Cape Town Reflections

Cape Town, South Africa June 1^st, 2011. Final Thoughts from the Cape

After a long, exhausting night, which started off like any other amongst new friends, a warm fire, and a great meal here in Cape Town, things took a drastic turn, a turn unforeseen, as a new, close friend received some terrible family news. All we could do was be here for her, to fill the space of unfamiliar openness so quickly opened by familiarity, with hugs, comfort; again and again, the universal theme of the Dharma comes into mind when these life situations inevitably arise; the themes I have studied in texts, the themes philosophically analyzed in the abstract, running into the reality of existence; the theme of the truth of suffering, of birth, of old age, of sickness, and of death; the theme of the impermanence of all things, the illusions of stability and solidity in a universe where there is simply nothing to hold on to that will not change, that is not changing, that is not decaying and hurtling towards eventual demise; and this is not meant in a macabre context, but rather as an inspiration to act, an inspiration to learn, an inspire to understand the truth of this human life. Wise Zen masters ask, “The days and nights are relentlessly passing, how well are you spending your time?” How well are we spending our time, understanding both the preciousness and frailty of this human condition, the truth of cause and effect, and the opportunity for freedom? Are we working to benefit others, to open our hearts, to seek truth and progress? Every experience is meant to gain knowledge, to gain understanding, to progress, to contemplate, to discover these truths in the context of our own lives.

And thus, my time here in Cape Town winds down to an end; and yet, also a beginning; the winding path of life, of connections and of disappearances; of great new friends made who will be seen again down the line, when , I do not know, but this is not important; the reality of connection is what matters.

Cape Town, the beautiful city by the sea, framed by the mist-shrouded majestic crags of Table Mountain, a city of color and of brutality, of starkly contrasting manners of life, of gates and security warnings and warmth and vibrancy; a city that was not expected but that opened its arms for me over the last two weeks; and as I prepare to depart, to board the train tomorrow morning for a long journey through the South African heartland to Johannesburg, and on to Maputo, Mozambique, a journey that will be both long and hard and eye-opening and rich and rewarding, a microcosm of the realities of this beautiful life of travel, I thank the good grace that brought me to this edge, this tip of a vast continent. And I look forward to this upcoming journey, its challenge, the time for reflection, the boredom, the discomfort, the realities of life in the developing world, the strangeness, the dust and dirt, all of it, all of this life, here, now.

South Africa Journal, Take Three: Rocklands and Pics!

May 26, 2011. DeParkuys Camp, Rocklands, South Africa

Sitting on the concrete edge of an unfinished structure in the middle of the bush camp,

the sun's rays rose over the eastern, rocky hillside about an hour ago to greet my chilled, down-clad body. Closing my eyes and listening to the delicate birdsong, the beautiful dance of nature, play out for my silenced ears. The quiet and calmness of this place is stunning. The complete peace, utterly unsoiled, constantly awaits if one can take the time to stop, to put down the mental mechanizations and gymnastics, and simply listen. It does not need to be sought out; rather, its pervasiveness surmounts the small echoes of noise. Sitting here in the sun, assessing the damage to my body from yesterday's climbing session; a stiff neck, also the result of my tent's cramped interior, two ripped knuckles, and a hole through the armpit of two shirts, the result of falling from an 18foot highball bouldering problem, nearly missing the pads, and almost being impaled on a sharp, 2 inch thick tree branch which almost sent me straight to the emergency room of the Clanwilliam Regional Hospital, not a relished thought by a long-shot. The perils of a perilous sport; I did manage to climb two beautiful lines that called to me in their beauty, their sculpted holds requiring both balance and strength, a true test of both the physical and mental barriers. A gorgeous day spent in the vast boulderfields of the Rocklands, a magnificent landscape whose beauty ranks quite high in my personal story; the light and shadows writing beautiful scripts at each moment on the streaked black and orange boulders and cliff bands; a remarkable area to be cherished and remembered. And today, more of the same, a solo pilgrimage to hunt out beautiful climbing lines, the calm, the stillness when you stop walking on the dusty trail, quiet the mind, and just listen.

South Africa Journal, Take Two: Rocklands!!

May 19^th, 2011, Rocklands, South Africa

What a day....reflecting as I lie here, cocooned in my tiny tent, robed in longjohns and down jacket against the frigid night sky; Driving well over the speed limit in Tristin's small Audi, blazing through the South African countryside, the golden hues blazing on the peaks of the Cedarbergs; stopping for groceries in the small rural town of Clanwilliam, the day laborers all laboriously spending their wages on drink, crowded around the front of the local SPAR Market; arriving in the dark of night, stories having been told over the blur of the traffic lines, the glare of the semi-trucks heading north to Namibia and south back to the Cape; setting up tents in the sand by headtorch, happily cocooned after an epic day in South Africa, a stranger alone in the company of strangers, now friends, a lone traveler on this far out road of life....

May 20^th, Rocklands, South Africa

Just in from an evening spent around the campfire, good people, stories, laughs, the stars thundering from overhead in all their singular brilliance, this magical place perched on the edge of the world, balanced, as we all are, so perilously. Walking back into camp today after a great climbing session with some new South African friends, I was enveloped by the absolute peace of this place, the silence startled me; the best day yet in this new country...and many more to come...

South Africa Journals Take One: Cape Town

Cape Town 17^th May

The sounds of pop music blares from the bar's speakers downstairs, yet my small dorm room remains still, with only the bed I lie upon and a crazy old American (who would have thought??) from Louisiana the humble inhabitants on another night on the tip of the vast African continent. I dont think that the size really got to me until after arriving here on African soil; from far away, everything shrinks in size, becomes more accessible when being accessed through the fingertips on a foreign keyboard; sitting here now, pondering life, the journey has suddenly grown huge, daunting even; I try to keep my wits about me, to stick to my guns, to not be afraid of the unknown, despite my senses screaming “you're fucking insane!!” Its been a long day of walking, of adjusting, of pondering; up and down the hills of color, the labrynth of the City Bowl, downtown, the waterfront, peering back at Table Mountain, its rugged splendor, jagged rocks calling me to climb. I hitched a ride this morning with Jeff, who tracked me as I came through customs at the airport; normally on guard, I was disarmed by his easy candor and lack of bullshit; his client who was to be on the same flight pulled a no-show, and I gave him little more than gas money to take me back into town in his tiny red hatchback, telling him how I managed to get through immigration with no return ticket (make up a believable story and deadpan it to the immigration manager who pulls you out of line and grills you for 10 minutes, and ALWAYS be polite...sir goes a long way, all over the world; though for a few minutes I didnt think id be seeing more than the immigration lounge of South Africa's nicest airport-mental note-check immigration requirements MORE CLOSELY next time!). Jeff also informed me that tomorrow is the national election, of which I had no idea; it is almost certain that Jacob Zuma and the ruling ANC will be reelected, but there is growing discontent with his rule and his lack of delivery on so many promises in this “Rainbow Nation.” Of the rainbow, Jeff informed me that Cape Town is very much a “white run city” and thus, not subject to the copious issues of the other major cities if South Africa; even in its innocence, this comment did open my jet-lagged eyes to the truth of life here. Tomorrow, to figure out how to get to the Rocklands, do a bit of gym climbing at City Rock and try to meet some people to hitch up to the mountains with, or arrange a rental car to go it alone (though the costs of everything here are very high, completely even with NYC prices, the food is quite shit and the public transit is sorely lacking, three huge caveats for a poor traveler such as myself which will surely limit my ultimate amount of time here in South Africa). It amazes me how poorer South Africans can survive with the prices as high as they are-I am finding it a very tough adjustment coming from New York City, not the cheapest of places....

Dubai 17.May.2011. Perpetual Motion

Dubai 17-May-2011: Perpetual Motion

The bright fluorescent lights framing brighter display cases, emblazoned with the wares of the West, sparkling marble floors and enormous canopied windows; none of this has changed since my last visit to this Mecca of Consumption, this Medina of Capitalism, a brush stroke of Western corporate imperialism painted across the bleak desert sands of the Persian Gulf. The mini-constellation that is Dubai, this strange place that I seem to be passing through more and more as the years progress. And, entwined into the perpetual motion that has been my crazed life, this strange place has become a strange bedrock, a strange bedfellow on routes to and from the developing world; a final outpost of home, its familiarity bred through the slogans of our Starbucks and Costa Coffee bars, our Burger Kings and Givenchy and Christian Dior and Rolex; a weigh-station, transiting through this very terminal on my last birthday from Africa to Asia, a chance to binge for a few hours on the comforts of home without having to actually be home. Maybe this is why so many come here to live, work, and settle. For me, this harsh land with its cursory smattering of modernity, this brash bastion of the West, this temple of money would never faintly considered as a final resting point; however, right now, the warm cup of Starbucks sitting in front of me holds my hand as I journey back to Africa, back to the unknown, back to the unfamiliar, once again.

I have promised myself that I would keep better track of this trip I am embarking on; this efforts have trailed off in my travels to date, but I will be making a more honest effort this time, as a personal record, as a reflection that I realized has been missing after so many long journeys home. Gate number 121, Emirates Dubai to Cape Town will open in a few hours, just enough time to catch up on some correspondence and to wander the gilded hallways a few more times, to soak in this strange atmosphere that is most certainly ephemeral in these circumstances of my life. Now, the calling of gate numbers in Arabic, the language that practically nobody here speaks (as all of the workers are Asian in Dubai, almost 90%) continues and I sit and watch life pass by from over my glowing screen...

Next stop: Cape Town, South Africa, and the beginning of a grand new adventure.

Cancer and Capricorn

As I prepare to reenter the cacophonous  riot that is Africa, I find myself scouring the resources available, the words that have been written describing these indescribable lands, the words of Rimbaud, Greene, Naipaul, Meredith, and so many others who have had the courage to journey, to describe, to entreat all others to their inner madnesses. And one of the best of modern times is Paul Salopek, the Pullitzer Prize winning journalist for the Chicago Tribune, master of prose, dancer of words and worlds....

From writer and journalist Paul Salopek's collection, entitled The Twenty-third Parallel

The twenty-third parallels north and south—what map makers call the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn—girdle the Earth roughly three thousand miles apart, bracketing the warm belly of the planet. They hold between them some of the poorest, least stable and most culturally diverse nations in the world.

The bulk of humanity lives in or near this immense subtropical belt—about two-thirds of the world’s six billion people. It is a place of numberless villages and exploding mega-cities. It is the source of the greatest human migrations in history. Its face is younger. Its colors are brighter. Its sky is a paler blue. By sheer weight of numbers alone, it is where our common future is being scripted.

Africa 2011. The Plan

Ticket to Cape Town, May 15th, via Dubai, purchased. Its only been 3 weeks since I last passed through the United Arab Emirates on my way to the States from Nepal, and yet, it beckons once again. This time as a quick stopover for another 9 hour flight south, way south, to the southern tip of the African continent. I was in Africa last summer, when I visited Kenya and Tanzania; I remember the late night departure from Dar Es Salaam International Airport, eating a last African meal at the small roadside grill across the darkened road from the airport, drinking a final cold Tusker beer, assured that I would return. And return I will...for yet another "trip of a lifetime." How I've managed so many of these in my years I cannot understand, yet they continue to unfold, and I continue to unfold with them.
My goal: To be way more active updating this site during my travels, as I have always tended to trail off during my various adventures around the world. I want this site to be a true travel blog for the next 4 months of adventure.

The Plan: Cape Town to Cairo, or as far north as I can feasibly get in three months of overland, local transport travel through East/Central Africa. South Africa>Mozambique>Tanzania>Rwanda>Uganda>Kenya>South Sudan>Sudan>Egypt.....visiting some great local Educational NGO's to do field work for my next masters degree starting in September at The London School of Economics. Anything NGO/Education Development will be written about and posted at my sister site, www.theschoolsproject.org.  This blog will be just for the nuts and bolts of travel, the hardships, the glories, and everything in between as I take on the mother of all overland adventures.....
Now: wrapping up loose ends, planning, scouring the internet for information, reading as many African books as I can get my hands on (which means re-reading many, as I've already devoured most of them over the years), buying some gear, mainly for camping along the way, and dropping in and visiting some friends here in my hometown of NYC.

leaving nepal.

isn't it all just as a dream?
nothing starts, nothing finishes, just a continual journey, a continual flow of experience, arising and passing, the screen of consciousness.
I have grown non-sentimental over these years; walking out of Boudha, my back to the giant stupa whose gaze has accompanied me for so many months, for so many nights, its eyes welcoming me home after so many journeys, a simple smile, a simple acknowledgment of time spent, of moving forward on this perpetual journey that life has been, the cumulative experience, the perspectives gained, the whole greater than the sum, lost, seized upon, abandoned.
as the plane lifted off the tarmac in Kathmandu, the haze parted with the recent unseasonable rains, and the ancient city shone below the tips of the white wings, its decrepit and ramshackle glory, the huge village sprawl, the dusty brown facades, life continuing apace from this downward gaze, i recognize this fascinating home now from space, and smile, the perpetual journey swallowing the moment, and pushing further forward, into the unknown, the future.

perspectives

"The cumulative experience of seeing the world from many vantage points has helped me to appreciate the real circumstances of our planet-the causes of poverty, the role of rich-country policies, and the possibilities for the future. Gaining a proper perspective on these issues has been my struggle and challenge for the decades. Nothing else in my intellectual life and political engagement has been as rewarding."

-Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty

Kinshasa Symphony

This looks to be a wonderful film coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a rare bright shining light in a place so often portrayed by darkness, both real and imagined, but the foreign press....