A Bad Day for Stage Fright, A Good Day for International Development

Posted by Libby Koolik

I am not the most comfortable person speaking in front of a crowd, so I was pretty nervous going up to participate in the debate today.

A little background: Yesterday, Annie asked me if I would be one of the MIT kids to lead today's debate over whether or not a sustainable solution to water security actually exists.  The debate involved the collaboration between MIT and NMMU (Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) students.

Here's how it went down.

First, we met up in the hotel bar at about 10PM last night.  The MIT kids discussed our personal views on the issue and tried to see if we could pick sides.  By some stroke of luck, we actually fell three and three on the issue, so it was super easy to split up.  Later, the six representatives from NMMU showed up and we started a super riveting discussion on the future of water security, particularly in South Africa.

The discussion was so captivating.  It was really interesting to hear the perspectives of the NMMU students on things that I - as a naïve American freshman - had never even considered.  They made me really think about a lot of issues that I didn't even know existed.  It also was really riveting because we were constantly incorporating the inspirational activities that we did that day.  Particularly, we discussed the elementary school and Missionvale (which hopefully another Terrablogger is going to write about).  The students we worked with were all masters and higher degree seekers, and they all had personal experiences with the water crisis here in South Africa.

The next morning, we met up really early to solidify our teams and get some good team opinions set in stone.  My group bonded really well because we totally allowed ourselves to get off-topic and I was able to see some crazy similarities between me and the NMMU kids.  By the end, we were all on a first-name basis, making inside jokes, and having an incredible time.

Finally, it was debate time.  Cue the butterflies.  I actually felt sick to my stomach! Luckily, my team was so awesome that they all cheered me on and made me feel comfortable.

And thus began the debate.

The debate was not what we had prepared for.  We had prepared to defend why we believed that a sustainable solution existed, but we were actually supposed to just answer any question on sustainable development that the facilitator and the audience could come up with.

We had to be super quick on our feet, and our group totally was. We got 120 seconds after each question to come up with the best answer we could.  Our team was so good!! When my turn came to talk, one of my NMMU friends shoved a microphone in my hands and pushed me forward to talk.  Oh boy...!!

All in all - despite the horrible nerves - the debate was a ton of fun.  I really enjoyed every aspect of it - from hanging out with the NMMU kids to coming up with stressful responses to joking around on stage when no one was looking.

I'm so glad that I had this opportunity! I can't wait to reach out to my new NMMU friends as soon as I'm back in the states! (Shout out if you're reading this!!)

Dung Beetles Have The Right Of Way 3.23.14

After our geology excursion, we headed straight for Addo Elephant National Park. We were faced with the sight of two elephants skulls when we pulled up to the gate.

And when we passed through the gate, we saw a sign that declared “Dung Beetles Have the Right of Way”. Um… what could that possibly mean?

It turns out that there is a population of dung beetles in the park. These little critters run around and roll balls of elephant dung and lay eggs in them. The sign warned drivers against running over the rolls of dung to keep up the population of dung beetles in the park.

But we didn't come to gape at the adorable creepiness of dung beetles. We stopped by to learn more about the big guys – the elephants.

Zoologist Prof. Graham Kerley gave us a history of the park and its native elephants and we quickly got around to actually seeing the animals. While usually we consider a large population of elephants to be solely beneficial to their environment, elephants actually are a threat to plant diversity in the park. Large gathering of elephants around water holes have started to convert the surrounding bush into large grassy areas, decreasing the number of plant species that would flourish near a water source and in the shade of the bush. What can we do about it? People are not too sure.

And while you are contemplating that fact, here are some photos of those beautiful giants.

The Jet Lag Series: A Photoset

An early morning wake up, three plane flights, and several bus rides later, we were finally in South Africa! I was also part of the Simmons group that met up and took the shuttle to the first bus and Libby described the whole trip pretty accurately.

But maybe not ALL of the 17 hour plane ride from D.C. to Johannesburg.

While Libby was catching some zzz’s, Joseff and I barely got any sleep on that flight. How were you supposed to sleep comfortably? Curl to your side? Sleep sitting up? Put your pillow on the fold out table in front of you and hope that the top of your head won’t be squished by the seat in front of you? So we were awake for every single one of the selfies.

Here is a set of photos of MIT students – faces vs. time.

0hrs YAY! We are going to be in South Africa! 

2hrs They serve dinner? This is awesome.

7hrs Okay… kinda tired… at least we get a break when the plane is refueling.

8hrs That. Break. Was. Refreshing. We can do the next 7 hours.

9hrs BREAKFAST! 

11hrs … Libby… how?

14hrs WE’RE FINALLY HERE!

Last plane flight! YAY!

Rock Mystery Adventure! – A Prospective Course 12’s Dream Come True

Posted by Libby Koolik

            To kick off our first real day in Port Elizabeth, Sam took us on a really amazing geological adventure! As soon as I read about it in the overflowing booklet of Terrascope events for this trip, my inner Course 12 squee’d with joy.  It was so super awesome to get a glimpse of some ground-breaking (literally?) research going on in the geological and geochronological realm of South Africa.

            We loaded into the buses bright and early in the morning with the preface that we were going to be faced with a serious South African puzzle.  The geologists of NMMU – and the other universities here – have been working super hard to figure out how long ago the sea level dropped to its current state, and we had the opportunity to try our best to figure it out!

            The first stop was to a little side-of-the-road spot where we were able to examine this awesome ridge and see if we could figure out what information it gave us.  At this point, no one had explicitly told us that we were examining sea level changes, so we had to piece together the clues available to figure out that there were relics of the ocean.  We were encouraged to climb through plants and scale the sides of this ridge to view it. 

            The sides of the ridge were completely covered in fossilized oyster shell-looking things! There were thousands of these bumpy, rocky, awesome fossil-things covering the entire side of the ridge.  We were all encouraged to take a little piece home, and I know I can’t wait to put mine up on my shelf!

            Sam – in particular – was really encouraged to take some of these home because the scientists of South Africa believe that Sam’s lab has technology and expertise that might be able to actually solve this important geochronological issue! Apparently, Sam has machines in his lab that practically aren’t available for South African scientists, so they need Sam to take them back to America so they can progress forward in their research.  So cool to think that a major scientific discovery pivotal in the progress of South African geology is going to be taken back to the familiar Green Building and solved back at MIT!

             Our next stop was to this unbelievable rocky cliff that we were encouraged to climb around on and look for particular rocks.  No one had to tell me twice!  I jumped on the opportunity to climb all around and examine a ton of different rocks.  Alongside a bunch of my Terrascopers, I climbed all around the mountainside, looking for rocks that had these small “wormlike” (in the words of the wonderfully knowledgable Jessica Fujimori) cracks.  These cracks were evidence that smaller rocks had been forcefully scraped against the larger rocks in a water-based erosion process.  This was yet another clue about the water levels and the changing sea levels.  Awesome how much rocks can tell us!!! (Ok, I’ll make my inner Course 12 calm down just a little).

            With the promise of seeing wild elephants, I made my way back down the cliffside and got back on the bus.  I can’t wait to see what kind of conclusions the future of this research project holds!!

Pachyderms and the Eastern Cape: South Africa (Day 1)

[from my blog: ifeverythinghadaword.wordpress.com]


"Oh my god, it's just like India!"

As much as I wanted to resist the usual comparisons, it was hard not to chime in.  The simplistic airport in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, the slightly humid, warm, salty night air, and the dusty roads certainly felt similar for those of us who have been to India.  Then again, there were people exclaiming that it reminded them of Mexico, Bangladesh or other less-developed-than-the-U.S.-fill-in-the-blank countries, so I suppose there's not much going for the specifics of those comparisons. 

This year, the Terrascope Mission 2017 group has arrived in South Africa for our spring break travels.  As I've mentioned before, Terrascope is a freshman learning community at MIT, which focuses on self-directed learning and complex, global, interdisciplinary issues.  When I was a freshman, Mission 2015 took a look at solving the world's biodiversity crisis and traveled to Costa Rica.  As a UTF (Undergraduate Teaching Fellow) last year with Mission 2016, the trip to the American Southwest tried to understand the physical context of mineral resource management and extraction.  This year, again as a UTF, I'm accompanying the 2017's to the Eastern Cape of South Africa to study water management and security, and even think about solutions to South Africa’s water and development problems. 

In conjunction with Prof. Maarten de Wit from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), we have 7 days of jam-packed tours, sessions, discussions, with some time to explore.  Our first stop in Port Elizabeth has taken us to a beautiful lodge that sits, quite literally, by the ocean and on the first day we began our introduction to the area's water context through the landscape, people, and most memorably, animals.

We all knew before even coming on the trip that we would be seeing elephants at the Addo Elephant National Park.  Zoologist Prof. Graham Kerley showed us around through the park and told us that the park began in 1931 with only 11 elephants and no adult bulls.  All of the elephants in that area had either been poached for ivory or shot for "misbehaving."  It was, as he said, a recipe for inbreeding and genetic drift. 

The elephants' problems were far from over once the park was established, though.  There were no fences when the park began so elephants couldn't be contained, and skirmishes with the neighboring farmers resulted in more deaths.  Elephant populations also need massive quantities of water--100 liters per elephant per day-- and vast areas of vegetation which require their own source of water.  From above the water hole where the elephants congregated, we could see a gradient of elephant impact to the vegetation, with only weak brushes Over time, the various measures implemented have created a population now of about 450 elephants in the park. 

We saw elephants twice on our drive through the park, both times within 10-35 feet of the bus-- there were the babies scampering after the warthogs, the waddling young adults rolling in mud, and the adults herding the group majestically forward.  It was hard to believe that these creatures who look like they are always smiling could be vicious, but they were wild animals, and we were not allowed to get off the bus.  Tortoises and kudu (animals that look a bit like gazelles but with curled horns) were also animals I got to check off on the list from our park map, though unfortunately, no lions or rhinos. 

We followed the road through the park past the Golden Dunes, tracking the mouth of the river until it reached the sea.  Claps of thunder and lightning suddenly filled the sky, and we were caught in a beautiful rainstorm.  As you can probably imagine, the bus ride home, full of dripping, sandy people, smelled anything but great. 

Red-green grasses and the Golden Dunes in the distance

The context of what we had received so far was what any tourist could probably do if they were to come to South Africa.  What we then got was an inspiring talk by a man who has grown up in the Eastern Cape and who is “colored,” a term used here to mean a person of a mixed race who can speak Afrikaans.  The talk truly framed most of the historical, complicated and contradictory questions that governed this area’s history—the pre- and post- apartheid eras, the disappearance of the indigenous population, and the broad lens with which we need to consider our approach to complex problems like the ones we were looking at this week. 

The day ended with a traditional barbeque called Braai (or lasagna for the vegetarians like me) with buttery potatoes to die for.  And a dessert that elicits universal excitement: ice cream!

"...this is an everybody business."

Today was a very full day for Mission 2017, beginning with transect walks through the informal settlements near Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and ending in the South End Museum with talks from those who witnessed the apartheid system first-hand and at personal cost. We also visited a school begun over fifty years ago with no water which became, through the efforts of many, a thriving community school of over 1000 elementary students with water. The principal's words to us: "You are the crafters of your future." "You cannot wait: these kids are not waiting," marked the moment as we stood in her shadow in the African late afternoon sun.

"So what IS an "everybody business" in the town of Port Elizabeth, or any other community with significant needs and limited resources?

Surely one part is to work in some of the ways we heard about today: to relate our science to the practical knowledge and wisdom of those around us; to always ask whose interests are being served; to develop our social competence, political will, and our abilities to engage with each other in ways that respect human dignity; to inspire all our desires to contribute to our families and our societies.

In the words of an NMMU colleague, "Let's act in solidarity and get on with the work."

We are in South Africa!  After a very long day of travel -34 hours – we made it to Africa.  The travel day was long but everything went smoothly and the flight crews did their best to make it comfortable.  After a delay in Johannesburg due to equipment issues, we arrived in Port Elizabeth and made our way to our lodging by bus by 11PM local time.

We managed to pull ourselves out of bed for a mostly buffet breakfast and an 8:30 departure for a geologic and elephant tour.  We were accompanied by our hosts from NMMU, led by Professor Martin de Wit, and a team of videographers.  Our first stop was an old marine platform at 300 meters elevation.  The terrace was marked by easily distinguishable oyster beds.  We could see the white color of the beds all around us at similar elevations.  Martin had talked about how the sea level was markedly different from today’s see level and this was our first evidence of where the sea level once was.  Our second stop was at the site of stream incisions into older rock that is below the marine platform.

Our next destination was the Addo Elephant National Park, where we met Professor Graham Kerley.  Professor Kerley gave us an introduction to the history and current status of the national park and its elephants, including the water issues that the park faces in helping the elephants survive.  His talk was present at a high overlook, with the Hapoor Water Hole below us, with elephants visible (I could see some walking).  We then drove to the water hole.  It was stunning.  There were 30-40 elephants, including calves, along with Warthogs and several zebra.  It was an incidental but exciting mini safari.   We later drove to the see the coastal and while still in the park, we drove past 7 elephants, including 3 calves.  While it was special to see the many elephants at the water hole, we had our first close look at elephants here.

The dunes were lovely although we experienced heavy rains and eventually an electrical storm.  Still, it was beautiful.  Professor Kerley gave us an overview of how the dunes developed and how they affect the river systems in this area.

On our drive we saw the edges of some of the townships we will be walking through today, giving us a glimpse of the life there.  Our host at NMMU told us to be prepared for an interesting and unsettling experience there.  And we are leaving in 5 minutes ...