I had a great fall semester at the AF academy. I explored some of the great running trails Colorado has to offer, I enjoyed some awesome debate trips, including one to Slovenia, and I even enjoyed some of my classes, but after a very long fall semester infected by graded reviews, military training, and an English teacher giving the good fight to defeat the 21st century, I was ready for winter break. Break finally arrived and I expected to "relax" and "recharge" for the Spring Semester at USAFA. In retrospect I'm not sure why I thought going to Africa would be relaxing.
The second two weeks I spent traveling to and in Southern Africa. Traveling to Africa is much easier said than done. My trip began with a snow storm that engulfed the entire eastern seaboard making travel to JFK seem bleak. This inconvenient storm caused me to nearly miss my flight from JFK to South Africa which happened to be the last flight to leave the airport for a day and a half. The inconvenience to me was nothing compared to the other two debaters whose flight from N.C. was delayed. They enjoyed a four day all inclusive vacation at the JFK airport until the airport ran out of food. Apparently this stay was so bad that one of the debaters just quit the team all together. I think he was being a,#1bad word, lame but you can be the judge. Anyways, after about a day of traveling we finally made it to South Africa. We had a 7 hour layover in Jo-burg so I got to see some of the World Cup Stadiums and some of the history from Apartheid South Africa. So the first Stadium I saw was Soccer City where the 2010 Fifa World Cup ended with Shakira and an overtime win by Spain. The other world cup venue in South Africa was Ellis Park it also hosted a variety of preliminary and tournament games as well as the US-Slovenia game(2-2).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-ZGbvNHzf4&feature=player_embedded Iniesta Goal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaEAAa22o1E Waka Waka
After touring two of the ten world cup stadiums, we went to Soweto. This was the location of much civil unrest during Apartheid South Africa and the former home of a young Nelson Mandela. Much violence occurred in this large Bantu settlement including the killing of a young boy named Hector Peterson in student riots. Below are pictures of the Apartheid Museum, a memorial dedicated to Hector Peterson and many others whose lives were taken during this struggle, and the Soweto settlement.
Besides seeing houses surrounded by electrical fencing and barbwire our seven hours of layover was drawing to a close. We took a short flight to Gaberone, Botswana arriving at the University of Botswana. If you didn't already know Africa with some exceptions, like South Africa, is owned by China. The airport in Botswana was being constructed by a Chinese company as well as the University of Botswana. The Chinese lease land in most of the African countries to massively produce and exploit the resources that the Africans haven't gotten around to yet. It was quite clear where the shoddy Botswana work was taken over by impressive Chinese buildings. We unfortunately had the opportunity to stay in the Botswana made dorms; there was no air conditioning which is key in 95+ weather which wouldn't have mattered because there was little attempt to enclose the building so mosquito's tore us apart at night.
There are two things worth writing about in Botswana. The first is our trip to the "Madikwe" game reserve which rented jeeps out to take tours of the reserve for an entire day which "would have been" awesome if we actually went to Madikwe. If you ever go to Africa, ensure that you plan your own trips. In our case we didn't have too much leniency since we were part of the debate tournament contingent, but the organizers who were given millions to run the tournament were a bit incompetent. Just one example, someone bought a car with the leftover money that they didn't spend. I think I would get too frustrated if I explained why we didn't go to Madikwe, but just cross-apply the "someone got a free car" example. After serious hassle we finally left and went to the "Mafikeng" game reserve which had a ton of animals. We literally drove the bus provided by UB to begin our excursion. During the game drive, we saw a-lot of cool animals. My favorite was the rhinoceros, see pictures below.
The second thing worth posting was the actual debate tournament. I debated with a different partner during the tournament since Dave, and Andrew were stuck waiting in the JFK airport. Karen and I hadn't debated since freshmen year so it was interesting to work together on such short notice. The tournament itself was very competitive, teams came form all over the world including, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale. My partner Karen and I only won about half of our rounds, but this was Karen's first time and my second time competing in this form of debate so we were already fighting an uphill battle. The topics had to do mainly with international organizations like, the World Bank, UN, EU, and the South African Developing Community since it would be unfair to debate a certain countries politics.
Not making it to the break or championship rounds was nice since we had the opportunity to see much of Gaborone, and the surrounding area. Here are a couple pictures of the nations capital.
Here are a few more pictures from the tournament. There's not too much more to talk about, but stay tuned for another exciting edition of my blog.
Some Friends from New Years.
My partner Karen and I
Final Debate Round
Back to wonderful USAFA.
