How was I ever able to function in a world without Wiki? Having access to it and Google from my cellphone means I can be the smartest person in the room -- well, at least the most resourceful. What do Zoroastrians believe? Wait, let me check. What is the name of the woman in that movie we are watching? Hold on, I'll find out. The student just fell down unconscious, but his eyelids were moving so we know he is possessed by demons. Well, the Internet says it could be a medical condition called eplilepsy (this really happened).
If only I can invent a way to wire the Internet into my brain...

I was in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, on Easter Sunday, on my way back to Venda after a two-week holiday in the southernmost part of the country.

In the hostel where I was staying with my fellow PeaceCorps travelers that morning, I woke up with a song in my head:"Jesus Christ is Risen Today." My Dad used to sing it with such gusto at the beginning of every Easter mass, and for me it has always been the quintessential sound of the season -- more so than "Here Comes PeterCottontail." I can easily recall the feeling of joy of being a kid, sitting with my parents and sisters in the church pew -- all of us gals dressed in new Easter outfits with matching corsages (courtsey of my dad) pinned on our chests. There would be a brass fanfare, the organist would would launch into the first notes of "Jesus Christ is Risen Today," the congregation would stand and we would all sing. Such a triumphant moment. How great it was to be alive!

After breakfast today, while wandering around town in the springlike weather (even though it is the end of summer here), I came upon a brass band performance in the garden of a Lutheran Church. As I stood at the gate listening to the band, one of the church members informed me that the Easter Sunday service was about to start. When I asked if it was OK if I attended, she said: "well it will be all in German, do you know any?" My Dad's family was German, I replied, feeling goosebumps at this suprising turn of events. So she took me by the arm, led me to a pew and handed me a songbook, indicating the page for the opening hymn.

You can probably guess what the hymn was, although here it was titled "Jesus Christus ist Erstanden." Drawing on my early experience as a member of theKinderchor (the children's section of my father's beloved Maennerchor, a German chorus), I was able to decipher the words and sing the song with as much gusto as my Dad did, and in his Mother Tongue.

Easter's cross cultural experience was a lovely way to end my trip -- a trip characterized by more views of diversity (in land, culture and people) than I had previously seen in my last 8 months in South Africa. During a two-day train ride (second class) fromPretoria to Cape Town, my friends and I met middle class Indonesians, Afrikaaners, Zulus, Brits, Aussies and Southern Asians.

In crowded, but cosy train cars, we traveled together through the dry and starkly beautiful Karoo desert, ostrich farms and then the rolling green of South Africa's winelands. During meals in the dining car, we listened to campy polka music with lyrics in Afrikaans. We also enjoyed watching the three folks in the berth next to ours. There was an elderly couple who frequently held hands and gazed at each other as if they were newlyweds and their sister, who spent endless hours peering out the train window with a look of pure joy on her face, waving enthusiastically to any people the train passed by.

In Cape Town, which is a lot like San Francisco I am told, my friends and I started each morning with real coffee (not the powdered Nescafe popular in Venda) from a different coffee house each day (there are many), sampled a wide range of foods, including steak from a springbok (like a deer), ostrich meat salad, tapas and spicy dishes influenced by the Cape's Malaysian ancestors.

In a nod to my mother's grandparents (since I have already referred to my father's side in this post), I learned that parts of Robben Island, the site of Nelson Mandela's prison home for 20 years, is sometimes referred to as "Little Ireland." The name was apparently given because of the island's craggy beauty, the small stone houses erected when the island used to house lepers and mentally ill in the 1800s and in honor of the Irish nuns who cared for them.

Robben Island is beautiful. The land surrounding the prison is a nature preserve, where there are many wild creatures roaming about -- including springbok, penguins, duiker and other four-legged, deer-like animals. The prison itself was old and stark, as one would expect a prison to be. A museum since 1997, it is open for tourists to view. Several cells contain touching artifacts left behind by political prisoners and letters explaining the artifacts' significance. For example, there was a Christmas card a prisoner had received from his wife. Because he had not been able to communicate with her for so long, he wrote, he found he was unable to feel anything when the card arrived.

We also received a tour of the jail by a former prisoner. It really brought the place alive to stand with this older man in the recreation yard and hear him talk of what he and his fellow prisoners endured and what they also did for diversion when they were there. "There were some good times," he repeated often, maybe wistfully or, perhaps, optimistically. Apparently one of those good times was when the prisoners captured a guard's beloved pet cat, skinned and ate it.

I don't want to bore people with more South Africa travelogue, but for those who are interested: the rest of the holiday included tours of wineries in the lovely, mountainous Stellenbosch region and a few days spent along the coast of the Indian Ocean where we stayed in a beautiful hostel run by a 72-year-old hippie named Deion who made us awesome oatmeal cookies each day.

The South Africa I saw in the Cape area is nothing like the far north where I stay, except maybe for the beautiful scenery. The majority of the residents and tourists are white. Most of the black and mixed race folks I saw were workers: shop employees, housekeepers, gardeners and domestics. A reality not too different from apartheid days.

In Venda, I am the only white person in my village and a member of very small minority in the nearby town. While I really enjoyed getting hot showers every day and frequenting bookstores and coffee shops during my holiday, seeing the huge gap between the way the cultures live made me feel guilty, as if I was betraying the kids and families of my Venda village.