The Magical Wilderness of Bulungula!

The Magical Wilderness of Bulungula!

First of all, I apologize for not blogging in a while. In my defense, I have to have about a spare 2 hours to complete one post. I come to school with everything written but it takes about 2 hours to upload all the pictures. Also this is an extremely long post! I digress....

I went to Bulungula this past weekend and it was one of my favorite trips here! It is currently ranked number two: only below Cape Town. It was so beautiful that I have to write about it before my Jo-burg trip even though Jo-burg was first. I’ll first write about what I did in Bulungula and then I’ll write about my thoughts on the area.

We left for Port Elizabeth at 8:20 am and we reached Bulungula around 7 in the night. It was an extremely long drive and 3 hours of it was on unpaved dirt roads. There was a collective feeling of dread in the car on the unpaved roads as our small VW Polo rental car was taking quite a beating and we are all poor college students. Thankfully the little car came out all right at the end and we hiked up to the lodge in the dark. I could hear the ocean but it was pitch black in the mountains and I had no idea what the area really looked like. We immediately had dinner and went to sleep in small huts.

When I woke up in the morning, I went outside our huts and the sights absolutely astounded me. Below are some pictures of the view from the lodge: I think you’ll understand my jaw dropping open after you have a glimpse. 

On the first day we went canoeing and had a village tour.

This is my second time canoeing and it felt much better than my first time- I didn’t worry about tipping at all this time! We started in the lagoon and continued down until we were up river. The day was warm but the waters were chilly. However this didn’t stop my friend Andrew (an avid canoer who has gone to the Arctic) from jumping in. Here are some pictures!

Local men catching prawns!

Are we wearing dress socks or is that simply the African mud? Hmm.....

The village tour was quite interesting. We walked up and down a lot of mountains to get through the village. I have no doubt that I would confuse all the mountains and get lost if I was alone. Thankfully our guide knew how to differentiate all of them and had no trouble finding her way around. We tasted some traditional village beer…an experience that I hope never to repeat again. It was a thick liquid that had a rather horrid taste- not quite sure I want speculate what was actually in there. Unfortunately, the language barrier didn’t allow us to have many conversations but we were able to see the area.

A soccer match- so colorful!

Inside a rondevelt hut. 

They don't have cars here so they have warnings on the beer cartons for walking- I thought this was hilarious!

Eeek!- local African beer

On our second day, we went horseback riding. My riding experiences were limited up to this point: I had ridden on ponies in Sri Lanka on the beach for a few minutes at a time but that was about it. My group was quite excited to see me try and mount a horse alone for the first time: much to their dismay, I didn’t have too much trouble. However, I still gave a few yelps of surprise when the horse began galloping down the hill. We rode on the beach, through the sand dunes, and then through the mountains. I can’t say I find horse riding very comfortable but it was quite an experience.

Liz and I were the only two girls on the trip and we went on a ‘Women Power’ activity. The boys said it was very stereotypical of me and refused to participate. We gathered sticks, cooked pap and cabbage, painted our faces, carried water up the hills, built bricks, and talked to our guide about village life. Unfortunately the language barrier prevented much conversation again. Here are some pictures.

One of the many puppies I wanted to steal

Face paint!

Gathering wood

A village woman I saw on the way ;)

Outside the Inxola's hut

Women making bricks

Liz lifting the cowdung and mud while I watched and took pictures =]

Getting my hair braided

End result: 

Everything I did with my group at Bulungula was a lot of fun but my short stay also opened my mind in a different way. Let me explain.

My stay in Bulungula, even for just a weekend, helped me understand some nuances of South Africa’s history. Bulungula is in the area of the Transkei. Towards the end of the apartheid era, President Verwoerd created what he called ‘black homelands’ in the Transkei area. The idea was that the black homelands would be where the blacks of South Africa would be citizens. Essentially, there would be two South Africa’s: the small area of the Transkei for the blacks and the rest of South Africa for the whites. The Transkei area was meant to have its own political system, a vibrant economy, and become a cultural hub for the blacks. Instead, it became a dumping ground for poverty where famine was widespread and unemployment was rampant. The creation of the black homelands was a tipping point against the apartheid regime because the dismal conditions of the areas created frustration and anger within the black community. As I walked through this area, I started understanding their feelings of outrage. There’s no running water or electricity. Roads are nonexistent: there are only unpaved gravel paths. The small one room Rondevelts (the round houses)  generally have 8-10 people living in them. The soil is dry and not very suitable for farming. I see all this 20 years after apartheid has ended: I cannot imagine how much worse the conditions were during the last years of apartheid. The emotions I began to understand in Bulungula go beyond what textbooks have taught me about the intense frustration and outrage that existed during apartheid.

The magical wilderness of Bulungula was truly a one of a kind experience: the sights, my group, our activities, the history…simply everything about it. I'll leave you with some pictures of the beautiful sunset at Bulungula =]