Good bye!

30 mins to go and I’m panicking. Not because I wouldn’t be ready. No all is packed, everything is ready. It’s just that I realised that I’m actually leaving Bloemfontein behind. (Ok, Bloem wasn’t that exciting place, but it’s more what’s happened here.)

On top of Table Mountain with some friends.

It’s a 24 hour journey back to North (to what I’ve heard is not much of a winter, sadly). I’ll miss all tmy new friends, but hope I’ll see as many as possible of them again anytime soon!

I’m happy.

My final presentation is over! And it was good, although I was nervous like never before. The successes of today also include having both coffee and lunch with the IIASA director general Pavel Kabat.

Tomorrow is the second day of presentations (14 of them still) and the closing ceremonies in the evening. And party, party...

That’s Table Mountain with the ‘tablecloth’ in the background.

Another hot Saturday

A week to go. My brain is melting in the heat and fever.

But it is not as good as Bokomo Oats.

Just for fun

‘Do people go to Finland for fun?’ asked one my colleagues quite casually during a breakfast last week in Cape Town. I didn’t know the answer. I told her that I’ll be going there pretty soon to live there (and will have lots of fun), but I’ve never thought if foreign people actually want to got to Finland just for the fun of it. I know that quite a number of at least British tourists fly every winter to Lapland to see Santa Claus and realise in horror that they are served Rudolf the Reindeer as dinner. But I don’t know if that counts as fun. Maybe they just drift there because the Mallorca resorts where already full. Maybe people who have moved to Finland could tell me. Please.

To the same thought I might add this: We saw some baboons on the way to Cape Point, the most south-western point of African continent. I had never seen one before, which greatly surprised my friend Simon. I tried to come up with an animal that I had seen (in Finland or elsewhere) which he had not seen. Couldn’t. Tried elk and reindeer. He had seen elks and caribous in Alaska. No luck, and animals in zoo don’t count. So one would probably not go to Finland to see the not-so-special fauna...

A baboon, the alpha male of its troop.

Nevertheless, I still have quite a handful of reasons to go to Finland. Last Wednesday a visit to the Khayelitsha township (township means apartheid era non-white residential area) and the informal settlements (slums) spreading around it to every direction, gave me a bunch of more reasons.

Still, somehow I think going back to my homeland of security, abundant food, water, energy, everything is not going to help these people living in their shacks. But think of this: Because we have messed up the European economy and subsequently the carbon credit market, the price for emitting a ton of CO2 is lower than ever. Well, how does that relate to a township in Cape Town? In a neighbourhood called Kuyasa, more than 2,000 houses have been equipped with solar water heater and proper insulation. As part of the Kyoto protocol mechanisms, they can then sell carbon credits for European companies. All the investments being made, that is just pure income, but the price now is just a fraction (6.30 €/ton as of 11 Feb) of what it was in the beginning of the trading system (about 30 €/ton). The world is small.

African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) on Robben Island.

Education is the most powerful weapon

...which you can use to change the world. Guess who said that. Ok, you’re right.

Sure is, but still I can’t help wondering why would everyone even want to go to the university. This seems to be the case on this side of the world, for example in Kenya, as a colleague told me. University – or nothing, seems like the options are there. That all boils down to not having a middle class, I guess. Getting to a university is a way (the only?) to climb the social ladder, with very sparse steps.

On Monday, we SA-YSSP’ers did our share in spreading the word of education to local schools. We were divided in three local schools with also high grades and with which the university had done co-operation before before. My group went to a scholl in the outskirts of Bloemfontein, almost in rural area. There were all grades from the 7-year-old 1st graders to the almost adult 12th graders, and they were all singing as we arrived to the spot (a bit late, no wonder). The principal introduced us young scientists to the pupils, and then they sang another song. The whole school was answering to my good morning as ‘good morning, sir’, pretty cool.

The idea was to have a chat with the oldest, the 10, 11 and 12 graders. Tell about ourselves, what did we study, what do we do as researchers, what kind of dreams or plans the pupils have, and so on. It was awesom to have this kind of experience, and see a piece of real life. This school was a free school, as the principal told us, the government pays everything from pencils to lunch, even a transport for the kinds (some live as far as 40 kilometres away and used to walk!). Do I need to mention that I saw no white students there?

And again it struck be: Go to university, work hard, and go to university. This was basically the message that our group leader (from Ghana) told to the youngsters. Having seen how the future options are advertised for the Finnish 9th graders, this was quite different. And, as said I mentioned above, I don’t think university is something everyone even considers. (A quick survey among the other two Europeans among us proved my point.) At least recently also professional training in Finland has really improved its status, and, hey, those people are really needed! I need to find out what other options there are here, if any.

My roommate noted that one of the reasons behind this large-scale university go-go, might the fact that universities were in the past only for the whites. Many black people in universities are first generation students and might not have the same kind of support from home, or even knowledge of their possibilities. Again, it feels like there are acctually two societies in this country. That is so wrong.

End of the deep thoughts for now. This Friday we’ll head to Cape Town, more on that later then! Finally, the latest bird observation is a red-and-yellow barbet. This guy is having a carneval season all year round.

Red-and-yellow Barbet (Trachyphonus erythrocephalus) Photo: Steve Bailey

A Saturday Safari

I spend today with a couple of friends driving the nearby city of Kimberley known for it’s diamond mines. We even went to see the ‘Big Hole’ (or acctually just the edge of it), but the best place we found was our lunch pit-stop, a restaurant called Mini Pakistan!

On the way back we stopped at a nature reserve.

Looks like Isla Nublar to me...

...but inside, we only found these furry beasts:

(Yes, it’s through the car window. Apologies for the reflections.)

Other fauna spotted: elands, springboks, kudus, a warthog (with piglets) and a glipse of a meerkat mob on sentry disapperaring as quickly as they can.

The Nordic Solution

Jonas and I finally got fed up with the mosquitoes. The weather has been very hot the last couple of weeks, so one really cannot keep windows shut during the nights. But with some inspiration and a quick visit to the mall, we came up with a solution. This is how it goes:

1. Target

2. Material & tools

3. Process

4. Results

That’s it! Now just waiting for the night and see how this works...