World Turned Upside-Down

Even since Britt got me hooked on yoga, I’ve been spending a lot more time upside-down than I used to. Yoga is big on “inversions”, postures like headstands, handstands, and shoulderstands that get your feet up and head down. But that’s not all. Many of the basic poses – the bends and bridges, the triangles and twists, even the omnipresent down dog – involve putting your head lower than your hips.

If you ask, many yoga instructors and enthusiasts will tell you that getting upside-down is good for you. They claim it improves blood flood, helps the lymphatic system, and decreases stress. It increases upper body and core strength, they say, and takes pressure off the diaphragm and lower back.

There doesn’t seem to be much science to either back or disprove these benefits, though I can vouch for the upper body workout part. In contrast, there’s pretty strong evidence of the risks involved with inversions among people with glaucoma, high blood pressure, or congestive heart failure. Also, if you are prone to vertigo or inner ear problems, as I am, you have to take it easy and build up your tolerance over time. If you hang upside-down too long, the science is clear. Too much blood pools in your brain, and you die.

Whether literally or figuratively, many people recommend turning yourself (or your world) upside-down every once in a while to get a new perspective on things. In yoga, that generally has to do with clearing your mind of clutter, refocusing, and getting your mind and body more in balance.

In the wider world it can mean rethinking previously held notions.

Malcolm Gladwell has a Ted Talk and series of lecture tours based on his most recent and best-selling book, David and Goliath, where he argues, “We are never more alive than when things get turned upside-down.” Much of what he describes in the book is about challenging common viewpoints by inverting widely held assumptions. As he turns certain arguments on their heads, he tries to reveal their flaws or, conversely, the hidden strengths lying beneath the side we usually see.

Moving from the northern to southern hemisphere, as we have, turns lots of things on their heads. Summer is winter. The north-facing side is sunniest. The moon is reversed – or for those of us living near the equator looks like a boat instead of a crescent. Because of the way most modern maps are drawn, we think of the southern hemisphere as being on the bottom half of the world. And I confess there are days when it does feel like we are walking upside-down.

Long before Malcolm Gladwells’ books, there was an Argentinian cartoon character called Mafalda, created by “Quino” Lavado, who became very famous in the Spanish-speaking world for her way of innocently re-examining common views, stereotypes, and politics. In one series of panels, she explains to a friend that it is because the southern countries live upside-down that they are less developed than the northern ones – as it causes all their ideas to fall out.

With Mafalda in Buenos Aires

There are different groups and thinkers and artists who suggest that flipping world maps everywhere would be a way to break old thought patterns – including the notion of who’s on top. Joaquin Torres-Garcia (1874-1949) was an avant-garde Uruguayan artist, who wanted to turn Eurocentric art traditions, including their elitist tendencies, on their heads. Along with creating a style he called constructive universalism, meant to be accessible to everyone, he worked to promote Uruguayan and South American art and artists. His own work features geometric images of towns, common objects, and characteristic people. Among the most famous, however, is an inverted map of South America, where it is the continent’s southernmost point that gets the top billing.

América Invertida, Joaquin Torres Garcia.

For many people, having their world turned upside-down comes as a result of a dramatic or traumatic change in their lives.

For us, it has come more often through choices – and a deliberate sense of curiosity and adventure. I may never fully master the acrobatic inversions of yoga. But my life has indeed become richer and broader from turning it upside-down from time to time.

When Life's a Picnic

Our fabulous Kenyan picnic set and blanket

I have something of a picnic basket fetish. It all started years ago at the Globe Theater in London, where you are allowed to eat during the performances. “Let us dine and never fret!” is the motto, borrowed from Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.

We were watching the Merchant of Venice and eating mushy sandwiches bought from the theater’s snack bar. Meanwhile, the people next to us were enjoying champagne, smoked fish sandwiches, and strawberries pulled from a beautiful picnic basket, complete with crystal flutes and porcelain plates.

I was mesmerized. It was all so civilized and compact.

Within the week, we had bought our first picnic basket. It was green, wicker, and had straps to hold things in place. We got to pick out the enamel cups and plates that came with the set. We used the basket until the wicker gave out, and still have the dishware. 

Enamel dishes from our original picnic set

Over the years, we’ve picked up more picnic sets. There’s the Yogi Bear picnic hamper we found in an antique shop, probably dating from the late 50s or early 60s. The top opens up like butterfly wings. The plastic plates have compartments like an old-fashioned TV dinner, and come in the retro pastels and aqua blue so typical of that era. We also have a backpack picnic set for hikes. We have a pretty basket lined with blue and white-striped fabric and filled with place settings for four, which lives in France and accompanies us on European car trips. There’s one that had a special place for wine bottles, which we gave to friends upon leaving Peru.

Our retro Yogi Bear picnic set, circa 1950s-60s

For Christmas, Britt got me a Kenyan picnic basket set, complete with metal dishware and a waterproof Maasai fabric blanket (made by a woman who turns out to be Peruvian).

I love it.

Kenya is especially conducive to picnics. The weather is often sunny and mild, and there is no shortage of spectacular spots for spreading one's basket and blanket. The trick is to steer clear of monkeys (avid food stealers), large carnivores, or angry herbivores. We once had a lovely picnic lunch with a giraffe, and enjoyed watching hippos and a lioness (from a safe distance) during a picnic breakfast on safari.

Obviously, people have been eating their meals outdoors and on the ground since early man climbed down from the trees. But evidently, the term picnic is relatively recent, dating back to 18^th century hunting parties and country feasts.  Picnics are very popular in art and literature from the 19^th and 20^th centuries, where they take on the romantic air of the English countryside, French Impressionism, Tuscan sun, or such.

Picnic food has varied over time, and picnic menus reflect all that is traditional in the culinary habits of various cultures.

Our 1988 edition of Joy of Cooking offers six different picnic menu suggestions. Some are more traditional, as in grilled frankfurters, barbecued ribs, or cold fried chicken. But there’s also fried fish or lamb kebabs. The side courses are predictably American, too, including corn, coleslaw, potato salad, tossed salad with 1,000 Island dressing, and celery or carrot sticks. Then there are things like oat bread cockaigne, dill batter loaf, and nut creams rolled in chives.

For comparison's sake, here are the suggestions from the 1953 edition:

1.     Wieners or hamburgers rolled in pancakes, chilled tomatoes, rye crisp, cheddar cheese, gingerbread in cup cake pans, pears and grapes, coffee.

2.     Sautéed Canadian bacon on hard rolls, snap bean salad with lettuce, onions and French dressing or potato salad with lots of lettuce, deviled eggs with liver sausage, watermelon, poppy seed cake, coffee.

3.     Baked ham, Italian salad, bran muffins, Roquefort cheese balls rolled in chives, sour cream apple pie, berry pie, coffee.

4.     Broiled steak, canned French-fried potatoes, picnic salad, soft buns spread with butter, pickles, white cake with chocolate icing, salted nuts, coffee.

5.     Sautéed eggs with bacon or sausages, baked beans or jambolaya, olives, toasted buttered French bread loaf, apples, gold layer cake with caramel icing, coffee.

6.     Fried fish or chicken, baked potatoes, potato chips or green corn, coleslaw, dill pickles, beaten biscuits, banana chocolate cake, peaches, coffee.

It makes one wonder whatever happened to canned French fries.

Going further back in time, you find menus that include pigeon pie, beef tongue sandwiches, a souse of pigs' feet, veal loaf, boned herring, and lamb cutlets in aspic jelly.

My tastes tend towards lighter fare – and to following the wise words of Omar Khayyám:

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
Ah, wilderness were paradise enough!

Hidden Art in the Park

Rock art figures in Nairobi National Park

Rolling over another bump along the dirt roads of the national park, the passenger door of the beat up Land Cruiser in which we are riding swings open – again. The door latch is old and doesn’t hold. There’s a risk of tumbling out onto the savanna at every curve and landing amidst the wild animals that inhabit this stretch of savanna. We laugh.  The car is turning out to be as rickety as the adventure on which we have embarked.

It is the last day of my mother’s visit to Kenya. We’ve celebrated her birthday on the warm seafront of Lamu Island, off the northern coast of Kenya. We’ve slept in a luxury tent, had a cheetah sit on the open roof of our vehicle, and enjoyed other great sights in the Maasai Mara reserve. Now we are on a final quest, to discover the African rock art hidden in Nairobi National Park.

The trip has been a long time in the making, and it has involved numerous contacts with the Trust for African Rock Art (http://africanrockart.org/). Known as TARA, they are involved in preserving rock art and promoting awareness and income-generating opportunities for the communities that live near it.

According to TARA, rock art can be found on rocks, caves, and rock shelters all over the continent, from the Sahara to the southern-most regions of Africa. Many depict human figures and animals, some dating back as many as 12,000 years or more.

Rock art predates writing by tens of thousands of years, and is found across vastly diverse countries and cultures. Some of it is quite beautiful, and often a bit mysterious. You see animals that no longer exist, like aurochs and wooly mammoths, in climates that have changed radically from icy cold to temperate or lush jungle to desert. The famous Wadi Sura, or Painted Valley, in Egypt (featured in The English Patient) contains a cave with images of people who seem to be swimming, in a part of the Libyan Desert that’s now completely arid.

In Kenya, rock art is not part of the usual tourist circuit, and it is not readily accessible for most visitors. The best sites are in western Kenya on some islands in Lake Victoria, and further north along Lake Turkana.  But there are some small sites near Nairobi, including the one to which we are headed – presumably.

So far, our quest has been something of a fiasco. As is too often the case here, attempts to plan ahead and secure logistical details have failed completely. We’ve waited over an hour for a park ranger to accompany us, who never materialized. So, we’ve left accompanied by a park guide (plucked at the last minute from his other duties) and a TARA staff member. They are both well-meaning, but neither knows the exact location of the site.

Our guides do have written instructions and lots of determination. So we drive to a spot where we have been told to leave the car. The rock art is supposed to be fairly close by and within easy walking distance from the road. So we get out and follow the guides as they start off, climbing up a steep hill. There is no path. And for the time being, there’s no immediate sign of danger providing you ignore the antelope skull, picked clean, and scatterings of water buffalo poop.

Within a few minutes, our guides are far ahead and out of sight. I begin to feel that we look a bit too much like potential prey for nature’s version of the hunger games.

We hike back to the car.

The minutes tick by.

Knowing I have afternoon meetings on the other side of the city, our time starts to run out. But just as we are about to call it quits, shouts echo across the valley. Our TARA guide has found the spot.

No one knows the true age or origin of these geometric figures, painted on the sides of a rock shelter near a small river. Presumably, they were made by pastoralists, either Maasai or their predecessors. One resembles a shield, the rest are pretty abstract.

The painted images aren’t particularly compelling or beautiful, but what is amazing is the resilience of this art form. If you’ve ever tried to etch or paint something on a rock, you’ll discover that it’s not easy, particularly if you want your artwork to survive the tests of time and natural forces.

We leave satisfied. We’ve attained our goal. And we’ve survived the tests and frustrations that come with quests that take you off the usual tourist circuits and beaten paths. The annoyances will soon be forgotten, leaving only the adventure and elements of a good story for later.

Found! Elusive rock art site in Nairobi National Park

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

We tried to go to a see the film Wolf of Wall Street with some friends the other night. The plan was to catch the show and go out afterwards for a late dinner. Simple enough. Except that when we got to the theater, we learned that the movie had banned by the Kenya Film Classification Board the day before. And no one had updated the online theater schedule, so we were caught by surprise.

The board’s reason for banning the film included its “not being in line with Kenyan values” and its emphasis on graphic sex, drug and alcohol use, and corruption. The board posted the ban on its Facebook page saying, “There is a LIMIT to everything and we believe the Kenyan public deserves better. WOLF OF WALL STREET has been RESTRICTED. The film is NOT for sale, exhibition, or distribution in KENYA. Violators shall be PROSECUTED.”

In a country plagued with widespread government corruption, rampant rape and violence against women, and alcoholism, among other problems, there is no small measure of hypocrisy in all of this. But more importantly, we all know that most censorship efforts backfire. It’s due to what some call the forbidden fruit phenomenon. There’s nothing like banning a book, piece of art, or movie to ensure its increased popularity and demand. 

Articles in the press bear this out. Sales of bootleg copies of Wolf of Wall Street are booming reportedly, with vendors able to charge two or more times the usual prices, and people lining up at cybercafés to watch it online. Social media responses are full of outrage and snarky remarks against the film board. One comment points out that the restriction only prevents the studio and filmmakers from collecting revenues. Another reminds board members that the film is after all based on a true story. And then there’s the one that tells the board to “go watch paint dry… no wait ... don’t …you’ll ban that as well.”

I have to admit that had any of the other Oscar-nominated films been offered for view here in Nairobi, I probably would have chosen one of those over Wolf of Wall Street. But pickings are slim at our local theaters. 

Consider this week’s billboard lineup. There’s a samurai movie with Keanu Reeves, an Indian action thriller, and an Indian romance. You can see a 3-D film called Walking with Dinosaurs. You can opt for a movie starring Sylvester Stallone or a thriller written by him. There’s also The Hobbit, which we’ve seen, and the Snow Queen.

My understanding from the various write-ups and reactions to Wolf of Wall Street is that the depictions of sex, drugs, and debasement of women (among others) do have people squirming in their seats – as does the unapologetic nature of the film’s main character.

I’m not sure it’s my cup of tea. But then I haven’t seen the film, have I? I have seen other Scorsese films like Raging Bull, The Aviator, and Hugo – Scorsese’s delightful homage to the magic of early cinema. He’s a remarkable director, who works with stellar actors. So it’s hard to imagine that this latest movie is completely debauched.

When we first moved here, we saw a really interesting local film called Nairobi Half Life, directed by Kenyan filmmaker, David Gitonga. Though low budget and not as glossy as movies coming out of Hollywood, or Bollywood, it was strong and moving. It told the story of a young country boy who comes to Nairobi with a dream of becoming an actor. No sooner does he step off the bus than he is robbed, arrested, and taken down a path through the dark sides of city’s worlds of crime, corruption, and slums. There is violence and prostitution and police corruption. There are depictions of the very kinds of carjackings and robberies that we are warned of repeatedly. The film is hard and real and likely to reinforce the fears many have of life in “Nairobbery.”

But rather than being banned, it was submitted for nomination for best foreign language film at the Oscars. It was one of only two Kenyan movies ever to be considered for such recognition, even if it did not make the final nomination cut.

The fuss and hullabaloo around the banning of Wolf of Wall Street here has unfortunately overshadowed the news that Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o has been nominated for the best Supporting Actress Oscar. She stars in 12 years A Slave – a controversial film in its own right. Nyong’o is the first Kenyan ever to be nominated for an Academy Award.

Perhaps it is in her direction – and that of Kenya’s young filmmakers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and social changers – that the film review board members should turn their heads. Maybe that’s a better way to help exemplify Kenyan values or highlight the positive aspects of this country to its citizens, and the rest of the world.

Oscar nominees Leonardo di Capria (Wolf of Wall Street) and Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)

Red Light, Green Light

 

Photo: Nairobi Wire, 1 Aug 2013

“Have you noticed that people have started stopping for red lights?”

We were speaking with some acquaintances during a concert intermission the other night, comparing notes about our holiday travels. Like us, this couple had celebrated Christmas and New Years abroad, and they had returned to Kenya to find that a major change had occurred in the traffic practices of Nairobi drivers.

Traffic lights are not very common along the streets of Nairobi. In fact, any kind of lighting is rare. But new digital stoplights have been installed in over 20 major intersections, including the large traffic circles by the central business district (our downtown, known as the CBD) and a few other key spots. These tend to be places where traffic is especially bad during peak hours, and jams of over one hour are not unusual.

The lights are equipped with those countdown numbers that tell you how many seconds until the light changes from red to green. Following some strange law of physics, they are some of the slowest seconds you’ll see tick by.

Though the new lights have been up for 6 months, until recently they were almost entirely ignored. In fact, those of us tempted to obey the traffic lights – especially the instinct to stop at a red one – were quickly dissuaded by the behaviors of other drivers. To stop at a red light was to put yourself seriously at risk of being rear-ended, or worse. And of course, during rush hours, the traffic cops take over the job of snarling traffic, making the switching of red to green to yellow completely meaningless.

Just before the holidays, we received emails from the ever-vigilant UN/International Organizations’ networks warning that traffic cameras had been installed across the city, including at all the stoplights, and rules would now be enforced. It says something that a move to enforce basic traffic rules is big news. But if the result is less anarchy and better traffic flow, so be it.

For nearly 20 years, I worked on public health issues, including how to encourage better habits to improve well-being and lower risks of disease, disability, or death. We analyzed how to replace bad behaviors with better ones, when were opportune times to encourage positive changes, and how to not only transmit health promotion messages but also get people to act upon them.

Driving behaviors are just as hard to change as health ones. Presumably, one has to learn the rules to pass a driver’s test and obtain or renew a license, but you wouldn’t know that by the way people ignore basic traffic rules here.

The fact is, traffic habits are very much tied to groupthink. If the majority of people are breaking rules – by speeding, ignoring traffic signals, overtaking on blind turns, never using a turn signal – chances are others will join in. It’s an interesting example of the prisoner’s dilemma lesson they taught us in public policy school. Everyone would be better off if they all cooperated. There would be fewer jams, wrecks, and frazzled nerves. But the temptation to cheat to get ahead is great – and may work for the first takers. Ultimately, it makes everyone worse off as traffic becomes increasingly chaotic and dangerous. Breaking the cycle is tough, because following the rules means losing out, at least among early practitioners, so no one has the incentive to do so.

Enter CCTV. Supposedly, the traffic lights are equipped with cameras to help regulate traffic flow and catch red-light runners. Our concert companions were convinced that the cameras were indeed having a dissuasive effect, and prompting people to obey the signals.

I am fortunate that my usual driving patterns avoid the central and most traffic-ridden parts of the city. I go about most of my daily business along the outskirts of the worst of the traffic problems. Also, I rarely see a stop sign, much less a stoplight. The intersections I cross subscribe mostly to the rule that the biggest or most aggressive car goes first.

But this morning I had to navigate through some of the lights and circles of Nairobi’s busiest thoroughfare. And I was less convinced than our concert companions of the change in habits of my fellow drivers. Most plowed right through the red lights and ticking numbers, though did not actually rear end me when I stopped. One car to my left at the Westlands Circle not only drove through the red light, but actually grazed two pedestrians without so much as a pause.

Changing behaviors is hard, whether on the individual or societal level. And in countries where many people don’t feel well served by their laws, government, and political leaders it’s especially difficult to replace a sense of looking out for oneself with one of social duty and collective responsibility.

Will Nairobi drivers ever fold to the rules of the road and start to build a new dynamic of collaboration, where everyone is better off? 

Maybe.

The pace of change will likely be slow, but it’s possible that the force of small steps will eventually push through. 

Change has a way of doing that.

To quote Bill Waterson’s wonderful cartoon character Calvin:

“Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change, but pretty soon...everything's different."  

Bill Waterson, Calvin and Hobbes

The Miracle of Flight

Flying over Samburu, Kenya

Britt has a lovely story from one of the many dozens of flights he has taken for work trips. It goes like this:

Walking across the Tarmac to the plane in Abuja, Nigeria, a 4-year old boy with his hand in his father's squeals with joy. He hops and skips, and says, "We are going on an AIRPLANE! THERE IT IS!"
With his family, he sits five rows ahead of us. We hear him say, "Look at the wings!"
He squeals again on takeoff and says, "We are flying IN THE AIR!"

The story is a joyful reminder of the innocent directness of children – and of the everyday miracle of human flight.

I have a facebook friend who punctuates the updates on her frequent travels with a “Pouf! I’m in [new destination].”  It’s such a lovely way to acknowledge how magically we are transported from one part of the world to another thanks to airline routes, e-tickets, and frequent flyer miles.

For the Christmas holidays, Britt and I joined up with our sons in Europe –  a sort of halfway point for a family split between East Africa and opposite sides of the United States. For the journey, Britt and I began our day in Nairobi, had happy hour along the canals of Amsterdam, and woke the next morning to clear blue skies over Marseille.

Happy hour in Amsterdam, en route from Nairobi to Marseille

With all the current security measures and limitations on what and how much you can carry onto an airplane, air travel has lost some of the fun or cachet it once had. We get frustrated with queues and questions, become annoyed at being squashed into tightly packed seats, and tire of feeling dehydrated and even somewhat dehumanized.

And yet.

What a wondrous thing it is to be able to fly through the air, above the contours and obstacles of land and sea. How glorious to cover distances in hours that used to take days or even months.

In the days before air travel, journeying from Europe to Africa involved endless legs of trains and ships and rough roads. Even during the early days of aviation, though the pace was picked up, the obstacles and travails were still considerable.

In her beautiful book, West with the Night, the Kenya-born and raised aviation pioneer, Beryl Markham, describes flying her plane back and forth from Nairobi to London in the 1930s. With stops to refuel and hassles over transit permits through various countries along the way, the journey often required something like 10 days. She had to deal with considerable discomforts and overnight in some pretty colorful places, including a Libyan brothel, for lack of other accommodations.

It puts having to sleep in the airport hotel or lounge into perspective, certainly.

Flying also gives us a measure of the vastness and beauty of the earth’s features – the deserts and mountains and blue seas, the dense jungles and city lights, the tidy patchworks of crops and fields. Going north from Nairobi across the African continent to Europe, you get a real sense of the huge expansiveness of the Sahara desert. You see the Nile River, the entire outlines of Sardinia and Corsica, and large swaths of the Alps. The evidence of human activity and habitation is visible, though you can only capture the big picture and not the minutia. Individual people and concerns disappear to be replaced by a greater whole, made of all the interconnected bits of our lives.

Beryl Markham describes her reaction to her first airplane ride this way: “I saw the alchemy of perspective reduce my world, and all my other life, to grains in a cup.”

Her contemporary, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, who survived a crash in the desert of North Africa and died when his plane was shot over the Mediterranean in WWII, said that flying released his mind from the tyranny of petty things.

Today, we easily let the petty annoyances of modern air travel overshadow the immensity of the accomplishment of human flight. We quickly lose sight of the perspectives and possibilities it offers us. And it can take the simple reactions of a small child to remind us of its magic.

“We are flying IN THE AIR!”

The miracle of flight

Black and White All Over

If you ask safari guides here in East Africa whether a zebra is black with white stripes or white with black stripes, you’ll get differing responses and passionate opinions.

One argument is that the base color is black, because the nose and tip of the tail are black, as are zebra embryos, apparently.

On the other hand, if you look at a Grevy’s or mountain zebra (two of the three types you find here in Kenya) the black stripes don’t make it all the way down to the belly, which is white. This supports the argument that the animal is white with black stripes.

Either argument can be convincing. But like a Rorschach inkblot, whether we see black on white or white on black may say more about our own perspectives – and prejudices – than anything else.

I am writing this as the world mourns the passing of Nelson Mandela – a black man, imprisoned by whites, for believing in dignity and freedom for all. A man who, despite the indignities he suffered, created, in the words of his friend and fellow Robben Island prison inmate, Andrew Mlangeni, “hope when there was none.”

I never got to see Mandela in person. But I did get the chance to visit Robben Island a few months back, when I accompanied Britt on a trip to South Africa. It’s where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years of captivity.

Robben Island sits about 7 kilometers from Cape Town harbor. It’s small and flat and pretty desolate. The name comes from the Dutch word for seals.  Over the centuries it has been used to house outcasts, lepers, and the mentally ill. During WWII, it was a military base. During the apartheid years, it served as a maximum security prison for hardened criminals and for political prisoners (kept on different parts of the island). Like everything else, it was segregated.

Today, Robben Island is a national monument, museum, and UNESCO heritage site. There are about 100 inhabitants, living in the village that previously housed prison guards and administrators.

Visiting Robben Island is an incredibly moving experience.

Located near the southern-most tip of the African continent, it draws visitors from around the world. On the day I was there, my tour companions were wearing braids and baseball caps and turbans and headscarves. They spoke lots of different languages but were united in awe and admiration.

After a 30-minute ferry ride and quick bus tour past some of the island’s sites –including the rock quarry where prisoners did hard labor – we were taken for a tour of the prison. All of the guides are themselves former prisoners. Our tour guide was a man arrested at the age of 19 for being part of a student anti-apartheid group. He walked us through the different prison blocks, including the ones where people like Mandela were confined to individual cells with a thin mattress on the floor, no contact with other inmates, and a bucket for a toilet.

Our tour guide was not one of the more famous names to come out of Robben Island. But his speech was as eloquent and impressive. Here was a man used and abused by a system both cruel and unjust, who, several times a day, walks patiently past his old cell and speaks of the importance of peace and reconciliation. While others booed during the Mandela memorial service out of frustration with their current president, this South African talks passionately about the power and potential of moving his country forward.

Back on the mainland, I got a chance to visit the University of Cape Town with a friend. Like campuses worldwide, it was abuzz with youthful energy and activity. It was also refreshingly diverse and integrated, holding the promise of the rainbow nation, a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and described by Nelson Mandela this way:

"Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country, as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world."

Prison cell, Robben Island