SOUTH AFRICA (October 3-8)

South Africa was very comfortable.  I can say that because I experienced the white South Africa.  The shopping mall on the Waterfront, the theater at University of Cape Town, and my accommodations at Kruger were all world-class.  However, a glimpse of a township on the drive back from the airport confirmed what I already knew about the legacy of the apartheid.
         The apartheid ended so recently—within my lifetime.  Naturally, there had been a lot of talk about it in classes leading up to the port, as well as a few lectures from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has been and will be travelling with the ship for the entire voyage.  Archbishop Tutu is simply a wonderful person.  The first thing he told us at the beginning of the voyage is not to lose our sense of optimism, that we really can make a difference.
        Social consciousness aside, I went on a fantastic safari at Kruger National Park.  We were very lucky.  We saw all of the Big Five game—lions, leopards, rhinos, elephants, and buffalo—multiple times as well as crocodiles and hippos and zebra and many colorful birds and impala and kudu.  The internet on the ship isn’t good enough to put up pictures.  Maybe I will add some at a later date.

GHANA (September 22-25)

I didn’t have one main event in Ghana like Barcelona in Spain or the Berber Villages in Morocco.  Instead, I did something different for each of the four days there, in the port of Takoradi.  However, I encountered a strong reoccurring theme throughout every activity and experience: music. 
It sounds silly to say that music is everywhere in Ghana because, to some extent, music is everywhere everywhere.  From where I am writing this, outside on the 6th deck of the ship, I hear rhythm in the constant crashing and swooshing of waves and the shuffling of feet in addition to the more obvious music coming from my headphones.  There was always pop music on the tour buses in Ghana (thanks, globalization).  Then, there was the soundscape of the Kakum National Forest.  But what I am really talking about is the way that many Ghanaians weave song into conversation. 
From my extremely limited experience, music seems more accessible in Ghana.  It is not limited by training and setting the same way it is in the US.  It is also more closely tied to other art forms and audience participation is commonplace.
The first two days in Ghana, I saw performances.  They were drumming and dance with some poetry and acting thrown in for good measure.  The first day was a workshop, so of course we participated, drumming and dancing too. 
The second performance was marketed as a “Bamboo Orchestra”, which to me implied that the audience would be formally separated from the musicians, and we were for most of it.  We sat in rows of chairs under a tent outdoors, as the performers sat under an opposite tent and struck sticks of bamboo together percussively in the complex rhythms of this region of Africa.  Then, some of the performers emerged from their tent and began dancing and acting out comic stories about attraction and environmentalism.  Finally, they expected the audience to get out and dance with them, so we did.
The next day, on the way back from a tour of a water village where our guides sang spirituals as they rowed, our guide on the bus taught everyone a song about a vulture that eats out of the trash and won’t come home.  Even though he admitted having a terrible voice himself, he insisted on us singing with him to boost morale because we were falling asleep. 
On the last day, I was done with organized tourist activities, so I went to a beach with friends to surf and swim.  There, we encountered more music and singing and dancing, right there on the beach. 
Finally, that evening as the ship pulled away from the pier, the vendors outside serenaded us away.  There was music everywhere.

MOROCCO (Sept 9-14)

Within an hour of arriving in Casablanca, I was in love with Morocco.  The medina was alive and bustling with people selling everything from fruits and vegetables to stuffed camels made of camel skin to cell phones.  I spent quite a while outside the Hassan II Mosque, in awe of the geometric architecture and the power of the recitation of the Quran as it blared through the speakers scattered throughout the surrounding campus area.  The scale of the building and the sound was overwhelming.  It was right next to the ocean, and there were Moroccan boys jumping 15 feet off of a wall and into the water next to the mosque.  I don’t think that any of my peers were quite as affected by the beauty of that environment as I was.  Later (still only the first evening in Morocco) my friends and I ate “breakfast” for dinner, as the Moroccans around us broke the fast of Ramadan at sunset. 
        The next morning, I took a train to Marrakech on the way to the Altas Mountains, where I would visit Berber Villages.  As much as I loved Casablanca, I felt very negatively toward Marrakech.  In the medina there, I made the seemingly obvious revelation that everyone wanted something from me—my money—and they were prepared to go to desperate measures to get it.  Suddenly every brightly dyed object in the market became a trap, and here were my friends and I foolishly, even happily, walking into the danger.  But after an incredible dinner, my bitterness faded into a healthy dose of skepticism.
        On the third day, we began our journey into the Atlas Mountains.  Donkeys and mules carried our backpacks while we walked, led by a guide, through the hot sun and prickly underbrush.  All of the elements attacked my senses, yet the landscape was unbelievably beautiful.  There isn’t much in those mountains, a few picturesque villages scattered here and there, some abandoned.  After a while, would stop somewhere shady for a welcome lunch before continuing on.  We walked for most of the day until arriving at the house where we were scheduled to spend the night sleeping on the roof.  And so it continued for three days and two nights until we came out somewhere else in the mountains where there was a paved road and a line of buses waiting to bring us back to Casablanca.
        Those three days among the Berber Villages was outstandingly one of the best things that I will do on Semester at Sea.  But there wasn’t time to dwell on it because before we knew it we were back in Casablanca and then back on the ship and off to the next place.
        I saw Casablanca very differently after Marrakech.  I noticed how few women there were out at night.  There were just men sitting outside of cafes at tables all facing out at the street, watching us walk by.  But that didn’t stop me from finding one last mint tea (a drink that I will always associate with Morocco).  I began to come to terms with the identity of being a tourist.  I know that I will not fit into any of the places that we visit on this voyage, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t have authentic, meaningful experiences there.

There should be a video about the Berber Villages trip on the Semester at Sea website with my friends and I in it.

SPAIN (September 4-8)

I divided my time in Spain between Barcelona and our port city of Cadiz.  In Barcelona, I saw some Gaudi architecture, a winery where they make cava, a monastery on Montserrat, a flamenco show, and a ballet-opera choreographed by Pina Bausch.  In Cadiz, I simply walked around the city and swam in the ocean.
        Through all of these activities, I was constantly reminded that Spanish people are on a very different schedule from the US.  A meal takes at least an hour, and everything happens later in the day.  I was surprised to see children and their mothers on the playgrounds of Barcelona at 10 or 11pm. 
I was amazed by the little ways in which Spain differed from the US and couldn’t even begin imagine what Morocco would be like.