Frank in Africa ‘08

howdy people,

1 of the things people seemed to worry most about when I told them about my trip and what we would be doing was the Concert at the townships in Capetown called Phillipi, yes, people have guns here, yes there are shootings here all the time (I have no proof but even the locals say so), what I got to see of the townships is that they’re pretty much the same as the other townships in the other countries.

Not a damn thing happened while we were there with thousands of euros worth of equipment, the concert was even a bit of a “failure”, not many people showed up and the power kept going down. the location was beautiful though, it was near an old Cement factory, an big old concrete building with lots of old rusted metal, I was more interested in taking pictures of that place than the whole concert, but I had a job to do, so I took pictures of rappers and kids. I think we’re using the cement factory for the videoclip so I hope I’ll have time to take some cool pics.

The local rappers here have some real talent, little kids from the townships who grow up eager to be famous rappers and really have the talent to make it if they were giving a chance. It’s kinda strange to see some of them wearing Eminem shirts though, but maybe that’s just me.

not much else to report right now, internet still isn’t working here, so far South Africa has been the worst when it comes down to the internet connection, I mean Malawi was slow but atleast it worked… I think the people we rent this place from dont understand that we need internet to do our work… oh well… thats something for another blog post, I’m complaining too much as it is…

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just wanted to let everybody know that my cellphone got “stolen”, when we went from Malawi to Namibia we made a stop in Johannesburg SA, some bags were opened, and I suspected mine had also been opened (it was a mess), but I wasn’t missing anything…

Last week when I went up devils peak I figured it would be a good idea to take my phone with me, so I could call someone if something bad happened, but my cellphone was nowhere to be found…

“lost” or “stolen” you decide, doesn’t make a difference, it just sucks that I lost some phone numbers and adresses, but nothing that can’t be recovered I guess (if you’re 1 of those people that demands a postcard, mail me because your adress was in my phone)… I hadn’t used my phone since the day I left home, I’m not much of a cellphone user, so to me, it really doesn’t make a difference.

Tags: South Africa by Frank
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hey hey blog readers, whats happening?

I’ve been in Capetown South Africa for like a week now and I guess I’ve gotten used to being back in civilization, to me this place isn’t africa at all, I haven’t been doing much fun stuff (besides playing some pool and having some beers with the guys) mostly because there’s lots of work to be done, the project for this country seems like a lot more work mostly because everything is more professional and there are a lot of small last moment things that people need that end up our (Beers and mine) plate….

For example, the Producer of Assalti Frontali wanted to hand out some CDs with beats to the workshop participants, resulting in me and beer having to burn 10 CDs in like an hour while still having to do our own work at the same time, sometimes I feel people forget we’re actually doing a lot of work…

I’ve been working at the SABC studios a lot, in room C4B in case you’re wondering, it’s a radio studio booth, with Mics and Headphones, Padded walls, soundproof glass through which you can see the Radio Studio, and double doors. I don’t like being in that place because it’s near the ocean, and knowing that without there being a window for me to look out of, simply sucks…

The artists have recorded 1 song so far, and today they’ll have to do 2 more, the song they made isnt something I like, but I believe the quality is pretty high. The Italian rapper has a little too much energy for me, he’s funny but sometimes I’m just done with it…

Today I start work on the final episode of South Africa 1, which should be done and online on sunday… after that I think there might be a free day, I dunno what I wanna do yet, but if anybody who’s been to capetown has any good suggestions, let me know…

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sooo after we arrived in Capetown me and Beer somehow managed to free up a day (an afternoon) so he could go surf, and I could climb the mountain I see when I talk out of the door of the house each morning, It’s not table mountain, it’s 1 of the peaks next to it, it might be called “devils peak” but I’m not sure.

So at 11:30AM or so I was finally ready to go, I had packed everything I needed (first aid, photo camera and video camera). I walked down the street to the Kwik Spar or whatever the grocery store is called, and got some Water, Coke, Orange Juice, Mars bars and some other snacks, I felt like I had everything I needed so I headed straight to the mountain.

After walking for a bit there was this huge hospital (good to know in case something would happen) followed by a lot of fences and 2 big busy roads which I couldn’t cross. So I started walking a different direction, following the road, hoping I could cross it somewhere. I walked passed the Capetown University and through a not so safe looking part of town (which you can estimate by the amount of drunken people on the streets before noon). After a good hour of walking the wrong direction I finally managed to cross the road, there was this strange dutch mill at the start of the crossing, which felt really out of place.

After walking up hill for about 20 minutes (through a pine tree forest, which smelled like you’d expect it to) I realised how sick I was, there was slime everywhere and I started to think about going back because at the speed I was walking/climbing and with all the slime I started to get trouble breathing. So I stopped… for a while… and drank some water… I found out that the water I had got at the grocery store wasn’t water at all, it was honey mellon flavoured water, gross… but I had no choice, I had to drink it…

I decided to keep going and soon after starting to walk again I had to stop because of a big fence that was in my way, I followed the fence uphill and it soon ended. There were 2 african men chilling under a dead tree (there were a lot of burned down and fallen down trees) and for a moment I got worried about the equipment in my bag and what could happen. but nothing happened, and I continued.

From that point on “nature” really started, lots of small bushes, and small plants with spikes/thorns, there were a lot of different smells around, and a lot of birds and small lizards shooting under rocks and dead trees. at first there was just 1 small path uphill but later on looking down I noticed there were lots of bigger paths all over the place, and it looked like the path I was on was the steepest of them all.

After another hour of walking I came across an old fort, with a bunch of old cannons, the fun thing was that the fort was covered in radio antennas and satelite dishes, I looked at the view for a while, had a snack and took some pictures. you could see the whole city and the coast with the harbour.

I spend most of the day walking around on that mountain, over small man made paths and stairs, and managed to get from 1 side to the other, from where I could see table mountain and the carpet of clouds flowing over the top, which looked pretty impressive.

I had to hurry back because it was getting late, and I got home just before dark, everything was fine and I felt like I had a great day, even though there wasnt a single muscle in my body that didn’t hurt

Tags: South Africa by Frank
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hey hey people,

so Namibia is awesome, after finally being able to get out of the city and run around in the Namib I’ve made up my mind that I like this country.

On our free day we decided to try and see as much of Namibia as possible, we got left at 5am and drove to a little german village near the coast (can’t remember the name) on the way there we made a few stops to take pictures, the desert is reallyt f’ing huge and beautiful. I turned over a lot of rocks because I really wanted to take a picture of a snake or scorpion, but they were nowhere to be found. I guess there simply arent any snakes in Afrika…

after we arrived in the village and picked up some lunch we drove to the coast, it really smelled like rotting fish there and I wondered why so I decided to go have a look, there were lots of dead octopusses and fishes everywhere, and a lot of crayfish, and there were lots of people (white people) catching them, it felt really wrong and strange because it can’t be that all those animals just died there…

after that we headed to some sand dunes along skeleton coast which was really impressive, it’s basically what you expect it to be from all the pictures you’ve seen only much much much bigger. I tried to run up a sanddune and well, was exhausted for a while, the view was stunning with the ocean on 1 side and the sand dunes (also an ocean) on the other.

I took lots of pics and Marieke did some sand boarding there, which looked scary.

after that we drove back (3 hours) to a wildlife park close to Windhoek where we had a safari, the surrounding were really different from what we had just seen, it was a jungle, we got to see a lot of cool animals (crocs, lions, rhinos, oryx, gemsbok, heartbeast, giraffes etc. etc. it took about an hour and a half and I really enjoyed it.

Jelle filmed a special Webisode while we were there, a sorta behind the scenes crews day off video, which will be some sort of easteregg on the site.

After the safari we had dinner, I ate Oryx which tasted good.

when we got back to the lodge I was really tired, and went to bed pretty early.

what a great day.

Tags: Namibia by Frank
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So we left Windhoek Namibia and are now in Capetown SA.

Everything went ok, the flight from Namibia to South Africa was amazing, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, our planet is so amazing, why even think of exploring the universe when most people haven’t even seen more than 5% of this planet, the landscape changed constantly, and the colors of the plants/water/sand/rocks were really impressive. I took a lot of pictures of it through the window of the plane but I don’t think they’ll be any good.

After arriving in Capetown and going through customs (new stamp in my passport =)) we headed to the green elephant house, which is a backpackers place, we’re renting a house here for almost a month. after we got all our bags out of the Van and moving in we quickly noticed that it was gonna be difficult, 7 people in 2 bedrooms, the 3 girls have 1 room, and the 4 guys have another, then there are 2 rooms for the rap artists, a kitchen, 2 bathrooms and a little garden.

After getting settled we headed to the coast, capetown is a modern city (even compared to the windhoek city centre), we took a daladala and the beach was breath taking, I walked down the beach which was surrounded by high mountains and watched the sun go down, it was just what I needed after a long day of traveling and I felt peaceful. there were pretty big waves, the water was cold, and there weren’t many sea-shells, just a lot of Kelp.

we had dinner at a fancy restaurant, which made me feel out of place, I had mussels in cream/white wine sauce, and a windhoek lager, after dinner we headed back to the house.

was a long but good day.

Tags: Namibia by Frank
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I’m writing this while watching a dog poop in the grass I walk in every day, there are 3 little dogs here we’re not allowed to feed, but interacting with them seems so simple compaired to the human communication sometimes.

Today I was supposed to go an take pictures at the videoclip shoot, but as so many times before the AVM crew failed to load the video for us to edit or atleast communicate to us in time that we had to do it. All of this resulted with Beer not being able to edit, and taking over the photography while I uploaded the latest webisode. As soon as Beer was in the Van and on his way to the location they changed plans again, dropped him off back home with a camera and didn’t ask me to come along or anything. But I can’t complain, I’m sitting in the sun, writing a blog post and thinking about taking a quick dive in the pool.

I spend most of last night talking to 1 of the german girls (Nina who’s birthday we visited a few days back) while somehow hearing other people discuss the project in the background, it felt good to distance myself from them for a while, and interact with somebody unrelated to the project, and hear about what other people are doing in a country like Namibia.

Last night we had a BBQ and even though I felt sick I still ate a lot and enjoyed myself. the Oryx was really nice.

I’m starting to get sweaty so its time for a dive, followed by a shower and a shave…and we’ll see after that.

Tags: Namibia by Frank
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