In Between Finals

Classes ended two weeks ago on Thursday (although I still had to finish some glazing in Ceramics on Friday morning), and to celebrate the Denison girls and I went down the coast to Umzumbe for the weekend where we stayed at Mantis & Moon Backpackers. It was the perfect post-school, pre-finals break. Located just a couple blocks from the beach in a subtropical climate, the backpackers had a very jungle-y setting. I stayed in a treehouse, you heard right, with Kate and Debbie. The rest of the girls (Lauren, Jessi H., Jessi S., and Mani) stayed in adjacent treehouses. The treehouse had a bathroom, a hammock on the porch with an ocean view, as well as a view of the many vervet monkeys bounding through the trees (and on top of the treehouse). The backpackers also had a jacuzzi set within the trees--the first I have seen in SA, and much appreciated now that the nights are getting cooler. All of us would have been pretty content just lazing around the backpackers all weekend but there was so much more to see. On our second day, after chatting with another guest who had just sailed from Argentina to Antarctica and then Cape Town, we went off to Oribi Gorge. The Gorge, which is located about 20km inland from Port Shepstone, is gorgeous and dramatic as it cuts a deep and long slice through what would otherwise be a swath of sugar cane. We went horse riding around the mouth of gorge. This horse ride was only walking (no trotting) so I didn't feel like I was going to fall off like when I went riding in the Drakensberg, plus they used western saddles which are much easier to hold onto. During the ride we saw a family of warthogs--the guide said this was the first time in four years of doing this ride that she had seen them. The Gorge is also an adventure junkie's paradise as it is home to the tallest gorge swing in the world. I briefly considered trying the swing until I saw what it entailed--a 100m freefall. I opted instead to try the 'foofy slide' or zip line that traverses the gorge. What happens is they strap you into a harness that hooks into a wheel mechanism that goes over the cable. You just sit into the harness and slide into the middle of the gorge. They let you hang there for a minute, suspended 160m above the ground, before pulling you back with a rope that is attached to the harness. The scariest part is at the end when you're almost back and the tension of the rope makes you swing and bounce back and forth. I would definitely do it again (if it weren't so expensive). The next day we spent as much time as we could on the beach before having to head back to PMB. Umzumbe has a beautiful relatively secluded beach, but the waves are brutal. The sand is pretty course and filled with shards of shells, there are patches of rocks right by the shore, and the waves break in very shallow water on the beach. Just sticking my feet in the water, although warm, was painful as it felt like being attacked by seashell shrapnel. I tried walking in past the breaking waves, but my efforts were thwarted when I was knocked down by a thigh-high wave. I then determined it was not worth it and went back to lounging on the beach. Amazingly, the local kids about half my size seemed to have no problem with these waves. Possibly immune to the pain, they would stay out for ages and a few of the little guys were excellent body boarders and got some great rides. Later in the afternoon we reluctantly headed back to PMB.

After returning, I spent much of last week cramming for my two finals that were at the end of the week. When not studying I was usually ranting about the format of exams at this school, which I assume reflects the format of university exams in this country due to the British educational influence. In South Africa, finals carry much more weight than in the US (i.e. more than 50% of your final grade). There is a lot of pressure to do well on the three-hour exam, while 'real' work during the semester receives a marginal grade. I was discussing this with a girl in my Zulu class, and she was insisting that it is probably better this way because so many people plagiarize their work during the semester and it is harder to cheat in an exam setting. I do not agree with this. Many lecturers here are lazy and do not change their exam questions from year to year, so people pass off the prompts to their friends who are going to take the class in the future. Since I had so much material to memorize in a short amount of time, I tried focusing on certain areas I thought would show up and ignoring areas that I had already been tested on. This was not a good strategy because in both of my exams thus far the lecturers repeated questions already asked during the semester. Also the exams do not focus on comprehensive understanding through analysis and interpretation, but rather memorization through regurgitation. For instance, for my Labour Economics course (the most basic economics course I have taken since high school even though it is offered at the senior-level here), we were expected to memorize ten topic areas as they appeared in the textbook (since lecture notes very closely mimicked the text). My single-spaced typed notes with half-inch margins wound up being 12 pages, excluding graphs. After getting a very low grade on a test during the semester and talking with the lecturer, I realized that they were looking for exactly what is outlined in the book--nothing more, nothing less. This is problematic for me because I am not good at memorizing text. I thoroughly understand all of the topics covered during the semester because they are so basic, but I cannot necessarily memorize the five advantages and six disadvantages of bargaining councils in South Africa as stated in the textbook, for example.

If the content and expectations of exams weren't bad enough, the examination setting is not at all conducive to focused thinking. Exams are held in big halls around campus where they test about 300 students in one room, with possibly four different classes being tested at the same time and place. You have to check your bag at the door "at your own risk" and are assigned a seat situated in long rows of about 25 desks. The exams are not proctored by lecturers, so you cannot ask questions during the exam, and the people who do proctor the exams walk incessantly up and down the rows, stopping every now and then to stare at you (no, that's not distracting at all). Twice during my first exam they called out car registration numbers on the loudspeaker. Not only was this terribly distracting, but did they really think someone was going to get up and move their car, cutting short their own exam time? On top of those nuisances, the lights flickered regularly and it was cold in the exam room.

Besides screwing up my GPA, the higher education system here concerns me because, the way I see it, it does not prepare students for ANYTHING. Exams are incredibly unrealistic scenarios. In the real world you have time to research and prepare your work in a thoughtful manner. In the past, I have developed intellectually and professionally by doing work during the semester, but never by cramming for exams. I honestly believe that I did not develop academically at all this semester--if anything I have reverted to the warped expectations of high school. From what I have seen, many students are incapable of producing original university-level work, and yet they are able to slide through and graduate. This leads me to now severely question the validity of a South African college degree. The universities here are not creating thinkers, but rather machines that learn how to work the system. This is problematic for the current and future state of South Africa. The country is already experiencing a massive skills shortage, and I do not believe that the existing caliber of the university education will alleviate this anytime soon. I would like to be proved wrong. I hope South Africa does fill its skills gap and that its ‘educated’ population will be able to think critically to solve some of the country's major dilemmas such as mitigating the impacts of HIV/AIDS and lifting millions out of poverty.

After the frustration of my first two exams, I took a much-needed mid-finals trip to Mozambique with Kate, Patty, and Amir. The southern border post is about 500km up the coast from PMB. We left in the evening on Saturday and stopped about halfway in Mtubatuba for the night at Khumbulani Lodge where Kate and Patty had stayed before. The backpackers was basically one big converted house, with many home-y comforts. We spent most of the evening lounging in the living room on the big comfortable couches in front of the TV, and even though we stayed in dorm beds we had two clean bathrooms to ourselves. Continuing the trend of meeting interesting people at hostels, we met a woman from Nova Scotia who is in the middle of a six-month round the world trip. Her work offered to either transfer her to Atlanta or give her a severance package. She took the severance package and decided to take a trip of a lifetime--I think she made the right choice. Sunday morning we continued on to the Kosi Bay border post to make our 2pm pick-up. We got there early and there was already someone there from the resort, Ponta Malongane, with a pick-up truck and trailer waiting for us. Even though the place we stayed at was only 15km from the border we had to leave our rental car there because Mozambique only has sand roads, so you need a 4x4 to get around. It worked out fine because there is a private lot on the SA side where they watch your car for about $3 per day, and once you get to the beach you do not want to leave. The SA-Mozambique border was probably the most lax border I have seen. The fence separating the countries is smaller than the fences most people have around their homes, and people were bringing in pick-up trucks with tarps over their cargo in the back--no fear of terrorists here. A group of five from Pretoria was being picked up at the same time so we waited as they loaded their stuff. As it turned out, it seemed like we got ripped off at the Mozambique border post because we were charged R172 (almost $25) each for our visas, while the South Africans were charged only R10 each. They are at Ponta Malongane for a week, but when I first saw how much food, equipment, etc. they had brought I seriously thought that they worked for the place and were restocking it and that perhaps the language they were speaking was Portuguese (it was actually Afrikaans). The 15km ride to Ponta Malongane took 45 minutes because you cannot drive faster than 20km per hour on the sand roads. Some background on Mozambique: After decades of colonial rule by the Portuguese, Mozambique won its independence in the 1970s. In 1977 a civil war broke out as factions vied for control. The war lasted until 1992 and resulted in the displacement of about 4 million people and close to 1 million deaths. Life is now peaceful in Mozambique, but many people still live in poverty, and the government still does not have the resources to provide many basic services such as tarred roads or clean piped water.

We stayed in the dive camp at the resort which was more like a hostel than a fancy resort, which was fine with us. We stayed in tents with mattresses on a covered deck with shared bathroom and kitchen facilities. The beach was about 200 feet from our tents and you never needed shoes because there is fine sand everywhere. After realizing how warm the water was (about 23C or 73F) we decided to go for a swim before the sun went down. Unlike the beach at Umzumbe, the sand was very fine, there were no rocks, and the waves crashed a bit farther out. As is apparently the case along most of the Mozambican coast, we pretty much had the beach to ourselves. After swimming we were ready for dinner. We cooked some spaghetti in the questionable water which is supposedly okay when you boil it and enjoyed our dinner on the deck of the bar which overlooks the beach. After dinner, Kate, Patty, and Amir got their books out to start studying since they have a few finals left. Totally burnt out from having just finished two brutal finals, and with only Zulu left, I did not bring a single book with me. Their studiousness seemed to weird out a bunch of other guests who were horrified by the sight of them studying while on vacation. With the only light being at the tables by the kitchen and having nothing to read, I decided to go to sleep early. However, none of us slept well because it was raining most of the night, and with only a tarp above the tents it sounded like it was raining right on the tent. The next morning we started our day off right with a breakfast of Portuguese bread rolls still warm from the oven. The folks from Pretoria (I will refer to them as the Pretorians from now on), a few of whom had stayed at Ponta Malongane the year before, invited us to walk down the beach with them to the town of Ponta D’Ouro. The town is located about 7km down the secluded beach from where we were staying. We took our time walking, enjoying the tide pools, shells, and warm water, spending about two hours walking each way. Along the way there were a handful of nice beach houses just above the sand. Leonard told us that the people who own the houses do not actually own the land that it is built on. Apparently it is a risky endeavor because the Mozambican government can come in at anytime and tear down your house, plus there are still many landmines leftover from the war, so it’s not safe to go walking around in the bush. We eventually made it to Ponta D’Ouro which is an absolutely lovely little beach town. The streets (still sand roads) were lined with brightly colored charming bungalows--no electric fences, no bars on the windows, and kept in very good condition. There was however an eerie juxtaposition--about one in ten homes were completely gutted. From what was left you could tell that these were once very nice homes, but they were abandoned during the war and no one had come back to claim them and fix them up. I’m sure that these broken down homes are just the tip of the iceberg that is Mozambique’s remaining scars from the war. Overall, the town had a very different vibe than towns in South Africa. It is difficult to describe the difference, but a big part of it was that we did not feel threatened or targeted in any way even though we were some of the only white people in town. The town was pretty small and quiet, which means it is probably a boring place to live but a wonderful place to vacation. After getting a drink (Mozambican Coke in a glass bottle really is better) the Pretorians wandered back and we went to lunch at one of the restaurants. I had a surprisingly good veggie pizza that I enjoyed with the homemade peri-peri. Peri-peri is a citrus-garlic chili sauce that is used commonly in SA, but comes from the Portuguese influence in Mozambique. It was definitely the best peri-peri I have had. After lunch we slowly made our way back to Ponta Malongane. After another swim, dinner, and studying, the girls and I sat around chatting with the South Africans. The Pretorians were in the middle of a board game when we joined them. I’m glad I got a chance to hang out with them because I now realize that I had some stereotypes about Afrikaans-speaking South Africans since there are not many of them in KwaZulu-Natal. Unlike many white South Africans I have met, these people are not itching to flea the country. They love South Africa and Africa and appreciate its astounding and unique beauty. They acknowledge that crime is a problem, having all been victims of carjackings and armed robberies, but they did not seem bitter or fearful of this, but rather accepted it as a way of life.

The next morning we woke up early to watch the sunrise over the Indian Ocean. Since it is almost winter, the sun does not rise until about 6:30am. We unsuccessfully tried to join a boat trip to go snorkeling since you need eight people to launch a boat, but there was no one else going out so we were stuck on shore. Instead we each wandered down the secluded beach in the other direction from where we had walked the day before. I stopped to lie down on the sand and rest for about an hour. For that time there was no one around me in either direction for at least a kilometer. After a quick swim we walked back towards the resort where we lounged on the beach for a few more hours. It was an incredibly relaxed day--the sort that is desperately needed during finals. For dinner, we had arranged for one of the workers to buy and cook prawns for us (I of course did not have any). They were cooked in the traditional Mozambican way with just butter, garlic, and lemon. They were supposedly excellent and the guy only charged R80 per kg (about $5 a pound). Since this was our last night in Mozambique we decided to take a break from studying. After the Pretorians finished braai-ing their dinner we built another fire on the beach. As we went out there the moon was just beginning to rise over the ocean, the light from which helped us to see the hundreds of crabs on the beach (luckily the crabs were very afraid of us and kept their distance at all times). The beach fire was definitely the perfect ending to our great trip. The next morning we spent some more time on the beach, where it was now very windy as another storm rolled in, before packing up and heading back to the border. Kate, Patty, and I joked about stealing a Mozambican kid because they are so cute. As the truck passed, some kids would start running after us waving. We made it back across the border without incident. As soon as we got in the car it started raining, which lasted for the first few hours of the drive. Along the way we stopped at a collection of craft stalls near Hluhluwe. Since it had been raining, a lot of stuff was covered in the tarps and the rest was wet, so I just got some beads. As we approached PMB there were flashes of lightning in the sky, and as soon as we pulled up to the Denison gate it started pouring (apparently it hadn’t rained the whole time we were gone).

I now reluctantly have to get back to studying for my Zulu final which is on Tuesday. After that I have a few days before Susanne arrives a week from Sunday. Sadly, many of the international students are starting to pack up and leave in the next couple weeks. We are trying to plan one last bash for this weekend and talks are beginning for a reunion trip to Alaska in a year or so. I have had some experiences of a lifetime with these people and I’m sure I will miss them dearly.