Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

Our first full day in town, Katie, Margie Duncan and I went to the Botanical Gardens.  It was Christmas Day at Kirstenbosch, one of the largest and most diverse botanical gardens in the world, where some 4,000 people enjoy their annual Christmas picnic at the gardens.  The Gardens are so large they didn’t feel crowded.  It was so hot we dashed from one tree to the next to avoid the intense sunshine, but there were thousands of fascinating trees to hide under.

Founded in 1913 to preserve the area’s unique flora, Kirstenbosch was the only botanical gardens in the world dedicated to protecting indigenous flora, as the others focused on growing exotic species.

The plant life of this area is some of the richest in the world.  Some 10% of the world’s flowering species were found in one country: South Africa. A sign said that SA is the only country in the world with an entire plant kingdom inside its borders: the Cape Floristic Kingdom, which contains 8,600 species, 68% of them endemic (occurring nowhere else). The Cape Peninsula alone boasts more plant species than all of Great Britain.  A great many of the world’s most beloved flowers originated here, but how many people know that?

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Photos of Long Street, Cape Town

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Cape Town—the world’s prettiest city!

There is a bit of hyperbole in that, but I wanted to get your attention, because this city IS over-the-top in assets.  Turquoise water, sandy beaches, dramatic mountains, fine wine, a fantastic mix of world cultures, gorgeous gardens, 100s of ethnic restaurants, cheap prices, great hiking, easy driving, warm weather—what’s not to love?

The Cape is at 33° 55’ south latitude. According to my blow-up globe, it’s at the same latitude as Buenos Aires, Santiago Chile, & Sydney, Australia. In the north, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut are at this magical latitude.  In terms of average annual temperature, the city is slightly warmer than Barcelona and about the same as Rome & Naples. It is considerably warmer than San Francisco (66 v. 55 degrees). It actually gets more sun than most Mediterranean cities, including Athens and Madrid. This time of year the sun doesn’t set until almost 9 p.m. leaving plenty of time for fun.

We took 3 days to get there from Windhoek.  Here is a map with our route, which covered more than 10 °of latitude.

Cape Town is just north of the Cape of Good Hope, named by Vasco da Gama in 1497.  The Cape of Good Hope is on the tip of the red peninsula on the following map & Google Earth image. Note that it’s not actually the southern-most point in Africa.

Katie Dean drove down with me. She hails from Washington D.C. and is doing research on giraffes in Etosha National Park in Namibia.  We camped at Fish River Canyon our first night on the road.  The canyon is reportedly the second largest in the world and what we could see of it was certainly impressive.   The second night found us at Saldanha, a picturesque coastal town in southwest, just north of the city.  There we stayed at a B and B owned by a Belgian woman who had shipped all her family’s many antiques to her new guesthouse.  Her main building was like a museum and her garden blossomed with the famous succulent plants of South Africa and Namibia.

LONG STREET. We arrived in Cape Town on Christmas Eve.  I was worried about driving into a town of 5 million people, but it was easy.  The traffic was never bad in the area and drivers were remarkably polite.  We checked into the Cat and Moose Hostel and went for a walk on the famous Long Street.  Twenty-somethings rule here; tattoos, piercings, and tie-dyes are de rigueur.  It’s a cross between the old Haight-Ashbury and Bourbon Street.

We had dinner at one of the “Eastern Food Bizarres.”  Here you can choose from Turkish, Iranian, Indian, or Thai food.  Their vegetarian biryani is to die for and will set you back all of $2.50.  That night we found two of the Peace Corps volunteers from Namibia who had done most of the planning for our trip.  They were enjoying shots at a bar for just 10 rand each ($1.25).  I didn’t  join them.

In fact, that night, I didn’t think I could handle staying at the hostel with rowdy kids.  At least 20 Peace Corps volunteers from Namibia were going to join us over the course of the week, and I knew their primary desire was to “get hammered,” as they put it.  But that night I found a fellow my age from the Czech Republic at the hostel and we spent two hours talking about changes in Eastern Europe, Václav Havel’s life, WWII, etc. and that made me feel better. I knew there would be at least one other egg head at the hostel.

Later I ended up delighted with the clientele of the Cat & Moose Backpackers. I met young and old from Japan, China, Hungary, Congo, Zimbabwe, Australia, Argentina, Chile, Canada, Sweden, Holland, France, Germany, Seattle (is it a country?), and San Francisco. There was always someone interesting to talk to, great meals being cooked, and a friendly atmosphere. There were two retired professors from Rhode Island who had traveled around the world and taught  in India for two years.  I couldn’t help comparing it to a B & B where people typically hardly talk.  Standing in line to use the bathroom breaks down barriers.

One of the managers of the place was a sharp 25 year-old man from the Congo who was getting his degree in computer science. He was also about 6’2″ and gorgeous. Women would line up to flirt with him. Diana called him the finest dark chocolate.

I was told that famous people like George Clooney, Robin Williams and Prince Henry are often seen along the beach shown in the slideshow below, but I waited 15 minutes and didn’t see a single celeb.

I did have a long chat with a woman from Turkey who insisted that Istanbul is far prettier than Cape Town, so I’ll have to go to Istanbul next to compare the two!

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A day in my life in Windhoek

Several people have asked me about a “typical” day. However, until recently, I didn’t have much of a routine.  Lately that’s changed so I thought I’d give you a look at such a day.

I wake up somewhere between 6 and 9 (I’ve never been consistent about that). The sun rises a bit before 6 now and it’s still fairly light at 7:30 pm, but during the “winter” here it rose a little after 6 and set by 6, so we also have more light now that it’s summer. I didn’t expect to see much seasonal change in the amount of light at just 22 degrees south.

The alarm on my iPhone wakes me & I generally set 4 alarms on it to be sure that I get up.  For a few weeks I was teaching class at 7:30 am so on those days I would wake at 5:30.  I make organic green tea (they sell lots of organic items) first thing. I was always a coffee drinker, but here I’ve switched to tea and I have 3 cups every morning while I check email. Then I have a  breakfast of wheat flakes with dried fruit, delicious fat-free banana yogurt and skim milk.  I buy the milk in paper cartons that do not have to be refrigerated–how nice!  There is always a carton in the cupboard when I need one. Why don’t we sell milk that way?

Next I take a shower and get ready. I wear a cotton blouse and skirt every day–even weekends. They sell cotton skirts here for $20 US and blouses cost about $40 US and there are lots of colors & patterns to choose from. I always wear my Teva sandals as comfort comes first. I try to remember to apply sunscreen before I leave the flat. I always take a bottle of water to work with a few slices of lemon in it. The tap water is fine if you fill a bottle and put it in the fridge so the chlorine gas can escape.  I make a sandwich with their wonderful German hearty rye bread, throw in an apple, orange or carrot and that’s lunch. Lunch and my computer go into my LL Bean backpack that I’ve carried for 15 years.

Keys and locks are a big thing here: I’m carrying enough keys to break a toe if I should drop them!  First I unlock my wooden door and then the “jail door” made of metal bars. Then I reverse the process and lock both of them before setting off.  I walk down the 8 flights of stairs. This has completely CURED the pain in my right knee that constantly bothered me last year. If the elevator is working and I have a lot to carry, I sometimes take it back up, but generally I try to climb up even if the lift is working.

I put on a wide brim hat or take out my umbrella and sunglasses for the 1/2 block walk to my office, which is in the building called “Office Building” to distinguish it from the “Lecture Building” across the central square on campus. By 9 am it is HOT and the sun is so bright I can’t even look down at the brick walk without squinting.  I would like a beach umbrella for this walk!  By the time I get to the office, sweat will be pouring off my brow, burning my eyes.

I pass lots of strange trees that are always changing from no leaves at all last “winter,” to flowers, and now they have pods forming.  The young women put on a fashion show every morning. They look so nice in their casual/professional combination of jeans, unusual tops (rarely t-shirts), western dresses and skirts and a few traditional African dresses. Half of them are carrying umbrellas or wearing big floppy hats that are just adorable. Many of the native Namibians have the most beautiful complexions I’ve ever seen.

My office is about 2/3 the size of my office back home. It’s on the 3rd floor right next to the Tea Room. Tea is served at 10 am every day, meaning that someone boils water & there are tea bags, sugar and milk. Bring your own mug.  Most faculty try to stop by. I like all the faculty I’ve met here and they are so friendly it’s hard to believe they’re faculty. Haven’t met an arrogant one yet.  Everyone is particularly polite in the Tea Room. There are strong disagreements between people about curriculum & such, but in the Tea Room, all differences are set aside.  It’s a great idea to have a place where lots of people gather every day.  It’s a very civilized custom.

I have wireless internet, a printer and a scanner in my office plus a wonderful air conditioner!  It has a remote control and you just adjust the temperature to your liking and it works like magic. I don’t have air con in my flat, but since it’s on the 8th floor and there is a good breeze most of the time, windows on 3 sides, plus I have two fans, I don’t really need or want air con (not yet, anyway).  It’s been in the upper 90s every day lately, but the humidity is low. I know it could be much worse; I could have been in Boston last summer!

Tonight I left work at 6 after grading several exams and headed for the grocery store that closes at 7.  Here’s my thrill for the day: I turn on the Fairbanks radio station that comes through LIVE on my iPhone so I can hear Morning Edition. My son fixed my car radio so that the Bluetooth picks up whatever is playing on my iPhone and–this just blows my mind–I play the Fairbanks radio station live through my car radio here!  Love it.  Costs me a bit of money to listen to it, but it’s worth it now and then.

I buy iceberg lettuce because romaine is hard to find & in poor shape when I do find it. English cucumbers and red and yellow peppers are grown in hothouses just an hour north of here and they are wonderful. They also have a huge choice of olive oils (some grown here in Namibia) and balsamic vinegars and not a bad selection of cheeses. Wish they had parmesan & Asiago, but German cheeses are easy to find.  Occasionally I buy canned tuna or flank steak for a stir fry, frozen chicken breasts for chicken curry. They have a huge choice of pastas and rice and if you’re fond of fish, you should head to the fish market. Hake is a favorite, but they have several other wonderful white fish and Norwegian farmed salmon is sold everywhere.

After shopping I climb the stairs and tonight I made a salad for supper. I listened to CNN for a bit. I’ve never had cable TV in my life. Who would have guessed I would have it here?  I did some exercises, and read the 2nd draft of a student’s research paper. His topic is timely: is it more profitable to grow livestock or wildlife on a game ranch? Why not grow gemsbok instead of cattle in such a dry place?  Gemsbok can go for a month without water!

I washed a few items in the fancy computerized low water use washer that’s hooked by a hose to the kitchen sink and hung them out on my balcony to dry.  I LOVE hanging clothes out to dry. It’s one of those Zen activities.  They also have very clever clothes pins here that grip better than American ones.  You can hang out a towel dripping wet and it will be dry in one hour if there is a breeze!

After sunset, the air cools down and the evenings are beautiful.  Too bad it’s too dangerous to walk at night!  I pour a glass of wine and head for bed around 10.  I really like the South African wines sold here.  Lots to choose from, but in hot weather I prefer a Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc ice-cold.  I sleep in a queen size bed with two or three cotton top sheets instead of blankets, which are just too hot. I keep a humidifier right next to the bed, open the high windows that allow cross ventilation, and often turn on the fan. I usually read a bit or listen to an audiobook on my iPhone and call it a day.  I sleep well despite the trains and heavy traffic on the major highway just below my window.

Life is good.   I hope it is for you, too.

More adventures than time

I’m running behind in my posts as too much has been happening lately. I was very busy at the end of the semester grading and writing tests. Then “Dok,” the head of the dept, and I went to Gobabeb in the Namib desert to visit the Desert Research Station. They average just 25 millimeters of rain a year. Most of their moisture comes from fog and the plants & animals have remarkable ways of harvesting the fog. One beetle has bumps all over it’s back that catch the fog, then it stands on its head to let the drops run to its mouth. The Namib has dunes that can be 30 stories high, but the ones at Gobabeb are perhaps 10 stories. We visited a girl who is doing her internship there on a new species of sand lizard that is found only in a very small area. Its tail is bright orange and it’s body is tan. Namibia has dozens of endemic species with very small ranges that are vulnerable. Miya is documenting the extent of its range and types of habitat it’s found in. She’s an excellent student who seems cut out to do research. Two faculty visit each intern, grill them mercilessly on the ecology, climate, plants and animals of their area, then interview their supervisor for at least an hour. The student has to write a report on the research and give a presentation back at the Polytechnic. I enjoyed sitting at the top of a dune each evening to watch the sunset. The director of the Center is an American woman who became director in the early 1960s and has been here ever since. She grew up with Bill and Liz Berry in northern California before they moved to Fairbanks. Small world. She’s an unabashed liberal who follows American politics closely and who speaks out on environmental issues here in Namibia.
I’m writing this on my iPhone while waiting in a small town for Pat Holloway’s sister who is hitching a ride down from the north where she is a Peace Corps volunteer. Its starting to rain a bit. Only the 2nd rain I’ve seen since I arrives. We are headed to the coastal town of Swakopmund. They have lovely beaches but the temps are supposed to be in the mid-60s and the Atlantic is very cold there. But the cold water yields great seafood. It’s an old German town that apparently still feels very European.
Wednesday of this week was my birthday and I had a wonderful time. There was a big sign on my door when I got to work. I brought treats as the custom here is that the birthday person provides the treats. We have tea everyday at 10 that everyone shows up for even if they only have a few minutes. It’s a great tradition. I adore the faculty here. They are so friendly and accepting of a complete stranger. They go out of their way to make me feel comfortable. They are totally dedicated to Namibia’s environment; it’s not just an academic interest. And even though they don’t have much money, they manage to take the students on several 10 day field trips every year. Of course, they cook things like mutton knuckle stew and they sleep right on the ground without tents which saves money. I can’t imagine any of our faculty putting up with the hardships they happily endure. The faculty often don’t go to bed on those trips before midnight and they are up by 5:30 and seem to think nothing of it. I get so tired and filthy! How do they manage to look and act so fresh? That goes for the students also.
Pat’s sister is here so were off to the coast. More soon. Hope all is well with all of you.

Should residents be evicted to make way for a park?

I asked my students to list reasons for and against evicting residents to create a park. That is how America created its parks; John Muir could not tolerate the idea of “those filthy savages” living in “his” sacred Yosemite. It wasn’t until the Alaska Lands Act of 1980 that we tried not completely evicting people from new protected areas.  Parks around the world copied our model of evicting locals—places like the Serengeti where the Maasai were reduced to selling trinkets outside their sacred area and in India where desperately poor people were given the boot.

But England and Norway followed a different model.  Maybe we should call it the “please close the gate” model, where you are welcome to walk through the farms that comprise a national park, just remember to close the gate behind you.

The inspiring thing about Namibia is that it is building a third model–something new under the sun. My students here are amazed that people were ever evicted from protected areas. They have grown up knowing that conservation can actually be stronger when you enlist the help of the locals instead of throwing them out penniless and with no place to go.  And when you enlist the local people, as they have here, they stop poaching, they stop resenting the government, they start catching poachers, and they start benefitting when tourists come to see the wildlife on their well-managed lands.

So here are some of the reasons the students gave for NOT evicting local people from a new protected area:

• If you evict them, the local people will lose the land where their ancestors live.
• If they evict the local people, where will they go?
• The local people were living here for centuries and taking good care of it, otherwise you wouldn’t want to make it a park. You should ask for their help, not kick them out.
• The government should allow local people to have rights and benefit from the resources, then they will take good care and use them sustainably forever.
• You should involve the local people because they know the area better than anyone and they are best at catching the poachers.

That pretty much sums it up, in plain English (the best kind).

Text messaging, Namibian style

Here is a note from a student who went on our first excursion.  She is not in one of my classes and this is not a formal note.  If a student were in a class, I would want them to write more formally, but since she’s not, I just thought this was rather cute.  SMS will surely change the language, whether we like it or not, so here is a preview of how it will look in 10 years…

mrng mem its maggi how are u doing this mornig? hope all is well aaa jst wanted to ask you to please sent me the excurtion pictures pls mem thank you mem enjoy yo day maggie.