FISH AND PICS

1) A bontebok on table mountain, a rare antelope hunted to near-death because they were too dumb to run away
2- the child of my landlords
3- An informal settlement, or "township" in Mitchell's plain
4- part of our catch (read below)
5- fishing boat in Kalk Bay harbor

Despite fate's best hindering efforts, I finally got to go boat-fishing, with some YMCA guys and their buddies. Some commercial fisherman have decided that it's advantageous to take visitors along for cash, so local anglers now have a chance to fish with the big boys, in ludicriously small boats. Things were fairly familiar from other boat-fishing trips... the blue of the ocean all around, the taste of salt, the smell of bait, the feel of thick handline through shamefully soft fingers and the sound of other passengers hurling over the side.

The oceans here are shark-infested from the bottom up, it seems. I caught the largest fish of the trip to be landed sucessfully, an irate, leg-sized sand shark. It flailed wildly in the boat, whipping its needle-like teeth around and wrapping its shockingly supple body around arms, waists, and lines, anything to prevent us from unhooking it and throwing it back. In the mid-depths, our fearless leader hooked the largest fish of the trip, a man-sized thresher shark. Thereafter he gave a truly expert preformance in "loosing all your line". And just to show us who was boss, a great white shark breached on the surface, making an enormosu splash and putting an immedate end to the "I could go for a swim" jokes.

The water is even more infested with hand sized bait fish, that school and swarm around the boat. It was fun, because we could literally catch them at will, throw them into a tub and then pull them out later to feed bigger fish. They were also annoying because they ate tremendous amounts of bait off the hook, but inbetween the sharks and the baitfish we still managed to catch a good number of eating fish. I got pretty outfished by the experts, but still went home with enough for a couple of good meals. Fishing rocks.

MITCHELLS PLAIN

(Note: To see how the wrestling went, check post below this one.)

Wow. Sometimes this place scares the shit out of me.

Yesterday, I was in a sketchy-looking parking lot with 3 YMCA workers (my immediate partner and our 2 female bosses) when some drunk men began, persistently, to hassle us for money. The girls freaked out "lets' go before they attack us!" so we jumped into me car and I peeled out of the lot, feeling very cool.

I thought they were being a tad dramatic. Then one of them launched into a story- her sister had, earlier that week, been caught in a massive gunfight between two gangs- IN the Police Station- A couple blocks away from the YMCA. Wow. The other girl didn't have a cool story, but today she was robbed. Oh well. Everyone in Mitchell's Plain has been robbed.

Today, waiting to judge a high school debate on abortion (particularly gripping because, statistically, many of the participats will be raped at some point in their lives) I had a truly bizarre discussion with my partner about theology (again.) It blew my mind. He has a strong loathing of Roman Catholicism, because they apaprently mixed the truth of Christianity with paganism. True, maybe, but iw was wierd for him to say it because he is a pretty unorthodox christian who doesn't believe in hell (score- there's more of us every day) and thinks that eternal life is a kind of reinarnation. Then he went into his beliefs on history and geography and race, drawing heavily on the books of Genesis and Revelation and truly bizarre interpretations therof.

His arguments deflated when I convinced him that Isreal is in the Middle East, not Africa, and that the race-based theology of his "experts" was used to justify apartheid. This brand of Christianity is like another world for me. (Homework assignment: flip througha book by "Rebecca Brown: MD". Do so without reading what other doctors have to say about dr. Brown. That's the kind of thinking I'm talking about.)

I am battling with feelings of racism myself these days. It sucks. Comes not from hanging out with Afrikaaners, I think, but from hanging out with colored people... Because I work with mostly the colored culture, all my fears and frustrations are directed towards people of that race, and I long to escape to sanctuary among "my people" who think the way I think, work the way I work and isolate themselves from areas of crime. I know I'm a terrible person, and that scares me toom, because every time I go off feeling superior fate, or God, or my subconscious, makes me do something really stupid so I feel humble again. I don't want to be humbled again.

Anyway, my posts keep coming out negative, complaining and whiny and all that. I'm sorry. I really am. i want to write about people's lives being changed, people overcoming adversity, hope and fun and adventure. I really do. I don't know why I feel so melancholy lately, or why I'm not thrilled to be doing this. I think my sights are set too high.

Wrestling Recap

A long discussion of SA wrestling would be frustrating for me to write and boring for you to read, so here's a short summary...

My dream of representing South Africa died a quick and gut-wrenching death. (Pun alert: a gut wrench is a painful wrestling move.) I wrestled okay but not great, and the competiton was tough. National team trials are, I suppose... I placed 7th at 84 kg. My teammate and defending champ won the tournament.

Match 1: lost 0-2, 0-6 to the Jr. Commomwealth champion. A very frustrating match, because no less than 4 points awarded were highly questionable, a combination of differences between South African and Canadian officiating and outright bias.

Match 2: Won 6-1, 5-2. A good match against a tough opponent. I scored 2 massive double leg takedowns and was in control most of the match.

Match 3: lost by pin trailing 4-2. I wrestled well, tried to score in a wierd scramble with seconds left and got caught on my back. Getting pinnned sucks.


On a 20 hour (one way) drive with 14 people crammed into a 12-seat van, I also got to experience true Afrikaaner (white South African of Dutch ancestry) culture. They are a fun people, if you ignore the odd shockingly racist comment. (Some, but by no means all, Afrikaaners still hang onto apartheid-era beliefs.) The Afrikaaners are really the ultimate rednecks. They have big, patriachal families that go to church on Sundays and pray before tournaments. They like meat and beer and sports (especially rugby) and wildlife and fighting. In fact, much of our drive was spent alternately being amused and irritated by the 2 lightweights in the back, who entertained themselves by annoying each other. This repeatedly cumulated in fistfights. These are grown men, mind you...

Anyway, I have big plans for my school project, I may have found a new place to stay, and just got invited to go ocean fishing this Sunday but now I am very hungry and will report on the happy stuff once it all falls into place.

Fixing the Problem: Part 2

Personal notes:
Lockdown in prison today, no acess for us, so I'm blogging. I will be in Mpumalanga for most of the week, trying to gain a spot on the South African wrestling team in freestyle and greco. I have no idea what to expect, but it will be tough. As always I love emails and comments, but it might be some time before I have computer acess again.

‘Does HIV cause Aids? Aids is an acquired immune deficiency syndrome. I don’t believe it is a sensible thing to ask if a virus causes a syndrome. A single virus cannot cause a syndrome. A virus causes a disease. Aids is a syndrome … including 29 different diseases. When you ask the question, does HIV cause Aids, the question is: does a virus cause a syndrome? It can’t.’
- South African President Thabo Mbeki

If you do not realize why the above statement is re idiotic, please read up on HIV/AIDS before reading the rest of this post. (In short, HIV does cause AIDS!)

If part 1 of FTP is brutal right-wing conservatism (better policing) part 2 is the epitome of left-wing liberalism. Education. Educated people make better decisions. I have a double stake in promoting this education: as a teacher by profession, I've been trained (indoctrinated?) to value education. As a worker for the YMCA, I've chosen education as my volunteer labor. My main job involves going into schools and prisons, helping programs that teach people self-control and good decision making skills. I've also gone on Christain radio and offered "advice" to the listeners. Education rules.

Lack of knowledge is killing South Africa. Not just intellectually or financially, but also physically. While our doctors work their fingers to the bone combatting AIDS, lobbying for cheap antiretroviral drugs (the drugs that keep HIV+ people alive)and and running education programs our polititians make stupid statements like the one above. (Stay tuned for the 'politics' part of FTP, when I will discuss more stupid politicans). Idiots. Mind boggling, rage-inducing idiots. It would be hilarous it if weren't so tragic. AIDS is a miserable way to die. When our politicans act backwards and stupid that makes other countries want to avoid dealing with us.

Educatiors fight against more than just lack of knowledge. We fight against "culture". It is always a sensitive subject, trying to change someone's historical or traditional beliefs, but sometimes protection of life must rule over cultural ideas. It is NOT okay for a man to have sexual rights over his wife or girlfriend (ie she can't say no) in an HIV-flooded land. It is NOT okay for people to believe that raping a virgin will take your AIDS away. (Of course, people who choose to follow those cultural ideas conveniently forget that traditionally, black African culture was sexually conservative.)

There actually are many education progarms in South Africa, working with mixed sucess. Reading over questionaires filled in by students in low-income areas, most kids seem to understand the basics of AIDS. This makes me happy. Prisons are flooded with education programs. Even the government spends money educating. The YMCA seeks teach people "how to think" rather than just how to act. We target gang leaders in prison, and train "peer educators" in schools. We teach students how to deal with their emotions, differentiate fact from oppinion, say no to peer pressure, and strongly suggest abstinence until marriage. Many groups follow the ABC plan in AIDS education: Abstain, Be faithful to one partner, use a Condom. with each step safer than the one below it. Slowly, painfully slowly, messages get through. People change and make new lives for themselves.

Of course, the problems with education are two-fold:
1) There is dispute over what is "good" to teach. (Example: do we emphasize condom use or complete abstinence?) I've been told by medical students that professors made fun of them for not experimenting sexually. This seems silly- all religous or moral reasons aside, there are damn good MEDICAL reasons to be sexually conservative in Africa. Not all ideas are good ones, and not all knoweldge is helpful. South Africa would be a much better place if no one knew how to make Cryztal Meth.

2) Knowing something and doing it are two different things. South Africans are notorious for not acting on their knowledge, or for ignoring obvious truth. Thabo MBeki HAS to now what the global consensus on AIDS is. Willful ignorance is easy enough, especially when surrounded by so much real ignorance.

Prisoners are more than willing to tell long, reasonable stories about the mistakes they made in their past, the wrong paths they went down, the wasted years, and how they are changed people now. Once they get out onto the streets (or even out of the YMCA meeting) it's a different story. Many of them have been in prison repeatedly. Who is to say this stint, this class, makes a difference? There are social and economic reasons why people reoffend, of course, and we need to deal with those also, but you can't underestimate the willingness, or unwillingness, of human beings to make good choices for themselves.

Talking to medical students in South Africa, they are driven to total frustration by the unwillingness of patients to follow simple doctors orders. "Take these antiretrovirals, at X dosage, at Y time each day, and it will extend and drastically improve your life." And the patients take them sparodically, only when they happen to feel like it, and then the ARV's do nothing except make you sicker. How can you help people that won't take a bloody pill to curb horrible suffering? Tuberculosis, almost unknown in the west, is reaching epidemic proportions in South Africa, partly because people don't take their medicine to completion, creating drug-resistant TB.

I could go on and on... How do you educate against laziness? Against a person who would rather beg than get a real job and contribute to society? Live off government handouts rather than make an honest living? The lack of commitment to doing a good job, being punctual, backing up your commitments, ideas we take for granted in North America, are comically lacking in Africa. Really. Not all South Africans are like this, of course: many, many people are hard-working, honest, and dedicated. However, negative trends are easy to see. These are not the rants of a crazy Ann Coltour-type conservative. These are honest observations made by many people from different racial, social and political backgrounds. You really can teach a man to fish, but you can't make him get on the boat.

Education is great. Education is necessary. Education is hope for the people of Africa. But without motivation, Eucation will fail. We must continue to educate the people of South Africa. However, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that it will solve all problems by itself.

Fixing the Problem: part 1

Time to stop whining and fix problem. The problem that is South Africa. (No, not by blogging, I'm merely sharing the ideas of otheres here.) That is, after all, what organizations like the YMCA, YCN ministries and the like are trying to do. South Africans have the resources and the infrastructure to do well. What we lack, is what every other place on earth lacks as well: morality. Good, old fashioned morality may no longer be a catchy phrase, but in a place like South Africa its lack is glaringly and tragically obvious. "Though shalt not steal"- "though shalt not kill"- "though shalt not sleep around"- "though shalt get off thy fat ass and do some work"- "though shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, even if their skin color is different"- if people truly believed, and did these things, South Africans could enjoy the beauty and diversity of their country without living in fear.

I intend to write several posts about different things suggested here to fix the problems.


Solution 1: Meet force with bigger force.

Don't dismiss brute force out of hand. Every justice system in the world uses it: crime = jail. Fear is a powerful motivatior. Speeding tickets slow down drivers. Failing grades make students study. Even religons use concepts like karma, and hell, to coerce people into doing good.

It's a common request in South Afrioa (even amongst liberal, loving, level-headed people) that we bring back the death penalty. Our liberal constitution is not suited to the bloodthirsty populace. Sample story: a friend of a friend was driving to JoBurg when his car was hijacked by 4 heavily armed thugs. One smashed him upside the head with the butt of a shotgun, but as he fell, the man (who happened to be an ex-soldier and a crack shot) pulled his custom-made pistol from his sock and laid waste with it. The robbers riddled the van with machine gun fire but the man broke the trap and tore off, leaving one of his attackers dead. The man, who had acted purely in self-defense, spent the rest of the year fighting a lawsuit, because the man he had shot turned out to be an off-duty policeman. The law often helps the guilty, it seems. Often crime does pay, while the law screws around with auto registration.

I sympathize with the man. I don't have a gun or anything (nor do I intend to get one) but the other day walking at night, I was approached by large black men and my hand went quickly to the knife in my pocket. Paranoia rules the day here. "What's this guy doing? Trying to sell stuff to drivers?" "Or checking them out to find one to hijack."

Worse, as civilians are starting to arm themselves in self-defence, criminals resort to pre-emptive violence. "The good ones stab first, then rob" a man incarcerated for armed robbery told me. He has been in jail 6 times and he's 20. South Africa's penal system is backed up to a crazy extent. People await trial for months, while criminals found guilty are released for lack of space. There are no halfway houses, no place for first-time offenders, so kids that get arrested for shoplifting come out members of prison gangs. (to join a gang, you have to stab a warden or get sodomized.) The real thugs don't fear the police, they shoot the police. What's a man with a wife and kids and a pistol to do against a carjacking gang with AK-47's? Tragically, in many cases it's "join them".

It seems clear- and this is after much discussion, with South Africans of different races, experiences and social groups- that we need to get ourselves a new police force, and fast. The old Apardheid-era police force was efficent, but brutal. I don't suggest we bring them back; it's no suprise that the new goverment and their opressors refused to work together, and loathe the cruelties of the old regime. The new police force needs to be tough, but fair. I've always advocated US marine-type soldiers that aren't stuck in Iraq. Men that are well armed, well trained, wear body armour and kind of hungry for trouble. Men then know how to shoot, do things by the book, and are well paid.

A Cape Town police chief asked me what I would do to improve policing here and I said "pay them more". He arged that cops already make enough and the police force needs instead to be instilled with a sense of pride. Cops, he says, no longer feel loyalty to law and order and the badge. Rather, they want to make maximal money with minimal risk. When dealing with organized crime, this is clearly not okay. The laziness, slopiness and general inefficiency of the rest of Africa can not be allowed to taint the justice system, and right now it clearly does.

I feel terrible writing much of this. I know former gang members. I work with them, I try to help in them in prison, they are my friends. Yesterday one of them fixed my car. They are human beings, with families and thoughts and feelings, just like the rest of us. I don't want to wish them harm. I don't want them to be arrested or sodomized or killed.

I don't consider myself especially bloodthirsty; I haven't been in a street fight since grade 9, and I still wince whenever I'm killing fish. I wish I could say that love, hope, and gentleness can win the day. And, in many cases, it can. Seeing the difference in the lives of criminals- murderers- that have found the love of God and a purpose to live is amazing and inspiring. But until the time that all of them are willing to do that, people will keep dying. Innocent people. Women and children are caught in the crossfire of gang wars every day. School children tell me stories about avoiding bullets. More cops, more guns, more jails is a terrible solution, but I fear it is a necessary one.

South Africa, get some cops that fear nothing, shoot straight and spit on bribes. It's time to crack down.

Frick, Man...

Things were going so well. My car was resgistered, I finally went to school and prison, I even have my own school program to set up. In wrestling practice, i was racking up the points on everyone- even the good guys. Then I stepped wrong, got tossed on my back, and the weekend went to hell.

To sum up:

throat = sore

internet acess = gone, because the people whose computer I was using virused the crap out of it, downloading songs but not purchasing antivirus software despite my many warnings, then suggested I had wrecked it.

home = moving. The people I am living with decided to move to Gurut next week (they were supposed to move in March. I now need to find a new place to stay, at least until they get settled.

fishing trip = cancelled. I booked a trip on a boat. It was too windy to go out, so i sat on a dock, wached the seals play below, wrestled my bait away from seabirds and caught 8-inch fish for the local kids. (This part was actualy kind of fun.)

Insurace companies = scam artists, springing hidden costs on my at the last moment, because of which my car is still uninsured. (This is legal here... injury claims caused by accidents are covered by a gas tax you pay when you fill up.)

Cell phone = not working. This problem was quickly solved.

Hubcap = off. I found it again, but this does not bode well for the future.

Wallet = stolen. This one sucks big time. Luckily it was taken by subterfuge, not violence. I still don't know how "they" got it, unnless it fell out of my pocket when i say down, but in the 3 minutes between using wallet and missing wallet it was nowhere to be found. I spent most of the evening cancelling cards, which was luckily sucessful.

Sometimes when this much suck happens, you can only sit back and laugh, try to think of funny things, like the thought of some homeless guy (there's scores in Muizenberg, stubbornly refusing to use the shelters) running around swiping my mastercard in electronics stores. Or look on the bright side, I guess, and be thankful my boat didn't capsize, I didn't land on my head, my phone works again, my sister will lend me money and Mastercard will not charge all those TV's to my account.