Afrika Burns Festival (Oct 17-19th)

my friend doerte and i decided to try our luck at life in a parallel universe by heading to the afrika burns festival in the desert (a variation of the american-born "burning man").
here's what they have to say about themselves on the webpage:

Afrika Burns is a creative arts and freedom of expression festival that aims to build temporary community through collaborative arts projects, in a completely non-commercial environment.

This is a place to collaborate, cooperate, and add to the public environment. To build community. We want you to make a conscious decision to inject artistic sensibility into every daily activity: to invent the world anew; to generate a culture, a connective environment to be idealistic and celebratory. We want you to think of this gathering as an “invent” rather than an “event”. See this as an opportunity to reinvent the world and to foster art-making.

So our objective with Afrika Burns, is simply to create a blank canvas on which participants can project any creative endeavour that they desire to create; project aspects of themselves, collectively or individually; all of this in an environment not mediated or controlled by commercial enterprise.

flat tire in the desert? no problem...

this old fella was tickled to be gifted one of the hula hoops doerte & i made

my favorite structure - this psychadelic circle sphere

doerte checks in her ego at the "ego booth"

disgruntled postal service workers: billy, billy, & billy.

a homemade postcard :)

hiding from the sun in our ramshackle shade structure

i kid you not, there's a live human on the other end of the line...

all in all, it was a crazy and fun experience. i don't think the project is yet succeeding at making it a space that's comfortable to all africans - it was very much a white hippy event. but as i half-jokingly pointed out to doerte, if you're already living in conditions where you have a hard time getting water and adequate shelter on a daily basis, what draw is there in spending a few days in the desert? still, it was interesting to see the ways people let down their walls. i think i appreciate it even more now that i've been back in cape town for a while and am noticing how closed people are here to making new friends. and i got some recharging energy for crafting my performance in everyday life...

Trip to Joburg

toward the end of september, billy and i had an interesting 5 day trip up to johannesburg to visit a friend of ours, mohammed, who is teaching at a new school called the african leadership academy. curious as usual to explore different parts of joburg, we ventured into downtown, which has basically been abandoned by white south africans since the transition from apartheid, so predictably, we stuck out as the only white people in square miles. and, while neither of us was naive or uninformed about the risks of being mugged in joburg, on account of some unusual circumstances i had some valuables in my purse that i normally wouldn't have ever taken into joburg with me, including my ipod. thus, after being mugged within 20 minutes of arriving downtown (but not before commenting to each other what a vibrant atmosphere the city has, and what a shame it is that all folks talk about is how violent joburg is and so forth), i am now sans passport, credit cards, ipod, house keys, and a comb (at least i can attribute my tangly hair to something other than split ends, right?). it was a bit of a disappointment to be really striving to let joburg show us its best side, giving it a chance, and to end up being targets of organised crime (as well as injurious to my pride, as i'd just given my mom a lecture the night before about how exaggerated the claims of danger are as regards cape town -- i still feel that way about cape town, which has is a relatively much safer space and has lots of public security measures).


johannesburg is well known for being one of the strongest epicenters of organized crime in the world. south african middle & upper class neighborhoods are characterized by intense 'keep out' strategies, ranging from the relatively mild tall wall/fence approach, to the just as common major spikes and barbed/razor wire and electric fencing. above is a triple-threat!

water privatisation is a major human rights issue facing not only south african communities, but also others around the world. this great wall mural in soweto that we drove past celebrates a community victory in the Constitutional Court over a privatisation scheme. the court ruling upheld the constitution, which declares that no party may obstruct access to another's right to basic needs when the access was already there. in this case, previously public-access water sources were being removed and pre-paid water meters installed for families by Johannesburg Water. unfortunately, the struggle against water privatisation is far from over... you can read more here if interested: Coalition Against Water Privatisation.



mohamed was his classic, charming self when we went out for dinner. it got quite cold in the open-air restaurant, and he didn't have a hat, so decided his servillete would have to suffice...

these cooling towers in soweto are much more beautiful than the plain grey concrete ones in pinelands (cape town)...

Public Art

always interested to see the ways people use public space to express themselves.

billy and i like capturing interesting graffiti...

some anti-american sentiments in a middle income, mixed neighborhood:

the same day, on the same bike adventure, we came across this creepy but fascinating house in a neighborhood called athlone, with tons of threatening "do not set a single foot on this property" type signs, as well as lots of commentary over the 'murder' of a man name isaac volkwyn. i've kind of let it slip to the back of my mind, but looked up who he was just now as i was posting, and he was a very elderly man who suffered a stroke and then his doctors recommended his nourishment thru a feeding tube and hydration be ceased. his children agreed but then later questioned the decision and eventually felt he'd been murdered by the medical system.



this always cracks me up when i'm on the short walk or bike ride over to a posh "square" (it's actually a mall) near our house where i go to use free wireless. the arrow points to the window, instructing normal crack customers to approach, but the SAP (South African Police) to kindly use the front door.


this statue of Jan Smuts, in the Company Gardens, was hit on Heritage Day, among others like statues of Cecil Rhodes, by some artist. "Reject this Heritage" - it says. I do think South Africa, and the world as a whole, will benefit by condemning the colonizer mentality.

Here's also an interesting letter to the editor I saw online about the graffiti:

Most public holidays, my sons and I have a tradition of going to the Company Gardens to feed the squirrels and watch the chattering parrotlings. This Heritage Day would have been like any other, except that as we approached the aviary in the Garden, we noticed bright red graffiti covering the Cecil J. Rhodes statue nearby. "REJECT THIS HERITAGE." My sons, ages 7 & 10, both turned to me. "Look, Mommy! Bad people painted the cool statue." Each looked at me intently, waiting to hear my condemnation.

Perhaps another parent would have simply responded that it was wrong and moved on to the birds. But something about those words struck me deeply, made me think about our British heritage. "Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life," Rhodes said. When I was my sons' age, I was taught that this man was a hero. And how are my sons to think any differently when statues honoring him all over our city? "Do you know how this man is part of our heritage?" I asked them. Neither really knew who Rhodes was, nor what "hinterland" could possibly mean.

The birds took a backseat. We've spent the afternoon at home together, researching Rhodes and colonial ideology on the internet. I want them to understand how severely this element of our heritage devastated the African continent and our own country. And although we discussed the legal wrong in defacing public space, it's no longer so clear to the boys that the people who graffiti-ed the Rhodes Statue are the lone "bad guys." For us white South Africans, we must celebrate our heritage not by continuing to laud our imperialist ancestors, but by learning from its mistakes and creating a new heritage our children and grandchildren will be proud of.

Daily Life at 97 Hope Street

billy's dad has been sending weekly letters, along with some marvelous art masterpieces based on the avant-garde principles of what they call "coloring in the lines". while 'pops' kenny claims to be colorblind, nonetheless his pieces bring delight to viewers of all ages. here billy has tried to recreate the pixie masterpiece in vivo, adorning my chest with a tulip not unlike that of the refrigerator sprite...

bernard, a 73 year old french chef, is one of my favorite cape town characters. he's a vegetarian anti-racist who's been living in africa for several decades now. lived in the french countryside with his aunt & uncle during WWII, was sent to england for a few months with other children of the war, and then returned to france to begin training as a pastry chef at age 14. he's the closest thing i have to a grandpa figure in my life at the moment, and has been a real gem to both billy and i. bernard's most recent enterprising idea has been operating a from-home pizza delviery service with the catchy slogan "u ring, we bring"... i laughed so hard the morning that i found the blue flyer for "chef bernard's pizza" in the mailslot and knew it had to be none other than my favorite frenchman!


paul, a malawian friend billy met through chess, lived with him for several months before i arrived and stayed with us on and off while he was sorting out his employment situation in september. life is brutally harsh for immigrants here. the cost of living is often so much higher than wages, and employment in the formal sector is hard to come by. billy and paul co-created this bangin' meal of pap (kind of like fluffy polenta or grits; a typical southern african delight made from corn meal - also called mealey-meal!), with chicken in a tomato sauce for paul, and some vegetarian culinary delight for billy and i. pap sits in your stomach like a brick and you don't have to eat anything for the rest of the day, basically!


here's our bed! sleepytime bear and dog and i pose in the sleeping loft.


ok, it's a bit messy, but here's an attempt to capture the layout of our studio apartment. the kitchen in the back left, bathroon door onthe right. outside the bounds of the image are, to the left, a cozy sitting area we created, and to the right, our guestbed/couch, and dining table. behind me (the picture taker) are french doors out onto our little balcony, where we've attempted to start growing a garden. (as of mid november, despite being spring, it's really struggling!) billy's written about our gardening exploits on his own blog, so i'll just link to it.

Exploring Cape Town

billy's made some extensive photo-uploading efforts to portray this on his blog, so i'm lazily going to include a link here, and then have put a couple of my own favorites below...

HIKING AND BIKING PHOTOS

... i love this windblown tree down at kalk bay, a 40 minute train ride from home...

billy looks out over 'false bay', close to where the indian and atlantic oceans meet

...a change in perspective...

Student Society for Law & Social Justice Retreat - Sep 4-7th, 2008

Arrival to South Africa - August 29th

...it's funny how you can forget about even the most obvious differences between places... as i boarded the south african airways plane, i heard lots of folks talking around me with not-american accents, and laughed to myself upon suddenly remembering that even native-english speakers from south africa speak with a distinctly different accent.  i'd been moving toward for south africa for months, and yet still couldn't believe that the plane was actually carrying me to see billy and to live in cape town ...