update

I'm planning some amazing blogs, but just wanted to drop a line and say I'm doing well. When you live abroad you just kind of start living your life — work, buying groceries, paying rent. So there isn't a lot of exciting things happening everyday as when you're traveling. That's my excuse for not sending many postcards too, but I did just release a new round to the great wide open (South African mail is notoriously bad so if you don't get one it's probably blowing down some dirt road in Africa.)

Jenna and I are doing well. We'll be back on March 14th and will be having a get together at North Bar (Portland) soon after (details to come!) We just spent the weekend with friends at a swanky little beach house in Hermanus which has some of the most beautiful coastline in the world. I also saw a bunch of Baboons barkin' at each other and a couple of them doing it (steamy pics on the way!)

In other news, I've extended my online social networking circle to include twitter where I can be found under travis-fulton. Tune in for my latest microblogs!

Hope everyone is well in your respective parts of the world.

More soon,

Travis

Africans and Afrikaans

So, remember in school learning about the spice trade in Europe? East Indian Trading Co. and so forth? Well, for European countries wanting the spices of India, one way to go was to sail around Africa. The Portuguese set up a refreshment stand where Cape Town is now today. Here they had some guys hanging out growing crops, raising livestock and brewing beer for the sailors to stock up on. Another reason for the name "Cape of Good Hope." (Check out my blog posting on that here.) There was also trade with the indigenous population whom were later completely wiped out (sound familiar?).

Anyway, the Dutch (from Holland/ Netherlands) were also into getting spices and eventually took over this refreshment stand and formed a colony in 1652. Later, the British, in the early 1800s, fearing that the French (Britain’s enemy at the time) might take over the colony (and thus a valuable trade route stop) took control from the Dutch. Up to this point the early Dutch settlers had settled in to Cape life and developed their own distinct language and culture—Afrikaans (pronounced Afri-Khans._ The Afrikaans language was basically a simplified Dutch mixed in with some African words. The colonists and their slaves spoke it (Slaves from Madagascar, Tropical Africa and Indonesia). Though the British rule was long lasting and wide spread, the Afrikaner population wasn’t into giving up the land they stole fair and square so a bunch of wars ensued between the British and Afrikaans. The Afrikaners, having lived in the area for about 200 years were familiar with the terrain and had experience fighting in it against the Africans and subsequently were quite able to kick the British’s ass a whole bunch through guerilla warfare techniques. The British, resorting to putting the Afrikaner soldiers families in concentration camps (were over 26,000 died) and burning farms and crops, eventually won. Meanwhile, the African tribes fought on both sides and against each other including the famous Shaka of the Zulus. In fact, Zulu had a huge part to play in destabilizing southern Africa to such an extent that it made it easier for the Whites to take over.

One thing about the Afrikaners, they were very racist and thought they were chosen by god to take the land of the heathens (again, sound familiar?) The Afrikaners, after being defeated by the British, begrudgingly agreed to a shared government which they eventually won control over. It was they who created Apartheid, which simply translates to “separateness” a brutal system in which to control a population they would rather do without, but needed to exploit for labor. On the basis of skin color, they divided the population up between whites, blacks, coloureds ( a distinct population that were descended from imported slaves and indigenous Africans) and Indians (who were brought in as indentured servants. All non whites were treated badly but no one as badly as the Blacks who were forced into township slums on the outskirts of cities and could be arrested, beaten and/ or killed at anytime for not carrying a pass book, which said where and when they could come and go. Constant raids were conducted in the township and people could be taken away at any moment, sometimes forever.

I’m trying to keep this short, but the atrocities committed during the apartheid years were some of the worst human rights violations ever committed and were allowed to continue unquestioned by many of the world governments including America during the Kennedy, Nixon, Carter and (especially) Regan administrations. See, South Africa had a huge supply of minerals that much of the world wanted, like 80% of the world’s gold, a bunch of diamonds and uranium. Activists, however, around the world called for and end to apartheid and a resistance movement began within South Africa. One of the major leaders was Nelson Mandela who was imprisoned for 26 years for his organizing activities. He was sort of a Martin Luther King Jr. figure. Eventually, some of the world governments came to impose sanctions on South Africa and the internal resistance movement intensified to such a point that the apartheid government couldn’t afford to maintain the status quo. Nelson Mandela, although imprisoned, remained a powerful force against apartheid and began talks with the apartheid government to make moves towards a democratic, majority rule South Africa. See, throughout history and to this day, South Africa has only been about 10% white. 10% of the population ruthlessly exploited and controlled 90% of the population. Mandela was eventually freed and during the first democratic elections in South African history in 1994, he was made president.

This in no way begins to describe the complexity of this country. Think of this post as a grain of salt on an iceberg. Today, 14 years after the end of apartheid there are still millions of people (in fact the majority of the population) that live in shacks that are really lean-tos made of sheets of metal set up like a house of cards. There is one water well every 100 plus people, everyone must use a shared outhouse, and when it rains everything turns to mud as there are no floors or even streets in some places. Poverty, crime, domestic and sexual violence and government corruption is out of control all over the country. There’s a kid who looks about 8 or 10 who sleeps on the sidewalk I see on my way to work. Some politicians openly threaten each other’s lives. And this is the richest country in Africa.

There are a ton of shocking examples of daily life I could describe, but this post is long enough as it is. I will say, though, that this place is the way it is because someone made it this way. This is the result the actions and lack of action by governments all over the world. All of Africa is the world’s store of natural resources and cheap labor that governments have been looting since the 1600s. Developing countries are the way they are because of the way developed countries are. It’s exploitation, greed, heartlessness and ignorance on the part of developed country’s governments and their people that little girls here are raped by their teachers and fathers, that 8 year olds sleep on the street, that men must leave their families for 11 months out of the year to work in diamond and gold mines for dollars a day. Months ago, a huge backlash against immigrants resulted in 60 people being killed, some burnt alive, by desperate, poor people fearing that what little opportunities they may have are being taken by other Africans.

It hasn’t been easy or very fun being here, but it has made me realize a lot. One, is that Africa’s and the world’s problems are complicated beyond belief but there are solutions, it just takes the right people to want to really do something about it. The thing is, the people that can create this change don’t want to because they benefit from the way things are. So it really comes down to the people to demand that their leaders do something. It’s the same with all issues really, globally and locally. Apartheid ended because of pressure put on the government by common citizens demanding it. Civil Rights, Women’s Suffrage, worker’s rights and the clean air and water we enjoy today in America came about only because of the actions of normal, everyday citizens demanding the government to change. Politicians and governments won’t do things against their interests without pressure and a swift kick in the ass by its citizens—Obama included. If we really want to see change, it’s still up to us to demand and create it.

beard check

Do you know someone named Seth?

merry christmas from jenna and travis

from south africa

H(ell)ousemates

It’s been challenging living here. Jenna and I live with 6 other people. Four are German, the oldest being 21. There’s also a 21 year old girl in the loft above us who has a incredibly loud and dumb boyfriend who practically lives there and yells a lot during rugby games. So here we are living with these kids who have never lived on their own before. I’ve never lived among such filth. I should take a picture of the kitchen sometimes. They leave not only their dirty dishes out, but uneaten plates of food on the table, counter and anywhere with a flat surface. There are constantly stains a food smears on the kitchen table and counter and 1 million cockroaches at night. I don’t walk barefoot in the house. In Germany, there’s a mandatory stint in the military. If you don’t want to do that, you do social work in South Africa. So these kids aren’t really here out of the kindness of their hearts, they’re just partying and buying time until they get to leave. They party until really late at night and come home loud. One of them started bringing a couple of street kids home. One stole an iPod and then rode off with someone’s bike. We had a meeting and agreed no more street kids in the house. Then they just started hanging out on the porch (in front of my bedroom window) at all hours. We asked them to be quite about 8 times. The landlord (who lives in a loft upstairs) finally put a stop to it all. I haven’t had a full nights sleep in a couple weeks. Last night was the first.
This kind of thing can make you feel old. Telling the kids to keep it down, trying to understand why they leave bowls of uneaten yogurt, crumbs and spilled juice on the table all day to attract flies and roaches. Also thinking, “Those kids are so disrespectful and inconsiderate!” I guess I’ll be able to live anywhere and with anyone after this. This rant could go on and on, but you get the idea.
The house is conveniently located, though, close to the train station, a grocery store and the main strip in Observatory (the suburb where I live.) There’s coffee, bars, a health food store, book store, bottle store (liquor store which is the only place you can buy beer.) and Chemist (Pharmacy). Plus, it is safer (though annoying) to always have someone around the house. I’m coming to terms with the inconveniences and realize that I have less than three months to go. Someday I’ll wish I was back picking dried cheese off “clean” spoons and rewashing dishes (they don’t rinse the dishes when they put them on the drying rack! Is this a German thing?) Actually, I probably won’t.

Paintball, Turkeys and Reindeer

Sorry that the blogs haven’t been more forthcoming, you just get into a groove when you’re living somewhere as opposed to traveling. Really, not much exciting happens day-to-day (which is a good thing around here, believe me.)
I’ve been working a bunch, usually four 9hr days a week. These next two weeks I’ll be working 5 days because the studio closes for two weeks for the holidays (hear that American bosses?) Most things shut down during that time.
The job is going great. I’ve been doing illustration work, web design and am the contact person with clients in Germany and Holland. I’ll post the websites soon, they should be ready in a couple weeks. Last week we had an office outing of playing paintball. It seemed kind of odd at first to be playing war in a such a violent place, but it was actually a lot of fun. There was the added fun of possibly coming across wild baboons in the forest where we played. You don’t get extra points for shooting them though.
Thanksgiving came and went uneventfully. In fact I only realized it was thanksgiving once (while at work) and then forgot about it for the rest of the day. Christmas is coming up, but it doesn’t seem to be as big of a deal here. A couple temporary angel stencils on some storefronts and some cheap gift ideas at the stores. No lights though, electricity is too expensive to use on that. Have I mentioned that you have to buy electricity per kilowatt? You can literally run out. For a while the country was having a hard time producing enough electricity so there would be semi-scheduled rolling black outs. Problem was that some were unannounced so business would have to shut down and sometimes loose their perishable stock. Some tourists got stuck on a tram hundreds of feet in the air for a couple hours. Our house ran out of electricity the other day because people were using too much juice.
The internet is sold by the megabyte. I use about a gig a month. It costs around 24 dollars. It makes you careful about what you download when it’s not infinite and you can run out of internets. The studio where I work often gets capped out and is quite a pain in the ass. The boss has to call and order more internets and often work gets slowed down.

employment!

I have a job doing graphic design here in Cape Town at Sploosh Digital (www.sploosh.co.za). I'm pretty excited. I was starting to go a little crazy hanging out at the house all day and looking for semi relevant volunteer work. This will be my second week, too bad my computer is in the shop (of course!)It should be ready tomorrow, but things are always uncertain in this country.

In a internet cafe, gotta jam.

t