Sprall Break

It’s been a while since I've written, and the noteworthy things that have piled up in the meantime make blogging seem more and more overwhelming by the day. So I'm going to keep this short, but with lots of pictures, which in this case really are worth much more than my words. 

By far the best thing about being in the southern hemisphere is surprisingly NOT that the toilets flush in the other direction (which I'm pretty sure is a myth), but that I get a second Spring Break 2011. You could chalk it up to stereotypes but I'm convinced that there is a significant difference between all other breaks and a SPRING break... on a fall break you're expected to catch up on sleep and hang out at home with your family, but on spring break you're expected to do nothing but have as much fun as possible. When Spring Break comes in September, however, expectations get a little blurry. Luckily, just in time to satisfy my growing desire for a good home-style fall break, my mom arrived, and together we rocked spring break part two. It was the perfect combination of home and abroad, adventure and comfort, relaxation and excitement; it was truly the best Sprall break I could have asked for. 

Madre arrived on Friday, just in time to see campus before it cleared out for the week. Walking her from my house up the hill to campus reminded me of the first time that I had made that walk. I remember it like was yesterday, but comparing what it felt like two months ago, the first impressions, the nerves, the excitement, the foreignness of it all, to what it felt like in that moment, I realized just how long I have been here. It was the first time I have really reflected on how comfortable I have become, how much campus feels like my campus and home feels like my home. It was a good feeling, but even from the best of homes, one can always use a vacation. Well, it was more of a staycation for the first three days. We roamed around Cape Town, hitting all the essential places I eat at and exploring the ones that were too expensive to eat at until mom came to visit. We shopped on Long street and Greenmarket square, went to the Waterfront, went to Old Biscuit Mill (a magical place that I will have to write about in more detail after a more boring week), rode a cable car up Table Mountain and enjoyed a panoramic view of the city, and took a Cape Penninsula Tour similar to the one I took during orientation (but with six or seven calm adults instead of four hundred college students). It was a great rapid overview of the city, even though our festivities were cut a half a day short when I picked up some sort of stomach flu and couldn't bring myself to leave my bed. Talk about perfect timing to have a mom around...

Fortunately I was feeling almost 100% by the next morning as we boarded a place to Kruger National Park for a four-day-three-night luxury safari. It was unbelievable. We were greeted with a glass of champagne, shown to our private room (complete with deck, mini pool, princess bed, and veranda) and were on our first game drive within the hour. We saw just about everything you can image, from the tiniest baby birds to the ginormous elephants. We saw rhinos digging for water in a dried up river bed, a baby elephant drinking milk from its mother, a tower of giraffe chilling at a water hole with a dazzle of zebra (yes- those are the technical terms for what normal people call a herd), and a leopard in a tree eating the kill that he had dragged up with him, not to mention herds upon herds of impala and just about every variety of "bok" (antelope).  It took a few drives and a bit of a goose-chase but we eventually came across a lion as well, completing our Big Five checklist and my Lion King Character checklist at the same time. While it was incredible to see so many animals up close and in their natural, beautiful environment, I am almost tempted to say that the people made the trip. There was Givena and Chris- a nice newlywed couple from York that pretty much bled British stereotypes, Lazarus- our trusty safari truck driver who gets equally excited over fresh rhino dung as a feasting leopard, Molly- a spiritual Iranian woman with a lot to say and James- her husband who I was pretty sure was mildly autistic and partially blind before finding out that he taught International Law at Harvard Law School, worked for the State department and USAID, and retired as the chief legal advisor for Freedom House. Wild card! In all with animals, the people, the three course meals, the first and second breakfasts, the African back massages and sunbathing on the deck, I'd say that Kruger treated us very well. I found myself immediately missing our pretty room once we left, especially considering where we went next.

We spent one night and one day in Durban, which gave us enough time to take a tour of the city sights, have an authentic (and questionable) Indian meal, and visit two craft markets to pick up souvenirs. From there, we set out on a two-hour drive towards nowhere Eshowe, Zululand.

So, Zululand is a real place, a fact I was not entirely sure about before getting there. It includes a vast and lush are of what used to be the traditional Zulu Kingdom and then became the KwaZulu Bantustan (homeland for blacks during apartheid) until 1994. Now it is a municipality governed in part by the reinstated traditional monarchy, with some remote villages, some more modern farm towns and a whole lot of huts. After driving through endless rolling green hills and sugar plantations Mom and I arrived in Eshowe, one of the more modern, bustling towns. Even though she found a nice little hotel with a restaurant, a bar, and every other tourist that was currently in Eshowe, Mom thought it was more “authentic” to stay with a perfect stranger, in his house, on the edge of town. It’s just not a Michael family vacation unless Mom books us into some awkward, slightly uncomfortable and possibly dangerous place to stay, under the pretence of “cultural experience”. Ryan, Tom- I know I don’t need bring up Hawaii again…

In her defense, despite sharing a bathroom with an elderly South African man, his thirty-year-old Thai girlfriend, and their numerous other houseguests, Zululand turned out to be the absolute highlight of the trip. Early on Saturday morning we set out with about ten other travelers and two locals on our way to the Zulu Virgin Reed Dance. It took another two hours driving further into the middle of nowhere to reach Ulundi, a village of sorts where the King lives and where the young Zulu girls would be celebrating their virginity by singing and dancing and presenting the King with a reed. Back in the day this was when girls who had hit puberty offered themselves to the King and he picked his wives, however, even the traditional Zulu king no longer finds that appropriate, so it has became a purely symbolic coming of age ceremony. I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting but it definitely wasn’t what I saw- 30,000 teenage Zulu girls dressed in nothing but traditional neck beads and skirts (emphasis on the nothing) paraded up a long dirt road to the palace carrying 15 ft. reeds and singing on the top of their lungs. It was unlike ANYTHING I have ever seen before, and not just because I have never seen so many naked boobs in one place. The masses of girls walking up the road was endless, they just kept coming and coming, singing all the while and dancing with pride. We were the only spectators, not even the families come since many of the girls came from distant corners of Zululand to get there. Our local guides gave us a completely meaningless badge to wear around our neck that somehow made us look like we were supposed to be there, and that coupled with my big camera led nearly everyone to assume I was working for the press. I figured out quickly that teenage girls are the same all over the world, and they all love to have their picture taken. I was happy to oblige, and it was a nice icebreaker for some of the most interesting conversations I have had on this trip. We were surrounded by, engaged in, and truly experiencing the Zulu culture in an intimate yet extravagant way and it was wild. As if it wasn’t a once-in-lifetime-experience already, we followed the girls into the royal palace (bigger hut) compound, where the King and his entire family awaited the arrival of none other that South Africa’s President Zuma. Apparently he’s a Zulu.

The whole experience was almost too much to take in, especially in the intense heat, and I mostly just wandered around wide-eyed, laughing in awe and the situation and snapping as many pictures as I could to try and capture it. I even did some high quality (not) photography for one of the King’s sons who referred to himself only as Prince and is writing an autobiography about royal life. True story.

At the end of the day I just sat back and reflected, not only on the day but on all the ones before it- I had gone from the top of table mountain to the back of a safari truck to the King’s palace in Zululand in less than a week. I had stood on the Cape of Good Hope, driven through a herd of wild elephants, been close enough to touch President Zuma, and sipped white wine in a sandy riverbed at sunset. And all of that with my wonderful mother at my side. I think its safe to say we had had one hell of a Sprall break. 

Cable car to Table Mountain, Cape Town

Top of Table Mountain, over looking Camps Bay, Cape Town

Cape of Good Hope

Isn't she pretty?

My hat + elephant in the background= baller safari picture

Our driver Lazarus in the sunset in the river bed.

Laz and I having our morning coffee and biscuits on the road (note the fold out table on the front of the truck.. I want one).

Rhinoceros 

Nala.

Just a leopard in a tree. NBD.

I always thought that stopping to wait for a herd of elephants to cross the street was just a safari myth.. I guess not.

Indian Ocean, Durban.

Virgin Reed Dances, the King's compound, Zululand. 

Beautiful. I wasn't kidding about the boobs.

Note that pants are apparently not allowed in zululand, just as a general rule, so I am wearing a scarf held up with a hair pin. Frankly I would have probably fit in better had I not worn it at all.

So much joy, so much dancing. 

President Zuma with King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu.

Cheers friends,

Emily