After my six day journey across South Africa, I have finally made it here to Pietermaritzburg. I must say that my first few hours here have had a very Davis feel. Pietermaritzburg, (‘Maritzburg or PMB) is also a smallish town centered around a University. It’s located in what they call “The Midlands” the area on the foothills between the majestic Drakensberg Mountains and the coastal metropolis of Durban. The central business district (or “CBD,” to the locals) is pretty small, with sprawling, tree lined neighborhoods and artsy craft stores and coffee shops surrounding. They've earned the nickname here of “Sleepy Hollow.”

In a way, it seems a bit of an anti-climatic end to my trip out here. But it’s nice to have things feeling a bit calm for a while. At the moment, it’s overcast and very quiet. Very different from the sunny and windy Cape Town that I am missing so dearly now.

Jason Searles and his wife Candice have made me feel very at home already. Jason is also here on a Fulbright studying and practicing indigenous forms of theater and dance. Likewise, Candice, a PMB native, met Jason while she was on a Fulbright to study theater in the US. South African Fulbrighters must live in South Africa for at least two years after their return from the States, and so they have set up shop here. When the two years are up the plan to move to Vermont where Jason grew up.

People told me that coming from Cape Town to KwaZulu-Natal, I would feel like I had finally arrived in Africa. In way that was true. The Western Cape’s Mediterranean region reminds me so much of California. The rocky buttes of the Cape Fold Mountains and the Karoo Desert beyond are like a microcosm of the southwestern United States. Traveling east along the south coast of Africa, we passed through the heavily farmed plains of the Overberg, and then into a costal, sup-topical forest of the famous “Garden Route” around Knysna (pronounced “neyes-na”). Entering the Eastern Cape Province, you approach the old homelands areas of the Cis-kei and the Trans-kei, with their rolling hills of native, lawn like grass and farm animals wandering the highway. Further east still, you begin to see the acacia trees dotting the slopes like the oak trees of the California foothills, completing that stereotypical image of African grassland savanna. I couldn’t help but make analogies during my drive with what a transect across the south of the US might be like. The scrub and chaparral of California, the deserts and rocky buttes of Arizona and New Mexico, the farms of the great plains, the sub-tropical costal forests along the Caribbean, and the low, rolling hills of the southeastern states with their greenery and high humidity.

Before I left on my trip, I had several people warn me about traveling through the old homeland areas. The Trans-kei and the Cis-kei (above and below the Kei River) are two homeland areas that where set aside for the Xhosa (pronounced “khosa” with a click for the ‘k’) in the 1913 Natives Lands Act. This act aside about 13% of the land for about 75% of South Africa’s population, dividing the blacks into 10 unnatural tribal groupings and moving them to the “appropriate” homeland. The affiliated “pass laws” then restricted their movement in and out of the overpopulated homelands without explicit permission.

Umtata is the largest city in the Trans-kei. More than one person warned me not to stop in Umtata, and about how the locals kept trying to steal their bakkie when they went into the Pick’n’Pay to shop. I was told that there was a large petrol station just outside the Trans-kei where many gas up and get supplies so they don’t have to stop until they get to Port Shepstone. Well, the beautiful Wild Coast and a few areas that I wanted to collect are in the Trans-kei, so I did not really head their warning. It’s been a challenge to balance my lack of familiarity with the country and the true need for safety and common sense with the paranoid siege mentality of the white South Africans here.

I will tell you more details about my trip tomorrow.

Take care all!

Shelah