Mauritius

We only stopped in Mauritius for 2 days and it was basically just to refuel. I’m disappointed with how Semester at Sea handled Mauritius. Usually the week leading up to a port we have seminars and learn about the country. Then 2 nights before we arrive, we have cultural pre-port and the night before we arrive we have logistical pre-port. They combined the cultural and logistical pre-port and didn’t have any other seminars. During the pre-port meeting, they basically told us that Mauritius doesn’t have any culture and we should make this our spring break. A couple professors spoke that night and kind of made fun of Mauritius. They told us to go to the beach, party and get drunk. Semester at Sea has issues every year in Mauritius because the majority of the students on the ship rent villas for the night and trash them. The villas in the city of Flic en Flac don’t allow Semester at Sea students to stay there anymore. This time everyone stayed at the Intercontinental hotel. The next day they all rented catamarans and drank as much as they could. People were being carried back to the ship because they couldn’t walk and a couple people are now on crutches thanks to alcohol related injuries. It was ridiculous and I was embarrassed that this is the way they are representing America in foreign countries.
Anyway, I had a great time! The first day, Sheriess and I decided we wanted to have a nice relaxing beach day, do some shopping, and find interenet. That’s exactly what we did. We went to Grand Baie and spend the day on a beautiful beach with crystal clear water. It was gorgeous! The water was calm and perfect for swimming. We laid out and swam for most of the day. We decided to get some lunch around 3 pm and we found a cute little café and ordered delicious Hawaiian pizza. After lunch, we decided to walk around the town for a little while and we did a little shopping. We were really just looking for postcards and magnets. Eventually we made it back to the ship and grabbed our laptops to go find internet.
The next day I went scuba diving! Brittany, Jeff and I were picked up from the port and we went to Tamarin Bay. It turned out that we were the only 3 people on the dive trip that afternoon. It was awesome! There were 4 crew members but only 3 of us. The first dive spot was at a drop off. We were told that we wouldn’t go off the drop off because it was deep and none of us had been down that deep before. When I got in the water, I couldn’t see anything. The visibility wasn’t very good. We used a rope to get down and it took a while before we could see the bottom. I hate not being able to see the bottom so I was kind of freaking out but we made it to the bottom and I was fine. The man leading our dive ended up taking us down to 100 feet! That’s about as deep as you can go when scuba diving. It was exciting but we didn’t realize how deep it was until after we came up. The visibility was better the deeper we went. There were lots of beautiful fish and an awesome coral wall.
The next dive was my favorite. The dive was a lot shallower and there was bubble coral everywhere! Bubble coral is my favorite coral and I’ve only ever seen it at aquariums. It’s light pink and looks like bubbles. I even got to touch it. We also saw several lionfish and eels as well as a lot of colorful fish. It was a great dive! When we finished diving, they took us to an island where they cooked lunch. It took them about an hour to prepare the food so one of the guys took us out on the boat to go snorkeling. I saw some huge trumpet fish and Jeff found a starfish! I was so excited because I’ve never found a starfish in the ocean before and I’ve always wanted to. I picked it up and it kind of wrapped itself around my hand. It was so cool! We went back to the island and ate a delicious lunch before heading back to the waterfront. At the waterfront, I looked frantically for postcards and stamps but I was in a hurry because I didn’t want to be late getting on the ship and get dock time in India. I made it on the ship with half an hour to spare. We’re only a few days away from India now and Dad is meeting me in Delhi so that should be fun.

South Africa Day 6: Indlovu Project

Today is our last day in South Africa. I’m very sad to leave because I love it here! I’ve had such a great week. The Indlovu Project is an FDP (field directed practica) for my video journalism class. Each professor organizes several trips for their class and this one was to a township. A lady from Kenya named Di started the Indlovu Project to help the township. She has a guest house that we went to and it was very nice. It was kind of like a hostel/hotel and it was just a lot nicer than I had expected. We all sat down and she told us about the project and what she’s doing. She said that nearly 40% of the people in this township had AIDS. We got to interview her and then we played with the kids and interviewed other people in the township. Abiola, my partner for our class project, and I interviewed this one lady who invited us into her shack and she told us she was HIV positive. It was really sad. She had an 8 year old daughter who fortunately isn’t HIV positive but she didn’t even look old enough to be a mom. The shack had a double bed in it and a counter where they were preparing food. It was very tiny and there wasn’t much to it. We interviewed a couple other people and most of them seemed to be unemployed. At the end of the day, we compiled all of our footage together and we made a video for the children to watch in the community center that Di built. It was very inspiring because Di had so much hope for the township. She wants to make it an eco village and have tourists come stay. It was a great last day in Cape Town.

Day 5: Operation Hunger

I had a Semester at Sea trip today called Operation Hunger. We went to a pre school and we weighed the kids. Then we had to figure out their z-score by calculating their exact age and weight. It turned out that most of the kids were underweight and malnourished. They didn’t look too skinny though. The kids in Ghana were definitely a lot skinnier than these kids. We had time to play with the kids and that was fun. I sat down and the kids swarmed. They were all trying to sit on my lap and it just about knocked me over. They were really cute.
Next we went to a soup kitchen in a township. A township is a really poor area where black and colored people live. It started out during the apartheid when the government forced black and colored people to live in townships and a large portion of the population still lives like that. The townships consist of a community of shacks built with metal. The townships are really dangerous and there are high crime rates. I believe nearly 50% of the black population of South Africa is unemployed and AIDS is a severe problem. The soup kitchen we went to was run independently by a woman at her home. We helped serve soup and bread and then went to another soup kitchen. This one was also in a township and it was outside. Again we helped serve the food and then headed back to the ship. They ran the soup kitchen 2-3 times a week because that’s all they can afford. People brought their own containers for the soup and it was kind of surprising how many people didn’t have bowls. I saw very few bowls the whole day. People brought tupperware, lunch boxes, cups, and empty containers of all sorts.
Once I got back to the ship, I changed into warmer clothes because it was freezing outside and then I went shopping. I ended up running into Nancy who just got back from her safari so we went to dinner and caught each other up on the last couple days.

Day 4: Safari

I ended up going on a Semester at Sea trip today. The trip was $250 but someone was desperate to get rid of it so they sold it to me for $100. I was really excited! We went to Aquila Game reserve, which was a 2½ hour drive from Cape Town. I slept the whole way there. Once we got there they greeted us with sparkling grape juice and served us breakfast and then we went on a 2½ hour game drive. It was awesome! In South Africa, the “Big Five” are the main animals that you look for on safaris. It includes rhinos, elephants, buffalo, lions, and cheetahs. We saw rhinos, elephants, buffalos, ostriches and a giraffe. We stopped halfway and they served us wine and sparkling grape juice. Our guide was awesome and he took us a lot closer to the animals than the other guides did. Later, we saw lions, crocodiles, cheetahs, warthogs and a leopard in captivity. I’m not really sure why they were in captivity but it was still cool I guess. After our game drive, we had lunch and then drove back. Once I got back I went shopping around the waterfront and then had dinner.

South Africa Day 3: Aquarium and Penguins

This morning I went to the Two Oceans Aquarium with my friend Kate. It was a pretty good aquarium and I enjoyed it. They had a tank with sharks that you could scuba dive in but we didn’t have time. We went back to the ship for lunch and met up with Lonyae.
Kate, Lonyae and I got ready to go to Boulders Beach but we were afraid we were going to get robbed so we were extra careful and managed to not take any purses with us. We stuffed out money in our bras, pockets, and shoes and we were really proud of ourselves. We walked to the train station and it was an hour ride to Simon’s Town. Once we got there we had to take a bus and then a taxi. Instead of a taxi though we took a rikki ,which is a little bigger than a cab and they stuff a lot of people into it. Semester at Sea told us not to take them but we were fine. We got to Boulders Beach and saw the penguins. Unfortunately, we couldn’t walk on to the beach with the penguins but we saw them from the boardwalk. We walked back to the train station and made it safely back to the ship. We went out for dinner and it was delicious!

South Africa Day 2: Shark Cage Diving

This morning we got up and had to meet our guide outside the ship at 5:50 am. It was a 2 hour drive to the place where we were going to go shark cage diving. It was a beautiful drive. I didn’t realize how beautiful South Africa is. We drove through the wine lands and mountains. When we got there, they served up breakfast and loaded us on the boat. It was freezing outside! Cape Town’s weather was perfect but it was so cold where we were. We got in our super thick wetsuits and it was a lot warmer. The wetsuits even had hoods because that’s how cold the water was. The water was really rough but once we put the bait out a shark came pretty quickly. It was a huge great white shark! They quickly put the first 5 people into the cage but the shark swam away. Another one came soon after and it was also really big. I had a great view of it from where I was sitting but I don’t think the people in the cage saw it. They sat in the cage for close to a half hour and no other sharks came so they got out. We waited for a couple hours and moved around but we never saw anymore sharks. I never got to get in the cage so they said we could come back the next day but I already had plans and I didn’t want to ditch my friend so I didn’t go back. It was a little disappointing but at least I saw some sharks.

South Africa Day 1: Table Mountain

I am very excited to finally be in South Africa. I have been looking forward to this for so long! This morning we all had to wake up very early because immigration officials boarded the ship at 6 am. They did random searches and had to meet with all of individually before the ship could be cleared. Then we had a diplomatic briefing and the diplomat scared everyone pretty badly with his horror stories. He told us about how dangerous South Africa is and not to ever bring anything valuable with you because people get violently mugged quite often. He also said never to go to the bathroom alone because an American student studying abroad got raped in the bathroom. He went on and on and it was very scary. After that we were allowed to get off the ship. Obviously the guy was trying to scare us into being careful but I think he went a little overboard.
Once we got off the ship Nancy and I decided to go to Table Mountain. We took a taxi there and rode the cable car up. You can either hike or ride the cable car but I heard the hike was extremely difficult so I opted to ride up. The cable cars are kind of like the ones at Stone Mountain except these rotate so you can get a good view of everything. We walked around on the top of the mountain for a while and took some pictures. We ran into Eloise later and we all had lunch together at the café. She started to hike with her group but she said it was too hard so she decided to ride up and wait for her group. She met up with them after lunch and Nancy and I went back to the waterfront.
The waterfront where she ship is docked is awesome! It’s so pretty and you definitely don’t feel like you’re in South Africa. There is a lot of security around the waterfront so it’s pretty safe. We got back and we walked around and shopped for a while. There are tons of shops and restaurants and it’s so close to the ship. At some of the other ports we had a good 20 minute walk so this was very nice. We had dinner on the ship that night and then went out and found some internet. I went to bed early because I had to be up early the next morning.

Guest Blogger: Rachel (my roommate)

Here’s an excerpt from my roommate Rachel’s blog about Desmond Tutu and our inter port lecturer. I didn’t feel like rewriting it so I’m just stealing it from her.

Desmond Tutu speaking:

We had the opportunity to hear Arch speak to us about South Africa for the first time this week before we arrive there. He told the most amazing stories and has the most infectious laugh. When he is around you just can’t help but smile. He spoke of how he loved his country so much and thought it was so unique that it could go through so much and still do it with love and humor. He talked about how the country has many problems, but they have overcome so much, and were able to overcome Apartheid without war. Speaking with him was our interport lecturer, Louis Patler who does business in South Africa and is a SAS alumni. It was cool to hear his experiences in South Africa. He told a couple of really interesting stories that I think you might find interesting. His first story was about one SAS trip that went to Cape Town that he was on. When they arrived in Cape Town, immigration would not let the black students off of the ship. Louis got on the loudspeaker of the ship and told all of the students that if the black students weren’t getting off that neither was he and that all of the students could meet him in the Union. He said that about 98% of the students stayed on the ship and refused to get off until the black students could get off. After about 5 hours, South Africa granted the black students temporary European status so they could get off of the ship.

The next story he told was very tragic. He told us about the second SAS trip he went on, this time as a professor, where a black student got in a car with 3 white students that he was friends with to head up Table Mountain. Upon seeing the white students in the taxi with the black student, another car that passed them heading up the mountain proceeded to drive the taxi off of the road. But, they were heading up the mountain, so off of the road also means off of the side of the mountain. The black student was killed instantly and the white students were in such critical condition that they couldn’t continue their voyage. It was so powerful to hear of the impact of the apartheid on something that I am doing now. How going to Cape Town would have been different had I come not that long ago. We got to hear Louis talk about Africa the next night too, but this time about myths about Africa, many of them relating to economics and business which I found really interesting.

Ship Life

Here’s an update of what’s been going on on the ship lately. I’ve obviously had class and they’re all going pretty well for the most part. Some days at sea it gets a little boring but it’s nice to have time to relax and recuperate from each country. On A days I don’t have class so I usually sit outside and read. Since we have left Ghana though it’s been cold outside so I’ve been reading inside instead. I’ve seen some dolphins, whales and flying fish, which was very exciting. On B days I have all my classes and then I usually take a nap after lunch for a little while before my last class. Almost every night there is some kind of Explorer Seminar and I usually go to them because they’re pretty interesting. One night there was a Secret Service seminar. There is a couple on the ship who are retired from the Secret Service and they talked about their careers. It was so cool. The guy worked with Reagan, Carter and both Bushes. He showed us a picture of him running a marathon with one of the presidents. Another Explorer Seminar was about the Peace Corps. There are 5 people on the ship who were Peace Corps volunteers so they talked about their experience and how much they loved it. Desmond Tutu finally spoke at one of the Explorer Seminars. He is sailing with us the whole voyage but we’ve only heard him speak once and it was the second day we got on the ship. He hides out in his room most of the time and we rarely ever see him. It was exciting to finally hear him talk. We are about to get to South Africa and since he’s from South Africa he is giving a lecture during global studies and also he also did the seminar. Dean David asked him questions and he talked about his life and some of the work he did in South Africa.

A couple weeks ago I signed up for an extended family on the ship. An extended family is one of the many clubs on board and they assign you a mom and/or dad and siblings. The parents are either life long learners or professors of faculty members. I have 2 moms or a mom and a grandma, depending on how you look at it I guess. My “mom” is the Spanish professor and she brought along her mom. The professors are able to bring someone along with them so most people choose their spouse but since my “mom” isn’t married she brought along her mom. So, therefore, I have 2 moms. I also have 6 brothers and sisters. We meet for dinner every so often and just kind of hang out. It’s fun.

We recently passed through the Equator and the Prime Meridian at the same time, which means we went through the center of the earth. When you cross the Equator by ship you go from being a pollywog to a shellback but since passed through 0° 0° we are now Emerald Shellbacks. Semester at Sea has Neptune Day to celebrate crossing the equator. On Neptune Day, we were woken up by the sounds of whistles, drums, and cymbals as some of the professors paraded through the halls at 7:30 am. Then we went up to the 7^th deck by the pool and King Neptune made an announcement that to officially be a shellback, or Emerald Shellback in our case, we had to prove we were worthy. In order to do that we had to have fish guts poured on our heads, jump in the pool, kiss a fish, kiss King and Queen Neptune’s rings, and then we were finally knighted with a sword. Traditionally, sailors would shave their heads for good luck so many people on the ship decided to shave their heads include a surprising number of girls.

Not too much else has been going on. I took a bridge tour the other day and that was pretty cool. We’ve also had an awesome dance party and karaoke night. I’ve been a little sick for the past couple days. It’s just a little cold and I’m feeling better but I just want it to be gone before South Africa. Tonight is the culture pre-port meeting and Desmond Tutu is speaking tomorrow in global studies. We arrive in South Africa on Sunday Oct 3! This is the port that I have been looking forward to most so I’m very excited!

Takoradi, Ghana

We got back to Takoradi in time to each lunch on the ship, which was necessary because there were no restaurants anywhere. We decided to check out the Takoradi markets and it started raining again. We switched up the group a little bit and we all decided the rain was fine. There wasn’t much in the markets except for food and random junk. I was surprised by how un-touristy Ghana was. I have been collecting a magnet from each country because our walls are magnetic and I thought it would be a fun thing to collect. I looked all over and never found any magnets. It was even hard to find postcards and the ones we did find were really ugly and poor quality. Even though there wasn’t much, we just walked around for a while taking it all in. We all ate dinner on the ship again and I decided to just stay in for the rest of the night cause it got dark early. Some people went out to bars and stuff later but to me Ghana seemed like kind of a sketchy place to go party.
The next morning I went to an orphanage with a girl named Emma and about 20 other SAS people. Emma independently found this orphanage and organized the whole trip. She talked to the orphanage and asked if they needed anything and they said 75 children didn’t have shoes and they needed shoes to go to school. She made an announcement on the ship asking for shoes and people asked if they could donate money instead. She ended up raising $800. She bought 75 pairs of shoes, paid for every child’s school fees, bought supplies and donated the rest of the money to the orphanage. It was awesome! We were able to play with the kids for 3 or 4 hours. We started out by coloring with the kids and I brought some crayons so I handed them out. After a while, some kids started teaching some Semester at Sea people how to play the drums and before we knew it, there was a dance party going on. The kids started singing and dancing and it was amazing! Later on, they took us to their church and we saw a little bit of the village. It was very cool. We played with the kids for a little while longer before leaving. It was sad to leave but we had so much fun. That was definitely my favorite day in Ghana.

Ghana

Ghana was a bit overwhelming. I’m still not entirely sure what I thought of it. I don’t think I would go back if I had the chance but I’m glad I went. There was a group of 4 of us that were traveling together. It was me, Nancy, Alyssa, and my roommate Rachel. Rachel and Nancy had Semester at Sea trips planned the first day in Cape Coast so Alyssa and I planned to meet them at the hotel. Alyssa and I ate lunch on the ship and then headed out to go to Cape Coast. Cape Coast is about an hour and a half away from Takoradi. The moment we stepped off the ship we were approached by two Ghanaian men. They were very friendly and they walked with us to the front of the port. They asked us what we were doing here and about Semester at Sea. Apparently the guy talking to Alyssa asked her if she would marry him. This happened a lot to many of the girls on the ship. Anyway, as we were leaving, they asked for my phone number and I told him I didn’t have a phone. I actually didn’t have a phone with me at the time. He was very persistent and I ended up giving him my email address. So many people asked us for our phone numbers while we were in Ghana. I never gave it out. I think they were just excited to meet Americans but it got kind of annoying. Once we got to the gate we were bombarded with people. There were taxi drivers everywhere and people kept coming up to us and trying to talk to us and I was just overwhelmed. We ended up getting in a taxi and he took us to an ATM and then we asked to go to the bus station. Instead he took us to the tro tro station. A tro tro is basically a van that they squish a lot of people in. We made it to Cape Coast an hour and a half later and took a taxi to our hotel. The taxi driver saw us in the tro tro and literally ran after the tro tro cause he thought we were stopping soon. He saw that we were white and in Ghana they associate white people with money. We made it to the hotel and Nancy had already checked in and she was waiting by the pool. The hotel was pretty nice. There was a small lake that had crocodiles in it and a restaurant built on top of the water. Our rooms were better than I was expecting. We had a toilet, toilet paper, soap, a sink and a mirror in the bathroom so I was very happy! My standards have changed a little. In Morocco, our bathroom at the hostel didn’t have a sink, mirror or toilet paper. At our pre port meeting we had a little briefing on how to use a hole in the ground toilet. I was dreading using one so I drank as little as possible and fortunately I haven’t had to use one yet. I’m hoping I never have to. Anyway, Rachel met up with us a little while later and we ended up staying at the hotel that night and ate at the restaurant there.
The next morning we got up, ate breakfast, and went to Kakum National Park. The park has 1 of 5 canopy walkways in the world and this one is the biggest and highest. It was absolutely beautiful! We couldn’t see to the ground because the trees were covering it so it was hard to actually tell how high we were. When we finished the canopy walkway we went to the markets in Cape Coast and we searched for an ATM. The markets were not what I was expecting. They were not touristy at all. The markets were where locals bought their food and did their shopping. There was really nothing even remotely interesting to buy so we kind of just walked around. It started raining and even though it kind of felt nice, the whole group didn’t agree. Unfortunately, we ended up going back to the hotel at 1pm and staying there for the rest of the day. I felt like we wasted a day in Ghana but it wasn’t worth fighting about. We ate lunch at the hotel and that took a good 2-3 hours. I have never had worse service in my life at a restaurant but I guess that’s Africa. The food was fine but it was just super slow.
We woke up early the next morning to attempt to explore Cape Coast a little bit before going back to Takoradi. I wanted to get some pictures of the slave dungeons. I didn’t really care if we went in but I just wanted some pictures. We got there and again there was tension in the group so I suggested we walk down to the beach for some pictures. I got a couple of the Cape Coast castle and then we briefly walked through the markets before leaving. We left to go back to Takoradi at 10:15 am. I would have liked to stay in Cape Coast a little longer and explore but since others didn’t feel that way we went back.