After graduating from high school in 2008, I spent a year in Johannesburg, South Africa attending a start-up prep school for Africans.  The school was (and continues to be) called the African Leadership Academy, and my year there was one that, despite what I claim in my final post, changed who I am and how I see the world.  It also provided a wealth of classic misadventure stories, some of which were sent to my friends and family in a series of 11 emails.  What follows are these emails - unabridged, unedited, and unchanged but for the addition of pictures.

Part 2: Complications Ensue

October 23rd - Africa Update number whatever 

Sorry it's been so long since I've sent anything, but I couldn't muster the necessary moral courage to do so.  But just recently, we finally got our laptops, and I've surreptitiously obtained the access key to the Faculty Room wifi, so I know have wicked fast internet in my room.  It's wonderful.  I actually watched an episode of the Daily Show today.

So the past couple weeks have been eventful.  We had our midterm break, which was five days off from school.  Like most of the students, I couldn't really leave campus, so I spent a lot of time sitting around, or going on tours and excursions organized by the school.  That's one thing about this school - they hate unscheduled time.  But these tours were awesome.  We went first to the something or other caves in Cradle of Humankind.  I went around telling everyone that our last common ancestor probably lived somewhere around there, although it's more likely they lived in Tanzania.

The caves were literally the coolest thing I have ever seen.  John and Michael - you will remember not going to the Luray Caves in the Shenandoah.  That was an extremely bad call.  If I have learned anything, it's that you should always go to the caves when you're given a chance.  There were awesome stalagmites and tytes, not to mention big rocks that looked like elephants, tiny little tunnels to crawl through, spectacular cave lakes that looked air, and the place where some archeologist found an entire early hominid skeleton.  In fact, he hasn't even taken it out yet, so I was literally within 10 yards of million year old ape/human fossil.  So cool. 

The other tour was to Soweto.  For those who don't know, Soweto stands for Southwest Townships, and it was where the Apartheid authorities forced almost all of the blacks in Johannesburg to live.  Today there are 4-6 million people living there.  4-6 million. That's a lot, and there are no skyscrapers, just miles and miles of tiny houses.  As you drive there, you leave the city, passing through some rural areas.  Then you see the mine tailings.  They are immense - huge piles and sand and stone that tower over the landscape.  For those of you on this email list from Michigan - they're two to three times taller than that front dune in the Sleeping Bear dunes - and they're at least a half-mile long, and about a quarter mile wide.  These things are so enormous, it blows your mind.

You drive into a narrow slot between them, and emerge onto the lip of an immense basin filled to the brim with winding roads and millions of homes stretching farther than you can see.  There's a perpetual cloud of dust lying over the city from the mine tailings, so it looks hazy as you look down into Soweto.  The South Africans told me that it's called Soweto because if you were sent to live there, you'd be thinking so where to?, and believe me, you would.

 The tour lady took us to one of the poorest parts of Soweto, which even though it was poor, still looked a hell of a lot better than the informal settlements around campus.  There was a dead rat in the shack-lined road but there was also electricity, and communal running water.  Almost all of Soweto, just to make sure no one has any misconceptions, is houses, not shacks.  It was clear that the tour lady had an arrangement with the hawkers outside the neighborhood, because they walked with us for the 100 yards we went into the neighborhood, then directed us to their wares.  "I'm an artist, man, want to see some of my work?  You're a student so I'll give you a special price."  Some people bought things; I did not.

 After that brief stop we went to Regina Mundi church, a hotbed of resistance after the riots of '76.  There were still bullet holes in the roof, and a massive inscription on either side of the altar: BE NOT AFRAID.  There was also a famous black Madonna and child I'd read about.  the next stop was the Hector Pieterson Museum, which was a museum recognizing the '76 riots in Soweto.  Hector Pieterson was a 13-year-old kid who was killed on the first day, and was famously photographed being carried by his older brother and sister.  The museum was quite moving, especially the video and pictures of the riots.  There were aerial shots and video of thousands of people walking down the street, carrying signs that say "To Hell With Afrikaans" (the riots were sparked by Afrikaans being instituted as the language of instruction in Bantu Schools), being beaten, and even shot by police.

 Contrastingly, our next outing was to mini golf.  There's not a whole lot of mini golf in Africa, and so even with my meager skills (Dad knows about those), I dominated.  We also saw a movie, which brings me to one of the great things about South Africa - movies and everything but electronics are so cheap. It's ridiculous.  A movie costs 3 dollars, and now that the rand has plummeted, it costs about two.  I'm more in tune with pop culture than I was in the states, just because I can afford to see a movie every week on our mall trip.

 We've also started our community service work.  I signed up to work for Oasis, which is a multinational NGO based in Britain.  It's founded by some billionaire English guy, who from what I know about him seems completely insane, if doing good work across the world.  The community service work, however, has been halting, as the guy in charge of Oasis South Africa seems to have some issues communicating with the community he serves.  That community is Cosmo City, which is an immense government housing project near campus to the north of Johannesburg.  There are endless houses, hundreds of them being built, thousands already built, but in contrast to Soweto, there are nice roads, good schools, clean water, and lots of police.  Anyway, our work was going to be at the school, but the Principal thinks that our working for the school would be much more trouble than it's worth. It's actually quite obvious that she's right, but Carl (the Oasis head guy) is determined to find something for us to do, so I don't really know how it's going to work out.

 In academic news, we had our first round of assessments right before the break.  My classes are all going well, although my writing teacher knows little about grammar, and even less about writing.  He happens to be a really awesome guy, though.  The curriculum is so incredibly basic that I think I'm getting worse at writing.  Luckily my Afro Stud teacher rocks in the way that Mr. Morgan rocks, and she says she's going to give me essays.  But going back to writing, the assessment would have been quite easy, I think, if I had noticed that the first page of the article we were supposed to summarize was on the back side of the instructions.  I started reading the article (a really complex one about the DRC and its approximately 300 rebel groups) halfway through, and thought it was literally the worst article I'd ever read.  It's like a three-year-old wrote it - who are these people?  I didn't even know what was a place and what was a person.  But eventually, I figured it out, and got it done, so I'm reasonably sure it'll come out ok.

 In personal news, I've started dating a girl named Jojo from Mali.  She's pretty cool, but there are some problems, chief among them that she doesn't speak English.  I'm not kidding- my Spanish is better than her English.  Yeah.  That bad. So we just don't really say that much.  We talk plenty, but I now really understand the different between talking and actually saying something.  In ten minutes of conversation, we might get four or five sentences of information across, and even if we do, we have no idea of knowing whether the message was properly understood.  That's what I mean when I say we don't say much.

 Ooh!  I just remembered - I voted for Obama!!  Mr. Bradford faxed in my vote from the consulate, so in Michigan you can tally one more vote for Barack.  I'm so pumped.  I didn't vote straight ticket either.  I voted for a republican sheriff, because he was unopposed, and also all the Republicans running for Michigan State Board of Directors, just because I can.  I also voted to legalize medical marijuana and to promote stem cell research.  Hooray for democracy!

So that's all I got.  As always, I love getting email from all of you, and I miss you all very much.

       -fas co gris

November 6th

Dear everyone,

It took me two days to write this because yesterday, I was way too tired, because I didn't sleep the night before.  Rather than sleep, I spent the night at the Dean's house watching election returns.  This email is the story of that night.

Here's the cast:  me, the other three Americans (all rabid Obama supporters), three American faculty members, two Ghanaian students (the student government chairpeople), two Ghanaian faculty members, one Kenyan faculty member, one Kenyan students from Obama's grandma's region, the Dean, and the Dean's wife.

We all gathered in the Dean's house with incredible amounts of junk food at 10pm. That's 3pm on the East coast.  I ate my first pizza and my first sesame chicken in a really, really long time.  We chatted, watched CNN International, and ate.  It was quite pleasant.

The faculty here is quite young - most of them have just graduated from college.  So outside of class, there really isn't a whole lot of difference between us.  We joke, and laugh, and just generally act like a bunch of kids.  It's sort of strange, but you get used to it quickly.  Even the Dean, who is 45ish former Kenyan military officer, was laughing. 

The best part was talking to Mr. Wa-Shiko, who is from Kenya, about excitement back at home.  I told him about some mock elections that people were having in Kisumu, Kenya, where Barack had won 98% of the vote.  He told me that he was absolutely positive that some people in that line thought they were really voting for Obama.  He also told me of a interview he heard of a street vendor who was selling Obama stuff.  The interviewer apparently asked him why he had no John McCain merchandise, and the street vendor "didn't know what to make of that question at all."  He apparently sat there with a puzzled look on his face, and then asked the interviewer what a McCain was.  The Kenyan enthusiasm for Obama is amazing -  the Kenyans all believe that Obama is a Kenyan, and some have even explained to me why they should be allowed to vote.

It quickly became obvious that we would have to keep a running tally of how many times people on tv said the word "historic."  Reids and those who associate with Reids on this mailing list - you'll know that I was eagerly anticipating someone saying that they were "tingling historically."  Sadly, no one said it.

As you might expect, there wasn't a whole lot of news from 10pm to about 2am.  Wolf Blitzer, that bizarre polar bear-man, emerged in the Situation Room at 1am.  He, as usual, had nothing to say.  They introduced the useless exit polls, and the pundits began to babble.  I hate all of them except for John King aka the Map Guy, whose only job is to use the fancy map.  Michael, I think you will remember when we watched the Indiana returns and when they were just waiting for that one county, he started attempting to draw the congressional districts, which there are 13 or something, and their lines are just crazy.  John King tried to do it twice, but the map was just completely covered in scribbles.

Anyway, I took a nap in the Dean's bed at about 1:30 (6:30 eastern).  It was as hard as a plank, but I quickly fell asleep.  I distinctly remember being alone in the bed, but when I woke half an hour later at 2, Mr. Scudder, the biology teacher, had joined me.  This was quite odd - imagine falling asleep in the Rector's bed and waking up with Mr. Donnely.

 So I got up, and wandered over to the tv room.  I tripped over Ms. Davis, who was sleeping in the hallway.  I walked into the room and tripped over Jack's feet, which were sticking out from behind a couch.  Simone was asleep on the floor, Nina was asleep in a bed with the two Ghanaian faculty members, the Dean and Mr. Wa-Shiko were asleep on two couches down stairs.  The only people awake, therefore, were Eddie Oketch and I.  So we stuck it out, watching them call states one by one.  Pennsylvania was very exciting, as was Ohio, which was about 3am.  It was clear that it was over by then, and people slowly drifted into the room to watch.  When the polls on the west coast closed and they finally called the election for Obama, our screams woke everyone else up.  It was so exciting - the Kenyans were jumping up and down, the Dean was shaking everyone's hand, Ms. Davis (a black woman from Virginia) was crying.  It was so awesome.

Then McCain gave his speech, which was fine.  But when Obama gave his - oh boy.  The first rays of the sun were just coming in through the window, the birds were just beginning to wake up.  By the end, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

We made sure to turn it off before the pundits started talking.  We cleaned up, and the students went to breakfast.  All the other students had been watching on the dorm tv, and had just heard the speech like us.  When we Americans walked through the door, everyone cheered.  A "Yes We Can" chant began.  Everyone went around, shaking my hand, and congratulating us.  The Kenyans were just like crazy people - apparently their country had just declared a national holiday.

 And then I had to go to class, and not any class, but leadership Wednesday, which is like hell, but a lot less interesting.  It was a rough day - I've never been so tired.  But now I feel like a real human being because last night I went to sleep at 8:30, and so now it's just starting to hit me that Barack is the President of the United States.  And I voted for him.

             I miss you all,

               -fas co gris

November 18th - Africa Update #5

There comes a time in every great adventure when the novelty has worn off, spirits aren't quite as high as they were, and everyone suddenly realizes that they have worms.  This has happened at ALA.

They're not scary worms but little microscopic whipworms which live in our intestine.  Apparently they come from unwashed fruit, so now we're washing fruit and taking an anti-worm drug regimen, or as the Dean says, an anti-worm regime, which makes me think of Mugabe sending out the veterans to go and fire their machine guns into the compost piles of the MDC.  But it's all ok because I have no symptoms anyway.   

Mispronunciation is a big part of life here.  The Dean is hopeless (ALA becomes EHH LO-LAY), and my writing teacher always talks about moving from the general to the Pacific, which is kind of like what Lewis and Clark did, I think.  My name is one of four things: Hugh (the Americans and people who have spent time in North America or Europe), You (most people), Jack (people still occasionally call me Jack), and HhhhhEE-YOOOOO (this one guy named Kevin).  The next time I see you, remind me, and I can do the hand motion that goes along with it.

The most exciting thing that has happened recently was Mr. Adogla's rant about the rules.  Mr. Adogla is 22, recently graduated from Stanford, and lives in my hall.  He sleeps something like 15 hours a day, and is occasionally hilarious, like when he watches football.  But he often gets into the foulest of moods, and goes around yelling at everyone for nothing.  I suspect this is because he feels as though he needs to differentiate himself from the students because he's so young. 

(Quick note here - pretty interesting to read this today, being a 24 year old teacher.  I do worry about differentiating myself from the students, but I definitely do not go around yelling at people for no reason).

But anyway, he called the entire student body into the auditorium.  I bagged (SPS people - it feels great to say I bagged something), because I thought it was going to be some silly talk about the upcoming football tournament, but apparently he spent the entire time yelling about PDA (public display of affection) and punctuality. PDA is a big deal here.  Mr. Adogla threatened expulsion for it, but I just plain don't believe him.  Really, I think the whole school's outlook on sex and girls and boys is offensively puritanical, a perspective I have shared with the Dean, but then, this isn't my continent or my culture, so I just have to follow the family motto on this one. (The family motto is "Get over it").

The other exciting thing that has happened is Parent's Weekend, although it was really Parent's Day.  A whole bunch of people showed up, and it was very nice.  I think they specifically told us we had worms after that so the parent's wouldn't find out from us.

 Thanksgiving is coming up soon, as I'm sure you all know.  It's apparently not a very big deal in other parts of the world (who knew?), but the American students are going to cook up some turkey and cornbread, and also teach everyone to play real football.  It's going to be awesome.  Also we're working on a Swahili skit in which we talk about Grandpa who has gone mute because someone has cut out his tongue (ulimi). I play the tongueless grandpa, which means that all of my lines are just noises.  The best part is the end when we learn that it turns out the Uncle cut out the tongue all along.  "Ni mimi (It's me), ni mimi, ni mimi, ni mimi," he shouts, holding a long knife and the tongue above his head. "NI MIMI!!"  It's great stuff.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this or not, but there was a hailstorm the other day, which was the first frozen experience for a lot of students here.  I quickly learned that throwing snowballs (or hailballs) is a innate human ability, because long before I, or anyone else who's seen snow got there the war had begun.  Still, throwing snowballs well is not innate, because Jack and I quickly became feared for our ability to throw well even when our hands were cold.  I mention this because I've attached a picture taken of some of the warriors after hostilities ceased.  See if you can figure out which one is me.

I miss you all, and if you're in my immediate family, I can't wait to come home for Christmas,

        Much love,

         -fas co gris

December 15th - End of Term Africa Update 

Dear everyone,

This school has an unusual idea of the end of term.  Our exams ended yesterday, and yet we still have more than a week of school.  I certainly hope no one is going to expect me to do work, because they are sure to be disappointed.  I don't do work after exams - it's a matter of principle.

The exams were actually quite difficult.  I've never written so much in my entire life.  The best part was geography, where they had me identify three African countries on the equator, when the equator was drawn on the map.

The other day the head of J.P. Morgan South Africa invited the whole school to his house for a braai, which is a barbeque.  His house in the nicest suburb of Johannesburg, called Westlake, I think.  The amazingly wealthy inhabitants of this suburb have their own private police force, who drive by every few minutes.  Anyway, this guy had a nice house, with a pool, a tennis court, and a trampoline.  The Dean got on the trampoline, which was hilarious because he's fat enough that his feet were about an inch and half away from the ground on the bottom of his jumps. 

We played soccer in the school nearby.  I didn't disgrace myself, mostly because of the extremely low expectations I had previously set.  I even scored a goal, which was great because of the looks of shame on the defenders' faces.

A bunch of students are leaving today for a three-day Jesus camp.  This guy from Egypt, Ayman, told me that he was going, which surprised me since Ayman is Muslim.  I asked him about this, and he said he just wasn't going to listen during the Jesus part - all he wanted was the swimming and a chance to meet some girls.  I told him that he had absolutely no idea what he was getting himself into.

 The worms seemed to have been defeated, although Grandpa has kindly offered some of his horse worm medication in case they come back.  I'm really touchy about worms now, and whenever I see fruit, I'm immediately suspicious. Speaking of fruit, Mr. Myers went and got us all a whole bunch of it, including some carrots.  After two months of foul chicken and rice, I've never been so happy to see a vegetable.  I think I'm getting scurvy, or rickets, or whatever it is you get from not enough vegetables.  Note to family: kindly remove any chicken and rice dishes if they are on the menu.  That's pretty much all we get to eat here, except for gristle, which they call beef.

 Thanksgiving here was quite an experience.  The dining hall served us "turkey" which I'm almost certain was pork, because it looked like pork, smelled like pork, and tasted like pork. They also served us "cornbread," which was bread with whole corn kernels mixed in. It's like a chocolate chip cookie, but instead of cookie you have bread and instead of chocolate chips you have corn.  I ‘d never though of cornbread that way before.

Last night, since exams were done, and we had no work for today (for me, there are still Saturday classes), prep time was cancelled, thank god.  I went to a classroom and watched Horton Hears a Who with some friends, which made us realize how allegorical Dr. Suess is.

In other news, Jojo and have broken up. It was not good.  Yesterday she attacked me with cake frosting in anger.  Hope that never happens to you.  She also said I’m a devil and I laugh like a dog, which was not funny at the time.  Oh well.

 The other exciting thing that has happened is that I've published the first issue of the Leaky Faucet, which is the online literary mag for ALA.  I want it to become a counter-culture movement, but so far it's just a few stories and some poetry. None of my stuff on there is new, but I've been writing a lot since my work is so easy.  I wrote the story of the road trip, which makes us all look like lunatics. This probably isn't too far from the truth.  I'm also working on some satire called the ALA Guide to Clear Writing and Clean Living, inspired by that one Pelican piece Jordan wrote about Sadie Hawkins, I think.  "The Flaming, Bloody Truth about STDs," I think it was called.  All I remember was the part where he interviewed ITG about the upcoming dance.  I still laugh about that when I think of it.  

That seems to be about it. Please respond and tell me how you're doing.  Only normal emails, please (Ella, I'm talking to you).

     Much love,

      -fas co gris