A New Era Dawns...

Pre-Inaugural Tears A-Flowin'
The past few days have been a blur of emotion and exhilaration. Woww...where to begin.

We returned on Friday from Kwa-Zulu Natal (also known as KZN here in S.A.), after a fantastic 10 day trip. Saturday Naomi and I did a bike ride, and Sunday we both rode in the "Cape Cobra Bike Race." I did 85ks and 8 hills. It was brutal. Naomi did 45 ks, including the intimidating "au Kaapse Weg" --old Cape Road-- which climbs over the hills separating the bay-side from the atlantic side of the penninsula. Needless to say, we were exhausted.

Finally on Monday afternoon, I had some time to sit down and blog about our trip to KZN. But, I had heard there had been some kind of inauguration concert the previous night (yes, we were a bit out of it while in KZN), so I started to look on YouTube to see what I could find. The next thing I realize, four hous have passed, and I've been histerically sobbing watching various angles of the concert! Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, Garth Brookes. That's right, Garth Brookes even got me teary-eyed. But the clip that hit me the hardest was watching Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen sing "This Land is Your Land." And not jus the two verses, but all the verses including the lines of hungry folks at the churches! Pete Seeger's face, his enthusiasm, his encouragement to the crowd to join in and sing, just brought me to tears. Thinking how for his whole life, he has felt so marginal, on the fringes trying to "speak truth to power," and finally, here he was at the center of power in Washington DC with hundreds of thousands watching. He seemed so damn happy. Like a kindergardener with a new kazoo to blow!

Naomi and the girls had been out all afternoon, and when they came home my eyes were all red and bloodshot. I shared a few of the clips with them, trying to share the feeling. It wasn't as much fun feeling it all alone. Looking at the Lincoln Memorial, Alex said: "You can't believe how big that really is. It's huge. And his speech is right up behind him!" Clearly, her 8th grade trip to DC had planted some seeds, and it was great to see her connecting to a different kind of "Mall."

Inauguration Day
The inauguration started at 6:30 pm Cape Town time. We had invited a few South African and American families over to watch with us. Naomi insisted that we have everything prepared and ready by 5:00 pm. So, rather than doing the traditional South African braai, where you don't even light the fire until the guests come, and then spend hours (and numerous beers) tending the fire and chatting before putting on the meat, we did a more traditional American BBQ. In other words, I lit the fire at 2:30, had the meat on the grill by 3:30, and had everything on the table and ready to go by 4:30. Butterflied leg of lamb and b-b-q chicken, along with some very delicious salads.

The house was packed by the time the ceremony started, and so we got to feel a bit of the sense of being part of the crowd and part of the moment. The words and emotion totally transcended time and space, and the entire room was transfixed. It was awesome. I had ordered 100 of the "Yes We Did" commemorative stickers, so I handed them out to everyone who had come as a souvenir. It really felt like we too were making history.

I'll tell you all about KZN in an upcoming blog. In the meantime, let's still share in the glow of a new moment in time; transformation of the human spirit. Incredible! YES WE DID! YES WE WILL KEEP DOING!!

Blog ya later,
Seth./.

Seeing the "Colourful" Sites of Cape Town

Well, we're back from Mali and we've had two weeks to enjoy summer in Cape Town before our final trip of this summer break. (That's right, no moss is growing under these Pollacks' feet! Tomorrow we are off for 10 days to St. Lucia, Zululand, and the Drakensberg mountains...) But for the past two weeks, we've been in Cape Town, and have taken full advantage of the great summer weather to see all the tourist sites that we had not seen yet. Here are a few highlights.

Cape Point Lighthouse

Though we've biked past the entrance numerous times, we had never gone in to explore Cape Point National Park. This is the very southern end of the Cape peninsula, the spit of land that extends furtherst south and west in Africa. Historically, it has been called the Cape of Good Hope and the Cape of Storms. It's also the piece of land with the most shipwrecks anywhere in Africa, and there are dozens of wrecks all along this part of the coast.

While this area is known for incredibly high winds, the day we were there was gorgeous; a bit breezy, but really beautiful. We hiked up to the "old" lighthouse, which was so often covered in clouds that it did little good. It was replace in 1919 by a "new" lighthouse, which sits at the very tip of the peninsula.

We then capped-off the day with brunch at an old farm house just down the road from the national park. Ahhh...

New Year's Day Climb up Table Mountain

The most prominent feature of Cape Town is "Table Mountain." It rises 3,000 feet right out of downtown, and creates an incredible backdrop for the city. There is a tram that goes up to the top, and the one day we tried to ride it, it was closed for repairs. So, at 6:00 a.m. on New Year's day, we set out with a hiking club to make our first ascent to the top. We took the most direct root up, which is called Platterkloof Gorge. It is a 2 hour hike that zig-zags its way right up a narrow ravine to the top. Starting at 6:00, we were at the top by 8:00 --though Maya was with the fast group and made it up by 7:30, and Alex was close behind at 7:45. Once on the top of the table, we stopped for a bite, and to let all the stragglers catch up. From there we hiked another 45 minutes to McClear's Beacon, which is actually the highest point on Table Mountain. There, we had lunch, and climbed around on the pyramid that has been erected there. We had incredible views in all directions, and eventually hiked back around to the cable station at the top of the mountain.

Once at the cable station, we had an option to either take the cable car down, or... Well, Alex's knee was bothering her, so Naomi and her took the cable car. That left Maya and I to go back down the trail. While coming up was tiring, going down was downright painful! It is such a steep climb, that you are really working your knees and thigh muscles. By the time we were at the bottom, neither Maya nor I could hardly walk, as our muscles were just shot. It has taken a few days of major hot tub and sauvignon blanc therapy to get back to normal. We think we're almost there!

Minstrel Troupe Parade

Saturday January 3 was the day of the annual "Minstrel Parade." Historically, the day after new years day was the one day that the slaves in the Cape Town region had off! So, this has evolved into a huge party for the mixed-race descendants of these folks, known as the "Cape Coloureds." In seems that in the mid 1860s, the "minstrel show" made it from the U.S. to Cape Town, with musicians dressing up in "black face." Well, the locals adopted and adapted this "minstrel" get-up, and rather than putting on "black face," they paint their faces white, dress in outrageous outfits, and parade through downtown. Every neighborhood in the "coloured townships" has a minstrel troupe, and for the month of January, there will be music, dance, and marching competitions throughout the city. But January 3 is the one day when downtown Cape Town is taken over by the folks from the coloured townships, as they line the streets to cheer on the passing minstrel troupes in the parade.

While the outfits were incredibly colorful, and the dancing and prancing was full of life, two things really hit us watching the parade. First, this was the first time that we've seen so many of Cape Town's "coloured" minority out and about in downtown. You really got the sense that this was THEIR DAY! Second, we didn't bring any food because we were expecting to find all kinds of good parade junk food to be bought. You know, hot dogs, pretzels, snow cones, or their South African cousins. But amazingly, there was almost nothing for sale. We found one entrepreneurial guy who had set up a stand selling soft drinks. BUT, everyone was eating. It turns out, this is a major picnic event. Families cook food, and bring it all down to the parade route where the set up their tables, their tents, their chairs and cushions, and picnic. At first we couldn't figure out why no-body was selling food. Then we realized that people REALLY DON'T HAVE THE MONEY! Things are so tight for most South Africans, that rather than buying an overpriced grilled boerworst (local beef sausage) on the street, you'd rather make it at home yourself. Families really have to watch their pennies. So much for the parade-side junk food. (We did have a nice lunch at the cafe in the botanical gardens!).

So, What Color Are YOU Anyway?

As we were walking back to the car, we passed these two benches on the street. It took us a while to realize what was going on. If you can't read the writing, here is what they say:

"WHITES ONLY: From the Government Gazette registration of reclassifications, 1984: 518 Coloured persons were reclassified as White persons. 1 White person was reclassified as a Coloured person. "

"NON-WHITES ONLY: Edited from the Population Registration Act No 30 of 1950. A White person is in appearance White --and not Coloured. A Coloured is a person who is not a White or a Bantu."

It turns out, we were walking in front of the court house. And as another sign said, in an office inside this court house was the "Race Classification Board." This was the official administrative office where they determined what label you should have! (You see how ridiculous the criteria were!) As crazy as this sounds, this was reality from 1950 - 1991. The sign below helped us understand what we were seeing. It turns out that this was a "living history exhibit" created by the city. What a very fitting end to our day of watching "Coloured Cape Town" on parade!

Blog ya later,

Seth./.

Teaching and Learning Malian Style

I want to spend a moment singing the praises of "boronmuso", or big sister, Maria Diarra. But in order to appreciate her talents, drive and commitment to radical transformation, you have to understand a bit of the context, especially around education in Mali, and especially around girls education.

(Check out the Malian kids heading off to school in the photo on the right!)

First of all, imagine a school without books or handouts at all. Imagine 100+ kids squished onto benches, each with a small piece of chalk and a tiny board. Now, imagine that your home language is Bambara, that you hear Bambara all day long, that everyone you know speaks Bambara all-day-long, and that when you show up in first grade, the teacher says: "Bonjour les enfants!" And now, as you begin to learn to read and write in this foreign language, your day at school consists of either memorizing or copying and memorizing the lesson that the teacher has written on the board. Rote memorization is what learning consists of in most Malian schools. And what makes it even worse, is that the content is still largely based in the colonial French framework, with very few references to life as kids know it and live it in Mali.Now, add to that the fact that as a girl, you are expected to support your mothers (plural) with much of the cooking, cleaning and organizing of the home. Also, there are probably some home businesses that you need to be involved with --making shi butter from the nuts that are collected from the countryside; collecting and selling wood; making and selling herbal remedies. Clearly for your family, the time that you spend at school is seen as a loss to the family. Since the boys don't have these expectations of house work, it's not such a problem to have them spending time at school. But girls are just too valuable NOT to have at home. So, by the end of primary school, many girls have already dropped out of school.

Now if that's not bad enough, in the 1990's, the World Bank started a campaign called "Structural Adjustment," whose goal was to help third world governments and economies look more like the west. A key part of the strategy was to privatize state-owned businesses, and to reduce the budon of public sector employees. This meant privatizing education. Mali is a great example of this strategy in action, or in inaction. As a result, the government encouraged individuals to open private schools, with absolutely no money coming from the state. School fees are paid by the families, and from these fees, the school must pay its teachers, and purchase all that is necessary to run a school. Today, of the 12,000 schools in Mali, 6,000 are private.

My friend Baba runs one of these private schools. It is called "Ecole Sirido Baba," and it is located in a poor neighborhood of Bamako called Dianguinebougou. Unlike state schools, you don't need a teaching degree to teach in a private school. In Baba's school, Baba is the only person who has finished Lycee --the academic pathway to high school equivalency in Malian education. All the other teachers have a technical certificate of some sort, or part of a Lycee education. Also, they receive almost no training from the government, and so, they teach what they were taught, in the style that they were taught it. That means: the teacher writes lessons on the board, and the students copy it down, and memorize it. That's school.

l'Institute pour l'Education Populaire (IEP)

Maria started her own school, called "Chi Wara," which is the mythological symbol of excellence in Bambara culture. Now, she has an organization called IEP, and they have set out to transform Malian education; to end the process of "stupidification", as she calls it, which has been the result of public education in the post-colonial period. Maria's focus is to help schooling be relevant to the life and culture of the people of Mali, and to help the pedagogy be engaging and stimulating for the kids --to help them to be curious, to build on what they know, and to make sense of the world around them.

As we would visit classrooms in public schools, I was amazed at how Maria would step right into her transformative role. As if on cue, the teacher would immediately scare the children into statue-like obedience. Hands folded across the chest, faces expressionless --as if this was the posture of learning. More realistically, this is the posture of obedience, which is important when you have almost 100 kids in your class! From the beginning, Maria would start to get the kids engaged, slowly encouraging them to unfold their arms. She would ask them if they had any questions for us visitors. She would ask them what they wanted to be when they grow up? She would ask them if they had a song they would like to share. Slowly, the kids would come alive, as their knowledge and culture would for a moment be welcomed in the classroom. Unfortunately, these were French classrooms, and so the kids' Bambara knowledge and culture wasn't made to feel very welcome; as if their culture and traditions didn't have much value.

That is the work of IEP. Breaking the cycle of "stupidification." Helping Malian children build on their rich culture and values, and truly learn to make sense of the 21st century world they live in. Here are some images from our day visiting Baba's school, "Ecole Sirido Baba," and the public school up the road in Dianguinebougou.

Madu's Speech

I found that once in front of a group of kids, I would inevitably find myself trying to debunk the myth of the USA and the WEST being where its at! So many young Malians dream of going to the States, or to France, to "make it." I would tell them how much I have learned from them, from their culture and traditions. I would tell them how special their culture is, and how rich with humanity and respect and dignity it is. I would tell them that the "hadamadenya" (humanness) and "bonya" (respect) that exists in Malian society is worth more than gold. I would tell them that the sense of community and belonging that one feels in Mali is more valuable for their future than any sum in a bank account.

I would tell them all this in Bambara. Did they hear me? Not sure. Despite my language abilities, my white skin and American passport are pretty powerful.

Blog ya later.

Madu./.

Road Trip with Brahima Ouologuem (a.k.a. "Willy")

Road Trip!

After our first week settling into Maria's home in Kati, we spent 5 days on the road visiting Djenne and Bandiagarra in the north of Mali. Maria gave us her LandCruiser, and we were lucky enough to get to travel with Brahima Ouologuem. Ouloguem (pronousned Wiligem) and I worked together at Plan International in Banamba in 1985-86. When my folks visited in 1987, he accompanied us on a similar trip to the north country. Ouologuem is Dogon, and in addition to speaking Bambara and beautiful English, he also speaks Dogon and Fulani, two of the dominant languages in the northern part of Mali. Now, he works as a language teacher with Peace Corps, especially with volunteers in the Djenne, Mopti, Dogon part of the country. Luckily, Ouologuem was free, and so agreed to join us (and drive us!) on our trip north. I guess he's become the official Pollack-family tour-guide. He was the perfect guide!

The first day we drove 7 hours from Kati to Djenne. Djenne is the oldest city in Africa, situated in the Niger River delta, and home of the largest mud builing in the world (the Mosque of Djenne). We stayed at a great hotel on the outskirts of town, called Djenne Djenno, and spent a day touring the town. Unlike most Malian towns, Djenne is full of 2 and 3-story mud buildings. Their clay is so good, and they are such skilled builders, that they live in this very urban environment --16,000 people together on a pretty small island. It's amazing being surrounde by multi-story adobe buildings. Waling around felt very biblical. This is a picture looking at Djenne from the roof of our hotel.

The other exciting piece of the Djenne story was finding and visiting Jean Louis Bourgeois' house in Djenne. I met Jean Louis in New York in 1987, when he and Carrollee were finishing their book, Spectacular Vernacular, about adobe architecture in Mali and Afghanistan. Over the years, we've become good friends, and Jean Louis even introduced us to our little piece of sagebrush in Taos -- he has a gorgeous adobe on the mesa! In the past 10 years, Jean Louis has been going regularly to Mali, an was given a piece of land from the Chef du Village, and has built a gorgeous Djenne-style home. It wasn't too hard finding him, as our guide (whose surname is "Boss") is a grandson of the village chief, and knows Jean Louis very well. After a wonderful walk through town, we went by Jean Louis' home, and met his guardian "Cisse," who gave us a tour. It is situated right on the river, with incredibly beautiful roof-top sleeping. That will definitely be our home for our next trip.

After two nights at hotel Djenne Djenno (check out the hotel's website: http://www.hoteldjennedjenno.com/?page_id=10,) we drove up to the cliffs of Bandiagara, and Dogon country. The Dogon live only in this one part of Mali, which is very remote and protected by cliffs. As a result of their isolation, and their tenacity, they have stayed very indepenent, with a very strong animist tradition and unique cosmology. The land is very rugged, and extremely rocky. As a result, where the houses in Djenne are built with Djenne's incredible mud, the houses in Dogon country are built just of rock! No adobe bricks. Just stacked rocks! Dogon villages are collections of beautiful rock huts, and small mud graineries. Incrredibly picturesque. Since Ouologuem works with Peace Corps volunteers in the region, we got to stop and visit a volunteer named Kate in her village. We found her down at the village well, measuring. It turns out that her main project has been to deepen the well, not an easy task in the rocky terrain of Dogon country. She is finishing her second year, and enjoying every moment (believe it or not, she is 30 km on a dirt road from Bandiagara, and said she wishes she was placed in a more remote site... afterall, her village is on the tourist path to Sanga... and you know what those tourists do to the price of chicken...) We then walked with her down to the small river that flows next to the village. The Dogon are famous for growing onions in small plots alongside these small rivers, which are dammed up to provide water for a good part of the dry season. We went to see the volunteer's Malian counterpart, who was down in the onion fields, and got an up-close look at the onion fields. Very cool. Here's a picture of the volunteer, Kate, some village kids who tagged along as we showed up, and her counterpart (next to me with the t-shirt on his head).

Unfortunately, our trip in Dogon country was a bit slowed-down by Alex's stomach. She got a bug, perhaps some sour milk in Djenne, and just was feely crummy most of the time. The one day we explored the area, she had a terrible fever, and was feeling miserable. (In fact, one of the old ladies in the Dogon village took one look at her an said, "she doesn't looke well!" So, rather than hike the cliffs, we settled into our hotel in Bandiagara for some quiet downtime at our hotel, the Cheval Blanc. That allowed Maya and I to play some Dogon mini-golf. We have some cool video clips of that, but the blog site is not letting us upload them. Sorry...

So, that's a bit about our road trip in Mali. It was wonderful driving through the countryside, seeing villages enjoying a very successful farming season. It's amazing, but once you get outside the magnetic pull of the cities, the villages look really healthy. Adobe homes are well-plastered, gardens are well-tended, and people seem engaged in a variety of dry-season activities (shi-butter making; gardening; brick-making, etc.). The harvest had happened back in October, and was very good. We saw lots of people busily thrashing and winnowing the millet. Lots of millet stalks piled-up on rooftops, to serve as animal feed during the dry season. And we saw a ton of beautiful mango (delish!), baobab (leaves for sauce; bark for rope), and shi (oil) trees. It was easy to imagine how simple and good life can be, as we drove by at 110 km/hour. It was nice to be with Ouologuem, who would share stories of Peace Corps volunteers, who live in a number of the villages we passed. Perhaps some of that might have sunk it with Alex and Maya, though it's hard to tell. Nonetheless, it was a great road trip.
Blog ya later.
Madu (Seth)./.