Last Day in Cape Town

So its my last day in Cape Town now. Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while, I've been really busy wrapping everything up in the project. But its all done now and I'm just waiting to fly home now. The last few weeks have been both really amazing and incredibly stressful. After my little vacation in Kruger, it was really a big push of work to get everything together in the end. The past week especially has been a very very "productive" week. Two weekends ago our professors came to us with a plan for the end of the term, and it was a very ambitious plan as well. This was both exciting and also daunting, for they didn't always provide the most obvious guidance, but this time it was a very ambitious goal for the end of the project.

Their plan was for our entire group of 22's integrated plan chapter of our "atlas" and also a presentation shaped around that chapter to present to both memebers of the settlement and the city departments that were sponsoring us. And so with a week and a half to go and no progress on either of those, we moved quickly to get it all going. Through the first month and some we had been there, we had all of the information and ideas we need for this plan, it just all needed to come together into one presentation and document. And somehow, through working early morning to late night for most of those last days we brought it all together and made a document that I think is really quite amazing. I have a newfound respect for anyone making a publication with lots of text mixed in with pictures and figures and charts. I had a large role in planning the format of the atlas and in compiling different pieces together and editing it, and it is a lot more work than just writing it up. Wow, much more complicated than the research reports I am used to writing. But in working to compile everything and seeing it all come together, I was really very proud to have been a part of creating it. In addition to that chapter, each team made their own chapter and we have now just today finally compiled all of that into one 210 page document, the atlas of our findings and recommendations for the redevelopment of Monwabisi Park.

While finishing up the atlas last week, we also turned our focus to our presentation. It actually turned into two, one for community members last Saturday and one for the city last wednesday. The first ended up being a sort of first draft of our presentation. It was a little rough, but we presented our findings and made a good final impression on the community. After doing that, we came back to another big group meeting and the advisors once again had a really ambitious plan to completely revamp the presentation and make it that much better for the city. So we reworked it, making it more fluid and more similar to our integrated plan, and came out with something much, much better I believe. We compiled everything together and all got together with the city officials and made our powerpoint presentation. I was manning the computer for that show and clicking through the slides as we all spoke, and I was really amazed at how in such a short time and with 22 people, we managed to make something I thought was really very fluid and everything flowed together very well. We all presented our groups findings in the context of our larger plan and it all came together surprisingly well. Our basic idea for the redevelopment was that community structures should be established at various central locations throughout the park first and then redevelopment should spread out from those areas for other water facilities and new housing ideas. It is a different approach than what the city normally takes, but something we thought made a lot of sense.

So the best part of this whole presentation was the amazing responses we got from the city people at the end. All of them were impressed with how much we had accomplished in the settlements and the level of interaction we were able to have and even said that they thought they could not have gotten results as good in that time if they had paid someone. But even better was how much they respected and liked our ideas. They were very interested in the different approach we had taken and seemed very prepared to work with WPI and the community and the Shaster Foundation, a non government organization that works with redeveloping the settlement, to implement parts of this plan. I think we helped to set up a lot of future work with other WPI teams here. Before we did our work, the city really was barely aware of Monwabisi Park and now are excited about the plans we helped make and seemed to think there are possibilities for city funding to go into helping with it.

All of this response and finally sitting back and seeing the publication that we created, and seeing how much better it looks and reads than the normal IQP report you have to write, I am so happy that I was able to come work here. I think it has been an amazing experience. I learned about many of the difficulties and stresses of trying to work together with so many people, pretty much living with this project for two months. But then being able to take a break and pretty much be on vacation in this amazing location. Cape Town is really a beautiful place. The beaches are all really amazing (although completely frigid) and you can see Table Mountain from everywhere looming over the city and the views from the top of it are incredible. Going to see all of these exotic locations and animals and this city, I can't believe this is still school. Much different from sitting in class and living in Worcester. I am very very happy I came here. And after that presentation, I feel really good about the work I have done. I mean I may be going home and moving on from it in certain ways, but our group has managed to give this informal settlement city attention, and serious attention, and to open channels to funding in the future and plans for redevelopment and lifting out of the terrible living conditions that currently exist. Our professor talked to the mayor of Cape Town about our presentation and she made sure to send someone she trusted and who could make changes to the meeting. Being able to be the bridge between these two groups that are so close together, but have so little interaction, is really very amazing to me.

However, as great as everything has been, I am now ready to be home. Living away from home and also completely surrounded by my work and by all of my fellow students, I am ready for a break, ha. So tomorrow I fly home and after that loooong process I look forward to snow and a break from the heat. I have tons and tons of pictures and also copies of the presentations and the report/book that we made and I will put those online when I get home and let all of you know for sure. For now, its time to head back and pack up. Can't really believe I'm heading home. Its been an amazing experience and one of the best decisions and opportunities of my life. Talk to you all soon.

My Thankgiving Safari Trip

So for Thanksgiving break last week I went on my safari trip to Kruger National Park. I've been planning this trip since the beginning of the school year and organized it for ten of us, which turned out to be a lot of work. So I was very happy to finally be heading out and luckily everything worked out great. We flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg and stayed the night in this really cool backpacker lodge on Tuesday night on the 25th. The next day we were picked up at about 6:30 in the morning. It was a long all day drive out to the lodge we were staying in that night. But along the way we got to see the awesome landscape of mountains and canyons along the way. One interesting thing was the miles and miles of logging forests they have outside of Johannesburg. They went on for over an hour while we were driving, big groups of long straight pine trees in rows. They were in all stages of growth and some were just fields of stumps that had been clear cut and then burned out. It seemed like a rough way of doing it, but with how many trees were out there, it must be effective around here. They re-plant once they clear cut, so it seems all right to me.

We also stopped along the way at God's Window and the Blyde River Canyon which was really amazing. The canyon is the third largest in the world and is 33 km long and We stopped at a few places to look out at it and it was one of the coolest places I have been. Sadly it was kinda cloudy that day so I didn't get the best views I could have. I put up a lot of pictures of it on the site, along with the rest of the trip.

After that we went on to the lodge outside the camp. We slept for the whole thing in big green tents on platforms with mattresses. Pretty fancy camping in my experience. They sure felt great after the long days we had though. At the first lodge, we got a great African dinner that we ate outside and also had some local children do some tribal dancing for us. It was a very cool night.

The next morning we got up very early and drove straight out into the park. The game drives were lots and lots of driving around on dirt and paved roads looking at mostly the same terrain. That part of it would get a little boring at times. A lot of the time was spent looking and waiting for a sighting. But it was all worth it when I did see things. I saw so many animals I've never seen before, even in zoos. And a lot I've only seen in zoos. As soon as we got in I saw a hyena on the side of the road. It was a lot broader and stronger looking than I expected. I would not want to mess with one of those. The most common things were impalas and zebras and wildebeest and other impala like animals. I must have seen hundreds of those over the three days. I also saw giraffes and elephants. Those were my favorite. They were so big and calm and just seemed not to care at all about anything else. I loved seeing the elephant. I saw a little baby one too, that was really cool. The best elephant sighting was when we saw some on both sides of the road and one walked right to our truck and then around behind it to cross the road. I've never been so close and this elephant was bigger than our truck!

The big five in Africa are the African Elephant, the White Rhino, the lion, the leopard, and the Water Buffalo. These are the five more dangerous land animals in Africa. I managed to see all but one of them. The lion I saw on the first day in the afternoon. We saw a big male sitting under a tree in the shade. There was another male under a tree near him and a female and another male behind the first one. There was also some sort of impala like animal lying dead beside them that they had caught. They were about 200 yards away, but I saw it through the binoculars. I figured out how to take pictures through the binoculars too. That was really useful too, because I saw the rhinos, two underneath a tree the next day and I managed to get some good pictures through them even though they were a couple hundred yards away. The rhinos were a lot bigger than I expected. The only big one we missed was the leopard. Didn't see a cheetah either actually, but its not a big five.

The trip was an amazing experience. I have been looking forward to this trip for months and it was everything I had hoped. I was very happy that all of my planning worked out great and I got a chance to see so many new things. The animals were incredible, the canyon was really awesome and it was a very nice break from the work I've been doing lately. I feel ready now to focus in and get all the work done we need to in the next few weeks for the project. We have a lot of writing to do now and have to bring all we've done together into our atlas, which should be interesting. We are planning to take all six groups work and put it into one large publication, which can hopefully be used for future planning and to help the park get foreign investors to contribute to the efforts. It should be interesting. Wish me luck!