Chasing the Horizon Tour: December 2015

Saturday 26 December 2015

Merry Christmas

We all would like to wish you a happy Christmas and a crazy New Year.

source: www.google.co.za

We have a few treats for our readers for this occasion.

Firstly, do you remember that in the beginning of December Adrian and Zuza were interviewed in local television WTK? Well, here you can watch it!

- the Polish version on the official WTK's website

http://wtkplay.pl/video-id-22435-studenci_jada_do_rpa

- with English subtitles

We do recommend watching it! Adrian and Zuza did their best and on the basis of this particular performance they were officially appointed our Media Representation for the tour.

Secondly, we also celebrated Christmas as a group. There were South African carols, Polish carols and then, somehow, South African popular music and Polish popular music. We ate dishes prepared, or at least bought by ourselves. We spoke Afrikaans and talked about how each one of us would be celebrating Christmas. We talked about the tour and reminisced about our three years spent together. We had a great time and some of us got very emotional after the realization that it was our last Christmas together.

Thirdly, we found a really interesting, yet comprehensible article about Christmas in Cape Town observed by an foreigner.

http://www.sapeople.com/2015/12/18/christmas-in-cape-town-is-weird-when-youre-not-from-south-africa/

Merry Christmas one more time!

South African Christmas stamps from 2006

source: http://my-philately.blogspot.com/

Thursday 10 December 2015

Chasing the Horizon Tour's plan

South Africa is a vast and diverse country. With the area of over 1,2 million square kilometers one needs a lot of time to thoroughly explore this country. We don't have so much time so we were forced to compromise. Compiling out tour's plan was an incredibly difficult task. After many heated discussions and democratic voting we worked out a satisfactory solution. Our glory lasted until professor Olivier saw the itinerary. As a driver and a person who actually knows South Africa he put the finishing touches (quite a few of them) and here it is, ready to be applied, the official plan of our tour.

28 JANUARY TO 23 FEBRUARY

Activities

28 Thurs Departure

29 Fri Arrival and travel to
Kruger National Park

30 Sat Travel north through the Park

31 Sun Along the Limpopo via Mapunbugwe
[Border with Zimbabwe]

1 Mon University of Venda
2 Tue Travel to Gauteng

3 Wed Gauteng Polish Embassy,
University of Johannesburg

4 Thurs Gauteng Soweto crèche,
Adult education project

5 Fri Travel to Durban

6 Sat Durban

7 Sun Travel to Grahamstown

8 Mon Grahamstown Rhodes University,
Nat. English Literary Museum

9 Tue Travel to Hartenbos vis Garden Route

10 Wed Hartenbos

11 Thurs Travel to Cape Town via L’Agulhas
[Tip of Africa]

12 Fri University of Cape Town

13 Sat Cape Town Primary school

14 Sun Cape Town University of Stellenbosch

15 Mon Cape Town

16 Tue Travel to Sutherland
World famous telescope

17 Wed Sutherland [High school]
Travel to farm

18 Thurs Sheep farm stay

19 Fri Travel to Bloemfontein
University of Free State

20 Sat Bloemfontein
  Nat. Afrikaans Literary Museum [NALN]

21 Sun Travel to Gauteng

22 Mon Gauteng Departure

23 Tue Arrival in Poznan

Here is what it looks like:

We are also very proud to announce that our preparations for the tour are in full swing. We are very active in looking for sponsors and media exposure. We have written to many institutions and organizations and there is a lot of interest in our initiative. If you are carefully following our blog you can see how quickly it changes. Almost every day there is a new institution's logo in the right side of our blog, whether it is a sponsor, a media patron or a friend.

And speaking of media! Tomorrow, two representatives of our group, Adrian and Zuza, will give an interview in the local television! 11.12.2015 at 8:30 at WTK television, in a Poranek WTK with Liliana Skibińska they will talk about our tour! It is a must-see! It will be very interesting and, knowing Adrian i Zuza, highly entertaining! If you don't have WTK or television you can livestream it here: http://wtkplay.pl/live

We encourage you to watch it as well as follow our blog, with the tour being so close we have a lot to report!

Wednesday 9 December 2015

South African Movie Nights Again!

The first part of our South African movie program is already behind us. We are proud to announce that it has been a success. We have a dedicated and actively participating audience as well as beer.

We spent a lot of time trying to come up with the next set of movies which would be as interesting as the previous ones. Lucky for us South African cinematography is rich and diverse. The problem is logistics. We leave for South Africa in the end of January and Christmas holidays are soon, which leaves with only two movies to show before our trip.

The first one is Olivier Schmitz’s movie Life, Above All. It was released in 2010 and was very well received by the critics. It is based on Allan Stratton's Chanda's Secrets and depicts a story of a 12 years old Chanda (Khomotso Manyaka) who after the death of her newly-born sister struggles with destruction of her family and, being alienated from the rural community due to a gossip. She decides to leave home and starts to seek for her mother. Life, Above All has made it to the January Shortlist for the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film and was also present in Cannes Film Festival. The movie is dedicated to children orphaned by AIDS. It shows an incredible maturity and endurance of the main character as well as problems concerning rural South African community. The director was mostly appreciated for telling such a painful story without platitudes, while Khomotso Manyaka is said to have given an incredible and row performance.

The second movie is Disgrace. As you may suspect it is based on Nobel Prize winning novel of J.M. Coetzee. It is actually an Australian movie but it is set in post-apartheid South Africa. It was directed by Steve Jacobs and was released in 2008. David Lurie (John Malkovich) is an ageing professor teaching Romantic literature at a university in Cape Town. David has an impulsive affair with one of his students and as a result he is brought before a disciplinary board and fired. He takes refuge with his daughter, Lucy (Jessica Haines), who owns a farm in the Eastern Cape. There they face a tragedy and struggle to cope with it. ‘Disgrace’ rises a lot of important questions concerning personal downfall, guilt, violence and post-apartheid South African reality. We all know how easy it is to flatten the best book by a bad adaptation but Jacobs’ Disgrace is a very faithful adaptation while Malkovich remains a compelling and cerebral screen presence.

The venue is the same - Pub Van Gogh, ul. Żydowska 12, Poznań so see you there!

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ABOUT US

We are third year students from English and South African Studies in the Faculty of English at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. In January we went for a study tour to South Africa, making our dreams come true. It was called 'Chasing the Horizon Tour'.

We were generously supported by a variety of organizations as well as private individuals. We travelled 8500 km of South Africa for almost four weeks, visiting Johannesburg, Pretoria, Grahamstown, Cape Town, Venda, Kruger Park and many others. We saw many wonders, visited schools and universities and participated in Afrikaans project in Soweto.

It was a trip of a lifetime and we want to share our experiences as well as everything South African in our lives with our hosts, sponsors, fellow students and anyone who is interested.

We are also involved in many South African projects in Poznań such as South African Movie Nights (you are all invited!) or upcoming film festival Afrykamera.

Get to know our group a little better and enjoy!

PROFESSOR STEPHANUS OLIVIER

Professor of Afrikaans and South African Studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. A South African currently living and teaching in Poznań. He is the 'glansgans' of our group. He is one of a kind. There is a Wikipedia page just about him (click on his picture and see for yourself!). He is a poet, a translator, a teacher and a lawyer, an editor and a reviewer. He likes to hike, read and travel. In his free time he creates new Afrikaans words and wins awards for them. ‘Glansgans’ is one of them and it means 'celebrity'. As a great poet he has the ability to convert the most cynical prose enthusiasts into poetry lovers. Currently, he works with his students on translating polish poems into Afrikaans and then wants it published in South Africa. His favourite sayings are: 'Life is difficult when you deal with poetry' and 'There is this wonderful Afrikaans phrase/saying...'

ILONA

She's the artistic soul of our group. She draws, paints and designs. She was the one, who created our beautiful tour poster as well as the poster for our South African Movie Nights. We are all impressed by her skills. She likes to laugh and have fun. Ilona is also ‘the scientific’ one, she used to learn a lot of math and physics in high school. She has a soft spot for London and fashion. She is probably the only human on this planet who is interested in syntax. Ilona is very ambitious, so you can probably encounter her, while she is reading some notes.

AGATA

She is interested in so many things, that keeping up with her hobbies is quite a challenge. She loves reading and with her literature she travels around the world. She has been to Chinua Achebe’s and Chimamanda Adichie’s Nigeria, Murakami’s Japan, Alice Munro’s Canada, Zadie Smith’s and Jane Austen’s England as well as Gabriel Márquez’s Columbia and many many other. South African literature, however, is the closest to her heart. Regular traveling is her next passion. Anyone who knows Agata remembers that she is an expert in TV shows. Just give her a random title and surely she has already watched it. She is also interested in feminist movement, so don't hesitate to discuss it with her. In her free time she likes to hang out with South African Springboks on the Brighton Pier.

MICHAŁ

He doesn't speak much, but don't think that he is not a friendly guy! He is simply a man of few words for the vast majority of people, but he always has something interesting to say when with his friends. He knows our Faculty of English like the back of his hand. He is from Lubin- the city which we always mistake with Lublin. With not much effort he has a very good British accent. He adores cats and everything what is connected to this topic. If you're bored or sad, Michał will always cheer you up with some hilarious Youtube clips. If Zuza has the master degree from dry jokes he is now studying for one. He is also a foodie, he likes food, he knows food and he cooks food so he is super excited about going to South Africa and trying its cuisine.

ADRIAN

We can proudly call him “our poet”. He writes his own poems which surely will one day be published. If you forget an important historical date- ask Adrian. His head is like a history book filled with tons of facts and dates. Actually, he is not only The Poet but also The Brains of our group, a Walking Wikipedia. If he doesn’t know something, he will still guess it right. His is extremely easy-going and he has stolen many lecturers’ hearts with his positive attitude and confidence. He is this kind of student who writes a funny poem for a lecturer to convince him or her no to make a test. True story, I think our professor still has the original somewhere.

ZUZA

You may not notice her, but surely you will hear her laugh! She loves to make people happy and make everyone laugh. If it was possible, she would get a master degree from dry jokes. She loves being a volunteer anywhere and at any time. That’s why every week she dresses up as a clown to cheer up kids in a hospital. This year she discovered her new passion, which is sanding and drilling. So if you are redecorating your flat, just give her a call! She is not embarrassed to admit that she spends her free time on searching funny and cute pictures on Pinterest. She loves meeting new people and stealing their hearts, she is definitely The Glue and The Star of our group.