The Russians
Folks,
I live in a large, shared house, and recently a group of Russians
moved in. They have emigrated from Russia, though I have not asked too
closely about their legal status, at least one has a work permit ..
Ivan speaks the best English, Igor speaks some, and the rest have
little more than the greetings to pass around.
Ivan, I find, was a rocket scientist. Maybe a slightly tall order,
because he did electrical systems on their rockets, but rocket
scientist has a nice ring to it .. He is doing general construction
work now, soon to migrate to electrical, but it seems almost anything
is better than staying in Russia.
Hello from the millenium minds conference
Folks,
I just went to a conference last week discussing Internet in
education in South Africa. I went with George Solomon, someone
I met though a foundation in the States that sponsors computers
in schools here, through the African American Foreign Relations Council.
They installed 30 486-class into Esangweni Secondary school, in
Kyalitsha, one of Cape Towns black townships. They all have 16M RAM,
and Windows95. There is also a Server computer, currently unused.
Indaba, My children
Folks,
You remember Khekheke.
The camera-man for National Geographic, with the rest of the crew, spent
that evening in the bar at the George Hotel, where we discussed the
day’s events.
He said that he had been worried on occasion when snakes had been tossed
at his feet - his field of vision was limited by the camera lens, and he
hoped someone else was watching the snakes..
He also mentioned another Sangoma they had met in Johannesburg - who had
defied his teachers and had published a book on what he had learned.
Cape Town, the mother city
Folks,
I returned to Cape Town, the mother city, the first city in
South Africa. I am staying with friends from work, who have
an apartment overlooking the Atlantic.
The smell of the sea in the morning, and the sunsets, one every
day, computer access, a resort town.
I step symbolically onto a plane on June 2nd, as the country
takes part in the second election since apartheid. I am visiting
the States for a month, until early July.
Natures Valley, nature reserve
Folks,
I picked up my motorcycle again in Durban - R2200 worth of
repairs - including a clutch pressure plate at R900 (eek)
and a complete set of gearbox bearings, and R1000 worth of
labor. (R6 to the dollar).
I pressed on to East London, then the next day through to
Natures Valley, just outside Plettenburg bay, crossing in
my travels several huge rivers that run down to the sea.
I spent a couple of days in Natures Valley - a Feinboss
plant kingdom, and the worlds highest Bungee jump (No, I
didn’t..). I went sailing in Plettenburg Bay, and visited
a seal colony, and some dolphins that stopped by the boat
to play. The Backpackers lodge there had a very interesting
guy working there - a (gay) South African that had been
round the world massaging the rich and famous, and then
had lost it all trying to pass Coke through customs in
Bolivia - (bad experience deleted) - and was back in
South Africa after rehab.
KheKheKe - Sangoma from Zululand
Folks,
I hitched back from Swaziland, and got back in time for a visit to
KheKheKe - the Zululand Sangoma near the Tugela river. The
National Geographic film crew had showed up, and we set off
on Tuesday to his Kraal. the film is called “Snakes of Africa”,
and our interest in KheKheKe was his use of snakes during
his rituals.
He had collected several local Sangomas to be a part of the
ceremonies, and after a nice lunch and a beer, and selection of
a site for filming, the action began ..
Mbabane, swaziland
Folks,
I set off to Spashy Fen, a music festival, last Thursday,
only to have my BMW R80 break a clutch pressure plate
and other things in the gearbox.
After chatting with a motorcycle-owning indian bar-owner, he
offered to take it in his Bakkie (pickup) to Durban, to the
mechanic currently fixing his bike, which we duly did. I then
hitch-hiked to Splashy Fen - even with the help of a sign it
took too long to get a lift .. but the magic ride materialised,
and I got there in time for the evening festivities.
Sangoma with snakes
Folks,
A British girl came out to Zululand to organise filming of a
National Geographic documentary on snakes in Africa. Specifically,
she was interested in filming a powerful local Sangoma, KheKheKhe,
who incorporates snakes into his ritual. He even puts black and
green mambers, and puff adders, heads in his mouth ..
We (Graham, myself, and Mitch) took (another) gorgeous trip through
rural Zululand in search of this old man, now internationally famous.
Computer education in Eshowe
Folks,
The other day I visited the Convent school attached to the
local catholic church.
It is a primary school, private, that takes both sexes and all
colors .. and it has a computer education. They have a network
of about a dozen Windows computers, networked, where the kids
learn to type, draw, and program, using Logo. Logo is a kids'
programming language, where you ask a turtle to put a pen down
and walk around, drawing things.
Computer education in Eshowe, Zululand
Folks,
This week I went to see Andre Basel, who is the computer science teacher
at Eshowe High school and the local computer ‘fundi’.
We installed Linux on one of his classroom computers, and discussed
what his goals were in computer education.
He also put me in touch with Eshowe college of education, a teacher
training college here, which has a room full of computers, largely
under-used, without a network. I asked them over to the High School,
but only succeeded in scaring them about Linux.