A Chess Mom Loose in Durban -- Part two

I am almost alone on the beach at sunrise, except for the few women walking to work with their colorful headscarves fluttering like love-struck suitors behind them. The other day Josh and I noted that Durban is strangely absent of dogs, stray or pet. We resolve to research why this is, but never do. There is too much else to see and understand.

Students at KwaPitela Primary School, in the Drakensberg Mountains above Durban

Rising early I walk on the beach, leaving Josh to sleep as much as he can before another day of World Youth Chess. Signs are staked in the sand warning that swimming is forbidden and the usual array of young surfers are absent. The ocean is certainly riotous and unruly this morning, throwing bawdy stories and broken shells that stick in my bare feet, whipping the sand at me so that my skin and mouth feel gritty, a sensation a friend who lived as a child in the Sahara recalled and had once described to me. "Yemajah," I shout into the wind, "I have not forgotten you." Immediately my calls are answered by a deep-voiced singing:  rich, melodious and unmistakenly African. I turn around startled and squint up and down the coast. The beautiful song seems to be coming from a man I can barely make out ahead of me through the midst of sea and sand. For a moment I wonder about the prudence of continuing on toward him, alone as I am on the beach, but his singing is soothing and pleasurable -- I cannot believe anyone who sings like this can pose a threat. The singing continues and grows louder, but I cannot discern the words which I assume must be Zulu or Xhosa and the melody too is allusive, broken as it is by the sounds of the wind and ocean. The man himself I only see in bits and parts as I get closer, as if I am watching him painted onto a canvas. His sinewy dark figure is erased and redrawn in a constant whir of motion and when I am almost upon him I realize that he is going back and forth into the ocean -- either he hasn't read or has chosen to ignore the posted warnings.  He is sopping wet and dressed in only the flimsiest of white underbriefs. When he comes in from the sea he crouches in front of a line of plastic soda bottles which he appears to be filling with sand and ocean. My initial thought is that I have come upon a madman. Again I check myself -- should I turn around and bolt? But the man has stopped singing and he is smiling at me, a bony arm raised in greeting. He is so thin that his chest recedes and I am afraid his hand will disintegrate when I take it into mine, but am instantly surprised by the strength, warmness and firmness of his handshake. We introduce ourselves. He spells out  his name so I can say it properly. W-I-T-O-L-D -- it takes me about three times before my diction satisfies him. "I am Zulu," his skeleton chest puffs out with pride when he tells me this, fills up as if there is something much more substantial than the skin and bones that make him. "My language was Zulu, but they taught me English in school. I can barely speak Zulu anymore,' he says, not complaining but as if trying to make me feel better about my lousy English-centric pronunciation of his name.  I think of all the bands of South African children Josh and I have seen on school trips to the beach, combing the souvenir huts for cheap toys and marching in line behind stern, poker-faced teachers into the public swimming pools, orderly and neat in their crisp school uniforms. The discipline of South African institutions  reminds me of our years in Mexico. I imagine little Witold marching upright with his classmates, reciting English phrases. His English is near perfect.
"I had a good job with a big corporation but I was laid off, so now I sell these to the gas station up the road (he points to the plastic bottles of sand and sea). I look into his face, which is solemn, stubborn and brave, and  wonder again if he is just a bit insane -- why would a gas station want ocean water? (but later, when I make friends with three women from Limpopo I learn more about this tradition).
"Your singing is beautiful," I tell him. "but I could not understand the words," still thinking it must have been in Zulu. He looks abashed suddenly, as if realizing for the first time that he is standing in front of a strange woman in his underwear, underwear that is wet, transparent and practically falling off his small frame. I try to make him feel more comfortable by turning away and squinting out at the sea. I have not in all this time looked down below his waist. He follows my gaze and answers less shyly: "It is a song we learned at school," -- and recites the words which sound like Zulu to me. "Yes," I say,  "but what do they mean?" Again he repeats the words --  this time with the slow, even,  patience he showed when teaching me his name. "What-the-Mighty-God-Gives-Us," he repeats and then he begins to sing, in that deep sonorous voice, like the ancient African wind that once whipped around King Shaka and Durban before the obscene Coca Cola tower shown haughtily over the highrise hotel towers and elephants and leopards roamed the beach. And with that, Witold walked majestically back into the sea with his bucket and plastic soda bottles, leaving me alone again in Africa, surrounded by coastal fog, and I turned back toward the hotel to wake Josh for another day of chess.

A Chess Mom Loose in Durban -- Part one

Sunrise over Indian Ocean from our hotel room window

6 a.m.
The wind blows a shrill alarm, parting our room's curtains to reveal a sunrise veiled in mist. I rise, my body light with no sense of waking. Slowly a mosaic forms in the sky, it appears magically as if from nowhere --  Sun, himself remains hidden. The sharp beaked birds who startled us yesterday with their newness spread batik patterned wings and dive into pools of spray to disappear. A lone man walks along the beach, nothing more than a couple of sticks. A seabird hawks my birth name, for a moment reminding me of my mother's voice -- and then she is carried away. The sea reaches out to me and then recedes. Yemejah -- why have we forsaken you?
***
"I sell dis necklish for 20 rand, but I give to you for 10 because I am hoongree," the squat fierce mama says as she holds up a pile of strung beads with patterns like the wings of the sharp beaked birds whose name we do not know. She punctuates the "hoongree" stretching the syllables so the word grows like a deep pain in the stomach that is impossible to ignore or forget. The woman's name is Zonke and the necklace looks like all the other cha-chas that the women sell in stalls along the beach. As Zonke draws it around Jochi's neck I know he will not wear it and I almost think we are saved from buying it when she cannot release the clasp. But then she and the mama in the next stall pull out more and more of the identical jewelry and every one of the clasps are stuck. Zonke's friend uses her teeth in desperation, but no matter how hard they try they cannot unclasp a single one. I say to Zonke: "she cannot even open it with her teeth," and Zonke answers: "Yes, I have no teet," as she smiles to reveal a neat row of squat brown teeth so I do not know what she means unless they are false?

World Youth Chess Championship 2014 Part 1

World Youth 2014 at the ICC-Durban

This post will encompass my first six games of the World Youth Chess Championship 2014. After game six we had a break day. The tournament was held at the International Conventional Center (ICC) in Center City, Durban, which is a large modern building that sits across the street from the African National Congress (ANC) headquarters. The ANC has a decade-long history of fighting injustices against black people in South Africa. It is the ruling government party in the country today.

I played in the under-14 section (u14). There were under-8 to under-18 sections, skipping two years between each. So there were players from almost every age up to 18, even including a four year old from China in the under-8 section!

After each short round post I will include the game in a link.The only one I did not include was the first round, as I can't seem to find the notation for that game. Also you can download all of them in one pgn at the bottom of the page. In-depth analysis is included for the top and most interesting games.

Also if you don't have a chess application and want to view the games and my analysis with a chess application, I would recommend the free program Scid. Just open the pgn with Scid and you'll be able to follow the games and my analysis with a 2d chess board. Get it here: http://scid.sourceforge.net/



Round 1

One Zimbabwe chess player in their colorful team jacket (you can see me behind him waiting for my opponent)

 In this tournament I had the pleasure to play both the highest and the lowest ranked players. This round I played number 101, the top (but only) player from Swaziland! It was very interesting to play against somebody from Africa, unfortunately the game wasn't as interesting and I lost the notation.


Round 2

Waiting with Harsha for our game to begin

This round I got to play the No. 1 player from India, Harsha Barathakoti, rated 2297 Fide! This game I played black. Overall I blame my troubles for one stupid move I made, after that everything went downhill, although I could have defended much better. Even though I lost, it was still a pretty good game, and Harsha played very well after he got the upper hand.

Click this link to download the pgn of the game:
Harsha Barathakoti - Angel Hernandez-Camen

Round 3

Before my game with Yuantai Luanchen

It seemed a little suspicious that a player from China was only rated 1500 Fide (the top player from China won the u14 section!), so I was sure not to underestimate Yuantai Luanchen. However he didn't prove himself in the opening and played much too passive. All in all it was a fairly easy game.

Click this link to download the pgn
Angel Hernandez-Camen - Yuantai Luanchen

Round 4
On board 10, this was my second try against a top player, this time from Italy rated 2334 , but it didn't end up being any more successful than the first. I got into a passive but solid position and he got the slight upper hand. However he ended up being greedy, snatching a pawn, which I failed to take advantage of and quickly found myself in a lost position. I basically let him checkmate me and that was that.

Click this link to download the pgn of the game:
Luca Moroni - Angel Hernandez-Camen

Round 5

Again I got dropped to the low rated bunch, this time I played u14 #18 from South Korea and Number 1 from South Korea in this tournament. I got nervous by how solid positionally he was playing, but then I got him with a tactical punch.

Angel Hernandez-Camen - Chon Yongjoon

Round 6

This game was potentially the best game that I've ever played. I played against Quenti Burri, the top French u14 player rated 2312, who acted very cocky before the game. He was joking with the French #2 (who is right next to him) and he obviously thought it was going to be an easy game. Little did he know...

Click this link to download the pgn of the game:
Quenti Burri - Angel Hernandez-Camen

Click this to download all the games I played before the free day!
World Youth 2014 Games Part 1

Arriving in South Africa

Durban is a large city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal which comprises the Southeastern part of the country and includes many kilometers of Indian Ocean coastline, wetlands peppered with beautiful birds, hippos and rhinos, mountains, farmland, goats and bulls grazing in the highway, colorfully-dressed people walking in the roads, pesky vervet monkeys and a host of game reserves with every native animal including the Big Five -- lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and rhino.   The largest ethnic group in the province are the Zulu people (who once owned the land) and isiZulu is their native tongue, though there are altogether 11 official languages spoken in South Africa.  It is widespread, though, even among non-Zulu people, to greet with the Zulu word "Sawubona." It is similar to the English hello except it means literally “We see you,” the “we” referring to the ancestors, gods, spirits or so on. It means to truly see a person at their deepest level.  You say “Sawubona” and the other person answers “Yebo, Sawubona.” (Yes, we see you)

 ***

Josh before his first round at the World Youth Chess Tournament

Hi, I am Angel Jochi Hernandez-Camen or, as most of my friends call me, Josh. I am a 14-year-old chess master and started playing when I was 10. This is a fairly late time to start playing chess, but nevertheless I am on the verge of entering the top 10 in my age group for USA and striving for more. That doesn't mean it wasn't a humongous honor to be accepted into the prestigious World Youth Chess Championship held this year in Durban. To play against the best kids in the world...and it seemed even more daunting after my terrible play in the two tournaments I played preceding it (two wins in the 14 games I played, and not against the strongest players either!). However, I can safely say that I overcame these two tournaments with my nice performance in the World Youth!

We arrived in South Africa a few days before the tournament, to get accustomed to the difference in time, and to have some time to see Durban. Along with the chess I am also a music composition student, so I was very interested to hear the music of South Africa. South Africa music is full of singing and dancing, but it was only in Durban that I saw the most emphasis on drums as well (This was only in the places we visited).  Here's an example of what we saw and heard in Durban (please excuse the quality of these videos especially when you make them full screen. The originals are beautiful but when I upload them onto blogger they get compressed and blurry. If anyone has a solution to this let us know. In the meantime just watch them in tiny mode!):

                                                   (Opening ceremony before Round 1)

                                                                      (on a walk)

As much as I loved the melodic and especially rhythmic content of the singing in South Africa, I was really hoping to get to hear and see more traditional instruments. I was hoping to see an African marimba or harp but I would never see any traditional music played with anything more than voice and drums. Despite my initial skepticism though I would come to really love and enjoy South African music even without instruments...but I still wish I heard an African harp! Perhaps with another month to spare I might have been able to explore the African music scene more deeply.

Skins drying in a booth at the Muthi Market

On the same walk of the last video we also saw an African healer helping somebody quit smoking. This walk was on our way to the Muthi market of Durban. “Muthi” means traditional Zulu medicine and it is where many of the local Zulu people come after getting a diagnosis from a Zulu medicine man or diviner. We asked a person working there to show us what some of the muthi was, and what it might be used for. She showed us some of the animal skins they used, and a concoction of tree bark which was to be made into a tea and drunk to help something or other, I forget. In any case we decided to ask her what she would recommend to me to win the tournament. She thought for a while, asked a couple of people, and finally found a medicine man to give us advice. It was hard to understand him though since he spoke little English, and the only words we knew in Zulu were "sawubona," and "unjani (how are you) and unfortunately we did not write any of it down, as we were not super serious, but it was interesting nonetheless. I do remember two ingredients were water and some animals skin that needed to be grounded into a pulp. We did not leave the Muthi Market without getting something however, some man sold us an “African Potato”, telling us it was for problems with “bile” or stomach problems (Later we would see the plant that sprouts from this bulb in the Drakensburg mountains, and learn that it has been used for medicinal purposes since the time of the Bushmen and today is an ingredient in a pharmaceutical drug used to help cancer patients). Amazingly, US Customs allowed us to bring it into the States and I guess I’ll try it if I ever get a stomach ailment!

Anyway that's some of my most interesting experiences in Durban, South Africa. I relearned how to move the pieces, downloaded some games of the top 30-ish kids in the section, and after a good night's rest I was ready to play!

I want to thank the following people who helped me with my chess and to get to World Youth: Grandpa Clyde, Florri Middleman and the Watermark Foundation, Steve Shutt, Greg Shahade, Ronen Har-Zvi, Melanie Brennan, Coach El-Mekki and the students of the Paul Robeson Chess Club, Coach Douglas Cox, Malik, Javier and Sandra Kuehnle, Sue Sigmund, Edit Kurali, the Masterman Chess Team and all my other chess friends and opponents, Lucy, Tom, David, and Erik Brodsky, Wei Xu and Jason Li, Dov Gorman, Nick De Firmian, Ben Finegold, Aviv Freidman, Ben Cooper, Philly ASAP and anyone else I forgot. Thank you!

***

Man walking in Center City Durban

But if you are going to wear blinders then you do not know the world.

--Miriam Makeba (Mama Africa), South African singer and civil rights activist

I first learned that my son, Angel Jochi (Josh) Hernandez-Camen, qualified to participate in the World Youth Chess Tournament 2014 in Durban, South Africa, from his Masterman team chess coaches Stephen Shutt and IM Greg Shahade. Two of the most supportive mentors you could ever hope to have for your chess-loving son, they did not present this to me as an option or a possibility but as a matter of fact: he qualified and we were going. Considering I am a low-income single mom, I found their optimism a bit over the top. The cost of such a venture was astronomical. But their enthusiasm soon wore on me and put Josh in gear to go. We began to get excited about the adventure.  Before you knew it, Josh and I were discussing fundraising schemes, borrowing money from relatives and researching scholarships. We made and sold tamales at chess tournaments, received a large grant from the Watermark Kids Foundation which covered the bulk of Josh's expenses, and generous gifts from Josh’s grandfather.

Besides the money issue we had another more personal obstacle to hurtle. Josh and I had been building relationships with the African American chess community in Philadelphia to help level the playing field and build more success for the students, to bring more attention to the fact that money and fine coaches are needed for chess students to go beyond just ordinary after-school type play. As obvious as this may sound to any parent or chess student who is trying to compete, there is still a general lack of support for many of our public school chess students especially children of color from challenged communities. I guess because Josh and I have had to build his chess career from the bottom up -- without private coaches or a lot of money, always scraping from one tournament to another, wondering how we were going to pay off the credit cards for yet another weekend of hotel stay and tournament fees -- we understood what obstacles needed to be hurtled for a lower-income black student to achieve at chess. For our own sake and for the love of the game we knew we had to help fight against these glaring inequities.


All this considered, I felt uncomfortable about Josh (my part Mexican-part Russian son) and I getting the opportunity to go to Africa when there are so many black students that given the opportunities and situation Josh has had should be having the opportunity to see Africa and explore their roots. Despite my apprehension we were warmly supported by many of our friends in the African American chess community, especially Coach Douglas and Coach El Mekki, of the Paul Robeson Chess Club and our good friend Malik who kept in touch with us daily through our entire journey (and also helped us to restore our home when we returned to find it trashed by our house sitter after a month away, but that is another story for another time).

South Africa is known for its success of a grassroots movement to overthrow an apartheid system against people of color, but it still has much work to do to insure that all people have equal rights and opportunities. Like the US there are huge income gaps and many low income black people live in poverty and lack basic opportunities. There are great gaps in the education system and racism is still rampant. Our collective long histories of colonization has taken a toll on society that still has a long way to be put repaired.

When we were searching for lodging in the Drakensberg mountains where we wanted to hike to see ancient cave art, we came across a backpackers lodge that ran a volunteer program at a Zulu primary school. After some correspondence back and forth we arranged to jump
start a chess program at the school and to set up an exchange with the Paul Robeson chess club. Coach El Mekki and the students of the Paul Robeson Chess Club sent photos and greetings with us, an autographed chess board, chess key chains and various chess equipment. We could not bring them all with us (this time) or have them go in our stead, but we could be a mouthpiece, embassies of the students dreams and wishes. It’s not much perhaps, but we take little steps along the way and hope one day we all get to a just end. We also brought a dozen chess sets donated by Dewain Barber, longtime scholastic chess coach and supporter, owner of  American Chess Equipment and sponsor of the national “Dewain Barber Tournament of K-8 Champions.” Josh and I will write more about this program and how it developed in later blogs.

Josh looking at a mural depicting the South African Bill of Rights which was drawn up as part of the negotiations to end apartheid.

In addition, to help us to understand the situation in South Africa, Josh and I studied the history of apartheid through several books and films and also read Things Fall Apart by the  wonderful African author Chinua Achebe. I’m not sure any of this totally prepared us for what we would experience on our journey, but we attempted as much as possible to enter upon it with open eyes and as much thoughtfulness as we could.

In the following blogs Josh and I will share our joint and separate impressions of South Africa, of playing and being a “chess mom” at a grueling World Youth Tournament, of the Zulu school we visited, of the people we met, the villages we traveled through, and what we learned during the tremendous month we spent in South Africa. We hope it will give you a glimpse into our South African adventure.