Good Morning South Africa

Sorry for the lack of blogging over the last week but I've had limited internet access. I had to jump on a plane and head back to Durban and then Greytown, the teeny tiny town I grew up in to sort out some admin. :/

I head back to Cape Town today for my graduation on Saturday! I have a beautiful dress, heels, and a whole weekend of fun planned to celebrate me (finally) getting a degree! I cant wait!

While I was here in Durbs, my mum dragged me out to an event and it ended up being pretty cool. It was a Johnnie Walker whiskey tasting evening at Plush Lounge. Okay, so the club was not really my scene, but I do love my Scotch (in moderation!)

Good news for the morning:
1. Prince Charming has returned to SA from his distant palace and I will see him tomorrow!!
2. I may be in the newspaper, I need to buy the Post today
3. EWB SA: there is a motion in the ocean!

yaay!

African Beer!

I absolutely love this picture! 

I was lucky enough to visit our Engineers Without Borders project site one last time before I hand over the reigns to the new leads. Our mission was to find 'hidden' traders to get a idea of how many traders were operating 'behind the scenes'.  Most of the traders selling meat or vegetables line the main roads of the Nyanga interchange and the taxi-rank, but those who brew African Beer or 'Umqombothi' in Xhosa. (Both 'umqombothi' and 'Xhosa' have clicks in their pronunciation just by the way). The master's student on the TD4SUD project, Rissa came with us with the minivol, a machine that collects air samples for testing in the lab. While she set up and waited for the minivol to do its thing (accompanied by two chaperone's who agreed to take care of her), Tumelo and I followed Jack, our translator through the township.

Steaming drums of beer, being cooked with
harmful treated wood

The sights, sounds and most of all, the smells of Nyanga never fail to surprise me. We passed groups of old men gathered, drinking umqombothi or just sleeping off Friday-night hangovers on their humble porches. I wanted to know more about the method of brewing the beer so Jack took us into a 'shebeen' or drinking house to speak to one of the mama's. We needed this information to be able to design a stove to meet their needs.  We sat on a bench in a small shack, facing another row of customers as they talked, joked and sipped on paint-tins of beer. Jack, respectfully as always, asked the elder if she would tell us the recipe of umqombothi, which she began to relate to us with excitement.

An elder explaining the significance
of the walking stick

Once she and the other customers heard about our project, they were all to willing to help with any information we needed. Jack paid the 'mother' R5 (about 80 cents) for half a can of umqombothi and Tumelo (who is Xhosa) and I had our first try of the drink. One of the mamas taught me that the cultural way for a woman to drink umqombothi was in a kneeling position. I obliged out of respect, a value which is extremely important in the Xhosa culture. The elders told us about the traditions and cultures of the people and told us they were really glad we'd come to visit. One of the elders then said something really special to us: he told us that when we were there, nothing will happen to us and nobody will rob us. This is a privilege afforded to people and NGO's that work to help the community in township areas.  The influence of mob-justice or vigilantism exacted on caught criminals in townships by the community can be quite powerful. A colleague who worked on the upgrade of Warwick Junction in Durban a few years ago had her stolen phone returned to her 20minutes after it was taken.  Although this makes me feel slightly safer, I still wouldn't take any risks as its sometimes difficult to control the younger 'skebengu's' in the area. 

Tumelo drinking umqombothi

Me drinking the African beer

We rejoined Rissa, who had been chatting to some young men about her home in Rwanda and sharing stories over a can of umqombothi.  A group of children gathered around us, curious about the strange new faces and machine. They pushed to be in front of the camera and begged us to show them their images on the digital screens. We chatted a while longer and Jack told us about how the community had been shaken up about the Anni Dewani murder and how his Township Tours business had suffered. This unfortunately was the result of the media rampage surrounding the murder.

A man selling trinkets and plastic jewelry came by to offer his wares. I replied, in Zulu 'Ngiyaxolisa Baba, kodwa siyasebenza namhlange. Asikhona iMali.' (Sorry my father, but we are working today and do not have and money to spend). Rissa was shocked that I could speak Zulu (although that is just about all I can say in Zulu)...but I was anxious that I may have offended the man, as he was Xhosa-speaking. Jack just laughed and said, "Sweetheart, you're speaking a language of the African people, of course its ok!"  The man beamed at me, answering is Zulu that it was alright and walked away, chuckling to himself as he went...

'Mama' in her 'shebeen'

Engineer Joke of the Week!

Hot Nerd Guy...Working for you? No?

Engineering Pick-up Lines

• I won't stop bugging you until I get the address of your home page. Cringe!
• You fascinate me more than the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus.
• Since distance equals velocity times time, let's let velocity and time approach infinity, because I want to go all the way with you. Ouch, this one is wrong on so many levels
• My love for you is like a concave up function because it is always increasing.
• Let's convert our potential energy to kinetic energy.
• Wanna come back to my room? ...and see my 1000 Mhz Pentium VII?
• How about you and I go back to my place and form a covalent bond?
• You and I would add up better than a Riemann sum.
• You're sweeter than glucose. Chemical Engineering Scum!
• We're as compatible as two similar Power Macintoshes.
• Why don't we measure the coefficient of static friction between you and me? They mean DYNAMIC FRICTION I'm sure!
• Wanna see the programs in my HP-48GX?
• Your body has the nicest arc length I've ever seen.
• Isn't your e-mail address beautifulgirl@mydreams.com
• You're hotter than a bunsen burner set to full power! Sigh, poor engineer boys...You gotta love them!

Boiling Point

So I have been known to get quite stressed out at times, and I must admit, I am not fun when I do! The thing that stresses me out the most though, is getting Visa's. I don't know why, but something about the complicated process, ridiculous documentation and varying waiting times just gets works me up into a frightful mess. Do you remember this post? Travel Trauma wow.

But you've got to understand, I have had to get four different visa's this year, plus a replacement passport for my lost one! USA, UK, Australia and Canada. Not only were these really expensive and most of them were valid for only 6 months (Australia gave me a 1month visa and USA gave me a ten year), I have a habit of leaving things a little late. At one stage, I had 3 weeks to get a passport, a USA and a UK visa! (I must applaud Home Affairs for their awesome new passport process). 

A few weeks before I left for Vancouver, right in the middle of possibly the most stressful phase of my thesis project, I applied for my Canadian Visa. There was a huge mix-up with the courier company collecting my documents. I had specifically told the operator to call me before coming to fetch them, since I was working late at camps that week and couldn't guarantee where I would be. So the courier comes for my documents, and I wasn't home and he leaves. The next day I call back, and ask them to come back and this time, to PLEASE CALL ME! Around 4pm there was still no call so I race home only to find that the courier was just there and had left. Again. Now with the clock ticking on the visa-processing, I panicked. I called the courier office, insisted that the driver return immediately. I was so angry, I think I may have even tried to lodge a formal complaint against the driver.

So this skinny dude arrives at my gate, and honestly, I am not proud about the massive earful I gave the poor guy! *Rhea, breathe, one, two, ok* (is what I should have said. I'm not going to tell you what I actually said)  To be fair, it wasn't really his fault since he hadn't even got the message to call me in the first place. 

So today, after a sweaty gym session I was cooling off in the shower when the door-bell rings. The book I'd ordered had arrived. Crap, I'd forgotten about that! So I race out in a bath-robe, with a towel on my head, leaving pools of water all over my floor. I fling open my door, clutching my towel around me, and my jaw drops! Standing in front of me is THE SAME DELIVERY GUY that I'd been so inexplicably rude to a month ago! For a moment I was lost for words, then I half close the door, pretend like I don't recognise him and proceed to sign for my parcel from behind the door. It was really ridiculous but I just couldn't face him! (By the way, to make matters even worse, I got my visa more than a week before I left for Canada! Cringe!)

Moral of this story: Don't lose your cool in stressful circumstances. Treat people well, even strangers, because the world is way smaller than you think! On that note...

By the way, the book I got is called 'Boiling Point' by Leonie Joubert. I've wanted it for ages...It follows the lives of people in Sub-Saharan Africa, showing how their lives are so severely turned upside down by the effects of climate change. Let me quote something from the intro:

"When you tug on a single thing in nature, said the conservationist John Muir, you find it is attached to the rest of the world. Nowhere is this more evident than in the climate crisis. Tugging on a thread of our shared atmosphere in China or the U.S., for example, by shunting pollution into the skies, causes the fabric of local weather patterns to unravel half a world away.

Climate change is the biggest moral problem of our time, as people who have contributed little to the pollution responsible for global warming are increasingly understood to be most vulnerable to the shifting environment around them. In Boiling Point, Leonie Joubert embarks on a journey in which she explores the lives of some South Africans affected by this phenomenon: a rooibos tea farmer in the Northern Cape, a traditional fisherman in Lamberts Bay, a farmer in the center of the Free States maie belt, a political refugee in Pietermaritburg and a sangoma in Limpopo mining country. Most of these communities live on a knife-edge because of poverty and their dependence on an already capricious natural environment. Boiling Point considers what might happen to them as normal weather trends are amplified in a hotter world."

I know this is going to be a good one! Enjoy! 

Approaches to diversity: Part II

I had promised to follow up on a previous post: Approaches to Diversity from a few weeks back, and so here it is!  Now this is an interesting issue really close to my heart and I have had the chance to look at some of your comments and discuss this further with a few people, so I'm going to try and encapsulate some of it with this post. 

As a quick recap, in the previous post on this topic I talked about the low intake rate and even more dismal retention of women in the field of engineering. In recent years, we have seen a steady increase in intake rate, but a large percentage of these young women are leaving engineering soon after they get their degree, choosing instead careers in business or management. So why are we seeing this happening? Should the government just keep spending money for engineering departments to churn out graduates that are not going to eventually lead to the high numbers of engineers we need to develop our country? What can we do about it?

Afriquanwoman said: 

"One approach is reaching out in schools, from a very early age. Support networks are great too, I have found them valuable is anchoring myself in the profession, especially after having maternity leave."

 I agree with Emang here, we need to get to girls early enough for them to realise that careers in science and engineering are real possibilities and can be fun! This is something that is personally relevant to me as well. When I decided on studying mechanical engineering, my parents, teachers, and many friends all advised me against it! After prize-giving, when it was announced that I'd be studying mechanical engineering on full scholarship, one mother came up to me and said, "But isn't that a very manly thing, Rhea?"

So definitely, educating people on what engineering can be (not just grease and big machines) is important in changing the perception of the field to young women. I love www.EngineerYourLife.org for the work they do, giving girls a platform to grow as young engineers.

Naadiya, co-founder of the awesome and amazing SAWomEng wrote: 

"At SAWomEng, we are in the process of solving or at least putting together platforms to discuss and solve some of the critical issues facing the attraction and retention of women in the engineering industry. This year, from our GirlEng group, about 75% of the girls will be studying engineering next year for the right reasons - to be an engineer. It is exciting times as we aim to "build the staircase" to fix the problem. Watch this space...

So yes, there is a definite trend towards changing the perception of the field, and everyone agrees that 'the engineering flame' must be lit early on, But what about the retention of these girls in the field? I spoke to a lecturer in my department, a particularly old-school professor who had strong (and well known) views on women in the field...(note, I'm paraphrasing here)

Prof C: "I have no problem with women in mechanical engineering. If they feel comfortable being here, they can come! But I wouldn't want people to be in a career that makes them feel uncomfortable." 

(Well Prof, I can tell you right now, being in a class of mostly males is daunting and very UNCOMFORTABLE for most girls!)

Eng-Chic: "But what about the value that diversity adds to the class? What about the fact that having a diverse spread of people will generate a greater range of ideas then if you only had one demographic of students with identical backgrounds?"

Prof C: "Well, in my years of being a design lecturer, I've observed that most students, no matter their backgrounds, will produce a very narrow range of ideas for any assignment. Unless there is absolute proof that diversity benefits mechanical engineering students, I don't see the value. I don't think we should take women just for diversity's sake. And I don't agree with the quota system because it means we end up taking students who are not the best performers, or only applied here because they couldn't get into medicine or business"."

Okay, so this approach was clearly not working. How do you get through to someone who disregarded soft-skills to such a great extent. He's an engineer right, and engineers are logical...

Eng-Chic: "Yes, I get that with the push for a higher intake of female students or the 'quota-system', we end up taking students that are not necessarily top performers. But women are coming and that is a fact. Things are changing and I think the industry needs to change to facilitate it, to help it along even.Women are not taking over from men in the field, we are expanding its scope, adding to what mech eng is and what it can be."

Prof C: "Well, as you say, change will happen. So let it happen naturally. I don't think we need to do anything actively to facilitate it."

Eng-Chic: "No, we must actively change. We have to make the industry more attractive to women. Like the Engineering News magazine for instance. Its interesting and important, but completely male-focused! Its painful for me to page through, but the articles are really great. Women respond to colour and design and are being put off by the how the engineering world portrays itself. We need to let the women know that not only is there a space for them, but an entire platform for them to mold and shape the field, bringing in their femininity and being who they are! This way, we will be attracting the girls who would have applied to medicine and business, the top performers. They will come here, to engineering, first, and not as a third option. We need to make this a valuable and attractive career for a woman to pursue. Otherwise, we'll keep just getting women for the sake of having women doing the course."

Prof C: "Hmmm...So make the field more attractive to woman and attract a higher caliber of applicant that actually wants to be here? Wow, you're right. You're absolutely right! I suppose we do need to change."

And thats how Engineer-Chic won....

Just kidding. It was a small victory, but I'll take it. B.H., founding member of EWB UCT and ex-Chair did his thesis on "Challenges in Producing 21st Century Engineering"...I'll get into this one in the next post but for now, I'm trying to have an open mind about things. 

I'll leave you with one last thought from Naadiya that really got me thinking that maybe I need to open my mind even further to the way I view engineering:

"But as we move into the future, and after experiencing the African Leadership Network, I met many engineers from MIT, Harvard etc, many of whom are not practicing engineers, I realised that they still have immense value as they own their own companies creating job opportunities, working in development banks etc...and this just shows the flexibility of our degrees and the ability for engineers to change the world."

Career Confusion

Well, this post can potentially get me into a bit of trouble, but I think that if I'm to stay true to myself and my purpose for blogging (sharing my experiences and the challenges faced being a young woman in engineering), I have got to include it...

So I'm done with my degree and the new year is approaching. The working year in SA starts in January so the question of what I am going to do next year is something that has been coming up quite often lately! I'm on a bursary with a large, international diversified mining and resources company, lets call them X.  X has been an awesome bursar and the people there have been supportive and helpful throughout my studies. However, during the four, 6-week long stints of vacation-work I've done with them on a Ferrochome Smelting Plant over the past 5 years, I've realised that a career in maintenance was simply not for me! Vac-work gave  me the opportunity to work under various mentors and on some interesting projects but every way I look at it, I still find that this is not the career that I want to pursue. I love project management and operations so maintenance just did not align with my personality or goals. Furthermore, I simply did not enjoy the environment.

So about 6 months ago, I decided to address this misalignment and put in an application to move to the project management division of X. I thought this was a far better (and more dignified) move than getting myself bought off by another company. X had done a lot for me and I wanted to take it up with them first. Around September I heard that my application was unsuccessful and that I was to be stuck on the plant for the next four years...So, when the Global FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) company Y came knocking, I decided to give it a go, and five interviews later, I got an offer in their Supply Network and Operations!   

As you can imagine, I was thrilled! Finally, a job that seemed like such a perfect fit (remember my thesis project was a supply-chain management project). Apart from that, their brand new Sandton offices were not just a little tempting...Everything seemed right in the world until X (who had no idea that Y had given me an offer) suddenly contacted me saying they have approved my move into Projects. Now this is where the fun really started. I was completely thrown off. All of a sudden everything: my future, my purpose, my career!!! was blurred. For a control-freak like me, you can only imagine how dizzying this was. I was torn between what I wanted to be, what I thought I wanted to be and what I thought I 'should' be. 

I took the approach that came naturally to me: I resourced. I talked to my friends, family, lecturers and mentors. I contacted other young women in the field, other bloggers and read anything useful I could find.  I made lists and drew up pros and cons, I compared and contrasted and worked myself up into a confused heap of nerves, terrified of making the wrong decision. These were both great companies after all, and both really great opportunities! From all this seeking and questioning, I only really learned two things: 1. By choosing business (Company Y) I would be divorcing myself forever from the field of engineering. 2. Nobody could make his decision for me or tell me which to choose, the decision had to be made by me.

So, having been filled with as much good advice as I could manage, and even more confused than when I started out, I decided to think about things very differently. I sat down and thought very long and very hard about, well, me. I realised that I'd been so caught up in the awesomeness and glamour of these opportunities that I'd completely lost sight of who I was and what I wanted my life to be. Emang (aka Afriquanwoman) gave me possibly the best tip of all:

"We often give so much of ourselves to our employers and sometimes, it does not do us the best of favours for our own personal careers. So definitely prioritise. Which company satisfies your own personal causes, I note your passion for development and social consciousness? You do not necessarily have to share all your personal goals with your employer, in some cases they will not match your employers, and that’s ok. But be true to yourself and your journey."

I cut out all of the frills and fancies, the salary, the name, even the work and just looked inwards. I asked myself, 'What are you passionate about?' and came up with the following:

• Development in Africa
• Women in Engineering
• Education in Science and Engineering

And surprisingly, things became very clear, very fast. All my passions and interests lay in engineering. I read the Engineering News magazine each week, Popular Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering Today. I am an active member of ASME, an Engineering society, and Engineers Without Borders. I mean come on, I have a blog about how awesome it is to be a woman and an Engineer! Why wasn't this as glaringly obvious before? Why was there so much confusion in the first place?  I am an engineer. I was born an engineer and I think like an engineer. This is the perfect fit for me, and I'm gonna stop trying to be someone else.

Well, I suppose there are many reasons for the confusion, all boiling down to me being too focused on what I thought I wanted to do and what I thought I should do.  In the end, it doesn't matter to me if I end up on a plant, in a lab or in a fancy office. All that matters is that I'm doing what I love, what I'm passionate about and what is going to ultimately lead me to my major life goals. I'm going to follow the path that opens doors, and not just anyone's random idea of what a 'door' is, but the right doors...for me! If I am really going to stay true to myself, then there is only one option. 

Back to work

So I'm back home and all settled back into my regular routine...well, not quite. I'm so badly jet-lagged that I only get to bed at 3am and sleep until 12:30! While this schedule may be all well and good in Vancouver, I'm ending up wasting most of the day! Its almost 1am here so after this blog, I'm going to down a warm glass of milk and try to get to sleep.

I met today with some EWB project members to catch up on what I'd missed while I was away. The major TD4SUD (project EXCO) meeting apparently went very well, except that the City of Cape Town has planned to go ahead with the upgrades to the project site, Nyanga Interchange and this may change things quite a bit. Unfortunately, they wont let us in on their plans so we have to be flexible enough to work around them. Also, this pushes back our timeline quite considerably! Due to their upgrades only transpiring in 6-8 months, where does that leave the traders during that time? Will they be able or willing to invest in the stoves we are subsidizing if they know they are going to be (temporarily) displaced in the near future? I guess we have to keep pushing The City for more information until we can make some solid plans.

It seems we are going out to the site again this Saturday morning (jet-lag allowing). This is great since I've been admittedly a little, well, terrified! I know it sounds crazy but I'm still shaken by the story I mentioned in the previous blog. Even walking down the street out here in the university-suburb of Rondebosch has my heart pounding in my chest, grasping my handbag and keeping my head down. I really think that the trip on Saturday will be cathartic, a way of "getting back on the horse" so to speak. The great thing is that other project members I saw today (who are coming along on Saturday) completely sympathize and understand my feelings. (Thanks guys, you know you're awesome!) I will definitely be letting you know how it goes.

Check out some of these blogs about how I came to terms with working on the streets of Nyanga this year.

"Nyanga, I'm starting to learn"

"Back to Nyanga"

On another note, my technical leader, Matt has taken up a vacation-work position at an energy-efficient stove manufacturer, Honeycomb for the Summer! These guys have been hard at work developing us a stove to meet our (the traders') requirements! They are extremely cool and I am thrilled to have had a sneaky hand in setting up the vac-work opportunity for this bright-eyed first year who has shown time and again that he totally rocks at getting things done! I'm not letting any secrets out just yet, but I'm expecting great things from this young man in the near future of this project!

Check out Honeycomb: the proudly South African, sustainable energy manufacturer!