Of Falls and Forests

Writers are taught to shun hyperbole, clichés and worn-out aphorisms. Our current language usage has rendered impotent some important superlatives, like “awesome” and “amazing”. Too bad because Iguassu Falls is awesome and amazing. The outer limits of my writing talent are unfortunately revealing themselves today as I struggle for fresh words to tell you about this magnificent wonder of the world. I guess you’ll just have to trust me when I say that you should add it to your personal list of “100 Places to See before You Die”.

Our flight to Foz de Iguassu in southern Brazil was long but uneventful, which, given our travel karma, we have learned to celebrate. Forty students and adults comprised our companionable group, all of us looking forward to big doses of natural beauty, fun and relaxation. We were not disappointed. We explored the falls from both the Brazilian and the Argentinean sides via every conceivable mode of transportation including planes, trains, boats and trucks. Oh, and our feet. We tramped across metal catwalks hundreds of feet above the cascading water, getting up close and personal with the majesty and power of the falling, crystal river. Many of us added the adventures of rappelling, white water rafting, and canopy zip-lining on our free afternoon. Others used that time to swim, read, catch up on email or nap. SAS trips are notoriously overstuffed with activities and this schedule was a welcome change. We even began our days at the civilized hour of 9:00 am – imagine!

Our itinerary included a tour of the Itaipu Dam. Spanning the Parana River between Brazil and Paraguay, this efficient behemoth is the producer of the largest quantity of hydroelectric power in the world, although other structures are larger. It supplies Paraguay with 95% of its electricity. Because Paraguay owns half the river that forms its border with Brazil, it is entitled to half the energy produced by the power plant, which is actually more than it needs. The government of Paraguay worked out the arrangement so that Brazil put up all the construction money for the dam; Paraguay is slowly paying them back in excess electricity from its half. Sweet deal.

After months of intense global experiences, we all welcomed the refreshing and renewing change of pace of this trip. It was good to play tourist for awhile and just enjoy the sites. I got a reminder of my true identity as a traveler, however, during our trek by open truck through the subtropical rainforest. The young Argentinean woman who was our guide came up to me after the trip and asked the common question, “Where are you from?” I was careful to answer, “The United States”, not wanting to offend someone with equal claim to the title “American”.
“I saw you taking notes and I wondered,” she replied.
“Well, I’m a writer,” I said, “and I like to get things down on paper.”
She smiled and said, “It was so nice to see someone actually paying attention and caring enough about what I was saying to write it down.” I wish for this enthusiastic and knowledgeable young woman a future full of more travelers than tourists.

What I was writing was a note to myself about an image I wanted to share with you. Our guide explained the difference between a parasite, for example a strangler ficus vine, and an epiphyte, such as a philodendron. The former competes with the host plant, often eventually killing it. The epiphyte only needs the host plant for support, to get above the dark tangle of the jungle, up where there is light and nourishing oxygen. Both the host and the supported plant grow well in this healthy, symbiotic relationship. I immediately thought of the needs of the countries we have been visiting in the developing world. Citizens of the first world sometimes seem to feel threatened and dismayed by the vast and urgent needs of these emergent countries, when all they really need is some support – loans, technical assistance, professional exchanges. After centuries of colonialism and poverty, developing countries need help climbing out of their deficient conditions, a boost up into a fresh environment where they will then be able to nourish themselves. Together we will all be able to thrive.

South Africa's Flag

By carefully thought-out design, the flag of the new South Africa contains a complex array of brilliant colors around the shape of a Y. As it was explained to me, the Y represents the coming together of two separate histories and paths into one, unified, new nation. Many explanations have been offered for the choice of colors, proposing diverse correspondences with national values and symbols. Apparently, the original artist did not prescribe the meaning, leaving it open to individual interpretation. Taking up the challenge, I’d like to offer, with all respect to a potent national symbol, a very personal color key to my experience of South Africa.

RED:
Throughout the days before and after our time in South Africa, I have been wearing my beaded pin with the red AIDS ribbon paired with the South African flag. HIV/AIDS is certainly my first association when I think of this country, but that’s because it’s my new professional focus. I could share with you many ideas about the progress of the fight against the pandemic in this country but you’ve probably heard about as much on that subject as you’re interested in for now. I invite you to email me (marseawell@aol.com) and ask specific questions if you’d like; I would welcome the opportunity for some dialogue.
The overarching “redness” of South Africa is, for me, about pain, including the pain of real people systematically oppressed and injured by apartheid. A number of the experiences I had in Cape Town brought home to me the far-reaching and disastrous effects of this totalitarian policy but two stood out. In the first instance, some friends and I took a ferry to Robben Island, the site of the prison in which Nelson Mandela was held for 27 years. We were privileged to be escorted through the facility by a former prisoner. Unlike other guides I’ve heard stories about, ours was a reticent fellow, holding his memories close to him, elaborating in a personal way only when urged by specific questions. The one time he showed intense emotion was during a discussion of the activities of the censor’s office. He described how the prisoners’ mail was not only censored, sometimes leaving only the salutation and signature, but also forged. In an anecdote I believe was autobiographical, he told how someone in the censor’s office had learned how to copy the handwriting of a prisoner’s wife. A letter was fabricated telling of the wife’s falling in love with someone else and asking for a divorce. The prisoner’s response letter was never sent. Our guide wanted us to understand that the white guards used every physical and psychological means available to torture these political prisoners, with the latter being by far the most devastating. I was also moved by the “cell stories” that were told in the former inmates’ own voices broadcast from a small speaker in their cells. Each cell contained a picture of the former occupant, the dates he was held there and some piece of memorabilia important to his daily life – a postcard, a certificate, a set of chess pieces drawn on small, torn squares of brown paper bag. The ordinariness of their meager possessions and the power of their recorded voices combined to convey a poignant picture of their prison reality.
Several times during my five days in South Africa, I visited the townships and informal settlements, also called squatter camps, which contain an estimated 2 million of the 3 million Cape Town residents. On a walk through the corrugated tin and scrap wood shacks of a section of Guguletu, I saw a woman standing well off to the side watching a group of children and Semester at Sea students playing Ring around the Rosie. I went up to her, introduced myself and asked if she lived nearby. Her answer and the story that flowed from it were gifts to me of honesty, candor and generosity I’ll always treasure. Joyce’s story is heartbreakingly typical. In a low voice filled with pain and desperation she told me she is a widow with four children and no means of support whatsoever. I asked her how she managed and she shrugged her stooped shoulders and said, “Sometimes we have food and sometimes we don’t.” Tears welled up in her eyes, tears that were not a dramatic display, not a plea for sympathy, but rather an overflow from some deep well of chronic suffering. She never asked for anything. She gave me her story. I felt helpless to respond. All I could give her in return was my respectful attention and the reassurance that, like me, many people in the United States were concerned about her and her neighbors, that we were working hard for and donating money to organizations that we hoped could help. Joyce and I connected woman to woman and, for a brief moment, she allowed me to share her pain.

BLACK/WHITE:
In the spirit of the new South Africa, these two colors must be taken together. Two women, one black and one white, personify for me the vibrant and indefatigable hope that is alive and thriving in Cape Town.
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is a genuine South African hero whom I am proud to call my friend. I met her through Swanee Hunt and the organization she founded called Women Waging Peace, a network of women across the globe who are working at all sectors of countries involved in conflict to establish peace and promote reconciliation. Pumla was a member of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and is now teaching psychology at the University of Cape Town. Her recent book, A Human Being Died that Night, won literary prizes in both South Africa and the United States. In generously agreeing to meet with me, she took time out of a hectic schedule that included hosting an upcoming conference that is to be a public dialogue on “South Africa: The Unfinished Story.” Since the end of the TRC, Pumla has been promoting in her country, as well as in other African nations and the United States, the concept and the process of forgiveness, broadening its power through the technique of public dialogue. The lessons learned by South Africa during the abolishment of apartheid and the years of healing that continue today are powerful primers for a world devastated by conflict and ethnic division. Brilliant and brave, caring and committed heroes like Pumla are amongst us and must be our role models and teachers.
Linda Biehl’s daughter Amy was a young American Fulbright scholar working against apartheid in Cape Town when she was brutally stoned and killed by four young black men in Guguletu township in 1993. Linda and her husband, Peter, who became ill and died in 2002, participated in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s process. In a public tribunal Amy’s murderers told their story of violent political fervor, confessed to the crime and asked for forgiveness. Pumla was one of the TRC commissioners overseeing that case; its poignant story is told in the powerful documentary, Long Night’s Journey into Day. In an almost superhuman act of compassion and reconciliation, Linda and Peter forgave their daughter’s killers, who were then pardoned. But they didn’t stop there. The Biehls established the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust in Cape Town to continue Amy’s work and to support groups addressing the lasting effects of apartheid. Still coping every day, I’m sure, with the loss of first her daughter and then her husband, Linda now divides her time between the United States and Cape Town, raising money and continuing the work. She is supported by a dedicated and hardworking staff whom I met when I visited the foundation office. The staff member in charge of community relations, Ntobeko, served as our guide as we toured a number of the programs supported by the foundation. We visited schools and community centers in several townships where children eagerly assembled despite being on Easter break and performed music and dance for us. We saw a job training program and even a golf driving range begun by the Biehls in response to a request by boys who worked as caddies in white clubs and longed to play the game themselves. Throughout the day, Ntobeko told us Amy’s story and explained her legacy that is still at work among the people for whom she gave her life. He patiently and wisely answered our questions. He walked us through Guguletu, the neighborhood where he grew up, and there I met Joyce. He showed us Amy’s simple memorial in the dusty roadside in front of a gas station, as well as the beautiful new stone monuments, just up the street, to the Guguletu Seven, young men whose unprovoked massacre by the white police contributed to inflaming her killers to violence. As I learned more and more about Linda Biehl, I tried to imagine what deep, personal reservoirs she drew from to be able to offer that level of forgiveness and then follow it up with a lifetime of work on the ground where her daughter’s blood was shed. Then I discovered one more all but incomprehensible act of reconciliation: Linda Biehl not only forgave the killers of her precious child, she also reached out to them to be partners in her work to fight the legacy of apartheid. Two of the perpetrators responded and are now employed by the foundation. Ntobeko is one of them.

BLUE:
In a happier and more personal vein, let’s move to this my favorite color so I can tell you about some of my most enjoyable delights in Cape Town. The first of my favs was the music of a live band at one of the shabeens or local pubs in Langa township. Shabeens are everywhere, consisting of a bar, a juke box and usually a pool table. A few have live music at night and we got to hear what I thought was a fabulous band but was considered pretty run of the mill by the locals. The lead singer was a young woman with a voice and body reminiscent of the young Tina Turner; I could have listened and watched her dance all night. I asked the group of students I was with what the name of that style of music was but no one knew, so we dubbed it Township Funk – works for me.
I loved the food I had in South Africa. For one thing, there was one of those sushi conveyor belt restaurants in the Victoria and Alfred Mall right beside where we were docked. Ok, it wasn’t exactly African food but it had been a long time between bites of raw fish. I delighted in the freshest fish imaginable, all the while watching the passing array and planning which dish I was going to snag off the belt next. The students in my shipboard family treated me to an early birthday dinner in another of the local waterfront restaurants, one that reminded us all of Chili’s. I was celebrated with the wait staff’s rendition of an unfamiliar Happy Birthday song and a dish of ice cream topped with bubblegum-flavored syrup and blazing with sparklers. The best meal by far was a happy accident. Linda and Tom Hunter, Faye and John Serio, and I arrived at the restaurant we had made a reservation for and immediately rejected it. We wandered up the street to look for an alternate choice. John talked the manager of a fascinating-looking but fully booked game restaurant into seating us outside in their as-yet-unfinished courtyard. We quickly turned into a delightful private dining room, overlooking the fact that we had to go through the restroom to get to it and ignoring the red plastic mop bucket holding open the adjacent pantry door. Our host started us off with complementary shot glasses of some potent South African white lightning that effectively protected us from the slight chill of the night air. We sampled springbok, eland, kudu, ostrich and quail as well as an immodest quantity of South African wine. Good food, good drink, good friends – a winning combination all over the world.
My last South African favorite is actually blue, some of it anyway. It – or rather I should say she – is a magnificent wooden mask used in ritual initiation ceremonies of young Zambian men. The dancer wears the mask as he works himself into a trance, invoking the spirit of the ideal woman. His dance then instructs these boys in the essence of womanhood, why they must be valued and how they should be treated. Zambia was the first country in Africa in which I spent any real time and it holds a special place in my heart, so I love that she’s from that culture. I spent a significant piece of my life raising boys and trying to teach them to respect and value women. I delight in the very special women who are part of their lives now. The mask’s face is a dark brown wood, her hair is raw wool in shades of grey and blue, and she has blue and white beads over her forehead. Her expression is powerful enough to have stopped me in my tracks as I passed the shop window. I certainly wasn’t in the market for such a major piece of art but never mind. She chose me and I fell irretrievably under her spell. Now you will all have to come to my house to see her.

GREEN:
I’ve told you in a previous piece how I love the leafy green shade of the African trees that are used as outdoor community meeting and ceremonial spaces. Just such a tree was at the center of a stunning play I was fortunate enough to see performed at a beautiful contemporary theater on the campus of the University of Cape Town. The Syringa Tree is a one woman show drawn from the life of the playwright Pamela Gion, whom we were also privileged to see perform it. This remarkably talented actress portrays 24 different characters using only a large swing as a prop, varying her voice and body language in an amazing display of virtuosity and talent. The play chronicles several generations of two South African families, one white and one black, as it reveals a powerful and intimate portrait of the realities of apartheid. Although this award-winning play has been mounted in many international cities, including New York, this was its first
run in Cape Town. I can’t imagine a more appropriate or enjoyable choice for a theater experience here.

YELLOW:
Meeting Vicky at her two-room bed and breakfast in Khayelitsha township brought me immediately into the golden sunshine of her optimism and hospitality. For all its poverty and misery, its injustices and despair, Khayelitsha is also home to creative, brave and industrious people who have a more hopeful story to tell, and Vicky is one of its brightest lights. Seeing busloads of tourists day after day driving through her neighborhood but never stopping or getting out of the bus, she decided to start a small inn at her home where people could spend some time meeting people in her community, getting to know who they were and learning about their rich culture. Over the years she has hosted numerous groups and individuals who have expressed their gratitude to her by leaving contributions which she uses to enrich the lives of the neighborhood children. She told us a story about wanting to take the children on a field trip to Robben Island this year but she didn’t have enough money for all of them to go and how difficult it was to leave some behind.
My son Dave and his fiancée, Katie Galloway, were the reason I had the joy of meeting Vicky. At Christmastime in 2003 when Katie was studying in Cape Town, Dave flew over to spend the holidays with her. They heard about Vicky’s B&B and decided it would be a wonderful place to spend Christmas day. They quickly fell under her magical spell, the power of her caring and commitment. Big Dave played Santa to all the kids, passing out presents Vicky had bought each one of them from her donations. Katie spent her time draped in small brown bodies, hungry for her special attention and caring. They made particular friends with a couple of the children whose photographs occupy an honored place in their home in Seattle. When the Galloways and Seawells gave Katie and Dave an engagement party, the couple asked their friends and family, in lieu of gifts, to bring small cash donations for Vicky’s community. It was my enormous honor and pleasure to bring these gifts to Vicky. When I told her who I was, her face lit up. She ran to get the collage of photographs framed on the wall and showed me Dave’s picture. When I gave her the snapshots Katie had sent, she called out the window to the children and they all came running to see themselves, giggling with glee and saying “Dave! Katie!” over and over. With the help of Katie and Dave’s generous and selfless gift, I’m certain that Vicky will go on fostering opportunities and spreading joy into the darkest corners of Khayelitsha.

For all its brilliant colors, the crux of the symbolism of the South African flag is the Y, the joining of disparate elements into one powerful unity, the new South Africa. I heard it repeated often that people try not to refer at all to race any more, calling themselves not white or black or colored but South African. I believe that the hope of this country is in its children. The children in Khayelitsha, in all of Cape Town and across this vast country have compelling role models of every color to show them the way to their healthy and prosperous future, a future they can only reach together.