The Phoenix Sun

I haven’t had internet access for days. I’m in Kruger National Park on my last day in Africa — for now. This country is amazing — weighed down and held back by problems, many of which are the legacy of apartheid. Poverty, drugs, HIV, corruption, environmental threats galore — that’s all here. But the number of people I met who are working to overcome these problems gives some hope. It’s impossible to separate the humanitarian/economic crisis from the environmental ones. That’s true everywhere, of course, but the links are so much more visible here.

The Kirstenbosch project (if it gets funded) must address the social/political side. I took photos in the shantytowns that will show Kirstenbosch in it’s context. The country won’t be able to maintain these important gardens in the face of a growing humanitarian crisis. What’s worse, the plants will continue to disappear in the wild if social problems aren’t addressed. Habitat is being destroyed, acid rain is fed by new coal-fired power plants (South Africa uses 40% of all electricity generated in Africa — mostly from coal), as is climate change.

So the project is changing slightly — opening up — due to conditions on the ground.

Thanks again to all those who have backed the project so far. Only 30 hours left, so please spread the word!

One of the most important gardens at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens is the “Garden of Extinction.” All of the plants in it are endemic to South Africa — that is, they’re found only in this country — and most are threatened or endangered.

“If we lose them from South Africa,” says Roleen Ellman, “we lose them from the world.”

Ellman is the assistant director of education at Kirstenbosch, and she was kind enough to give me a wonderful half-hour introductory tour of a small section of these sprawling gardens.

I spent a couple of hours photographing in the garden today, my first visit. Walking around even a small area it’s quickly obvious what a gem this place is. It’s certainly a national treasure, but, as Ellman points out, it’s a world treasure — unique and irreplaceable. Most of the images I take here will need processing before they’re ready for display, but I wanted to post the one above, ASAP. It’s a tiny, inconspicuous plant, and it probably doesn’t exist outside of this garden. Because of habitat destruction, it is considered extinct in the wild.

Looking at it, I wondered if what I felt was similar to what the people who had a chance to see Martha — the last passenger pigeon, kept for years in a zoo — felt. Sad but lucky. Or lucky, but sad.

It reminds me to thank the backers of this project for your support. I wish I had more time here — I’ll only be able to photograph a small fraction of the unique plants found at Kirstenbosch. Still, it’s a wonderful opportunity to spread the word about one of the world’s most important gardens.I’m grateful for your support and for your belief in this project.

More backers are still needed to complete the project and publish a color catalog of Kistenbosch. If you’d like to join, your help would be greatly appreciated. For more on the project, including a video explaining the GigaPan technology I’ll be using in the gardens and a way to donate, please click this line.

I’ll write later about our (Toyota International Teacher Program) Sunday trip to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela spent 17 of his 27 years in South African prisons. I’ll also have to wait to write about visiting with residents of Mufleini, the largest “township” in the Cape Town area. Both days held powerful experiences — and that’s why they’ll have to wait. Complexity demands reflection and there was nothing simple about the past two days.

Since we arrived in Cape Town on Monday, it seems as if everywhere I look, Table Mountain is there. It dominates any view of the city, and it’s breathtaking every time I see the mountain. Up close, one can see zebras roaming the slopes and small herds of springboks. Tomorrow morning (which is only a few hours away now), several of the teachers on this program and I will take a cable car to a point below the summit and then hike the rest of the way up. We have to return to our hotel to catch a 1:30 bus that will take us to Kirstenbosch — one of the most important gardens in the world. The visit has special meaning for me — as supporters of my Kickstarter project know.

If the weather is clear tomorrow, as it’s been since we arrived, I plan on making a GigaPan image of Cape Town from the top of Table Mountain. Here’s hoping for good weather.