South Africa Archives - Maggie InkMaggie Ink

Shitbuckets & South Africa: Part 2 (The World’s Worst Hostel)

July 5, 2013

Note: You can read Part 1 here. Or, to bring you up to speed: My friends and I are drunk in St. Lucia, South Africa. It’s 3 a.m., and we’ve just returned to our terrible, moldy hostel. The owner is possibly wearing a thong Speedo.

Think of all the lush, green places you’ve ever seen in your life. Chances are they didn’t include your mattress.

But a moss-encrusted bed is exactly what we got at the World’s Worst Hostel.

My three friends and I were sharing a quad room, and we all looked at our beds with dismay. There was no way any of us could sleep on those those boggy mattresses. A sheet wouldn’t provide enough of a barrier unless it was made of metal, and no amount of alcohol could dull the fetid stench. We’d have mushrooms growing on us by morning, if the foul odors didn’t kill us first.

We spread sheets out over the mattresses, then unrolled our sleeping bags on top of that, hoping rip-stop nylon would do the trick. Unfortunately, the air was wet and sticky, which made the inside of my sleeping bag soggy. It stuck to me as if it had been lined with gummy adhesive.

A few minutes in my sleeping bag felt as long as entire high school years. I kicked the stupid, hot fabric off my legs. I couldn’t do this. All the sugar from that bucket of alcohol still coursed through my veins. Even under the best circumstances, even if I had been stretched out on a rainbow bed made of unicorn fur, I was nowhere close to sleep.

I stepped into my flip-flops and padded down the hallway into the bar area, where people still congregated around the hostel owner. The owner’s dog, Nicholson, wandered in and out of the building, trying to avoid all the people who wanted to blow weed smoke in his face. Cloudy puddles of mysterious liquid spread across the floor.

“Looks like you’re ready to party,” the owner said and shoved a beer at me. I am not certain how I looked that night, but I guarantee Ready to Party was last on that list, far below Ready to Cry and Ready to Drool on Myself.

However, the threadbare bar couch was cleaner and more comfortable than my bed. I accepted the beer, hoping it would be enough to knock me out. I was in sleepytime drunk mode, while everyone else in the bar appeared to be in smashing-beer-cans-on-foreheads, start-a-fight drunk mode.

The bar looked a little bit like this, if the crocodiles were people.

At that point, I’m pretty sure D decided to stay up and party with the owner and his crew, while my friends E and P were back in the room, trying to sleep. But I’m not positive. (See, alcohol has this weird effect on me in that it makes my memory fuzzy. It also makes me intoxicated.)

I know I finished the beer and began the trek back to swamplandia, aka my bed. But first I stopped at the bathroom to wash the night’s grime and sweat from my face. The water from the faucet was yellow. Tiny frogs jumped around my feet, and mosquitos swarmed my bare legs.

I hated this place.

I was lonely and uncomfortable. I was far away from my husband and my pets. I missed my bed. I missed falling asleep with my dog snuggled into the crook of my knees.

Dog! That’s what I needed. Just then Nicholson the Dog walked past the open door of the bathroom. He was the approximate size and shape of my own dog. If I squinted, he even looked a little bit like Lemon. You could say it was the canine version of beer goggles.

I tucked Nicholson under my arm and carried this strange creature into my bed.

Nicholson the Sleep-Inducing Dog.

My little Lemon.

Turns out I was right. With the dog wedged next to me on the tiny twin bed, it wasn’t long before I fell asleep.

Around 5 a.m., I awoke to banging. It was my friend, P, trying to get out the door of our room. Not only had the wood swollen shut, the rusty lock was jammed. P pulled again, so hard he grunted from the exertion, but the door didn’t budge.

So P did the next best thing. He walked over to the window and pushed open the pane.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just go to sleep.”

I looked away, but I still heard the unmistakable sound of someone urinating.

Nicholson apparently heard it too. He leapt from the bed and ran to the door, where he scratched at the wood and began to whine. The dog had to pee.

I tried to help, but I couldn’t open the door either. I already dognapped this poor creature, I wasn’t about to force him to piddle inside. t had to get the dog outside.

My only hope was the window.

The hostel was sort of situated on a slope. So even though we were on the first floor, we were more than a story from the ground but not quite two stories up. It was too high to drop a dog from the window, that’s for sure.

Thank God I’ve had a lot of experience sneaking out of windows. I tied a couple bedsheets together, then wrapped one of the ends around Nicholson and carefully lowered him to the ground.

Then, because I also had to pee, I lowered myself out of the window too.

Nicholson did his business, then ran away from me. I didn’t blame him.

Inside the bathroom, the floor was dotted with sewage puddles. Nicholson had the right idea, I decided, and I headed outside to the wild, overgrown area to pee too. That’s how filthy this hostel was. Actual dirt was cleaner than the bathroom.

Afterward, I returned to the room. By the time I kicked open the door, my friends were already packing to go.

Shitbuckets & South Africa: Part 1

July 5, 2013

A few days ago, a friend of mine said she just wrote a poem using the word “shitbucket.” I told her I had an incident that involves shitbuckets and South Africa, and I made a promise to tell her that story someday.

Today is that day. (Don’t worry. When I say “shitbucket,” it’s not what you’re thinking.)

My friends and I had been traveling through South Africa for nearly a month. We spent the bulk of our nights camping in thin, leaky tents at wildlife parks — dirty, shivering and surrounded by hyenas.

It’s so fluffy!

Any accommodation with four walls and a roof had to be a step up from sleeping on the ground, right?

No. And Bib’s backpacker hostel proved it.

Bib’s is located in St. Lucia, a coastal part of South Africa that is laced with marshes and wetlands. It’s the kind of place that begs the question, “Is that a log or a crocodile near my leg?” And the answer is almost always crocodile.

Yeah, that one’s a crocodile.

Hippos are also known to roam the streets, but you do not get them confused with logs. Or anything else.

He looks hungry. I might even say hungry, hungry.

The city of St. Lucia itself is overgrown and weathered. It reminded me of the little towns in Florida that used to be resort hotspots — formerly posh, now just mildewy buildings populated by weird old people who keep pet alligators.

In keeping with the overall theme of mold, the hostel had damp, saggy mattresses and wood walls that never quite seemed to stand upright. My friends and I didn’t care, though. We were scrappy and tough! We slept on dirt! We used bushes for toilet paper!

We were, however, dismayed when the front desk clerk told us the internet wasn’t working. We might not need toilet paper, but wifi was necessary.

“That’s not part of the deal,” the clerk sneered. “What made you think we even have internet?”

My friend, P, pointed at the big sign in front of the hostel. “Your sign says, ‘International Hostel and Internet Cafe.’”

The clerk just shook her head and pointed us to an internet cafe down the road.

Along the way, my friends and I passed boarded-up surf shops, neglected cafes, dank little bars and dilapidated discotheques. It was early evening, and we were tired and cranky. After a month of near-freezing temperatures, suddenly we were slick with sweat and buckling under the humidity of the wetlands. We desperately needed to cheer ourselves up.

That’s when we came to a consensus — this was the town where we would get our party on.

We had all been so good for a month, carefully watching our minimal backpacker budgets and avoiding all bars and nightlife. Not that there’s much wild nightlife in Kruger National Park, unless you count a lioness eating a zebra.

We deserved this, and St. Lucia was the spot. We were going to slip out of our hefty backpacks, unzip our convertible hiking khakis into shorts and let our dirty, knotted hair down. We were going to get crunk.

First stop: A random, dumpy bar that advertised a fish bowl of alcohol.

The bartender ran out of fishbowls, so he used a bucket instead.

“What’s in it?” I asked the bartender.

“Do you care?” he said.

Excellent question. I did not.

I think it had algae.

By the bottom of the bowl, I had forced the bartender to play Die Antwoord on my iPod and berated other bar patrons for not knowing this South African rap group.

Second stop: A ramshackle nightclub with a band that played terrible cover songs. Was that REO Speedwagon? Or the sounds of a dying wildebeest? I’ll never know. We danced anyway.

This nightclub is also where sloshed, aging Afrikaners felt comfortable enough to grab us. They gyrated with tight denim pants against us and bragged about their boerewors.

My friends and I were just about to leave when we were saved by a handful of young university students. The guys said it was so-and-so’s birthday, they were having after-hours at their rental place, blah blah. You know how these things go.

Third stop: We ended up back at the guys’ vacation rental.

Some dude. Some drinks.

They blasted some Akon and gave us drinks with no ice. My friend, D, ended up in her underwear in the pool. Some other people did too. I think there was some kind of accident involving a wet passport.

Inside the apartment, one of the young men decided to play mixologist and crafted a specialty shot called “Shitbucket.” It involved leaning one’s head back and pouring a combination of questionable liquor down one’s throat. It also involved several people chanting “Shit-BUCKET! Shit-BUCKET! Shit-BUCKET!”

This right here is everything my mother ever warned me about.

No, wait. THIS is.

It tasted like root beer that had been freshly made from actual roots. Dirt and all.

After that, I had two more.

Final stop: We made it back to the hostel. The bars had long closed, but the hostel’s party was just getting started. And by that, I mean the owner was handing out free beer to girls and wearing a thong Speedo. To this day, I don’t remember if he was actually in a thong Speedo, or if I just remember him as the type to chillax at his place of business in a thong Speedo.

Here’s what I am certain of: At that point, the night got worse.

Stay tuned for part two tomorrow.

9 lessons from Nelson Mandela

July 2, 2013

“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. … I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.” — Nelson Mandela

Mandela painting on Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, South Africa.

There are two doors to enter the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. One for whites. One for everybody else.

The segregated entrance of the Apartheid Museum.

The rules aren’t enforced anymore, of course. Apartheid — the systematic racial segregation of South Africa — ended in 1994. But that’s the way it used to be. There were whites, and then there was everybody else.

And then came Nelson Mandela.

To be clear, I don’t know Mandela, and I am no expert in the politics of South Africa. I am simply someone who grew up watching the fall of apartheid on the news. Later, when I visited South Africa for the first time, I was moved by the fight for equality and efforts to move toward human dignity for all.

Out of everything from the anti-apartheid movement, I think I related most to Mandela because he was a troublemaker and I appreciate that in a person. I feel for the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels — the whole Steve Jobs quote. I like all of that. And that was Mandela.

The name given to Mandela at birth, Rolihlahla, translates to “pulling the branch of the tree;” one who does not follow the established order. And Mandela certainly lived up to that name. It takes a certain kind of troublemaker to challenge authority, spend 27 years in prison, go on to become the first black South African president of your country and destroy decades of forced oppression.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as Mandela is hospitalized in critical condition. His death is inevitable, but I hope we can keep some of the lessons from his life alive:

1. Lead by example.

While imprisoned, Mandela was restricted to a 6.5-foot by 8-foot cell with nothing but concrete floor and a bucket for waste. He was assigned to hard labor in a lime quarry. For much of that time, he was allowed just one letter every six months and one visitor per year for a half hour. Still, he walked tall and refused to show fear.

His fellow prisoners said just the act of watching Mandela walk through the courtyard, upright and proud, gave them the energy to go on.

Sign pointing to the Mandela Cell at the Old Fort in Johannesburg. Mandela was only briefly held here. The majority of his imprisonment was on Robben Island in Table Bay.

2. Know that words have power.

During the 1970s, while he was imprisoned, Mandela wrote his memoir. Copies were wrapped in plastic containers and buried in the prison garden. It was hoped that another prisoner, due to be released soon, would smuggle it out. The containers were eventually discovered and Mandela was severely punished.

Mandela’s manuscripts.

He continued to write anyway.

Knowing that words have such great impact, Mandela began to write more than his memoirs. The Old Fort in Johannesburg contains just a small sample of Mandela’s writings from his time on Robben Island — a total of 76 boxes in all. During his 27 years of imprisonment, Mandela sent more than 70,000 pieces of correspondence to prison authorities, lawyers and family. He frequently wrote on behalf of his fellow inmates, detailing issues about the quality of the food, protesting the regulations that banned books or filing complaints about improper care.

3. Value reconciliation over justice.

Mandela had every reason to hold grudges against his captors. Instead he worked toward reconciliation, which served as an example to a nation of wounded people.

As he wrote in “The Long Walk to Freedom”: “… the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom. Just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their community.”

Constitution Hill in Johannesburg serves as a visual example of this. The country’s highest Constitutional Court, which hears cases of human rights violations, now stands on the site of the Old Fort Prison, where freedom fighters were once held behind bars. Within the courtroom, a ribbon of glass serves as a symbol of the transparency of the proceedings.

Symbolic glass towers have been constructed atop the stairwells of the old prison on Constitution Hill.

4. Speak someone’s language.

This can be interpreted figuratively or, in Mandela’s case, literally. He spent many years learning and perfecting Afrikaans, the language of his oppressors. He realized that whatever solution might be found to apartheid would come from truly understanding one another.

As he once said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

5. Listen first, speak last.

Mandela grew up with the tribal tradition of consensus building, in which a leader listens first and speaks last, consolidating and integrating all of the views that have been expressed.

In “The Long Walk to Freedom,” Mandela writes, “Democracy meant all men were to be heard, and a decision was taken together as a people. Majority rule was a foreign notion. A minority was not to be crushed by a majority.”

Years later, Mandela used this technique as president. While members of his cabinet shouted at him, Mandela simply listened. When they were done and Mandela spoke, he summarized their thoughts before he deftly steered the conversation into the direction he wanted it to go.

“Lead from the back,” he said. “Let others believe they are in front.”

6. Spread knowledge.

In 2005, Mandela announced that his son, Makgatho, died of AIDS. Rather than keep quiet about the cause of death, Mandela said the disease should be given publicity so people will learn about it and stop being ashamed.

7. Learn about the experience of others.

This might be my favorite Mandela quote, because it says so much about empathy.

Mandela quote on Constitution Hill, which once held jail cells and is now home to South Africa’s highest court.

8. Devote your life to something worth dying for.

Mandela was so committed to equality of all people that he said of his fight, “It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

9. Realize work is not accomplished alone.

Mandela wasn’t the only person who fought apartheid — he is just one of many who believed in the dignity of all. There were decades of uprisings and protests. Many people sacrificed their lives, including hundreds of schoolchildren.

At the exit of the Apartheid Museum, there is a bridge that passes through two piles of rocks. On the right side is a small pile. On the left side, the pile is enormous. As each visitor leaves, they are asked to move a rock from the right side to the left.

The big stack of rocks is what people, together, have already accomplished. It demonstrates how one small thing, done by many people, can move mountains.

Rock pile at the Apartheid Museum.

As Mandela said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Just do one thing

November 26, 2010

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about personal responsibility. Where do I fit in this big crazy world? What is my role? What should I be doing for my fellow humans?

Nothing illustrates that concept quite as well as the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The museum is exactly what you’d expect — emotional, educational, horrifying.

Stories of resiliency and heroism are squelched, stomped and strangled by pure evil and hatred. You’re left with barely any hope for humankind.

But then there is the last display.

It’s two piles of smooth stones, divided by a path. Visitors are encouraged to remove a stone from one pile and place it on the other. Of course, it doesn’t take long before one pile is considerably smaller, the other dramatically larger.

It is a simple statement, but it is a powerful one.

I started this trip with enormous plans to make a difference, change the world, have an impact. But several months into this journey, it’s been incredibly frustrating to see that the need is so great, and I am so small. It feels like I can’t do anything at all.

The Apartheid Museum changed my perspective.

See, change doesn’t come from one person doing a million things. It’s a million people doing one thing.

I think sometimes we try to make things more difficult than they really need to be — especially when it comes to sweeping concepts like hate, fear, power — but it’s really just that simple.

Everything you do has an impact. Every action matters. And if you need proof, think about all the tiny steps it took to end apartheid.

One stone on top of one stone eventually becomes a mountain.

Getting schooled in Soweto

November 24, 2010

Because my life includes a number of educators — like my dad, sister, husband and multiple friends — I’ve been trying to get inside as many classrooms as possible during this trip.

That included a primary school in the heart of Soweto — the South Western Townships of Johannesburg, South Africa. The visit was arranged by our host and her friend, a representative for Discovery Channel’s global education project.

You’ve probably heard of Soweto before, because it was where many blacks were forced to live during apartheid. It’s also where Mandela lived before and after going to prison.

In 1976, the townships gained worldwide attention during the Soweto student uprising, a series of protests that became a turning point in tearing down the oppressive apartheid regime.

The protests were in response to the National Party government, which tried to force all schools to teach lessons in Afrikaans instead of English. In a country with 11 official languages, where most kids and teachers didn’t speak Afrikaans, this was yet another way to withhold education and opportunities from black citizens.

So thousands of students took to the streets in peaceful protest. The police opened fire and killed 23 youth. That inspired riots, which eventually resulted in 566 deaths.

With the violence in the past, Soweto is an exciting and unusual mix of shanties and glittery mansions, potholes and newly paved roads, artists and former political prisoners.

At the school we visited, the children receive lessons via a Discovery Channel global project that gives them books, lesson plans, videos and other equipment they otherwise wouldn’t have.

Like other kids in South Africa, they go to school from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Friday, January through early December . All of the students at this school are black, which is reflective of Soweto’s demographics. About half of the kids spoke Zulu better than English, so the teacher spoke to the students in a mixture of both languages.

Inside the third-grade classroom we visited, the kids prepared a special presentation called “South Africa: My Country.”

The kids then performed a couple songs and some traditional dances. They colored the South African flag, put together a South African map and wrote words to describe their country, like “desert,” “mountains” and “animals.”

Most of the students were extremely shy, though a couple of them asked questions about me. Like, why do you talk like the people on TV?

One little wisp of a girl stood up and recited a speech she wrote about what it means to be South African. Her face was earnest as she said, “Just because you come from a township, it doesn’t mean you have bad behavior.”

It made me tear up.