Anne R Lewis in Cape Town

Four months ago, when I was procrastinating the packing process for my semester abroad, I never dreamed my Cape Town adventure would be so full of cheesecake. I spent the holiday of Shavuot in an area called Sea Point, sandwiched, as many things are in this place, between mountain and ocean. Most of Cape Town’s Jews stay in Sea Point. I don’t know if it was because of the people walking around with kippot or the hills speckled with lights, but there were moments I felt like I was in Jerusalem. I stayed with a family called the Orelowitz’s. The mother, Sandy, is originally from Canada. The father, Jerry, is a Judaic Studies teacher at Herzelia, Cape Town’s Jewish High School. Sandy and Jerry have a son Daniel, who is exactly my age. Go libras! They also have a daughter Debbie, who is in Grade 11. They live in a flat a few blocks from the Arthur’s Road Synagogue, which boasts the city’s most extensive “brachas” (or post-service snack-fests).

The synagogue had a range of programming for Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates, commemorates and re-enacts the events at Mount Sinai, when Moses received the Torah. It is traditional for people to stay up all night studying words of and about Torah. The synagogue had a session called “The Community Speaks” in which different members of the congregation, of all ages and genders gave some thoughts on text. There was also a “Great, Late Debate” at midnight, on the topic of AIDS prevention and Jewish law, which evolved into bantering about whether or not Herzeliah should have condom dispensers for its students, for the sake of saving lives.

The observance of Shavuot can be a nightmare for the lactose intolerant and the vegans among us, as it is traditional to consume copious amounts of dairy products. The synagogue had a pancakes and waffles and ice cream and create-your-own-cheesecake session for all the children, which included any one under the age of 96. There was a community theatre piece about passing the Torah on to “the next generation”, led by one of the Rabbis in Moses garb. There was a hearty lunch for the B’nei Akivah kids, the Orthodox youth group. Turns out the advisor, Saul, was a counselor at Camp Morasha a few summers ago, just a few miles down the road from my beloved Camp Ramah. Perhaps we waited on line together to watch the pig races at the Wayne County fair.

The congregation was incredibly welcoming. Though I feel strongly about egalitarian practice in Judaism, I was able to enjoy the rich voices of the laymen leading the services. The synagogue was set up Sephardic style, with the main events happening in the middle, on the men’s side, but at least the mehitzah (the curtain separating men and women) was a translucent white, mesh.

The second night, I slept soundly. I dreamt I tried to get on a train home and all I had in my pocket were rand, no American dollars or cents. After the holiday ended, I got a ride to Camps Bay, the next town over, for a women’s study session of The Book of Ruth, in honor of Shavuot. There were about 16 varieties of cheesecake. I spent a long time talking to a woman named Zmirah about the politics of Jewish and feminist identities in South Africa. We talked about how fundamentalism chokes creativity. And I emerged with a rejuvenated respect for the conservative movement and its commitment to grappling with tradition and change. Still, it’s amazing to note the number of cultural commonalities across continents and denominations, such as buffet line etiquette (or lack thereof). I am very grateful for the hospitality, hugs and cheesecake I received over the past few days.

Viva 2010!

It was a little before one in the afternoon on Sunday. I heard cheering and hooting (which is car honking here) and hollering and singing outside. I live right across the street from a huge res called Tugwell which consists of two twelve-story peach-colored cylindrical structures known affectionately by students as the "tampon towers". I thought maybe there was another rugby game going on. The weekend before, Tugwell was the debaucherous departure site for busses to the inter-varsity rugby game between the U.C.T. ikeys(blue tigers) and the University of Stellenbosch Maties (maybe birds, spoons, shoelaces, I forget). For the first time in fifteen years, U.C.T. was victorious.

It turns out that Sunday's noise was the spontaneous celebration of South Africa having won the bid for the 2010 World Cup. Announcements were made on the library loudspeakers and the mood was one of revelry. People classified as all different things under apartheid are all thrilled at the prospects for South Africa between now and 2010. The event will do great things for the economy, for foreign investment and the creation of jobs. It is a matter of collective national pride for a country with a close past of division and a lot of fences still standing. I plan to be here for the festivities and would be honored to have all of you join me.

A precautionary note: For those of you expecting to read the purposeful,
poetic prose of Ms. Anne Lewis, I must explain that I am not she. I am known
as Jon to many, Adler to others, Jon Adler to Annie's mom, and boyfriend to
Annie. I have very recently returned from an eight day trip to the Republic
of South Africa (and 2 two day trips to get there and back) to visit Annie
and as such have been accorded the privilege of penning a "Guest Blog." So
enjoy...

Something about the squirrels in South Africa is... off. On my first day in
sunny Cape Town, Annie led me to a landscaped park-like path in the middle
of the city, lined with museums and historical buildings. While walking upon
this path, a squirrel meandered across our path, barely paying us any notice
despite our footsteps mere centimeters away. Don't squirrels run from people
in the US?

But it's not just the squirrels; there were countless little things that I
observed during my trip that constantly reminded me that I wasn't meandering
down the streets of Anytown, USA. They have 7-11 in South Africa, but it's
not the 7-11 that I know and love. The logo is different. The stores are
actually open from seven 'til eleven. Bakeries are present, Slurpees
(regrettably) are not. In South Africa, Diet Coke is called Coke Lite. No
one's ever heard of a Grande Non-fat White Mocha Latte. Or a granola bar. Or
black beans. Passionfruit is called grenadilla and blueberries are called
bulgarians. You can buy milk in a bag, but if you want a bag for your
groceries, it costs around nineteen cents.

There are other, much more important things that I noticed. Table mountain,
Lion's Head, and the Twelve Apostles cut a mountainous hole in the middle of
the donut that is Cape Town, making travel across town more than a little
challenging. From long distances and wide angles, these mountains provide
the natural beauty for which Cape Town is world renowned. Upon closer
inspection, however, there is much about Cape Town that is far from
beautiful. Ride or drive through many areas in town and you'll notice
buildings that are crumbling after years (decades?) of apparent neglect.
Drive a little bit further out of town (maybe 2-3 miles) and you'll start to
see thousands of shacks on either side of the highway, hastily constructed
out of wooden planks, fallen street signs, and any other refuse that help
keep the roofs attached to the walls. Millions of people live in these
townships all over South Africa, with a standard of living that is
unimaginable by most American standards. I never even entered a township in
the time I spent in South Africa, and I was still tremendously affected.
It's a situation that one can't really wrap their mind around unless they
see for themselves.

Because of the over-forty percent unemployment rate and the fact that nearly
fifty percent of the population lives below the poverty line, one has to be
very careful when traveling through Cape Town for fear of pickpockets and
muggers, especially after dark. Thankfully nothing happened while I visited
(and nothing has happened to Annie in the time that she's been there. I
promise), most likely because my imposing physique kept potential evil-doers
at bay. But if I may return to reality for a moment... Compared to my abroad
experience in Sydney Australia during which I intentionally walked down
dimly lit alleys to remind myself of more dangerous American cities, Cape
Town was a bit of a shock.

The weather was really just lovely. Annie explained to me that she implored
Mother Nature to provide good weather during my visit, and I think there
were four hours during the entire trip that the weather was not perfect.
Annie, I thank you and the region thanks you for the week plus of
outstanding weather. The warm, sunny days made our travel plans extremely
successful. We rented a car (they drive on the other side of the road in
South Africa. Yes, I drove. Ask Annie and she will tell you that she only
feared for her life for about 3% of the driving time) and drove 6 hours
eastward across the southern coast of South Africa, along a road called the
Garden Route. We stopped several times along the way, notably spending 10
minutes at an aloe farm where we learned from a very enthusiastic
salesperson that aloe cures everything and that our lives would be greatly
improved if we purchased some aloe based products. We tried aloe tea. It
tasted like lake. At the end of the day, we ended up in a town called
Plettenberg Bay. At Plet, we ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant where our
entrees tasted like eggplant parm and chinese food. Weird. That night, we
saw a full lunar eclipse on a beach that was a couple of miles from town.
Some of the best stars I've ever seen, let me tell you.

Over the next days we hiked on a peninsula in Plet, went abseiling
(rappelling. Climbing down mountains on strong ropes) in a nearby town
called Knysna, played at the beach in a town called Wilderness, and visited
an Ostrich farm at the ostrich capital of the world, Oudtshorn. Annie rode
around on an ostrich for about seven seconds. I just sat on one. Before
people climb aboard these fierce birds, the trainers put a bag over their heads (over the ostriches heads. Come on, it would be really strange if the trainers put bags over their own heads. I hate parallel
construction), to "calm them down." I don't know about you, but if someone
stuck a bag tightly over my head, the last thing I'd do is instantly mellow
out. But for ostriches, it seems to work.

There are so many other stories and amazing things that I saw and
experienced during my trip, but I feel that my somewhat rambling narrative
has already grown rather verbose. In case you're wondering, Annie is having
the time of her life and she's getting so much out of her experience. She's
met some fabulous new people, and despite the fact that her room is
sandwiched between the kitchen and the bathroom, her house is great. She
sends her love across the Atlantic, and strongly suggests that all of you
come to visit her immediately. There's no need to call or anything, just
show up. I'm serious.

And one more thing: I spent more time than I'd like to admit searching South
Africa for Milo in ice cream form. If you know where I can find this
fabulous product, please let me know. Thanks

“Some three thousand poems disguised as people on an almost-too-perfect-day” – Ani DiFranco

I was listening to this song “Self Evident” last night, trying to write a paper on attitudes toward skin color in antiquity, only the third paper I’ve written all semester. Ani was spilling and spilling about the Trade Center and America in and out of the world, and then today I clicked my way to the New York Times online only to find that Bush and Cheney sealed off their questioning session by the 9/11 commission from the media and the public, sealed it tight as a canister of anthrax. In another one of my lectures, we’re talking all about South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the months of PUBLIC hearings meant to jumpstart a democratic discourse, to doctor some of the gaping wounds of the past. And in my class on Language Policy, my professor told me how U.C.T. had a banned reading room during Apartheid. If you wanted access to Marxist materials, you had to sign your name and exactly what works you were leafing through. And under America’s Patriot Act, if I’m not mistaken, the government has access to library records, without explicitly saying what they don’t want people reading in the name of justice.

Last weekend I went to Lesotho. It was an adventure in various methods of public transportation. We spent the nights going there and home on a Greyhound, drinking tea and staring at movie screens bouncing back and forth with the bus. We saw the sunrise in Blomfontein on the way there, and played pool at the man-made waterfront of the land-locked city, S. Africa’s judicial capitol, on the way home. We waited for a mini bus taxi to fill up with people, three hours waiting, on the way there, to get to the border, and then the five of us made the perfect sum to send the mini bus taxi back to Blomfontein, on the way home.

We were enveloped in bustle in Maseru, Lesotho’s capitol, both ways, women with bowls of bread on their head, blackened corn rotating on metal pans, neon colored juices in dented plastic bottles, sacs of muffins cooling and clumped. Motion like embroidery everywhere, colors moving in and out in space, knotted.

We took another bus through winding roads up to Malealea, a village polka dotted into hills. All along the way, people got off the bus with crates of eggs, body-bag sized containers of snacks to stock stores. We got off at the Malealea Lodge, the white-owned resort center evolved from a store at the corner of the village. Our room had a thatched roof and a couple candles to use when the power shut off, cause it did, every night at ten. And we could look up from outside and feel like we were inside of a giant salt-shaker, speckles of light coming through the dome above. Guides from the village led us on hikes, one to a waterfall, another to a gorge and a woman holding a baby invited us in to her mud hut, not all five at once. The Lodge creates jobs, but it doesn’t. That’s what Zachary said. There are A guides and B guides and they alternate weeks and sometimes they spend the money for alcohol and dajja and fights break out. And half a dozen kids who come up to your waist come up to you and escort you to the Village craft shop for coins. A boy told me his English name was Alex. I asked for a Sesotho name. I got Liduma. I think it means “sound”, like something you hear, or maybe as a prefix for asleep.

“What’s that music?” we ask as we walk. “It’s the cows”. Lesotho was my first exposure to rural South Africa. “Lesotho is a very poor country,” Joseph told us as we climbed into a valley. He’s fifteen and wants to be a lawyer. The poverty there is different from Kayelitsha, where less than a kilometer away people swing golf clubs that cost more than school fees parents can’t afford. Lesotho is smaller than New Jersey, totally surrounded by South Africa, and has more people than Namibia, but not so many more. The women carry bundles of wood on their heads in Malealea, up dirt paths, past sheep and goats and cows whose bells play symphonies.

At the lodge we meet a group of retreating lawyers and real estate agents from Jo’burg, who insist we eat their leftover stir-fry and an American/Canadian guy doing HIV/AIDS work all over Africa who buys us beer. A band and a choir from the village perform in the evenings. There is a metal box for tips. Coins clink like cow-bells. “We came to Africa to see Lesotho,” my friend joked. “We came to Lesotho to see Africa.”

I apologize for being out of the loop. It’s been a few weeks of readjusting to life in Cape Town, catching up with the books and wearing hoods under drizzly skies. There was last Saturday’s rafting trip down the Breede River and last Wednesday’s elections, marking ten years of democracy. The ANC (African National Congress) won 69% of the vote and Thabo Mbeki will serve another term as president. To prevent fraud, voters’ thumbnails were stained with deep purple ink. As the voter turnout was above 70%, there were lots of queues in front of town halls and lots of spotted thumbs.

On to Holiday in Namibia . . .expanse of desert, massive sand dunes in shades of iridescent terra cotta, soft as skin, sun exits and entrances vivid as ripe papaya. With a population of about 1.8 million, Namibia has two people per square kilometer. In 1989, it was the last African country to gain independence, having been occupied by Germany and Apartheid South Africa.

Kelly, Rachel, Krista, Sarah, Jared, Steve, Mitchell and I landed in Windhoek, picked up the keys to a Toyota and a Nissan, stocked up on rice and beans and flavored potato chips and headed north to Etosha National Park. As we pulled up to the gate, we saw a piece of rainbow arching into a yawning sky. A few kilometers down, we hit the breaks and the off-button on the stereo so a dozen zebras could cross the gravel road. We saw herds and herds of antelope and springbok heading somewhere, giraffes trotting across fields, water buffalo heavy on their hooves (I think buffalo have hooves). We spent two nights in the Etosha campsites of Namutoni and Okaukuejo, building fires, pitching tents and playing rummy. We braved a thunderstorm and our subsequently soaked sleeping bags. We waited under a thatched roof with a view of a waterhole, keeping our eyes peeled for elephants and lions until our eyelids got too heavy. We heard a lion or two and plenty of safari goers in khaki pajamas snoring through tent walls.

Next stop was the coastal city of Swakopmund. After a day of scenic cruising past boulders and vast fields, we arrived at the “Alternative Space,” a bed and breakfast deemed an “experience”, decked in erotic artwork and scrap metal. Sybil and Frenus, German émigrés and avid art collectors, live on the premises with their two boys. They designed the outdoor showers amidst vines and hibiscus flowers, and the igloo-shaped rooms overlooking the dunes. They gave us the number for Raymond, a sandboarding instructor who once starred in a Seal music video. He took us out to the dunes for a day of boarding/sledding on flannel-soft sand. The Space also boasted a fully equipped kitchen for guests, which we filled with ingredients for haroset, and soup greens as we prepped for a Passover Seder. Four of us were regular seder-goers and the other four were first timers. A yam on the seder plate was also a new addition, playing the role of the shank-bone/beet as they were out of stock at the Swakop Pick & Pay. We jabbered into the night about the Israeli Palestinian conflict and Iraq and how thankful we were to be in Namibia and South Africa and college and with each other. There was singing and camera flashes and a few tears.

More playing on massive dunes in Sossusvlei and Sesriem. We bumped into some other U.C.T. kids at our campsite and offered them hospitality in our tents as they had popped three tires that day and had to their names a mini tent that slept one, a can of green beans and a guitar. We ascended the slip-slope of Dune 45 for sunrise. Dune 45, not unlike Studio 54, okay not at all like Studio 54 is. . . a HUGE dune. “It’s gonna be hard to convince people that sand dunes can be so cool,” Jared remarked.

Final tourist destination was Ai-Ais hot springs, adjacent to Fish River Canyon, the second largest canyon in the world, after the Grand Canyon. It was still non-hiking season due to flooding, but the view into the winding arteries of the canyon at none other than sunset was spectacular. We camped at Ai-Ais for three nights, at the foot of charcoal mountains teeming with baboons and lined by a bronzed river. We were adopted by an Afrikaaner family on their annual vacation. They offered us plenty of wine and beer and toasties and commentary on American politics and hip hop.

Camping culture is intense. People bring collapsible living rooms and canvas armoires of silverware and four-bedroom tents. Some people pitch their tents on the roofs of S.U.V.S. and pull tables and chairs out of trailers. Many people snore. Most of the campsites we visited had pools and fire-pits, general stores and petrol stations, and some even had restaurants. Most of the vacationers were white and the employees, black. Apartheid’s legacy sits sturdy.

I was surprised by the smoothness of our trip. Well, the roads were bumpy, and we nearly lost a bumper on one of our cars. But to that I say, thank heavens for duct tape! I think I laughed for ten days straight. Our random group of eight had an incredible vibe. We spent our days playing musical car seats and jumping out of the car on empty straits of highway to frolic in the sand and throw around Gilbert, our beloved rugby ball. It was a revitalizing trip, shampooless as it was, and a transformative Passover spent in the desert.

Tomorrow at 4 o'clock (or 3:60), I'll take off for Windhoek, Namibia. When we land, seven friends and I will rent two cars with four wheels each and spend ten days travelling around the country. How many cylinders must each engine have so that we may pass go and collect 200 Namibian dollars?

Sorry, I miss math.

I'm done missing math.

Our gravel roadtrip will take us through game park and desert and dune. I have never been away from home for Passover before, and so I thought a lot about Bradford Lane this week, and family and friends and former goldfish. I will miss my mother's soup and mixed media frogs and my father's afikomen treasure hunt. However, I've packed a seder in a tote bag, and I'm sure there will be plenty of sandy hiding spots for the dessert matzah.

This Passover, so many pieces of the world are cracked like matzah. I have trouble saying Dayenu when there are not enough antiretrovirals or teachers or jobs and too many spiky fences and too many crumbling shacks. Too many big macs and burning bodies and not enough books. But I say dayenu because I've had enough, and I believe that there can be enough. That we need to wonder and wander and change, regime and mindset and course.

Dayenu.

Sending enormous hugs and wishing everyone meaningful holdiays. Talk to you soon.

"Here We Go Stormers!"
Rugby is a prime sport for those with ADD tendencies. One can spend the whole game trying to determine if it’s most like wrestling, football in either of its inceptions, cheerleading, or bullies chasing after a kid with fruits snacks and glasses on the playground. Saturday the Pretoria Bulls were that kid, and the Cape Town Stormers not only stole the fruit snacks, but gave a nasty wedgie, defeating the visiting team 25 to 11.

The Stormers’ stadium is in Newlands, a Southern Suburb of Cape Town, in walking distance from campus. I had a standing room ticket for the game and managed to catch most of the action, including the heckling and shirtless Pretoria fans with blue chests, the vendors with cardboard boxes full of koeksisters (holeless donuts rolled in coconut), and the score board that showed 4:00 minutes as 3:60.