to take hold. This relates in an interesting and unexpected way to the technological sublime of the internet. The immediate assumption would be that such a feeling of seclusion would be unreachable in something as intimately connected to ourselves as technology, which is created by and for mankind. And yet we can see how the internet draws us away from the physical world and the familiar into a new and very complicated universe. Though created by us, the number of contributors and complexity of the information has morphed the internet into something far greater than ourselves, so great and all-encompassing that it really is incomprehensible. And this can bring a paradoxical sense of seclusion, of separateness from the familiar and manageable, despite the supreme connectedness that the internet represents. The internet becomes an object as much larger than ourselves as Wordsworth's "lofty cliffs," and just as outside of our control.

Despite the sublimity of the internet that we can see if we truly meditate on it, on a typical day as we're surfing the web or stalking our friends on Facebook we're not likely to be overcome by a sense of awe at the grandness of this worldwide network. Instead, we usually flit between windows and tabs, pleased and impressed with the convenience, entertainment, and utility of the technology, but giving no thought to its full extent and potential. This is similar to how Wordsworth describes his first visit to the River Wye, "when like a roe/ [he] bounded o'er the mountains . . . The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,/ Their colours and their forms, were then to [him]/ An appetite" (lines 77-80). At this time he experienced and enjoyed nature, loving it for all its elements, hungry to experience more; and yet he did not yet have the perspective that would give him a true understanding of nature's sublimity. Just as it takes true introspection and consideration of the internet or other modern technology to understand its true potential greatness or terror, Wordsworth needed time and experience to truly put nature into perspective and see it's sublimity. He describes how he looks at nature differently now, after his experiences in the world and now that he has gained an understanding of humanity. He now sees not only the beauty of nature, but its full connectivity and scope, and the power it has to connect all things:

"For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime
of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things." (lines 85-102)

Though the internet may not literally contain "the light of setting suns," it contains images and media that can be equally impressive. It is a thing "deeply interfused" and can be considered to "roll through all things," in the way that it connects the world, all places and all people into one network unlimited by space. In it we can find this same kind of power to influence our thoughts and actions that Wordsworth experiences in nature, if only we make the effort to see it. The internet is incredibly grand and powerful, uncontrollable, and both intimately connected with and utterly separate from ourselves. It is a perfect example of the sublime.

* The full name of the poem is "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798."

What it all boils down to

2010-06-12T18:27:00.008-06:00

The images in this post are visualizations of the internet from the BarabasiLa gallery and An Atlas of Cyberspaces.

The sublime is a concept that has fascinated scholars and evaded description for hundreds of years. Even the term itself is difficult to define: it is used both to describe things so great and awe-inspiring that any description of them is inadequate, and to explain the inexpressible feeling caused by such objects or concepts. So when you see something sublime, it invokes in you a sense of "the sublime:" a kind of overpowering feeling of terror, inadequacy, awesomeness, and transcendence. Confused? You should be. The very nature of the sublime is incomprehensible and unreachable. Yet this sense, which once was believed to be discoverable only in the farthest, most dramatic reaches of nature, has become in many ways inseparable from our daily lives, through new media and technology.

With the technological wonders that have become so commonplace in our world, sublime experiences are in front of our eyes and at our fingertips at every moment, if we only take the time to notice them. The technologies we've created have grown to such an extent that even the thought of what we've accomplished and what we have the potential to do in the future can evoke a feeling of the sublime. Just look at the internet for the ultimate example: this human invention is really more an idea rather than anything substantial, and yet it is far more expansive than anything that exists in our world. The internet contains information on every imaginable subject (and many that the typical person would never imagine), access to innumerable articles and books, maps and images of much of the world, international communities, virtual worlds that mimic reality, and so much more. This invisible thing made up of who knows what (radio waves? Magic?) connects all of us to the world, and to each other. And each day as we connect to it and write on our blogs or add photos to our Facebooks or search Google we change and add to it. Multiply that by about a billion internet users and you have an infinitely connected, constantly changing, and very sublime worldwide network.
This technological sublime, which is so much a part of us and at the same time so outside of ourselves, has grown to such greatness that it can match and perhaps even surpass the natural sublime that so enthralled Romantic and Gothic authors and philosophers. Yet having the sublime so intimately connected to ourselves has drastically changed both our understanding of the concept and the ways in which we experience it. This is what I've been exploring in this blog. After some definitions and connections, I've looked at the adaptive nature of the sublime, and given some examples of where I see the technological sublime, including the BP oil spill and Amazon.com. In my next post I'll tie this to William Wordsworth's depiction of the sublime in his poem Tintern Abbey, to solidify the link between the old sublime and the new.

The Expanse and Horror of Amazon

2010-06-09T12:30:00.005-06:00

I've been looking on Amazon.com to try to find some more books, articles and authors on the sublime, and I found an absolutely overwhelming array of information. I now have dozens of new sources to explore that have to do with every aspect of the sublime, from original definitions to artistic renditions and purely modern applications. I'm beginning to understand what Burke meant when he described "that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror" (On the Sublime and Beautiful), because this is the exact state I feel myself in with this project. There is just so much information, so many places to look, aspects to consider, people to contact, books and articles to read. Maybe there's a reason that they call it Amazon, because I feel like one of those early jungle explorers, faced with a new, unfamiliar and terrifying world. I start somewhere that makes sense to me, like with Edmund Burke or Emmanuel Kant, two prominent theorists on the sublime, and then I make natural connections from there: to related articles/books, citations within the book, books that have cited books I'm interested in, other books with the same tags, and so on ad nauseam. Soon I have no idea where I am or how I got there, and no chance of finding my way back to the safety of familiar text. The research and possibilities have become so expansive and all-encompassing that I hardly know what to do with them, and after spending hours on Amazon, Google Scholar and in the Blogosphere I have enormous amounts of information but no ability to process it all into anything cohesive. It's my motions of thought that have been suspended, and the infinite realms of academic and philosophical possibility that's brought me a sense of Burke's horror. I think the sublimity of the internet may be too much for me - I've been desperately craving some good literary analysis with just me, a solid, entirely non-digital text, and a pen. Maybe after some of that I'll be ready to jump back in and try to tackle this ridiculous expanse of information that we call the Internet.

The image at the beginning of this post, by the way, is of the Amazon rainforest burning. I think it well depicts an aspect of terror and the inability to control outside forces, which is a key element of the sublime. It is also what I would like to do to Amazon.com and modern technology: strip it down so that only the strongest materials are left, remove all the cluttering underbrush and give it the chance to start fresh.

Sublime events

2010-06-07T09:16:00.004-06:00

I've been looking for events and people currently involved with research related to the sublime. It's a common enough topic in the literary world, as well as in art and architecture, and it's been looked at from many very diverse perspectives, which makes it interesting trying to find sources that I can relate to my research, which is on the search for the sublime in our modern technological world. It's been difficult to find actual events or conferences on or including this topic, and I haven't managed to find online events or recorded content that I'd actually be able to listen to or participate in, but I have found some past and present conferences that deal with the sublime - predominantly in the UK, interestingly enough.

First I found a conference on Medieval and Early Modern Authorship, by the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies, which will take place between June 30th and July 2nd this year at the University of Geneva. In this conference Patrick Cheney, a Penn State professor, will present on English Authorship and the Early Modern Sublime. I looked up Cheney and found that one of his research interests is theories of the sublime, and he wrote a book called Marlowe's Republican Authorship: Lucan, Liberty, and the Sublime. I couldn't make any sense of the reviews I found for this book, but it may be interesting to look at. I also found that Cheney spoke at a conference on The Classical Sublime at Cambridge University in 2008, which focused on classical theorizations and representations of the sublime and their impact on later understanding of the sublime. The information about this conference was on the blog Rogueclassicism, which details another conference at the Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition, University of Briston. This conference, which will take place July 8-9 this year, is titled Reception and the Gift of Beauty in the Western Tradition, and one of the major topics of discussion is the sublime (focusing on the 'beauty' aspect). This event has a Facebook page as well, though there is very little content on the page.

I don't know how helpful any of this might be for my research, but it does show me that the idea of the sublime is continuing to be explored, and it has given me some new people with connections to the sublime who I can further research or even attempt to contact. I also am continually reminded of the multidisciplinary nature of the sublime, as I find the term popping up on pages relating not only to literature, but philosophy, religion, art and even medicine. I'm hoping that I can find more that relates directly to the modern technological aspect I'm focusing on, but I have been able to find connections between my project and many different studies of the sublime; in fact, connections to more traditional literary uses of the sublime is essential to my exploration of this topic. Let me know any of your thoughts/findings.

Gulf Oil Spill: Terrifying Sublime

2010-06-03T19:17:00.001-06:00

I'm sure many of you have been following the continual pouring of oil into the Gulf of Mexico - I know I've had a sick feeling in my stomach ever since the blast on April 20th. For those of you who haven't, here's the latest update from the New York Times (as of 8pm on June 3rd): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/us/04latest.html. Maybe it's just because I'm an Environmental Science student and an overall environmentally focused person, but this whole situation has been horribly traumatic for me. Every day there are more pictures of oil-covered beaches and wildlife, more statistics about the ever-increasing extent of the damage, more reports of failed attempts to stop the flow, and hundreds of thousands more gallons of oil in the Gulf. Currently the lowest estimates say that just over 500,000 gallons are leaked each day. Think about that for a minute. And this has been going on now for 44 days! It's absolutely horrifying. I think the worst part might be the fact that I'm just stuck watching this happen, knowing that there really is nothing I can do to stop it or repair the damage it's caused.

So how does this tie into the sublime? I actually found the connection while exploring The Englewood Review of Books, a book review blog run by the Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis. Brent Aldrich, one of their writers, wrote a review of the book The Sublime by Simon Morley, and in this review Aldrich expressed his own experience when watching the first public footage of the leak. Though the video itself is grainy, short and unimpressive, the knowledge of what it entails was enough to give Aldrich the terror of the sublime:

"This is a frightful image in its murky greenness. And the scope of what this simple video loop suggests is nearly beyond the capacity to describe. It certainly follows several of Burke’s [Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful] qualifications of the sublime – the terror of the scope, the obscurity and privation of the bottom of the ocean, the suggestion of infinity – but it also raises even more questions in regard to what a particularly contemporary sublime might encompass."

This contemporary sublime is essentially the purpose of my research and this blog, and the oil spill video is a prime example of it. This is not an image of nature, of something so outside ourselves that we can never fully comprehend it. This is a man-made video of a man-made disaster, and through it we see both the potential we have to cause destruction and horror and our inadequacy to end it. We are incredibly advanced technologically, and able to do some things which may have seemed impossible, such as building a well in the deep ocean. Just the possibility of what we can do is sublime - our potential truly is unbounded and incomprehensible. But as much as we accomplish, we still do not have complete control, and we can still make mistakes - and the greater our technology becomes, the more devastating and earth-altering these mistakes can be. This form of the sublime that we find so often in today's world is one found in reflection on ourselves and our creations, and arises both from our incredible power and our terrible inadequacy to control this power. It produces a terror perhaps even greater than that found in nature by the Romantics, because it is inseparable from ourselves, and yet beyond the scope of our understanding and control.

The Ever-adapting Sublime

2010-06-02T12:11:00.000-06:00

Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,
Thou art the path of that unresting sound-
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around;
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking among the shadows that 'pass by
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!

(From Mont Blanc: Lines Written In the Vale of Chamouni, lines 32-48, by Percy Shelley, 1816)

The definition and understanding of the sublime has changed constantly through time, always adapting to the unique circumstances and sensibilities of the present. The Romantic idea of the sublime, which I described in my previous post, can be explored in Edmund Burke's philosophical treatise, On the Sublime and Beautiful. Burke asserted that the sublime depends first on novelty: the excitement and interest of things new and unfamiliar to us. Yet he also argues that "things which engage us merely by their novelty cannot attach us for any length of time." Curiosity, the driving force behind our interest in novelty, "changes its object perpetually, [and] has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied." Because of this, those novel things which initially attract our interest would quickly lose their power over us, and in fact the whole world would soon become normal and dull, if it weren't for the many things that are "adapted to affect the mind by means of other powers besides novelty in them, and of other passions besides curiosity in ourselves." This is where the sublime comes in: when the curiosity and interest of an object does not weaken with time, but rather grows in our minds, in a sense becoming more unfamiliar and unreachable the more we come in contact with it. This concept is the basis of the continual understanding of the sublime, surviving even as the world has changed dramatically.

In 1996, David E. Nye expressed this same concept in his book American Technological Sublime: "Even an innocent observer can only be certain of an object’s sublimity by continually reexperiencing it to see if it gains rather than loses force through deeper acquaintance." Nye relates this to modern technology and the preconceptions that come along with it. Today it is unlikely that anyone will come upon a natural object without any previous exposure, through photographs, descriptions and even video found in print media or on the internet. This brings up some question of whether the natural sublime, that overpowering and all-consuming sense of wonder found by Percy Shelley in Mont Blanc (as quoted above), can truly be found in today's world. Nye argues that, despite the thorough understanding and continual representations of nature that we find in the modern media, "the sublime object cannot be extirpated by expectations" (Nye, p. 15). He gives the example of the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in 1980. This event was heavily publicized before, during, and after the actual eruption, and thousands of photos and videos were taken. Yet none of these could capture the true greatness of the event: "the witnesses to the eruption had an experience that was not only visual but also visceral. The ground shook. Lightning flashed out of the spreading cloud. There was thunder, and a sulfuric odor" (Nye). The sublime was not found in the human representations and recordings of the event, but in the actual thing, with all the elements coming together into one grand and all-powerful experience. No matter how many images and explanations of this eruption a person sees, unless they were actually there when it happened, they have not had an equally sublime experience.

With this in mind, we see how the Romantic, natural sublime retains its prevalence and power even in today's increasingly technologically advanced society. No matter how hard we try to replicate nature's grandness through photography and video, the kind of overpowering awe experienced by Percy Shelley at Mont Blanc can still only be experienced by visiting the mountain itself. This is not to say that new media cannot produce its own brand of the sublime - in fact this will be the topic of my next post, which will explore the new sublime made possible to us through modern technology.

Definitions and Connections

2010-05-26T13:08:00.001-06:00

I've been looking at The Victorian Web and what it has to say about the sublime and have found some great Romantic definitions that fit well into our technological age. One focus was on size: things which are sublime - mountains, waterfalls, landscapes - dwarf human beings. Walter Hipple said in "An Essay on Taste" (1780): "objects are sublime, which possess quantity, or amplitude. . . . When a large object is presented, the mind expands itself to the extent of that object, and is filled with one grand sensation, which totally possessing it, composes it into a solemn sedateness and strikes it with deep silent wonder and admiration."
On the same lines, Joseph Addison, in Spectator 412 (1712), wrote: "our imagination loves to be filled with an object, or to grasp at anything that is too big for its capacity. We are flung into a pleasing astonishment at such unbounded views, and feel a delightful stillness and amazement in the soul at the apprehension of them.

I'm sure you can see the connections to the internet here. The internet is immensely, incomprehensibly large - there are millions of websites on every imaginable topic, and limitless possibilities for the future. Its size and power truly dwarfs humans in comparison, as does much of our technology today--computers and machines can do many things that we alone can't, and other things that we can at much higher speeds. George P. Landow said on Victorian Web that "by the twentieth century, one observes authors creating a technological sublime in which the power of human creations-- moon rockets, atomic weapons, skyscrapers, and gigantic, mile-long trains -- produce the same effect as the Grand Canyon, Mont Blanc, and the infinite reaches of space." We have collectively created a technological sublime so great that it may have surpassed any natural sublime. And the really unique thing is that all of us are a part of it: our blogs, facebook pages, videos, posts, comments, pictures, bookmarks, and anything else we do on the web contributes to this great interconnecting network of information and collaboration. How's that for a sublime concept?!

Wickman's sublime

2010-05-24T13:54:00.000-06:00

I'm going on a bit of a tangent ramble today, but I was looking back on my notes from English 292 when we were studying The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the sublime and I noticed some interesting ideas I took from Professor Wickman. He'd said that the sublime in this poem represented a failure to achieve feelings of gentleness and happiness or a sense of order; instead, it's an overwhelming, overpowering, and terrifying feeling/force. He compared the sublime to the French Revolution: out of control and impossible to contain. The only way to find some kind of relief from the terror of the sublime, according to Coleridge (according to Wickman), was to put it into some literary form, which the Mariner in the poem did by telling his tale - an oral literature. This kind of overpowering, uncontainable sublime seems like something you really can't find in normal settings. I certainly haven't felt that way when looking at YouTube videos or Flickr photos. I think this would be more that weird feeling you get when you try to comprehend eternity, or maybe when you look at the stars when it's really dark and keep seeing smaller ones in all of the dark spaces until they all start to blur together (I guess that connects to the idea of infinity). Is there anything in that that applies to the digital age?

I was also reminded how the Romantic period, which the idea of the sublime was a result of, was largely a reaction against industrialization and the role of the machine in removing man from nature and 'self'. In a sense I think the sublime is a way to transcend the things of the world and find greater things - even if we can't necessarily comprehend them. If this is the case, is there a sublime that transcends even the power of the Internet? And if the Internet in itself is sublime, what dilemma does that present for the Romantic meaning and use of the sublime?

Literature on the Digital Sublime

2010-05-21T12:52:00.000-06:00

I've been trying to see if anyone else has already written about the effects of the digital age on our perception of the sublime, or the sublime found in the realms of the new media. One book that looks really promising is The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power and Cyberspace by Vincent Mosco. I haven't found an actual copy of the book yet, but reviews and summaries explain that it talks about the ability the computer gives us to transcend time, space, and politics. Mosco explores how with the computer, we can transcend time, space, and politics-as-usual. The "myth" in the title is the belief that we've developed that cyberspace can "lift us out of the banality of everyday life into the possibility of the sublime" (http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10067). This sounds like it could be really interesting, so I'm hoping to get a copy of the book (maybe the BYU library has it?) to look into his ideas more.

I also need to find some literature either on the sublime or invoking the sublime, probably from the Romantic Period, so that I can compare it to the ideas I'm developing about the sublime today. I could use The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge or The Adventures of Basil Lee by James Hogg, which I focused my last essay on. I was also considering Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) or Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey. Any other ideas?

The Point

2010-05-19T14:14:00.000-06:00

In this blog I'm going to talk about my writing processes, and hopefully be able to get some helpful feedback that will help me improve my papers. I'm currently exploring how the new digital focus of our society affects our understanding of the sublime. The internet is a huge part of our world today, and gives us instant access to limitless information, images and videos. The incredible potential of the internet and other technologies can in itself produce a feeling of the sublime, since we can find and do so much more than we ever could before, and a single person will never be able to utilize the full potential of these technologies. And yet this wealth of knowledge can also detract from the romantic use of the sublime in relation to nature. In romantic literature a sense of sublimity was created because of the incomprehensible greatness of the natural world. Can that same sense be found now, when we know how natural processes work and in many ways have gained some control over them? Also, since amazing things can be found daily on YouTube, are we becoming desensitized to them, so that we no longer reach that intense feeling of awe that could once be found in nature?