19/4/2016 Sea day to Tenerife

We are well on our way to Tenerife - this morning something serendipitous occurred when I was checking our position, the weather and our speed.  We were at 21 degrees north, 21 degrees west, 21 degrees Celsius and 21 nautical miles per hour. Not much chance of that happening to us again.  What could that mean in the great scheme of things? ;)

Anyway, times have since changed and here they are at 10 p.m. 24 north  18 west  21.5 nautical miles per hour and and 20 degrees celsius.  This means we have crossed the Tropic of Cancer today, have passed Mauritania and are around the same latitude as Western Sahara. We will be saying goodbye to Africa tomorrow and re-entering Europe as we visit Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Madeira over the next 3 days.

Tomorrow we are on an excursion called "Northern Panorama", a half day in the afternoon by coach with very little walking to help me deal with hip ache, instead taking in the views.  It is only 3 months since our last visit to Tenerife, so we remember Teide by cable car very well, and didn't really want to spend a day on the beach either so this one sounds new and interesting.  I am reluctant to promise live contact via wi-fi, but am more hopeful than ever!  Let's see.

Just a quick update on our sea day activities today: super healthy breakfast on the windy deck (force 6), painting a Cape Verdian woman bearing fish on head, roast turkey dinner for lunch.

                      

Our high spot today was another inspirational talk by the most wonderful Chris Lubbe, a repeat of his first talk for those who had missed it with a few extra explanatory slides and a BBC feature about race classification during apartheid. A couple of times Chris alluded to the pre apartheid times and the segregation that pre-existed 1948, the colonial times, and the embarrassment it might cause us to to know that the British started it.  Here's a timeline - it might help to clarify.

The BBC world Service has whole projects about African History to support Chris's talk,  and the extract below is from there

"A large number of laws were passed to establish the apartheid structure of government. The three most important blocks of legislation were:

• The Race Classification Act. Every citizen suspected of not being European was classified according to race.
• The Mixed Marriages Act. It prohibited marriage between people of different races.
• The Group Areas Act. It forced people of certain races into living in designated areas.

The apartheid regime had a number of pseudo scientific tests for classifying people as belonging to one of four main groups: White, Black, Indian, Coloured (mixed race). One of these tests involved putting a comb through hair - if it got stuck, that meant the person being tested was identified as African.

Every year, people were reclassified racially. In 1984, for example:
518 Coloured people were defined as White
2 whites were called Chinese
1 white was reclassified Indian
1 white became Coloured
89 Coloured people became African"

Chris gives personal perspective to the following table showing the inequality,  taken from http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/apartheid.hist.html.  He speaks of the day his family's land was confiscated, resettling in a squatter camp with no possessions, attending a school with 60 pupils per class and no books, having to scavenge rubbish dumps for discarded books.



After Chris's talk I went to a second art class while Khachik went to gym, then an afternoon nap for me, just because I can.  Tonight there was another 5 course dinner and a thoroughly enjoyable Shirley Bassey night with a rather good west-end musical performer called Clare Bonsu, with all the arm, eye and hip drama you'd expect from Shirl, two Beatles numbers, two Bond songs, Big Spender, I am what I am and everything!

Until tomorrow, so hoping to get some pictures up and chat! Bye for now xx

11/4/2016 First of 7 Sea days to Cape Verde Islands

This is the longest stretch we have ever been at sea without port stops, so we'll make sure we keep busy and plan our leisure activities and our education.  There are two art classes a day, two craft classes, two visiting speakers, several health and beauty presentations and four different types of light entertainment. And while Khachik is still going into the gym every day,  I do like a bit of telly too

This afternoon there was also a most distressing, totally necessary, illuminating talk by Chris Lubbe, former body guard of Nelson Mandela. He lived through apartheid and in today's talk he reflected on his childhood and the realisation of what apartheid meant through the things he saw around him in his own life.  He gave a bit of background to his own heritage, and how he came to be legally (in apartheid) classified as coloured. His grandmother was a maid who was raped by her white employer.  When he was born he had a lighter brown skin colour than "black" classification allowed, and blond curly hair. As an infant he went through various bizarre racist tests like measurement of the breadth of his nose, thickness of his lips using a ruler, and famously the "pencil test" where a pencil was put through his hair.  The determining factor was if it the pencil sticks in the person's curls, the person is classified as "coloured", if it drops straight through to the floor the classification is "white".  Apparently white children in black families just weren't allowed, so if a child was classified as white they were either placed for adoption or sent to an orphanage.  Chris's father said "luckily the pencil got stuck", but for Chris it meant he was not classified as black like his dad and as a result experienced many different kinds of discrimination and feelings of not belonging anywhere.

Chris then spoke about his recent work for Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. He has several anecdotes of the fun had by Nelson Mandela denying celebrity, and imploring him to do the same. He also told us of his responsibility to tell things they way they were. He even has a piece of limestone from Robben Island, given to him by Nelson Mandela for him to use as a visual aid, so that future generations would know what their forefathers went through.  He then went on to tell several very powerful stories.  I am going to try to remember some of them.

First when he was six his family was living in port St John which I think is in the Eastern Cape on their own inherited land, farming animals.  One day two white government officials appeared on their land to give them 7 days notice to pack and leave for Durban, as the land they owned had been reclaimed as "whites only" land.  They moved without possessions to a squatter camp, and became homeless and destitute, with no system of justice to protect them.  Their former land became a whites-only holiday resort.

Next at the age of 8, on his 8th birthday in fact, his mother took him on a bus ride by way of celebration.  He became aware of  "non-white" buses, benches, toilets, hospital, areas in towns.  During the bus ride his diabetic mother became ill. The driver was unable to stop the bus to let them off. When they were let off the bus the only seat available was white only. She sat there waiting for emergency aid. A white woman agreed to make a phone call in a white only phone kiosk to avoid a black passer by being arrested.  Chris described how two policemen came and physically threw his mother from the bench to the floor, where she hit her head on the ground and was knocked unconscious. The two policemen just walked away, leaving Chris screaming for help.  Luckily it came. Some women came, reassured Chris and helped until the ambulance arrived.  This began a 3 month hospital stay, where she slowly recovered and returned home.



The final and for me most painful of all stories he explained that he had largely educated himself.  Schools were very poor.  Possibly 60 to a class, explaining he thinks the current high levels of illiteracy.  He said there were volunteers who came in to the squatter camps with feeding programmes and extra lessons.  He said one of those was a student, named Steve Biko.



Of course with the help of Peter Gabriel's haunting song Biko, his tragic story is now famous, but in the earlier days before his incarceration and untimely death in custody in 1977,  he taught Chris. Chris described searching dumps for disposed books, reading under the bedclothes with the one family torch, and always running down the batteries.



These were clear moments which inspired Chris to become an equal rights activist, and along with that came his own inevitable imprisonment for 4 months with hardened criminals.  His crime was leading a demonstration.

Following his imprisonment he decided to reply to an advertisement for trainee aeroplane pilots, only to be rejected because he wasn't white. He was bitterly disappointed and with the help of his uncle took a job on the railways. During this time he helped a black man not miss his train by allowing him onto a white-only carriage, and then walking with him through white-only carriages to reach the black-only 3rd class carriages.  Here they were both beaten up by two white police officers.  Chris was thrown to floor and sustained a severe beating and a broken arm. As the other white passengers looked on, the man he was helping was then thrown out of a moving carriage to his death.

This was the end of his talk, a cliff-hanger. Chris vividly gave an account of his devastation, how he was left to cope with this without counselling...... to be continued on 13th. Oh my word. He is still here,  having gone on to be Nelson Mandela's body guard, and has so much more to tell us about Truth and Reconciliation. This is a miracle in itself and we feel really privileged to be here with him.

 I am not going to be able to write about anything else today.
 xx

Since coming home I have been listening and watching many documentaries like this on you tube if you would like to get a bit more background to Apartheid and Nelson Mandela's family today, and a somewhat negative flip side of the Truth and Reconciliation process.

8/4/2016 Cape town Day 3

Today we went on an absolutely brilliant excursion to the top of Table Mountain by coach and cable car, with a fantastic, funny, caring and professional tour guide. We had a third clear sunny day with hardly any breeze, 30+C so we have been really really lucky today. This was made even sweeter because the tour guide saw that I was walking with a walking stick today and filtered me off into a group allowed to jump the one hour queue, go up in the lift to join the cable car with all the "gogos".  Khachik was allowed to come with me. Khachik did a phone video both up and down in the cable car, which incidentally rotates to give everyone a chance to see everything. There are about 60 people in each car, and 2 cars in operation. The organisation of the cars is fabulous and on the top of the mountain there are all sorts of facilities including internet cafes, bars and shops. So much to see up there - truly stunning and breathtaking views, very different terrain, three different types of stone I hear, unique wildlife (notably lots of little lizards, some pure black, some with turquoise heads), and the most beautiful birds I have never even seen pictures of.  Research required!

We stopped up there for about an hour for short walk, a coffee and a snack, and Khachik found internet to make contact home.  While we were doing that a couple who had already left the ship at Cape Town joined us. They said they were from Cheltenham, Warden Hill to be exact. I told them about my 11 years in Cheltenham, and mentioned Pate's Grammar School, of course they knew it.  They asked where we were from. When we said Glossop, they said they knew another couple on the same ship called Brian and Maria from Hadfield.   They have now also left the ship, without us getting to know them, which is a shame. Who knows we might meet up with them some time in the future.  However we might meet another of their contacts Tom Williams, apparently from our neck of the woods. Hope we recognise him from their description.

At departure time, the SA immigration team again found it necessary to take their time doing the face to face passport checks and stamping, which has resulted in almost 3 hours delay leaving Cape Town. The queues were bad, it was hot, bottles of water had to be given out in the queues to prevent dehydration. I think the best thing is to expect delays, and not rush out of the cabins to queue, but arrive at the tail end and pass through quickly.

Never mind, we've eaten now, met a lovely couple from New Zealand and are back in the cabin ready for a good night's rest.  Sea day tomorrow.  New art teacher! New sector.  Excited about Namibia on 10th April  Bye for now. xx

4/4/2016 Third sea day to Port Elizabeth

Last night I went for a light buffet dinner, but failed to regain my appetite.  A lovely passenger approached me and said I didn't look well, gave me two Stugerons and then disappeared. I think she must have been an angel!  I then went to bed for 12 hours. No entertainment necessary. Ughhh.

Today the sea state remained moderate to severe, and the winds were force 6-7. The swell has been reportedly 4 metres. Spray was still reaching our balcony on deck 10, the pools had to be shut as they were swishing over the decks excessively. Warnings are posted on the information screens. I have felt nauseous and had a headache like a pressure band for most of the day. This morning I tried the "try to ignore it" approach, this afternoon I gave in and spent 3 hours horizontal, an hour of that asleep. I have now bought Nelsons homeopathic travel sickness remedy (Nux Vomica). The weather  seems to be settling down a bit, and tomorrow will be a really welcome port day in any case.  Tonight it has been possible to enjoy Jimmy James second performance - much less singing along with him tonight, but nevertheless enjoyed every Smokey Robinson, Otis Reading, Four Tops, Barry White and Gladys Knight number he sang. What a lovely man.



We are still travelling south westerly, currently our co-ordinates are approximately 33 degrees south and 28 degrees east and our speed is roughly 20 nautical miles per hour.  That speed means we cover 400+ nautical miles in 24 hours. The average temperature has now dropped to 25C.  Cloud cover is classed as 7/8 (very cloudy)

Tomorrow I'll be back in South Africa, just one month after my last flying visit to Johannesburg with Lisa.  This time Khachik and I will be cruising in to Port Elizabeth and going out to an animal park for a 5 hour trip after breakfast. We're excited. Khachik's really looking forward to his first trip ever to South Africa.  Officialdom first with a face to face immigration stop in the ballroom at 8 a.m. and then a full day in Port Elizabeth, followed by one day at sea (including an art exhibition) and then 2 days in Cape Town, with excursions to Robben Island by coach and a small boat and Table Mountain by coach and Cable Car. Happy days.

Bye for now xxx