Monthly Archives: August 2011

Day of exploring

Adventures, Little Rock,

Last Sunday dawned somewhat overcast but nice and hot. I was definitely still adjusting to the time zones. Which had the advantage that I was up early. Unfortunately, many attractions would only be open in the afternoon according to the guide book in my hotel room. Guide books are my kryptonite – the chances of me getting anything like work done once I’ve got my hands on a guidebook of the area are slim to zero. And things being closed didn’t scare me – travels with people like Richard have taught me that there is generally plenty to see outside, especially in a foreign country.

I had breakfast and headed off, armed with a map from the hotel and the standard sense of adventure. I was a little concerned about getting lost. In retrospect, it would have been quite difficult to get so lost I couldn’t find my way back but the first day out is always a little terrifying, especially alone. My colleagues had expressed interested in exploring but where nowhere to be found at the time.

I headed to the River Market. The market is a farmers market that operates only on Tuesdays and Saturdays but it’s a good landmark and from what I could gather, the river market area had lots to see. It didn’t disappoint.

Little Rock sits on the banks of the Arkansas River. The river is big. Huge to me. The relative size of rivers is something I struggle to articulate. I struggle to explain to others how massively huge a river like this is, based on my frame of reference. SO MUCH WATER! In reality, at least so I gather from comments and reactions of local people, it isn’t all that big. It certainly looked big to me – big and intimidating and navigable.

Right on the water, in front of the River Market is an amphitheatre. Apparently, the Little Rock Symphony Orchestra performs there quite often. Sadly, no performance (that I can find) while I’m here. Must be a gorgeous setting for live music.

From there, walking west, the path goes along beside the river until it reaches the spot where the remaining piece of the original little rock stands. Little Rock was the name given to this area by the first French traders who plied their wares along the Arkansas River. It was named for an outcrop of rock that was easily used as a landmark. Over time, the original rock was destroyed to create the foundation for a railway bridge – the next step in the economic development of the area. A small part of the original rock remains, however, and now stands in a little park area along the river, with boards explaining the history.

Public History. I never understood public history when I studied it at varsity. Well, I understood it but I didn’t get the significance. It is only later, having spent time travelling in countries who invest far more heavily in public history that I am beginning to see the value. I still have difficulties with the idea of boiling down complex, multi-perspective history to a few information boards in a park, but it is definitely helpful if you’re an ignorant foreigner trying to get a sense of the place.

This park area along the river has several different public history displays, constructed, it would seem, at different times. One talks about the history around the naming and founding of the town and the Little Rock itself, one is focused on the civil war and one talks about native Americans. They were informative, if somewhat shallow, as is the tendency in public history. I found the civil war one particularly fascinating. Did you know that Arkansas was all but wiped out by the American Civil War?

Above me was a huge bridge. The kind of bridge (a pedestrian bridge) where you can take a lift up to the walking level. I gather this is partly because the bridge was raised at some point in the past to allow for improved river traffic. Either way, the bridge is significant. I remember all the bridges in Korea. The story of the country for me was, so much, rivers and bridges. This was equivalent in size.

Further along, somewhat hotter and somewhat later in the day, I found myself walking through a public sculpture garden. Another aspect of American life not often replicated at home. I’m not talking public art in the sense of large, ugly statues here. This was art. Proper art. Art designed to challenge and enchant and to explore the medium. There were some beautiful pieces, just standing there, outside, for anyone to go and look at. One piece really captured my attention with its swirling, expansive energy. I could live with that in my house, I thought. Strange, not so many years ago, I knew nothing about art. These days I am far less circumspect and far happier to throw out my less than educated opinion based only on what I think. The Sylvia Plath-style adult and child was also pretty incredible.

A few squirrels later (yes, there are squirrels here – three types, I gather) I had reached the end of the riverside walk, so I turned back and headed towards the street again. I had long since abandoned street names and resorted to the tried and tested means of getting lost – following my instincts.

I crossed a road at the traffic light. I have always objected to the term ‘traffic light’. I guess everyone is somewhat stubbornly attached to the terminology he or she grows up with, and I am no exception. It’s not a ‘traffic light’, it’s a ‘robot’. Full stop. What I haven’t experienced in the past was the talking traffic lights. I understand the reason and I get how they might be helpful to some, but it’s a little panicky when the traffic light is counting down the seconds before the robot changes and you’re going to get run over and…and… and. You get the picture. Especially panicky when you’re in a country that drives on the wrong side of the road so crossing the street is fraught with the ever-present danger that you may be looking in the wrong direction.

On the other side of the street, I spent some time calming down and enjoying the novelty of the sight of the trolley (stree- rail-car-thingy). This apparently runs daily, although I have yet to try it. I was just thinking that this place felt eerily familiar when I turned around and there before me was a Korean ‘Gate’. I’ve written before on this blog about how Korean ‘Gates’ have little to do with getting in and out and everything to do with being elaborate, symbolic, colourful structures representing things of which I have little understanding and also dragons. I spent a lot of time in Korea looking at Korean ‘Gates’. I know one when I see one. This was definitely one. In the middle of Little Rock, Arkansas. Eerily familiar took a turn for the more serious.

It turns out the Gate is indeed a Korean monument. In a bizarre twist of fate, this Gate – the HU Lee Gate – is dedicated to Lee HU, the founder of the American Taikwando Association, who loved Little Rock because its mountains and lakes reminded him of his home in South Korea. When he died, his family and Little Rock’s sister city in Korea, Hanam, built and dedicated this Gate to him.

He was right about the similarities. Beyond the lakes and the mountains, the water and the bridges, the climate is the same. At least, the summer is the same. For days, beginning on that Sunday, I have walked around listening to the cicadas. I grew up with cicadas at home but they were different. The birds and the bugs at home were different to those in Korea. But for a year I lived with the bugs and the birds, the sounds and the texture of the air that is so much my sensory memory of Korea. This place is the same. It feels the same. The hot humid summer, the angle of the sun, the sound of the cicadas just like they are in Daegu. The trees and the temperatures. This place is familiar because it feels just like the place I called home for a year (with less Korean writing and more Mexican food).

I headed off into the rest of the day with a strange weightless familiarity. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve been to a foreign, never-visited-before place and felt like it was somewhere I used to call home.

Little Rock, Arkansas – first impressions

Little Rock, USA,

Hot. A friend of mine describes herself as being ‘solar-powered’. I get that. I don’t do well in cold and miserable weather. Which makes this such a pleasure – a gift of a week or two of warm in the midst of a cold winter. I sat outside for a while just now and just enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my skin. This is partly a legacy of living through what felt like an endless winter, of course.  I still recall so clearly that day in Korea when it was finally warm enough to take off the long sleeves and feel the sun on my skin. I have never been able to explain it adequately. This wasn’t as bad, of course – there has been some sunshine and warmth in between the cold in KZN – but it’s still great to feel warm again.

So far, that is about as much as I have experienced of Arkansas. This trip was a fortuitous coincidence for me. Most NGO jobs don’t involve much international travel, especially so soon after starting with the organisation, but circumstances conspired to require me to be here, so I get to see a place I might never otherwise have visited. Most of the trip will, of course, be hard work, but just being in a new place is a chance to experience it. I say the warmth is all that I’ve seen so far, but even a few hours is enough to catch a glimpse of the nature of a place.

For example, I’d forgotten how much being in the US feels like stepping into a TV series. Not surprising, given how many of our TV shows are from the US, but the differences that are hardly significant on screen, stand out when you’re here. The cars are different. The first time I travelled overseas, I was fascinated by the fact that the cars in America are bigger. They’re longer and more imposing. It doesn’t seem plausible but I noticed it again today. Bigger, bulkier, different.

The roads are different, too. What is the difference? It’s hard to say. I guess they seem bigger too, which is perhaps logical. But it’s the strangeness of the signs, too, and the fact that they use writing where we would use pictures a lot of the time. And the robots are different – the traffic lights. And the naming systems. My hotel is on Interstate 30. Just like they’d say in the movies. The roads also seem bigger because there are fewer high walls and fences.

And the houses are different. Across the road from where I’m staying is a wooden-style house with a swing on the porch. The widespread use of wood is a significant difference and gives the place a unique character. It’s not surprising, given the contrasting availability of materials for building. There are trees everywhere here. Taking off from Atlanta this morning, I was struck by that. We’d landed in the dark, so it was my first opportunity to see the area. It felt like flying over forests with the occasional clearing for houses and businesses. Towards Arkansas, the forests gave way to a patchwork of fields – many of them covered in water for some reason. But still, it looked like the clearings had been carved out of the woods, the forests, the trees that were naturally there. I often forget that what I consider the norm in landscapes, namely the wide, open, grassland plains that make my heart sing, isn’t the norm everywhere.

Time-zone hopping, combined with a very long direct flight (16 hours Joburg to Atlanta) has left me a little hazy. These impressions are partly the product of that. But they’re also the first impressions of a different place, a new place. I visited the US once before, although not this part of it and under very different circumstances and a long time ago. It was my first trip outside of South Africa and the experience was one of overwhelming otherness – I didn’t have the capacity to notice detail. Now, many travels later and after getting to know and appreciate some American friends while out of my own comfort zone, I find myself appreciating this so much more. But something about it – even if it is only the jetlag – retains the atmosphere of having just stepped into a TV programme.

Right now, outside my window, an American flag is flapping proudly in the breeze.

Layover, OR Tambo, Joburg

Airports, South Africa

Joburg airport. This place still feels a little like home. Not Joburg, just the airport. I have some time to kill, so I take it easy – wander through the food court in the domestic terminal, pop into CNA to buy a replacement for the highlighter I accidentally left at home, then head up to the third level, to my favourite spot in the airport.

Up the escalator, past the first of those tantalising international destinations boards – Amsterdam, Gabarone, Ouagadougou, Rome. Ok, not Ouagadougou, but wouldn’t it be fun to have the option of hopping a plane to a place called Ouagadougou?

I spend some time at the railing overlooking the huge, circular international arrivals area. I could spend ages in this spot. It is peaceful yet still in the midst of the business and there is no better spot for people-watching, even in the midst of the generally people-watching-friendly setting of an airport. People arriving, meeting, passing, chatting. A common point in a web of so many separate lives. A glimpse of what Hugh Grant’s character talks about at the start of Love Actually.

After a while, I head down to Cappello for some lunch. It’s four in the afternoon but it’s the only familiar stop between in-flight meals, so I take the chance for real food. This has become one of my staples at OR Tambo. It has a little outside area – next to the road, so not exactly quiet but without the air-conditioned, pop-music overlaid commercialism of the inside noise. I normally keep my headphones on in airports – they’re prettier with my own choice of soundtrack. But before a long flight some real noise is welcome. And real, unfiltered air. Even if it is the hazy, late-winter air of Joburg. Actually, especially the hazy, late-winter air of Joburg.

From where I sit, I can see the Gautrain station. I still find it strange, still somewhat disconcerting, that when I left for Korea – before my own first discovery of high-speed, high-tech train travel, South Africa’s first high-tech train system was only a promise. As I watch, a shiny Gautrain glides into the station. It’s gleamingly metallic shape is so similar to the Korail trains I got to know in South Korea.

In the pause between flights, I relax a little and remember all the other times I’ve been here in the past few months and years. Funny, I don’t think I’ve ever sat here with anyone else. A reminder, I guess, that the nature of my travelling has so often been solo. A hazy, half-remembered collection of precious memories never truly shared with anyone else.

As the Joburg sun edges towards the concrete horizon, I pay my bill and move off to the Delta desk to check in. Time to add another international carrier to my repertoire of experience and brace for a long, long flight. Perhaps that is the real reason I love this airport so much – it represents the gateway to the experiences of travel, good and bad, that are to come and to all the possible, exotic, much-anticipated places in the world where I have not yet travelled.