(Note: sorry blog readers - I know I have been remiss in updating the blog during the past week here. I have been having a great time and enjoying some wonderful adventures here. My access to the internet has been a little hit or miss (this past week being mostly "miss"), which is why I haven't been blogging about my travels.)
I am back in Capetown and it has been a wonderful past few days. As our final stop in South Africa, the GSE team attended at the Rotary District 9350 annual conference and had the opportunity to see all the people we have stayed with and met over the past month. It was a bit overwhelming and emotional - I have been surprised at the deep connections that all of us GSE'ers have made with people that we have only spent a brief period of time with. I choked up several times when I said goodbye to the Rotarians today. One of the things I know for sure is that I want to return here and spend more time with all of my new friends. (I am leaning heavily toward returning for the Cape Argus Cycling Tour next year)
Tonight is my last night in South Africa and I am spending it at the home of a super cool and talented woman, Jackie, who has been in charge of coordinating our whole trip. Jackie is a younger Rotarian and has been very involved with the organization (including as a GSE team leader and member) - I am inspired by this and hope to give back to Rotary like she has.
Tomorrow morning the GSE team will make a final stop at the Ilitha Creche (preschool) before heading to the airport. Ilitha is a Rotary project that we visited early on in our visit and we instantly fell in love with the teachers and the children there. Words can't accurately describe the poverty in the neighborhood where it is located, yet the beauty, hope and potential of the children and teachers, as well as the Rotarians who are involved. I want to take a lot of photos tomorrow and hope to post some to the blog while we are waiting at the airport(s) to give everyone a better idea of why this school moved us so much (and what we as GSE team members representing Southern Arizona Rotary are doing to help!).
That's all for now - I have so many thoughts running through my head right now about the trip, what I have learned and what I hope to do with this knowledge. I am excited about returning home and doing some serious mental processing of the past month!
The GSE Team returned to our "normal" GSE Team duties after a welcome few rest days. Today was a vocational visit day, and B.J. and I had the opportunity to visit the Overstrand Municipality, with the Director of Planning and Infrastructure. We had an intersting morning learning about municipal government here, which was a nice comparison to the City of Capetown that I visited in the past 2 weeks, since Capetown is so huge.
Overstrand has a population of 70,000 - 80,000, over 800 municipal employees and includes 11 different town areas under the umbrella of the municipality. Some of the notable items about Overstrand include its coastline (over 200 kilometers) and its location between the mountains and the ocean, making it very environmentally conscious. Because of the beautiful surroundings, the area's population can swell to 300,000+ in the vacation seasons of Christmas (summertime here) and Easter.
Our hosts, Steve and Henri, were very welcoming and discussed their occupation and responsibilities with us, including management and planning for the municipal water, wastewater, electricity and transportation systems. We learned about the water conservation that Overstrand promotes, as they experienced a drought in the past 5 years, which led to shortages of water in the dam that had been the main source of municipal water.
The water shortage led to drilling of "bore holes" (wells), which is slated to become the main source of municipal water. Unlike Tucson, this area's aquifer has an abundant supply of water, so drilling wells was a practical solution. However, the municipality is still trying to promote water conservation and is even looking to hire a PIO for this function (BTW, I asked about the pay for a job like this and Steve told me it would pay 250,000 Rand per year, which is equivalent to $25-30K per year in the U.S.)
We also had the opportunity to take in a City Council meeting, which had a few differences from the city council meetings I have seen in the U.S., but nothing too radically different. However, the meeting was conducted in Afrikaans, so I didn't take in everything that was being said!
A couple of interesting departures from city/town council meetings in the U.S. was the delegation of authority to the Executive Mayor, who has the power to approve certain items without a vote of the Council. Similar to Capetown, the Council is half directly elected and half proportionally selected based on the percentage of the vote received by political parties. The City Council here has 20 members.
B.J. and I had lunch with his host, Jaco, at the usual South African lunch time of 1:30 (side note: I am STARVING by this time - my American stomach is trained for lunch at noon!!).
In the afternoon, we had a quick visit to a recycling center, which B.J. was super interested in. I wasn't as crazy about it, considering that it had started raining and the place didn't smell so hot.
The highlight of the day was stopping by Jaco's office, who is veterinarian and also works with the equivalent of the Humane Society here. We visited the Cattery (I've never heard this word before, but I like it) - a 2-room building with about 20 kitties and cats. Too cute! It was so relaxing to be able to spend some time with sweet little kitties.
At 5 p.m., Jenny and I were collected by our new "host dad," Metcalf, who took us back to his and his wife, Carina's, house. They have a wonderful house about a block away from the ocean and are amazing hosts! We are totally spoiled, as we have the entire first floor suite to ourselves with separate rooms and bathrooms.
Jenny and I had a relaxing evening at home with Metcalf and Carina, who treated us to a home-cooked meal, and of course, some great red wine. After this blog is all posted, I am going to retire to my suite and head off to bed. Tomorrow we are visiting Rotary projects, touring an abalone farm and then doing a presentation at the Hermanus Rotary Club tomorrow evening.
Just a quick blog post today - I think some of the others have talked about the house that we are currently staying in, so I won't repeat everything too much. To catch everyone up, the Rotarians decided to give us a mid-GSE trip break. Yesterday, the Hermanus Rotary club picked us up, took us to a large house not currently lived in and dropped us off. The team members have joked that we feel a little bit like a reality show with all of us in one house together!
The Rotarians will return tomorrow morning and we will resume our normal GSE team activities. In the meantime, the group is taking full advantage of our free time with leisurely meals outside, walks on the beautiful beach here and catching up on computer time. Today we had a delicious tapas lunch, joking that you could tell we are Americans with our table full of plates (literally the entire table surface had some sort of food dish on it). Right now, Jenny and B.J. are looking like crazy people as they talk to their families via Skype, and are waving, blowing kisses annd talking to their computer screens.
I forgot to bring my camera to download some current photos, so here are a few of my favorites from earlier in the trip.  Children at Ilitha, a preschool in Khayelitsha, Capetown's largest informal housing settlement with extreme poverty. Ilitha is a project from the Seapoint Rotary Club in Capetown.
 My first cricket game ever - the Indian Premier League playing in Capetown. Note the "6" on the screen - a "6" is equivalent to a home run in baseball.
The past few days have been a well deserved mental break for the GSE Team. After two packed weeks of visiting Rotary projects, doing vocational visits and giving presentations, we spent a great weekend with the Rotary clubs in the Helderberg Basin region near Capetown and the visiting GSE Team from Germany.
On Saturday, we had the opportunity to visit the Solms-Delta Winery near Stellenbosch. This was a great experience, as the visit combined wine tasting and a bit of local history and socially responsible farming. The owner, who is the nephew of one of the Rotary club members, is a pretty amazing person - in addition to making great wine, he created a museum to highlight the region's history and affects of apartheid. He also told us about a plan he is implementing to give the farmworkers part ownership in the company.
Sunday also proved to be super fun with a visit to Spier, where they have wildlife encounters and a raptor show. The highlight of this day was getting to pet a cheetah. The cheetah was supervised by a trainer, so it wasn't exactly out in the wild, but it was still very cool. The cheetah was purring and the trainer explained that cats can either purr or roar, and that the cheetah is one of the cats that purrs.
Later Sunday evening, the Helderberg Rotary Club hosted a dinner for us and the GSE Team from Germany. The highlight of the dinner was when our team leader, Randy, led us in singing some great American hits, including "Take Me Home Country Roads," "This Land is Your Land" and "Folsom Prison Blues." We had an all-star international singing cast with our friends from South Africa and Germany, who were very familiar with these songs.
 Cheetah petting
 Me, Jenny and Sarah at Spier, where we got to pet cheetahs and hold owls.
Greetings from the Strand neighborhood in Capetown! The team has been staying in this area for 2 days, but I forgot to mention it in my previous blog post. Right now, I am staying with my teammate, Sarah, in a great guest suite area in the home of Lynette and Koos Stassen. Lynette is a Rotarian and is very active in the community - she has been a wonderful host to us. Strand means beach in Afrikaans - true to its name, Strand has a beautiful beach area.
In addition the nice guest suite area stocked with its own supply of food, I have really enjoyed staying here and having another GSE team member in the same house. Since we are rather formal all day long, it is nice to come home and relax and chat with another person my own age.
Today was another vocational day (more on that below) followed by some lunch and shopping and then a walk on the beach. I am just relaxing now before we head out to another presentation tonight to a couple different Rotary clubs from the Helderberg Basin area.
My vocational visit was one of the best yet today. I had the opportunity to meet with Alderwoman Gisela Jespersen from the Capetown City Council. We met at the home of a very nice couple (whose names I forgot to write down). Gisela and I had coffee and milk tart (a South African custard-tasting pie - very good!) and chatted about local government in South Africa.
Gisela is from the Democratic Alliance (DA) political party and she was very pleased with the results of Wednesday’s National and Provincial elections. The DA appears (not all of the votes are counted yet) to have won an outright majority in the Western Cape Province (where Capetown is located), which means that their party will control politics in this Province for the first time - previously, the ANC had the majority. From what I understand, this means that Helen Zille, the DA leader and current Mayor of Capetown, will become the leader of the Province (similar to being Governor of a State).
In addition to talking about the current National politics, we also talked about how the City is structured and how Gisela reaches out to the public. One of the notable things is that the City has 200 City Councilmembers! Half are elected by Wards and represent a specific area (Gisela is elected by a certain Ward) and the rest are proportionately selected by party. As compared to Tucson, the Capetown City Council only works on certain issues - other issues are decided by the Mayor and the Executive Council/Committee, which oversees the City’s major departments (I.e. community services, planning, utilities).
As for public outreach and involvement, each Council member that represents a Ward has a group of 19 citizens that serve in an advisory fashion. The citizens are selected amongst their peers to represent various constituencies (I.e. business, churches, non-profits). The advisory group meets monthly. I thought this was a good way of providing for public involvement. Gisela also has an extensive email list and regularly sends updates to the paper.
After the meeting was over, Lynette, Sarah and I spent some time at the Somerset West shopping mall. Apart from the different accents and stores, it could have been a mall in any part of the U.S. - funny how I can be across the world, but a shopping mall still looks very similar! I guess shopping malls in the U.S. don’t have biltong kiosks - biltong is a South African beef jerky that is very tasty.
Tonight’s Rotary presentation should be interesting, as it is our first time presenting with the other GSE Team visiting from Frankfurt, Germany. I am curious to see how our presentations match up! Okay, and I admit, a tiny bit of group rivalry is setting in, as I hope to make the U.S. proud and do a super job tonight. We spend the weekend hanging out with the German team and I am looking forward to getting to know people my own age and learn more about them.
That’s it for now - happy Friday all!
As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the activities that I really wanted to experience in South Africa was attending a cricket or rugby game here. I always enjoy watching sports and think they are a great way to take in the culture of another country.
Because the Rotarians here have been so kind in making our visit a memorable experience, they went out of their way to honor my request to see a sporting event here.
I attended the game with Mike, a Rotarian from the Wynberg Rotary Club, and his two children, Carrie and Rob, who were thrilled to teach this foreigner about cricket!
The game was between the Bangalore Royal Challengers and the Deccan Chargers in the Indian Premiere League (IPL), which is a quicker and flashier version of the original 5-Day cricket games.
In the past, I always thought cricket seemed a little slow and goofy because of the running back and forth and the wickets and stuff. However, after a few lessons on the purpose of the game, I found myself very interested in it. I won't try to explain it here because a) it would take up way too much room and b) I still don't know it super well. After a while, I found myself cheering at the 6's and wickets without being prompted to do so.
Cricket draws comparisons to my favorite sport of baseball and one of the things I enjoyed was the strategy and thinking that seems to go into cricket, similar to baseball. Mike is a big cricket fan and I really enjoyed hearing his cricket stories (the longest hit he ever saw at the stadium, worse losses, etc) - this too reminded me of the legends that tend to float around baseball stadiums. I even told him some of my favorite Mets stories from back in the day.
Since I seem to be on a kick of doing bullet point lists, here are some of my oberservations:
-Cricket seems to draw a more civilized crowd than at a baseball stadium. Example: our sodas and beers were served out of actual glasses! It seemed very fancy to have a real glass at a sporting event.
-The IPL form of cricket was of great interest to me for the sports marketing aspect: there was a big DJ booth with great music, cheerleaders and fireworks. Although cricket purists frown upon the quick form of the game and the extras, it made me wonder if baseball would ever adopt a flashier, quicker version to market to a new crowd? Sure, baseball purists would hate it (I probably wouldn't advocate for this either), but it might be more fun for the casual fan.
-The players had to travel through the stands to get to their locker room. The area they went through was right by where we were sitting, so at times, I was just 3-4 feet away from some big cricket stars. This was awesome! Even when I worked for sports teams during college, I never got to be this close to players walking to their locker room.
-The food and drink were way more reasonably priced at the cricket game. The cost of 4 meals was 150 Rand, which is between $15-20, depending on the day's exchange rate. Isn't that great?
Althogether I had a great time. Mike, Carrie and Rob were great hosts, the game was interesting and the stadium was beautiful. Couldn't ask for more!
End result: Decan Chargers: 184-6 over Bangalore Royal Challengers: 160-8.
I have a couple more minutes before departing for the cricket game, so I thought I would share a couple of the trip's more funny moments since most of my posts so far have been fairly serious.
Part of our trip purpose is to give presentations at various Rotary meetings throughout South Africa. During our presentation, each GSE Team member is responsible for a specific portion of the information that we present on Arizona. One of the funny things is that the GSE Team is starting to memorize each other's parts of our presentation. For some reason, it makes me get uncontrollable giggles when I think about how many times I have heard certain phrases that each team member uses. So, for the past couple presentations, I have been fighting back laughter every time I present and get to a certain phrase that I know my teammates have heard like 100 times already.
The funniest moment occured last night at the Melkbos Rotary Club meeting when the Club's Sergeant at Arms commented on the fact that the two guys on our team are named Randy and B.J. You can't say that South Africans don't have a sense of humor!
Speaking of names, our group leader, Randy's name has a very interesting meaning in South Africa! Apparently, the word "brooks" means "pants" in Afrikaans. Now I know why a few people have chuckled when he stands up and says his name is Randy Brooks.
Today is a very exciting day in South Africa... in addition to being our first free day since we arrived, it is Election Day here. South Africans are voting for National and Provincial (State) offices. There are a couple big differences with the U.S. elections and South African elections... here is a list of some of the things I have learned/observed:
-Election Day is a public holiday here. Many of the Rotarians that I have met have been excited about Election Day not only to vote but as a day off too. Having the whole day off to vote seems to elevate the importance of voting and make it something that people look forward to. I would be totally supportive of efforts in the U.S. to make Election Day a public holiday as a way to increase voter turnout and raise awareness of the importance of voting. What are everyone else's thoughts on this??
-I had the opportunity to drive by a couple of polling places and they were packed! I took some photos of the lines (or "queues" as they are called here) and hope to post them later on. One building had a seriously long line that was snaking out the door and down the sidewalk.
-When South Africans vote, they receive 2 ballots - one for National and one for Provincial - on these ballots, there is only one item to check off, which is what party you are voting for. In South Africa, citizens cast their votes for political parties, rather than for individuals. From there, the parties decide who their leaders will be.
-The big issue in this election seems to be how well the ANC (African National Congress), which has been in power since Nelson Mandela was elected in 1994, will fare. In previous elections, the ANC received 65%+ of the vote and South Africa was for the most part, a one-party country. Currently, ANC is facing its first major opposition from 2 parties: COPE (Congress of the People), which is a group of ANC people that split off in opposition and the DA (Democratic Alliance). It takes 2/3 majority to amend the SA Constitution, so a big item is whether or not ANC will retain enough support to have such a majority.
-Capetown is different from the rest of South Africa in that it is a stronghold for the DA Party - the City's Mayor is the leader of the DA Party. So far, most of the people I have met are DA supporters, but I think this is a function of where I am staying and the people I am staying with.
Another exciting thing about today is that I will attend my first cricket game this evening! I love sports and was really hoping to take in some sports in South Africa - I have been super lucky in that the Rotarians have bent over backwards to accomodate this request.
The cricket being played tonight is a quick form of cricket popular in India - this is different than the traditional type of cricket, which takes 5 days for a game to be played! Tonight's game in the quick Indian style is around 3 hours or so.
The teams playing aren't South African - they are part of the Indian Premier League (IPL), which moved their games to South Africa because of concerns over weather and election violence in India. Even though the teams aren't local, the South Africans I have met seem to be very excited to attend the cricket games.
This is turning out to be a very long blog post, so I will try to write more later or tomorrow to describe my cricket experience!
Note: I am writing this blog as I am wait for my "host dad" at his office before we leave for his Rotary meeting tonight. This may be short, depending on when he is ready to go.
What a day! I spent today with staff at the City of Capetown's Housing Department. My initial thought at the end of the day is that Tucson's housing issues are miniscule in comparison to Capetown.
I was matched up with this office, as I put "housing" down as one of my interests based on my work with the Arizona Multihousing Association and the City of Tucson. Since Tucson currently has many initiatives relating to affordable housing, I thought it might be interesting to see how Capetown tackles this problem.
Today's visit went in a totally different direction, as I had the opportunity to job shadow two men, Barry and Dave, who work in the Anti Land Invasion (the real name!) Division of the Capetown Housing Department.
As a brief background of what they do, Capetown has millions of people who live in 'informal settlements' - think of the shacks on the hill in Nogales, Mexico, but going on for miles and miles. The South African Constitution puts the onus on property owners to stop temporary settlements from being constructed on their land. To that end, once people put up a "house" (i.e. corrugated metal and wood), the property owner must receive a court order and prove that people invaded their land in order to get the people to move. If you don't have a fence and people move onto your land, then some judges will say it is your fault and that the people cannot be relocated, even if it is private property. And, taking up residence on someone's property isn't a criminal offense, which is why a court order is required.
Most homes in Capetown have very tall fences with wire, which I learned today is not only for security, but also to prevent a temporary settlement from being built on your property.
So, it is the job of the two men that I shadowed today to prevent people from taking up residence on City-owned property. (I asked about City parks and they have a separate police-type force who prevent people from moving in to parks.)
During my day, I witnessed a showdown between residents and the Capetown Police and Housing Department over people who wanted to build structures on vacant City land.
My head is so full of thoughts and questions that is hard to accurately capture everything in this blog post, so I hope I am able to do some justice in this description.
Some things I am thinking about include:
-The South Africa Constitution's treatment of private property rights vs. those in the U.S.
-What should Capetown do about the thousands of people moving to the City each month who do not have housing? Should they kick people off City-owned land, or let them take up residence there?
-What is government's obligation to those without housing? How do local governments balance this with other needs in the City and maintain a balanced budget?
Ahhhh - so many thoughts - I could type all day, but my host dad is ready to go to the Rotary meeting. We are on presentation number 4 on our Rotary club presentation circuit - I think I could almost recite my teammate's speaking portions by this time!
What a day! Let me first start by apologizing if this blog post goes on and on. It is the end of the day, around 10:30 p.m. here and I am just now settling in at my host family's house after a long and interesting day.
Today was both our first vocational visit and later on, our first presentation to a South African Rotary club. The way the vocational visits work is that our host district coordinator received a list from each of the GSE Team members on their professional interests and then tried to match us up with relevant visits in South Africa.
For me, I listed local government, land use, water and wastewater management and public relations as my interests. I guess my true colors come out on that list, as I own a PR company, but love learning about local government, which is why it was top on my list. As an aside, my interest and passion in this subject was validated today by my complete fascination in all things city government on the tour today. I am starting to wonder about possible fields of graduate study to continue this learning process.
Today's visit was to the City of Capetown. B.J. Cordova and I were hosted by a man who worked for the city for over 30 years named Kendall, who knew about what seemed to be just about everything in Capetown! In a span of a couple of hours, we visited with the City staff responsible for building the stadium and infrastructure for the 2010 World Cup, an urban redevelopment project, a biodiversity conservation program and a program to improve the informal settlements in town, as well as going on a drive around Capetown.
In the interest of time, here is a short list of what I learned today:
-Capetown is ruled by the Democratic Alliance, which is a different political party than the rest of South Africa (which is ruled by the ANC party). This sometimes causes friction between Capetown and the other major cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria. (sound familiar to those in Tucson?)
-The World Cup is a really big event! Since I am not a huge soccer fan (thanks mean girls in 7th grade who said they would beat me up if I kept playing), I wasn't aware of what it meant for a country to host the World Cup. The City of Capetown is investing 2.7B Rand (around 270 million dollars) in stadium and infrastructure development for the 2010 World Cup. Combined with Provincial (State) and National spending, the total government investment is 8.6B Rand ($860 million). This does not even include the private investment in hotels, developments, etc. Soccer = big $$ in the world.
-The City of Capetown today is huge. Prior to 1997, the City was actually 29 different cities and towns, which were consolidated into 6 cities and towns and one county (metro), then into 1 local government for the whole region. This was done by order of the national government for several cities, including Johannesburg and Durban and each city had a 4 year time frame for consolidation! Today, the City has a staff of 25K people and a population of 3.4 million. I can't even imagine trying to manage the task of melding all of Tucson, Marana, Oro Valley, Sahuarita, South Tucson and Pima County into one government! Can you? Who would come out in charge I wonder?
-And finally, this note is for Mayor Skelton and CM Rodney Glassman if you are reading this - the City of Capetown uses rainwater harvesting and greywater re-use. In fact, the 2010 World Cup stadium will have rainwater harvesting systems on its roof. There was a major drought here a few years ago, so people in Capetown are very water conscious as well.
Tonight's Rotary Club presentation was to the Rotary Club of Hout Bay, a beautiful area in Capetown. The club met at a mariner's club near a dock with many fishing boats coming in for the evening. The smell made me think of my time down the shore in New Jersey, especially when I visit my grandfather's fishing boat.
As with all Rotary Clubs, the Hout Bay group was very hospitable and we had a fun time. This club had a time for goodwill (cocktails) before the meeting, which was enjoyable and made it seem very social. The presentation went off without a hitch - I felt especially comfortable presenting here, as it was our first time talking to Rotarians who didn't know anything about Arizona, therefore all of our facts and figures were new and intersting to them.
Tomorrow the group will be touring a Rotary project in a very poor area where there is a family counseling center. This area has high rates of HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty, so it should be very eye-opening. It is my understanding that many Rotary clubs in Tucson have supported this project, so I look forward to bringing back information
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