A Chronicle of Amy and Sean's World Travels

Bulungula, Part Two

Posted by Amy on Sep 29th, 2010 in Africa, On the Road, South Africa | 3 comments

Bulungula Lodge

So when we last left off, I was in dire need of the bathroom. TMI, I know, but it is relevant to this story because as I mentioned in the beginning, Bulungula is an eco-lodge. This doesn’t just mean that you reuse your towel or sheets in the name of greenness; Bulungula is actually is carbon-neutral. This article from the Guardian describes their efforts best:

The lodge runs on solar and wind power and any CO2 emissions generated through gas and electricity usage are offset by the planting of slow-growing forest trees. Even the bread is baked in a solar oven – a huge mirrored dish that is tipped when needed to face the sun. Paper and cardboard are burned on-site (rather than driven all the way to the nearest recycling point) and all other rubbish is taken to the nearest town, Mthata. Clean water is collected from a spring or a rain tank, and all dirty water is soaked up by the surrounding banana and papaya trees, to produce fruit that is turned into smoothies using a bicycle-powered blender. The compost toilets are non-flushable, and the “rocket showers” are fuelled by paraffin. You simply pour it into the bottom of the drainpipe, throw in a handful of toilet paper, light it and voilà, you have a three-minute hot shower.

More aspects of Bulungula that make my idealist inner treehugger happy.

The rain collectors and banana trees grown with runoff from the showers

My practical self, however, was wondering what all of this eco-stuff was like in practice. I was pleasantly surprised. Turns out the compost toilets weren’t so bad. My criteria for judging a bathroom include a clean place to squat, toilet paper, and soap to wash your hands, and the Bulungula bathrooms have all of those things. The toilets look like regular toilets, but have two compartments: one for number one and one for number two. The two scoops of sand you dump in after using making use of the second compartment are supposed to cover up the smell, which worked, albeit not completely. The hardest part is compartmentalizing your bathroom usage, but it all worked out.

The compost toilets

The rocket showers referred to above are quite interesting. I had some confusion over the right amount of paraffin to pour into the pipe, so I was a little concerned when the small fire turned into a large roar. I was certain throughout my entire shower that the pipe was going to combust, particularly when fire periodically shot out the opening. Of course, you are naked while you were pondering whether there is going to be an explosion, which means you are reluctant to check with anyone to see whether there is, indeed, a problem. Other than fear for your personal safety, the rocket shower does as promised and produces at least a trickle of hot water for your cleansing needs.

The rocket shower

Maybe I should have focused my efforts on showering before I blew up the place instead of taking pictures

The rondavels where we stayed were simple and actually pretty nice, considering the ocean was just over the hill, as long as I ignored the fact we were standing on a cow dung floor.

Sean on the inside of our rondavel

View out of our rondavel door the first morning

Of course, being in the middle of nowhere, everything is just immensely more peaceful, and we spent time just soaking in the scenery and quiet.

Resident rooster and her chicks

Village boys playing soccer on the beach below the lodge

The center of the lodge is the common building. At any given time, whether day or night, people from the village are hanging around the lodge, and some of them, including little kids, eat some of their meals there. Both nights we had delicious African meals for under $10 prepared by some of the villagers in the common lodge. The people at the lodge anticipate almost all of your needs, and one of those needs, of course, is beer. The lodge has beer and other beverages available for purchase (although not bottled water, so if you don’t want to drink the rain water they’ve collected, bring your own). The first night, we felt somewhat shy, as we mostly were the only non-Xhosa speakers around. After dinner, we were encouraged to join the drum circle that some of the locals started. After learning that I have no rhythm, as I expected, we opted out and went back into the common lodge, where we struck up a conversation with the guy from East London who picked us up on our way in. The vibe on the second night was totally different than the first, because we were joined by about 10 English-speaking American and European travelers. Both nights turned out to be quite fun.

Not everything at Bulungula is all puppies and rainbows, however. Our bed was filled with the overwhelming scent of mildew. I finally isolated the smell to the pillow. Removing the source made for uncomfortable sleeping, but at least the smell was gone. And as I would soon learn, seeing how the people lived in the village put any complaints like this in perspective.

It also was frustrating to get a clear answer, sometimes. This seems to be part and parcel of the experience, as this blog writer wrote back in 2007.

Now, having waxed about the place, Bulungula is not flawless in the way a time-challenged globe-trotting citizen of the world might like. Not everything happens on time (ok-most things don’t happen on time), not everything works all the time, and there are few English speaking people around to help you out with whatever you might need help with. So you may not get everything you want, and what you do get may not happen on time or in precisely the way you wanted or expected it, but you will get an African experience.

By “African” I don’t mean that things work on “African time” (wink, wink with a condescending smile…) or that all the people who work there are black and local or that the food is traditional local fare. (None of those things are always the case, by the way.) What I mean is that you’ll get an authentic collision of worlds at Bulungula, with all the frustrating, spontaneous, eclectic, maddening, serendipitous and perplexing implications, and very little assistance in dealing with it – for better or worse. People with deeply traditional rural African cultural upbringing (Xhosa, to be specific) and little formal education are in their environment and you (likely to be Western and/or urban, well educated and affluent by global standards) are coming to see them on their terms. Bulungula is a gateway, a transitional space, a facilitator. But don’t expect much help in telling you what you ought to do, how you ought to approach any particular situation, or how you should think about whatever you might encounter.

We saw this mostly on our village tour (more to come about that later), and also with the contradictory guidance to get into the place. We also couldn’t get a straight answer about where exactly we left our car. We wanted to retrieve our car so we wouldn’t have to take the shuttle out of there the next day, so we attempted to take the “short-cut” to general store where we left our car. Again, the directions were along the lines of go down there, turn left, follow the 4×4 tracks, turn right, etc. and once again, we got promptly got lost. Although there were brief moments of frustration (mostly by me) as we chugged along in the hot sun without water having absolutely no idea where the general store was, the walk turned out to be an adventure itself. As are most things on our trip, the more something puts us out of our element, the more interesting and rewarding it turns out to be.

View along our walk

Children walking back to the village after eating breakfast at Bulungula. I also took their individual pictures because they were all quite eager to show off their signs.

More children showing off their hand signs

Boy carrying his baby brother. Babies don't wear pants or diapers in the village.

A lamb we encountered along the way. Lambs and sheep are kept by the villagers to eat on special occasions.

We also saw some black pigs.

View of the hills and a village rondavel

Bulungula, Part One

Posted by Amy on Sep 28th, 2010 in Africa, Look! Something Pretty, On the Road, South Africa | 4 comments

There’s a place on the Wild Coast of South Africa that I am sure will stack up to be one of the most memorable and most unique places we stayed on this trip. The place is Bulungula Lodge, an eco-friendly and fair trade lodge totally off the grid located in a remote area of South Africa. The Lodge is the type of place that can restore a little bit of my liberal, tree-hugging, idealistic heart that practicing law killed off with cynicism.

The Lodge was created by Dave Martin, a well-traveled man originally from Cape Town who wanted to put his ideals into action. Created in 2004, the Lodge is a partnership between Martin and the local Nqileni village, made up of Xhosa people. The village owns the riverfront/oceanfront land occupied by the Lodge, and 40% of the Lodge itself. That means locks aren’t needed on the doors of the huts for the guests and people won’t hassle you for money, because everyone has a vested interest in the business. The village selects the neediest people to work at the Lodge, such a widow who needs the income. In addition to the creation of jobs at the Lodge itself, the Lodge spawned a number of 100% community-owned and operated businesses. Guests have the opportunity to engage in horseriding, canoeing, or fishing with a guide; eat at a pancake restaurant in the village; get a massage; go on a tour of the village; spend time and work with the village women; or learn about herbs from the herbsman. Other than the Lodge, there is no other place for employment anywhere in sight. Many of the village men live in townships in Johannesburg most of the year, working in the mines and sending meager incomes back home.

The journey to get to Bulungula Lodge is part of the experience in of itself. The lodge is located somewhere somewhat near Coffee Bay on the Wild Coast of South Africa, an area with relatively unspoiled coastline and some of South Africa’s poorest people. Once you turn off of N2, the main highway – which already is not all that developed for miles – any sign of commercial life disappears, save for a gas station, one Spar grocery store, and later, a local general store or two scattered about. The first road wasn’t too bad, that is, until it started to resemble the moon. We spent a good half an hour swerving to the left and right, trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid the giant craters in the road. Once we turned off the crater road, it was dirt roads the rest of the way. The “roads” were in such bad condition, it wasn’t possible to drive faster than, say, 10 miles per hour. The drive made me fully understand the meaning of bone-jarring. Every bone in our bodies rattled and jangled as we bounced along in our little rental car for close to 3 hours(!) at a ploddingly slow pace, praying we wouldn’t get a flat tire or a giant gash in our gas tank. To top it off, I had the need to pee well before we turned off the N-2, which made each bounce extra fun.

One of the dirt/rock roads to get to Bulungula

Two white people in a tiny, decidedly non-4×4 rental car inevitably attracted much attention. Small children began to run out to the road, waving frantically at us and jumping up and down. Older children tried to look indifferent or intimidating, but inevitably one of them would sheepishly wave hello. Women carrying bushels on their head would turn and stare. As we suddenly became completely in the minority, we became very conscious of our white skin. And the fact our vehicle must have looked asinine trying to traverse roads not meant for ordinary cars.

Obviously there are no street signs. Our directions were along the lines of “turn at the second fork in the road” or “look for the building with the sign hidden behind a tree.” Luckily, there are few roads, which mean few places to get lost. Not so luckily, we still couldn’t figure out where we were going. We had picked up a cell phone for the first time on our trip only days before, and we put it too good use calling the Lodge over and over to ask, Now where do we go? This did little good; conflicting information between the map, the directions we got the day before from the owner of the Lodge, and the directions we were getting in a very thick accent over the phone caused me to end each call in frustration, turn to Sean and say, I really have no idea where we are supposed to turn.

Another of the dirt/rock roads, even deeper in

Eventually, by sheer luck or pure accident, we found the general store where we were supposed to park and walk the rest of the way. A big change for Bulungula recently had been the addition of a new dirt road heading back to camp. While the owner had told us on the phone the day before that non 4×4 cars could make it down the new road without a problem, the person we spoke with at the Lodge during our drive in indicated that the road was too muddy to try to drive it.

We started hoofing it with our packs, and quickly attracted a following. A group of young girls from the village began following us and giggling. I talked to them, even though I had no idea whether they knew English. I suspect they didn’t know much, but they did know the days of the week, which they proudly recited for me. When they saw my camera, they got excited. I had heard that the village kids liked having their pictures taken so they can see themselves on the screen. When I inquired, by motioning, whether they wanted their pictures taken, they immediately lined up and posed for the camera. Their expressions turned serious, but you can see in the pictures a hint of a smile poking through. Afterwards, I showed them their pictures on the screen, and they resumed their giggling. They continued to follow about 5 steps behind us for the next ten minutes or so, but lost interest somewhere along the way.

Village girls we encountered on way to the Lodge

Two more. They sang, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday...

Meanwhile, with a backpack digging into our full bladders, and no idea how long we had to walk, Sean and I were gravitating towards cranky fast. An older sedan came bouncing down the road and slowed to a stop in front of us. Want a ride? I bet we are going the same way! In the car was a couple from East London, South Africa, who spoke English and Xhosa and were staying at the lodge for the night. Thank goodness they picked us up; it turned out we missed the shortcut (which no one ever told us about). The drive down the new road took at least another 20 to 30 minutes, and included several more calls to the Lodge to find our way and picking up one local villager to show us the rest of the way. The kicker was that the new road was no worse than any of the other dirt roads we took that day, and other than the fact it would have taken us forever to find our way, we could have made in down the new road in our rental car.

Finally arriving at the Lodge meant two things: we finally saw why it was worth the agonizing drive…