Amazon Wildlife Photography

Brazil is a treasure trove of biodiversity. The country boasts 20% of the world's bird species, and houses more species of plants, mammals, and freshwater fish than any other place on earth. Wildlife is everywhere in Brazil, but especially in the rainforests surrounding Manaus, where the MV Explorer docked for four days this February. Watch the video below to see wildlife photos from students, staff, and lifelong learners in and around the Amazon River.

March 6-Hitting the Beach in Mauritius

March 6-Four hours in Mauritius

At 7 am, my friend Chelsea and I got off the ship in Mauritius and walked out of the port and grabbed a cab to go to the closest beach. Mauritius has the best beaches in the world. On the way the landscape was very diverse; there were a lot of wide fields of grass with a backdrop of a wide mountain range with sharp tips.

The cab driver brought us to a small beach for local people. When we arrived, there were only a couple people there and it was quiet and serene.

A local there offered to take us out on his boat to go snorkeling. So we joined another group to travel 15 minutes out and then he gave us the equipment. The coral underneath us was mostly leeched which is because of the change of eco system and people touching them. Luckily, there were other girls that knew how to snorkel so they tried to teach me to use the equipment even though I still had trouble breathing. I think I took in more water than air. There were a lot of brightly colored fish in the area; some fish resembled those in “Finding Nemo”. We also got to see an eel. It slithered around the coral like a snake and was rather long.

After that we headed back to the beach and waded in the water for a bit. The Indian Ocean is significantly warmer than the Atlantic and we had no trouble getting used to it, especially that early in the morning. There were more people on the beach now including retired locals, Semester At Sea students and members of the faculty.

We ended up getting sucked into a game of tag with a bunch of the faculty’s kids. We played tag and shark for almost an hour and it seemed that the parents were glad to have a break. I was happy to have an excuse to play in the water without looking weird. Unfortunately, there were not a lot of shells or rocks for me to collect; however, there were plenty pieces of coral.

After our playmates left, we walked over to a bar to grab some refreshments. My milkshake was really thin but still rather tasty. The interesting thing about Mauritius is that it took US dollars which is most likely due to the high amount of tourism on the island. We quickly walked over to a local beach store to purchase souvenirs. When we went back to the taxi, the cab driver had bought us a bottle of Mauritian rum to bring back to the ship with us. It was really difficult trying to explain to them that we could not bring it. He even stopped at a grocery store for us to get a mixer so that we would take it. We ended up leaving the rum with him.

Overall, we had a very productive morning for the limited amount of time we had in Mauritius. There was an issue with some of the other students who had gone to a different beach to party and get drunk. Fifteen people were put in the drunk tank at noon and there were several individuals who came on to the boat staggering or unable to properly walk. It was a bit disappointing to see people that thrashed. The shipboard community, including the dean and many professors were very disappointed.

Feb 28-29 - Final Days in Cape Town

Feb 28-The fifth day was a bit calmer than the other days. Everett and I went with another couple we have befriended (who just started going out on this trip) to breakfast and spent the day mostly walking around. We all had omelets at a restaurant in the waterfront area, and then sat on a bridge overlooking the water.

We caught a cab into town and found a restaurant to dine for lunch. We really enjoyed our lunch. We each had a glass of wine and the restaurant had beautiful black and white décor. The waitress was super friendly and joked around with us at lot. I even ordered a salad after my dinner because I had tried Chelsea’s and it was really good. This was the first time since home that I had gotten a nice slow relaxing sit down meal like that.

As a group, we intended to hike up Table Mountain to see the sunset. But while we were dining, it had started to rain and was really cloudy. On our way back we saw a bunch of people playing water polo on kayaks. They paddle back and forth and have to push the ball while doing it and then they have to pick it up and pass it or try to score. They block using their paddles and sometimes they would roll in the kayaks if they fell over. I thought I should include this for the Coraor family; it is not as intense as whitewater solemn but it was really interesting to watch.

The final day, February 29th, I spent the day getting internet service and shopping in the waterfront area. I made little effort to venture out anywhere or do anything because I had spent a good deal of money on my other adventures during the week and I was pretty beat. I also felt that I was tired of being in Cape Town. Being so westernized and modern, I did not get the feeling that it was foreign as much as the other countries and that took some of the thrill away. Many of the other students fell in love with Cape Town. I absolutely loved the nature and scenery but wasn’t thrilled about the social struggles at stake. It bothered me a lot to be privileged enough to take advantage of those amenities when thousands of people living in the townships have never gotten to enjoy their homeland in the same way.

Feb 27th - Amy Biel Foundation Service Trip

The Amy Biel foundation was started by Linda Biel and her husband after the apartheid related murder of their daughter. Amy’s parents strove to continue her work by empowering the youth living in the townships, creating stronger leaders, and increasing the income of those living in those desolate areas. For this service project, we received an opportunity to visit the home office of the foundation to hear about the mission, community development projects and goals for expansion in the future. After the briefing, our group travelled to a school that the foundation is supporting by building classrooms, talking to parents and training teachers. We returned to the school after lunch and in the last half hour we looked into the rooms with the afterschool programs the foundation established. All of the children were breathtakingly talented; I listen to the videos constantly because I am taken away and entranced by the power of their voices and the movements of their bodies to the beat of the drums.

The dances, songs, and music played were all traditional African style. It gave me a lot of hope that the African culture was still alive and well in South Africa. I hated Cape Town. I was really discouraged to see that the ethnocentric influence of the Europeans had completely taken over another culture. South Africa was not an intercultural mix of the Dutch, Malay and Africans but a culturally segregated country dominated by the whites that were privileged. Watching the young children dance and sing songs from their homeland was really a treat, because it gave me a glimpse into the African culture that I had hoped to experience. I hope that these programs are benefiting the children to become empowered to fight against the discrimination still present against them in South Africa.

The school was cement buildings with a courtyard through which the children entered the classrooms. In each room scratched up wooden desks lined the floors and kids’ schoolwork lined the walls. There was a sandy area behind the school buildings with a small, infertile garden alongside the area where the children washed the football uniforms. When we entered the kids greeted us with handshakes, however many did not speak a lot of English or were not confident enough to try much. The children are taught how to express themselves in English and the teachers were proud to tell the American students. This aspect of the curriculum heightened my awareness of the power struggles at stake in the surrounding areas of Cape Town. English is the language the children in the Townships need to learn because knowing our language and adopting that identity gives them power through better access to jobs and higher education. However, I believe they should be allowed to speak and learn in Xhosa, their native tongue, because that makes more sense, logically. It is their cultural language and should be recognized its linguistically unique richness.

The economic and social power of English is a quintessential example of privilege. Naturally those who born into white families have access to the more commonly used dominant languages and therefore have more access to travel and employment then other groups and they continue the cycle. The principal introduced the SAS group as the students from America to watch their performances and very proudly demonstrated through a tongue twister how well the seventh grade class articulated English words. I felt extremely uncomfortable to be put on top of a pedestal through that introduction. I am certain that these children because of the race relations in South Africa religiously associate a White person as a person that is inherently better because of the difference in status. It is clear little has change from the Apartheid and I had trouble enjoying the luxuries of this port because I cannot even imagine the blood and tears that were spread to make room for those houses, shops, and buildings.

Seeing such a striking difference in this country forces me to reflect on the disparities in the US that I know about but I ignore because that is the way it is and has always been. I am well aware of the numbers of Hispanics and blacks living off welfare and with little access to health care and education. I would be hypocritical to say that white South Africans should be doing more to help those who live such impoverished lives and then to go back home to my suburban house, ignoring the issues fifteen minutes away. Through our class discussions, I am becoming even more devoted to help fighting the global issues of racism and poverty by starting at home.

The purpose of this tour was to learn and experience the program and did not allow a lot of free time to interact with the kids. We watched dance instead of dancing with them as I would have hoped. Touring the facilities and watching the children perform did provide me with an opportunity to learn about the foundation and the issues that they are dealing with but through a project. I hope it was beneficial for the children to have an audience to perform for to boost esteem and confidence even though I am sure the foundation most likely brings plenty of groups through on the same tour.

Our tour guide brought us to the school garden that was in pathetic state. The dead plants were planted in heaps of sand. Five rotten tomatoes were the only fruit to be seen and weeds were everywhere. The Amy Biel foundation intends to remodel this garden in two months. They need money for the laborers, fertilizer, fence, seeds, mulch, etc, so that a garden can be grown to teach the children to garden and cook. I mentioned to our tour guide that I wish we knew about this need for labor and supplies because Semester at Sea students could have provided aid through labor. He responded that it is hard to judge whether groups are willing to do work or to just learn about the foundation so I made a suggestion on the evaluation to work with the foundation to setup a project.

This trip for me served as an opportunity to learn about non-profit organizations and their work in the community. I enjoy doing clerical work and fieldwork so I could we of use in the office or in the schools. I appreciate the mission statements of many non-profits, and I rather strive for social justice through one of these agencies than get stuck in a government social services job, not helping anyone. These trips are helping me see in perspective what the best way, as a social worker, to reach out and assist others.

Ev- Feb 26th - Cycling in the Wine Lands

Cycling in the Wine Lands - Day 3

Ev-My third day was spent doing a SAS sponsored cycling trip through the wine lands. We started at the historic and beautiful town of Stellenbosch, one of the first cities established by the Dutch during their colonization of South Africa. The streets were lined with thriving flowers, and the old brick buildings were capped with English Ivy.

We biked through the center of town and out into the wine lands beyond, and began a 10 mile cycle between the mountains. The trip was surprisingly difficult, and by the time we stopped I was convinced that I was much more out of shape than I had previously thought. However, as we turned around and backtracked for a mile or two back to one of the wineries, we went downhill the entire way, proving that what we all had assumed was flatland was in fact uphill (much to the relief of our bruised egos).

The winery itself was a small but luxurious place where we learned the snobbish art of wine tasting and appreciation. We learned how to hold the wine, how to taste it “on our nose”, how to swirl it, how to sip it, how to taste it, how to air it, how to swallow. We were told to look for all manner of completely irrelative adjectives in the wine like “judicious” or “approachable”. Needless to say, when we left for our second leg of the journey, we all felt like quite the pompous aristocrats.

The next part of the trip was a 12 mile trip even further into the wine lands which proved, although flatter than the first, to be equally strenuous. It became so difficult the more athletically challenged members of the group that they were picked up by a shuttle van and brought to the next winery directly (only 6 out of the original 12 of us made it the whole way).

Feb 26th Train Ride (Feeling Apartheid First Hand)

Remainder of Day 3 in Cape Town

We had a taste of the leftover segregation policies from South Africa’s Apartheid when we caught the train back to the waterfront dock. We got to the station right before the train was leaving so we hopped on the closest car.

The wooden benches lined the outside of the car and trash littered the floor. I looked around and we were the only white people in that car. When we sat down, two women near us got up and sat somewhere different. People on all sides of us were talking in their native tongue (called Xhosa, with a lot of clicking noises). We felt very uneasy because I think the black people on the car thought that we were trying to make a statement.

We got off after two stops because we weren’t actually sure where we had to get off or how to purchase tickets because the ticket offices were closed. We asked some girls in an ice cream stand and they gave us all the information we needed. We hopped on the next train, on the first class train that had people of many races and it was an hour back to Cape Town. We then boarded a public bus back to the waterfront area where our ship was docked.

The Waterfront area is basically a bunch of piers that had a two story mall, dozens of fancy restaurants with outside dining and music and several bars. It was a generally safe area and was very close to the ship. A lot of local musicians performed around there and in the center was a huge Ferris wheel that overlooks the city. It was built when the World Cup was held there last year.

That night we had dinner at a bar called Mitchells. I had a pizza with feta, garlic and onions and it was delicious. There was a group of Englishmen rooting for the Liverpool soccer team that were very rowdy. We then sat by the dock and watched the dock seals sleeping and snuggling up next to each other. It was a very peaceful end to the night.