Several days ago, I briefly made note of the xenophobic violence that has swept the country in the last few weeks. This morning, I went out to check up on the consequences–thousands of immigrants taking refuge in churches and mosques from threats, violence, and intimidation in their communities. It’s beyond comprehension.

“How many people do you have today?”

“Two more busloads coming, ok.”

“Any victims of violence?”

“Two stabbings, one burning, got it.”

At the sites we visited to gather data for relief efforts run by SHAWCO, the Treatment Action Campaign, and dozens of other civic organizations, things actually seemed to be under control. In numbers ranging from 17 at one church to over 200 at a nearby mosque, the displaced Mozambicans, Congolese, Zimbabweans, and Somalis quietly lunched on bread and beans, or slept on one of the thin mats laid out in long rows. The calm atmosphere, however, belies a paralyzing set of circumstances: many had had their homes destroyed, friends and relatives attacked, money and possessions lost–leaving them without the means to even flee back to their home countries, which they often left for similar reasons. Everyone talks about re-integrating them back into normal life, especially the white Presbyterian church we visited, which emphasized the dangers of dependence and the need to reclaim a sense of “self-worth.” But when you hear about one church in the cushy southern suburbs getting attacked by an angry mob after being inundated by refugees who fled violence in the townships, where do you go? While of the refugees had braved public transportation to go to their jobs, many more are still shut inside walled compounds, afraid to be foreign even in this most cosmopolitan of cities.

Urban refugee situations are hard to deal with because they’re so hard to keep track of, as new sites keep mushrooming and disappearing again when people move around. Right now, the political leadership is bickering over whether to keep people in the small community-run sites or to consolidate them into larger groups, which can apparently not be called refugee camps. I can see the argument for both sides: on the one hand, faith-based groups are ideally equipped to support people for temporary periods, since most congregations are only too eager to donate stuff and time. On the other, it’s a lot easier to deliver services that churches can’t provide if you don’t have to drive around finding them all day. Either way, it’s a dreadful, dehumanizing business.

NB: Because we were on a fact-finding mission, I gathered that taking pictures would have been a no-no. I stole this photo, which looks a lot like what I saw, from Agence France-Presse.

I decided to begin my post-program trip up the coast in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest and most populous city, because I didn’t really get a good look at it the first time around. I also wanted to see how the other half lives: this country is very regionalistic, and over the last few weeks, I’ve become a little too attached to the sierra for my own personal standards of objectivity.

What I’ve realized from wandering around today is that Jaime Nebot, the mayor of this port city on the River Guayas, is a self-promoter. And part of me says he has reason to be. During his tenure, state and private funds transformed the depressed boardwalk into the gorgeous Malecón 2000, a park with museums, theaters, and restaurants that snakes along the estuary. Visiting today with my Columbia buddy, Eric Hirsch and a friend who participated in SIT’s Peru program with him, I just gawked at just how green, clean, and well-maintained it all looked.

We continued into Santa Ana, a barrio built into a large hill overlooking the water. This spot was once one of the most dangerous in the city, a place where cops wouldn’t even dare to patrol as its winding streets and dark alleys providing safe haven for ladrones. Today, it is a polished tourist destination, thanks to mayoral intitiatives. Stone steps wind through cafes, bars, stores, and cement homes painted a rainbow of bright colors, informational signs and security guards are positioned every few hundred yards, every so often on the route up the hill, there is a garden, plaza, or playground. (Photos to come, I’m writing this from our hostel). I didn’t get a chance to really talk to the people of the town and the streets did seem a little dead on this random Monday afternoon, but I can imagine they appreciate the renovation. Nebot isn’t shy about letting people know who did the deed. His name is practically on every castiron lamppost.

But Guayaquil is a city of extremes. While the city’s elites (the king of banana exports, and the richest man in Ecuador, Alvaro Noboa) live like the wealthiest people in Miami Beach, the Guasmos slums at the southern end of the city are home to some of the country’s poorest. Every few weeks, there are reports (more in El Comercio, Quito’s daily, than in Guayaquil’s paper, which is a big Nebot fan) about the city’s failure to collect the trash in many neighborhoods on time. Plastic bags of refuse just pile up on the sides of the roads. It’s an uneven place that, in this respect, can really stand in for most Latin American cities. Wikipedia has also written some about how Nebot’s gentrification plan was modeled after Giuliani’s in New York, and about the sometimes excessive force used by police to keep street vendors out of the Malecòn.

Even still, most Guayaquileños love Nebot. He’s continued the city’s age old quest to cecede from the country, the argument being, they make all of the country’s money, yet officials in Quito get to spend it. He has been in a well-publicized war with President Correa to get the city more respect (the serrana in me wants to say: as if the city doesn’t get enough respect already). But I think his positive public image here is due more to how flashy and impressive his projects are. And the fact that his name is always on a gold-plated plaque somewhere.

For a long time in Cape Town, I thought I’d be able to get by without a bike. Cars are crazier here, most of the city is on a slope, a bike would get ripped off in a heartbeat. But after about three months, the deprivation became to painful to bear, and I snapped up a cheap mountain bike (road bikes are hard to come by) listed on the South African equivalent of Craigslist. The gears were a bit screwy and the fork screwed on backward, but a genial German bike mechanic fixed it up, and I was on my way.

So the last couple of weeks have been absolutely glorious, as I carve out big chunks of my days to pedal through the sloping vineyards of Constantia and dainty suburban neighborhoods. The area actually has a fair number of bike lanes, and enough cyclists that cars know how to treat us. Yesterday I ventured into the city center under a dense fog, cruising through areas that wouldn’t be that attractive on foot (like these vast empty areas filled with soccer games on Sundays). The only problem is a blasted type of thorn that has twice punctured even my fatty trail tires—which just means another pleasant chat at the mechanic’s.

A few of you have e-mailed asking about my safety after the wildfire of xenophobic violence hopped to Cape Town a couple of nights ago. Worry not; scuttling between my house and UCT’s library in the tranquil suburb of Mowbray, I’m far from the squatter camps where most of the looting and attacks have occurred. I’m sure it also helps that I’m white, and clearly not about to take anyone’s job. But it’s a truly awful phenomenon—42 people have been killed and thousands forced from their homes over the last 12 days, hitting the masses of refugees who are barely hanging on to survival already. Government officials say the violence is coming from right-wingers associated with the former white government, the kind of “third force” involvement that everyone remembers from the last days of apartheid.

Maybe that’s true, or maybe they’re just using those memories to divert anger over the police force’s sluggish response. But either way, it creates a halo of fear much larger than the actual danger zone: hanging out at the SHAWCO office yesterday, I overheard coordinators talking to Zimbabwean volunteers who were afraid to go out with the prospect of getting attacked. The Protestant Bookstore on my corner wants us to pray about it. I really, really wish that were the only thing we needed to do to help.

Food prices have been in the news for weeks now–in fact, the world seems to have already moved on, even though the U.N. prognosis has only gotten worse. In South Africa, there have been scattered protests, but the country has more of a cushion (financial, lipid) than its neighbors to the north (plus, now we’ve got better things to worry about). Food is so cheap here–relative to New York City at least–that I barely even noticed, and was surprised to hear local students complaining that food on campus had become unacceptably expensive (your average sandwich is $2, a latte for $1).

So the thing that really made it hit home was a 60 percent increase in the price of rotis at Sunrise Chip & Ranch, an ambiguously Indian place down the street that also sells bunny chow and gatsbies. The name is still an enigma, but there’s nothing mystical about a huge pancake filled with stew and rolled into a cylinder as large as my calf–all for the price of a tall Starbucks coffee.

When I noticed that Sunrise had hiked its rates, righteous outrage quickly gave way to a more balanced perspective. I still don’t understand how they can keep the place afloat even with the new price list. And I still don’t know what it means for a few rand on a bag of lentils to meaningfully affect your life.

As Columbia’s class of 2008 nears graduation, I’m starting to face the possibility of taking their place, becoming a senior myself, being older than the rest of the undergraduate population. It’s really quite terrifying–I liked having the cushion of a few years between me and adulthood.

So with that in mind, I’m not sure if the students at UCT really feel younger than students at Columbia, or if I’m just being patronizing in my advancing years. Sitting for a few hours in Leslie Social Science, the main student center, I was struck by the pronounced middle schoolish atmosphere, with people sitting around tables doing nothing in particular, backpacks strewn around haphazardly. I wonder if it may be due to UCT’s upper-than-average class student body, of whom perhaps not much has been expected. From what I know of the primary education system, you either go to a posh private school with pleated skirts and sport coats and the whole bit (in which case one’s maturity might not catch up with the sudden freedom of college) or an underfunded public school ill-equipped to prepare students for higher education. Either way, they come out still with the callow detachment of children-not-yet-adults.

It’s not a totalizing sense; I’ve certainly met quite a few of the sophisticated going-places type. And again, it’s possible I’m just withering into my gnomish 20s. I guess I’ll know when Columbia’s class of 2011 starts running around underfoot.

Oh Off Broadway! How much I have missed thee!

It’s been a long month working here in the press office of the Asamblea Constituyente. Check out the post I wrote on Bwog for some of the background on why I’m here and what I’m doing.

In every country around the world except of course the United States, May 1, día del trabajador, is celebrated as a national holiday. But like all of you toiling back at home, the asambleistas were still in the office on May day this year. In acknowledgment that the rest of the country was already in feriado, the Hotel Oro Verde, which supplies lunch for all of the politicians and staffers every day, brought in some wine. Tipsy, staffers walked from the cafeteria into the Plenario (where debates are usually held) and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Quito struck up some classical and traditionally Ecuadorian tunes.

And did they liven the mood. Here are some shots of the massive conga line that developed on the floor of the Asamblea, and the president of the Asamblea Constituyente (far right), Alberto Acosta, dancing the “handkerchief dance” with, I think a vice-president of the assembly.

Something tells me this could never happen in the States. Obama and Hilary, McCain and Feingold snaking their way around the chairs on the Senate floor? No way.

More from the Asamblea just as soon as I get my final papers done… I promise! Thanks for keeping us afloat, Lydia…

For SHAWCO last Monday, my coordinator asked me to design and deliver a lesson on wetlands. Fine, I thought–how hard can it be? Put together the relevant facts, get some diagrams and maps, and you’re good to go. But as I quickly learned, a concrete grade school classroom is different from a college lecture hall, and my excited rambling about hydric soils and wattled cranes aroused little interest.

Before you start talking about natural habitats, it’s also helpful to have a few key concepts in place–like evolution. At one point I began talking about a coelacanth, which led to a discussion of how it got to be that way.

“Have you guys heard about natural selection?” I asked. “Charles Darwin? How humans evolved from monkeys?” Blank stares. I plunged on. “So, a long time ago, everything was just made of cells…”

I have no idea how much they got out of that discussion. Luckily, the lesson was only an introduction to something that would hopefully make it meaningful: a trip to an actual live wetland. Most of the Cape Flats actually used to be wetlands, until strip malls and townships covered them up.

Edith Stevens Wetland park is not much to look at. On a rainy, cold Saturday, it appears to be just the space between three highways, with some broken down boardwalks threading through a sea of brown, tufty grass. But an enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff brought it to life for the kids with owl pellet dissections, taxidermied mammals, and live snakes–beats the hell out of a few old National Geographics.

And in ways they couldn’t necessarily see, Edith Stevens is a special place. It’s got a medicinal herb garden, and an all-access vegetable garden, and a small but expanding bird club, all free to the public. Unlike the glitzy game reserves with their often prohibitive entrance fees, Stevens belongs to people too.

“That’s the difference with a community park,” the friendly and vivacious education director told me. “When kids swim out to the island to steal the birds’ eggs, I can’t be mad at them, because they’re hungry. All I can do is say ‘don’t you know how toxic that water is?’”

That’s why environmental education is more complicated here. Before you can instill a love for earth’s creation, you have to make sure people have enough to eat, which is a much knottier proposition.

Part 2: By the ocean

To my absolute delight, in the Drakensberg I ran into a girl I knew from class who was heading to my next stop at more or less the same time with three friends in a car–although I do enjoy the up-close-and-personal nature of minibus travel, having your own wheels is liberating (and probably a wee bit more safe). Katie, Posie, Hallie, and Jenny saved me from my own excessive ambition, and provided excellent travel companions for the eight-hour trip to Port St. Johns. We were even headed to the same place, Amapondo, which I learned later had a reputation on the backpacker circuit for being a big stoner hostel. Mostly it just contributed to a very laid back vibe–even the big dogs wandering around slept for most of the day–which is appropriate for a place where it rains most of the time. I didn’t do much worth noting here.

For my third night on the Wild Coast, I hitched rides and caught minibuses to the tiny town of Coffee Bay, an idyllic hamlet with two hippie backpacker hostels lounging at the mouth of the Bomvu river. I looked around for the big 1,000-person hotels you find closer to Durban and Cape Town, but so far it seems like the inhabitants have fought them off, allowing the place to retain the character that draws people there in the first place. You won’t see big game here, unless by game you mean cows, sheep, and goats, which amble freely across the rumpled landscape. You will find Xhosa people living in a very similar way to how they lived hundreds of years ago, in the green-painted thatched rondavels (huts) dotting the hills.

When I arrived, I took a walk out along the green cliffs and back along the road, where I ran into barefoot children for whom white people mean one thing: money. Actually, they probably also mean the dirt bikes and big SUVs that come roaring through, but on foot–something of a novelty–I was friendly and approachable. “How you go?” they asked, offering to guide me back when I replied, in what became a sing-songy ritual, “I’m going to Coffee Bay.” Some would run at me, demanding “sweet!” or “small change?” Others made little crafts or sang songs, for which I offered praise and a few rand. But even when I brushed them off, they followed me quietly for as much as a kilometer, making me feel like a mother goose. Their real mothers, tough women with head wraps and long skirts, barely acknowledged my presence. I’ve never felt more like an outsider.

The next day, I hopped a bus to Port Elizabeth, just one last stopover to break up the trip home. When I arrived in the late evening, the middle aged British hostel owner who picked me up from the station asked if I wanted to come out a nearby bar for a few drinks with him and a friend (most hostels have their own bars, but this one catered to a quieter crowd). Relieved to have any sort of activity, I accepted, and we entered the divey place to much ribbing from the locals–”Hey, is she your daughter?” People look at you differently when you’re white, like you have a third arm growing out of your forehead or something, although it subsides when they realize you’re just there for a beer like everyone else.

Sunday dawned bright and sunny, but this churchgoing, British-feeling town was utterly quiet. As I walked through the broad streets, I heard services emanating from various houses of worship, at least a couple of which sounded like exorcisms. Despite the religiosity, I decided I liked Port Elizabeth, with its still-vibrant industrial core and waterfront free of Cape Town’s fakery. Not the star of SA’s coastline, but a place where someone could actually live.

And then, that evening, the long trip back. Low-cost bus lines have smaller seats and, I’m pretty sure, larger people to squish in them. I have never been so glad to see the Cape Town bus terminal.