Monday, 21 July 1986 – A Thoroughly Modern Geography Department at Rhodes University

I’ve spent the night at the beautiful historic home of Henry and Joan in Grahamstown.  At breakfast, they ask me how Americans can get along without domestics.  I admit that, despite all our automated appliances, it’s tough for couples when both work and especially for single mothers.  When examined from the vantage point of another culture, I can see that American life is riddled with certain flaws despite the glamourous image of wealth and comfort.

I’m looking forward to getting a hotel room in Port Elizabeth by myself for a few days after I leave here later this morning.  For the past week, I’ve had no time to myself, and I’ve gotten far behind in my writing. Plus, I wind up drinking too much and smoking too many cigarettes.  Hospitality has its price. 

Henry drops me off downtown, and I walk over to Rhodes University where a tour of the Geography Department has been arranged for me.  Oakley West, the staff cartographer, shows me around.  They have some fascinating modelling equipment in the Hydrological Research Unit which replicates a meandering stream, channel roughness, and rainfall.  There is a soils lab and a water quality lab which even includes a spectrometer.  There are computer rooms for the department as well as for the hydrological unit.  The latter includes a huge graphic camera which they picked up for about R12,000 from a firm going out of business several years ago.  The photo lab also contains a large dark room, blueprint machine, and slide copier.  Jeezus – my mouth is watering!  I’d sell my firstborn (if I had one) into slavery to have regular access to this equipment.  A coloured guy runs the photo lab.  In fact, I see several non-whites around the department.  I understand that Rhodes is starting to get a few non-white students.  It would be an absolute crime if all races couldn’t make use of facilities like these in the Geography Department.  This is obviously a fucking rich country that has so much to offer.

I meet Alex Weaver who’s currently doing erosion studies in the Ciskei.  He invites me to join his class on a field trip if I get back to Rhodes.  He’s the main environmental guy in the department.  Alex and Oakley recommend that I see the Ichthyology Department and museum run by Glenn Merron, a New Yorker who is doing fish studies in the Okavango Delta of Botswana.  He is looking at proposed water diversion schemes there which will mess with the ecology of the delta.  In the museum, I see a preserved fish which is an important evolutionary link between fish and amphibians.  A Rhodes professor discovered it during the 1930s. 


Rhodes University:  Administration Building from the Drostdy Arch


I meet Alex Weaver who’s currently doing erosion studies in the Ciskei.  He invites me to join his class on a field trip if I get back to Rhodes.  He’s the main environmental guy in the department.  Alex and Oakley recommend that I see the Ichthyology Department and museum run by Glenn Merron, a New Yorker who is doing fish studies in the Okavango Delta of Botswana.  He is looking at proposed water diversion schemes there which will mess with the ecology of the delta.  In the museum, I see a preserved fish which is an important evolutionary link between fish and amphibians.  A Rhodes professor discovered it during the 1930s. 

Around 11:30AM, I catch a ride with Gideon and Ann, an older Rotary couple who happen to be on their way to Port Elizabeth, less than a two-hour drive from here.  He is an Afrikaner, she’s English.  I tell them I’m planning to stay in the Alabama Hotel which was recommended to me by my coloured friends in East London.  Gideon and Ann try to talk me out of it, saying that it’s in an industrial area in the North End.  I’d have to spend a lot of time and money on taxis and buses to get downtown.  I decide to take their advice since the hotels they recommend are cheap and closer to the center of things. I find a large R22/night room (slightly seedy but clean) with a bath down the hall, in the Grand Hotel just a couple of blocks from downtown.  I’m free at last for the time being.


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