IFLA WLIC Day 3 - One Last Random Thought

So, remember I was saying the other day that the Stadium is gi-norm-ous?  I wasn't exaggerating.

This picture was taken from a couple km out into Table Bay on the way to Robben Island.  And look how big it still looks!  You can see it in perspective to other buildings and to the mountain behind it.  I've seen it on aerial views too, and it's immediately recognizable (I've seen postcards, mostly, but you can easily pick it out on Google Maps too).  Craziness!  Maybe I'm just not used to enormous stadiums (no professional football or baseball attendance here) or maybe it's the shape as much as the actual capacity, but it still seems really impressively big.

IFLA WLIC Day 3 - Robben Island

Wow.

This one was just so impressive.  Definitely a must-see if you're ever in Cape Town. Intense history, natural beauty - this was a combination of two things that I definitely love.  There's a reason Robben Island is a World Heritage Site, kids.

Robben Island is named for the Dutch word for seal, because lots of fur seals used to live on the island.  The English called it Penguin Island, and one explorer named it for his mother, but Robben Island was the one that really stuck.  I'd always thought it was named for a Mr. Robben, but no.  Seals.

Robben Island has been an important stop for explorers and traders and settlers and so on, since people first started sailing this way.  It made for an easy supply stop, without having to land on the mainland and deal with locals (aside from the seals and penguins, no one lived on Robben - at it's closest, it's still about 7km from shore - not exactly a convenient commute).  It's got a gorgeous view of the bay and Table Mountain.  It'd be million-dollar-real estate if it wasn't so far offshore.  Almost makes you forget why this island is significant, but that beauty supposedly just added to the imprisonment - life and beauty and freedom so visible, but not close enough to touch.

Activity on the island has a pretty long history too.  It's been used as a prison for almost as long as it's been used as a supply and communication point.  Starting in the mid-1600s (only a couple years after finding the place!), the Dutch put political prisoners out on the island - local leaders, mutineers, that sort of thing - the people they wanted secluded so as to not stir up more trouble.

The island was also used as a leper colony in the 1800s.  Though most of the leper buildings have been destroyed, you can still see the leper graveyard and the church used at the time.  Interestingly, the only reason the church survived the repurposing and redevelopment of the island was that it was the only building on the island not owned by the state; it was (and is) owned by the Anglican church.

Then the island was outfitted with 9inch guns during WWII, to protect Cape Town and Table Bay, should it ever be attacked.  The tour guide made a point to say the guns have never been fired in aggression though; Cape Town wasn't attacked.  The guns have been restored though, and one of the guns on the island is the only remaining gun of its kind still functional (well, it would be fully functional if they put in the firing pins, but otherwise...).  It's a big sucker, that's for sure!

The most famous use of the island though, was the prison for political prisoners during the apartheid era, beginning in the 1960s.  Many were sent without trial, or rather a sham trial, and one of the most famous residents had no trial, but an actual clause in the legislation keeping him there pretty much indefinitely.  Robert Sobukwe was another anti-apartheid political leader, a contemporary of Mandela's, and after his official sentence was completed, the government didn't want to release him, so they sent Sobukwe to Robben under a special legislation.  He was kept in a tiny house next to the guard dog kennels, not among the other prisoners, and only one person could talk to him, the priest who visited once a month.  And he suffered through six years of that. Humans can be so... well, inhuman, sometimes.

We passed the quarry on the tour, where many were sent to work as their hard labor detail.  Because of the range of backgrounds of the prisoners on the island, some were highly educated and some only with grade school level education.  The quarry was one of the places which brought them together, and they turned it into their university.  People would work with one man for a while, say a lawyer, and learn history, and then move to work under another man and learn math, and so on.  One man, currently a Supreme Court Justice, said that he arrived at Robben Island with a grade 8 level education, and left with his doctorate.  They even taught some of the guards ("warders"), and for that reason, guards were rotated regularly on duties on the island, and for overall time on the island.  The administration didn't want guards sympathetic to the prisoners or their political beliefs.

The pile of rocks in the forefront of the quarry was from a reunion trip in the 1990s.  Many of the former prisoners, including Mandela, came back in 1995 to celebrate the 5 year anniversary of his release.  They were talking about the duties at the quarry, and breaking rocks, and Mandela demonstrated.  Other former prisoners split rocks too, adding to the pile.  The pile grew into an Isivivane, or a memorial for those prisoners who had died on the island and didn't get to experience freedom again.

We passed the Medium Security prison building on the island too.  It was built because the security prisoners (the political prisoners) were supposed to be kept separated from the common law prisoners. Apparently the guards didn't want the political prisoners converting the others to their ideology.  The political prisoners were housed in the Maximum Security building, while the common law prisoners were in the Medium Security building.  In other words, the thieves, murders, rapists and so one were considered less dangerous than those people incarcerated for objecting to apartheid.

But the big stop after the tour of the island was the Maximum Security building.  Former prisoners serve as the tour guides now, and it adds an interesting element, hearing first hand how the apartheid government prosecuted and punished, even into the 1980s (when our guide had been arrested).

As part of my school work this summer, preparing for this trip, I've been reading a lot on South Africa, and have been reading Long Walk to Freedom too.  I was actually standing in the yard and at the cell that I'd been reading about, and seeing in so many old pictures.  I always like seeing history in person (so to speak).  Makes it seem much more real.

 

The only real downside I felt for the day was the length of time I was able to spend there.  We had great tour guides, both on the bus and through the prison.  But the tours were so structured, we didn't have a lot of time to wander on our own and read signs and really experience it ourselves.  Maybe it was because it was the last ferry of the day, maybe because it was the tour from the museum and not a private/chartered something, I dunno.  I just know that our family reads signs at museums (some more than others - love you, Mom!) and there was a lot of information on the island.  I ended up taking a lot of pictures of signs as well as landmarks and scenery, so that I could go back later and read.  It's not that I didn't like the tour, or didn't find it interesting or educational; I just feel like I could have learned and felt so much more if I'd had a little more time.  Still, that doesn't mean you shouldn't make the trip out to the island - definitely don't miss it if you're in the area.

On a lighter note, I couldn't have asked for a better day to go out on the water!  It wasn't choppy, cold or too windy - perfect weather, in fact!

IFLA WLIC Day 3 - Welcome to IFLA!

Today began with the Newcomers' Intro Session and then the Opening Ceremony.  We're officially open now! 

The Newcomers' session was helpful, but mostly in a review sort of way.  Information on the program, how the schedule was set up, how best to make the most of the conference.  All very good information, but a little bit of a review.  Still, always good to have reminders.

The Opening Ceremony was impressive, as opening ceremonies tend to be.  The key speaker was very interesting.  Dr. Rob Adam works on the Square Kilometer Array, or SKA.  It's a massive radio satellite array, an international collaboration aiming to create the most accurate radio telescope.  The dishes are spread in South Africa and in Australia (need lots of isolated desert for clear reading).  So why was he speaking at a librarianship conference?  His work falls more on the Information Science side of the spectrum.  The total area covered by the radio dishes is the titular square kilometer.  Which means that's an awful lot of data processing.  So, his work has some interesting implications for information science and Big Data.

Besides the speeches, there was interpretive storytelling, and lots of music.  I'm not much for interpretive storytelling (or poetry readings, so similar) but I really liked the children's choir who closed the show.  Very dynamic, and good music choices - some more popular stuff.  The lady behind me was singing along to one medley of songs they did, and I was singing along to Circle of Life (written by a South African, apparently!).  

 

I have to say, I like all the music.  I know I've heard about it before, but it really does seem to permeate life here.  It's like going to Memphis, I think, and not hearing blues or jazz.

The other thing I liked seeing today was how similar we all are, even as different as we all are.  I people-watch, being the little wallflower that I am.  So after I'd taken several pictures of the Marimba players before the Opening (the picture right above), I was watching the crowd who was also taking pictures.  And in the same crowd of people, were several in more traditional dress.  I.e., the sort of eye-catching dress that others might stop and take pictures of.  In the few minutes I was watching (and then getting my camera out), I saw lots of sports coats and similar business casual, a bright pink sari, several different traditional African outfits (sorry, can't narrow it down more), a handful of hijab, and an East Asian nun.  I think you can see several in the picture below, all snapping pictures (mostly on their cell phones) of something that's new and different to them.  I like that about big travel like this - the world is both very big and very small all at the same time.

IFLA WLIC Day 2 - Some sightseeing - guided wanderings

The other half of my day was spent literally wandering the city.  I rode around on the hop-on, hop-off bus for a bit, listening to the recording (more on that later), and I did a walking tour through the neighborhood of Bo-Kaap.  Bo-Kaap is one of the iconic sights of Cape Town, and you can see why in the pictures below.  All the pretty colors!  And if it's a clear day, you'll see Table Mountain overhead too.  Not our luck, but still a pretty walk.

 

Bo-Kaap was previously known as the Malay Quarter, and was an area of slaves and freed slaves.  Incidentally the Malaysians in the area were not the majority, but the name still stuck.  The Bo-Kaap name is geographic in origin - it is derived from the Dutch for 'above the cape' (the neighborhood is situated on the hillside).  Because of where the slaves were imported from, the area was (and is) predominantly Muslim, even though any religion other than Christianity was outlawed during that time period.  The first mosque was founded about 40 years before the repeal of slavery and the religious restrictions.  A man had been captured as a slave, and brought to Cape Town.  While on Robben Island, he wrote down everything he could remember of the Qur'an, and then brought that with him.  He used it to teach when he arrived in Cape Town, thus founding the first mosque.

       

The story behind the houses is a good one too.  Slaves couldn't wear colors, only black and white, and their houses could not be colored either.  Once a slave had earned enough to buy his freedom, he celebrated by painting his face in bright colors, dressing brightly, and celebrating with friends and family.  One freed slave painted his house bright red as well.  He found that it actually helped his business, because he became known as the 'tailor in the red house.'  For either reason, the tradition of painting the houses brightly caught on, and now these couple square blocks of brightly colored houses are a landmark in the city!

And of course a pic to prove I really was there :)

The first house in Bo-Kaap is now the Bo-Kaap Museum.  It's the tan one in the center there.  And it's right across the street from the oldest business in Bo-Kaap, a little corner shop and cafe, which smelled deliciously of spices as we walked past :)

The other part of my wandering wasn't so active, but still very informative.  The hop-on, hop-off bus has several routes very well planned to get you to a lot of the major sites.  I rode the long way back to the Convention Center after my tour, so I could see more of the town.  We passed several beaches to the south of the city, which were very pretty, but in the weather today, also reminded me that it was still winter here.  Those waves look very choppy and cold!

    

The bus route also drove up Table Mountain, but with all the clouds, it was absolutely 0 visibility.  I didn't even try for a picture.  It was quite a climb up the hill though, so I'm really hoping that it clears up this week and I can get up the cable car to the top to hike.  The view must be fantastic!!

The other big landmark I couldn't photograph today was the Stadium.  That thing is HUGE!  I know I've seen big football stadiums in the states, but this one seems really, really big.  Maybe it's the design, or maybe it's just that football really is that much more popular than foo'ball.  (Yeah, I said it).

IFLA WLIC Day 2 - Some sightseeing - the Museums

The conference doesn't really get going until tomorrow, so today was spent getting my bearings (i.e. doing some sightseeing!).  I'm gonna divide this up into 2 posts, so that it's not a GIANT picture dump on you.  First I'll talk about the museums I went to today, then I'll post on what I saw on tour (walking and on the city bus - but more on that in a bit).

The first museum I went to today was the District 6 Museum.  This one was a pretty intense one.  District 6 was one of the municipal districts of the city, going back to the early 1800s.  It had always been a crowded, pretty blended community, and in every description I've read, described as "rich and vibrant," even when it became poorer and neglected by the government.  In 1966, the apartheid government declared that the district was now a white area, and that everyone else had to move.  In relocation, the government gave you no compensation, just moved you from your home, not even with all your belongings, to somewhere (most likely) on the outskirts of the city.  More than 60,000 people were relocated from District 6, which was then razed to be rebuilt for white residents.  And this was just one of the areas that the government decided to reallocate in the country. There's tons more to read about it online and elsewhere.  If I tried to give you the whole history, this post would turn into a doctoral thesis.

And I've heard that the movie District 9, released a few years ago, was heavily influenced by these events.  I know it's dealing with aliens, but there's supposed to be a lot of truth to the circumstances (if not the players) in the movie.  I'll have to watch that one.

The museum itself is in a restored Methodist church, located on the edge of the original district and one of the buildings not totally destroyed. Along one wall is a timeline of the whole history of the district, going back to the city first being settled.  The big map on the floor is the old layout of the district, with notes from residents marking where they used to live.  And there are old street signs, and photos and stories from former residents.  It's not huge space-wise, but there's plenty to see and read.

One of the most striking pieces is this one.  It's 1.5m wide and 7m tall (stretches from floor to ceiling).  All of the writing is names and former addresses and maybe a sentence or two from former residents.  It was written by the residents and then embroidered.  What makes it especially striking is that this is only one portion of the whole Namecloth.  The entire thing is over 1km and continues to grow as more residents visit the museum and write.

 

The other piece I found very striking, once I realized what it was, was the mural upstairs.  The coloring is all done in earth pigments, with the images inspired by the stories and memories of the former residents.  What got me was at the base are bowls with rocks in them.  It's rubble from the areas or roads labeled on the bowls. 

 

Most of the reallocation in District 6 happened in the late 1960s and 1970s.  However, with all the protests over this removal, it really didn't end until the early 1980s.  Which means, that it was still going on in my lifetime.  The tour guides at the museum are all former residents, so they are full of stories about how it used to be, and about being removed (definitely catch a tour if you can!!).  Such a perspective shift - You read about these things in books, and it feels like history, but it really was not very long ago.

For some history that really WAS that long ago, I next went to the Castle of Good Hope, only a couple blocks away from the District 6 Museum.  This is the oldest building in South Africa, built between 1666 and 1679. 

 

The Castle itself is an old fort, so unless you especially like that sort of thing, it's kinda the same as any other old fort protecting the waterfront.  Think Ft Sumter or Ft Pulaski or something similar. There's only so many ways you can build a fort on the water's edge and position your cannons to protect all angles.  This one had a wider range to cover, so it's a star instead of a square, but otherwise... But, this one is very yellow!  It's plastered over with yellow clay (or something similar), so that is pretty unique.  The view looking down from the wall into the first courtyard shows you a lot of the yellow walls :)

 

A few other little tidbits were mentioned on the tour (free, and offered several times a day, if you get the chance).  There is a room in the governor's old section (now a small museum) with the Long Table, a dining table to seat about 100 people.  Imagine a stereotypical "isolating millionaire's dinner table" and then make it bigger, and that's this table.  It's in sections (obviously it'd have to be) but they are all connected together in one reeeeeally long dining room.  It's very impressive!  Unfortunately, the museum didn't allow pictures, or I'd have tried to capture that one. 

Besides fancy dinner tables, the Castle also has a torture chamber.  No, really.  They didn't want to execute anyone for a serious crime unless they'd confessed.  So if he'd hadn't confessed yet, they'd help to persuade him.  What I noticed most about that room wasn't the old manacles or chains still attached to the walls, but the small desk in the corner.  All torture proceedings had to be recorded, so a clerk sat at that desk to write down everything.  What a horrible job!

Also, all the shutters in the Castle are painted green, except for the end on the inner wall, where the shutters are red.  The magazine.  It warned the soldiers training in the courtyard to not smoke or fire their weapons too close to that end of the building.  Apparently, this has been a standard color-coding for Danger for a couple hundred years now :)

The portion of the Castle where I spent the most time was actually the military history museum (the Castle is supported by the SA Army even today).  Military history museums are hit-or-miss for me.  They seem to be either really interesting history, or just rooms full of insignia and memorabilia.  This was an interesting one.  It followed all the military activity in SA, going back to the Dutch and the Dutch East India Company (which supported its own army) in the 1600s.  And since the US is woefully lacking in African history education in schools, I really knew very little about any of it.  It really put the race relations in the country into perspective.  Basically, they've all been fighting each other since at least the 1600s.  South Africa is a very strategic spot for shipping.  So two colonial powers and a major commercial interest (that was basically its own country), dealing with several local tribes... it lead to a couple hundred years of fighting, ultimately laying the groundwork for the Nationalist Party and the apartheid system.  Like I said, it was very interesting seeing the pieces starting fitting together, even just through the lens of the military, like in this museum.

And to prove I really was there, and not just picking photos off a Google search (that big cloudy mass behind me would be Table Mountain, if it was a clear day):

And just to end things off, a slightly artistic shot of the Castle and Table Mountain (clouds) from the flower and herb garden outside the walls.

IFLA WLIC Day 1 - The Penguin has Landed!

And it's a reeeeally long flight from TX to SA!

Three flights actually.  And that's been almost entirely my last day and a half.

But it was not entirely uneventful, and I'll share a few things here as I try to calm down for sleep (yay jet lag!)

• I am a catastrophizer.  Really, though, no surprise there.  Everything worked out just fine, even with my long flight landing late in Johannesburg, I'd still allowed myself plenty of time for Customs before my connecting flight.  It was just amazing me again how wildly my imagination can spin worst case scenarios.  Especially when I'm traveling on my own halfway round the world (funny, go figure).  

• Motivational socks help combat the catastrophizing.  They also get compliments from TSA security guards :)

 

• The South African flag really can look like a rainbow.  The reflection of the wing tip on the South Africa Airline plane as it reflected on the wing was really rather pretty.

• Speaking of South African Airline, they treat you pretty well!  We even got dinner on the 2 hour flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town!   On a lot of short flights in the States, I don't even count on drinks on a flight that short, let along expect a hot meal!

• It's been so long since I've had a chance to focus on a fun book, I forgot how fast I read.  I finished my book on the long flight (the 2nd leg of the 3).  So yes, day one of the trip.  Now I've nothing left to read for the trip except a text book, a guide book, and whatever light-n-fluffy thing I have saved on my Kindle.  :( 

• I had some time to knit (of course I brought a project - what did you expect?)  And I started Citron, a shawl from Knitty a few years ago.  It's been sitting on my queue, and with the mindless pattern and the lace-weight yarn, it made for a good travel project.  For those interested, I'm using the possum lace-weight that Sarah and I dyed a few years ago.  I've a bunch of the green left, so this is perfect for it.  I made it through the first two shawl sections on my flights.  What can I say, I'd finished my book!  I know I'll slow down now that it's getting wider, but here's a first glimpse :)

 

The best comment I heard through all the traveling was in the very first airport.  A young jetsetter businessman type saw me knitting as I was waiting.  "Oh perfect airport hobby - no charging!"  A good comment on its own, but it made me laugh because I was sitting charging my phone, on which I'd saved the pattern I'm working from!  Signs of the times, maybe?  Either way, it made me smile.

At any rate, busy day sightseeing tomorrow before the conference really starts on Sunday, so I must get to bed.  Think I've finally wound down enough for that :)

Oh, look - she's back!

Hello friends!

So, I know it's been ages since I've posted -  Life has been rather on the busy side.  Things have been rolling merrily along in our little corner of the country, though, so all is well.  I still knit, and run, and read, and all those other things.  But the thing that has been keeping me busiest is also the reason I'm posting again: grad school!

Normally, school takes up most of my spare time and mental energy.  If I've time to write, it's probably being spent on a paper or a discussion post or something similar.  Except for this summer!  

This summer, my two classes this summer are part of an independent study abroad, tied into a conference I'll be attending (this week!!). My courses are International and Comparative Librarianship, and Information and Cultures.  And to pull together everything I learn, I will be attending the International Federation of Library and Information Associations (IFLA)'s annual conference, the World Library and Information Congress.  To make it even more exciting, I'll be traveling to Cape Town, South Africa!!

Now you may be wondering why some rather intense sounding courses have me blogging again, especially when my intro courses were enough to keep me busy and off the blog.  Well, as part of my conference experience, I am posting about my travels here - people I meet, sessions I attend, experiences in the country itself, overall impressions of things.  Which means for you, dear reader, that the next week and a half or so, my blog posts will be frequent and will swing between Extreme Library Dorkiness (capitals warranted) and "Eee! Penguin!"  If that bothers you, then you probably don't know me all that well :)  At any rate, you have been warned and can skim the ones you aren't too interested in; my feelings won't be hurt.

I'm going to try and keep the momentum going, so hopefully we'll be seeing each other (reading each other) more, even after the conference when I return to my normal chatter on books and cooking and running and yarn. My next year looks to be an exciting one, so it'll be good to keep this ball rolling.

PS - And to add to the excitement (beyond the interesting classes, professional networking, and exciting travel), I do love the logo.  Just look at it - a book, a penguin, and a mountain!  Now why on earth would I be getting so enthusiastic over that?

 

http://2015.ifla.org