16 Jan 2009 - First Week

On our sixth night here in Cape Town, I’ve finally found the time – and the internet connection – to write about my first days in South Africa. We’ve all been inundated with information, breath-taking landscapes, and quintessentially South African experiences, but I’ll do my best to introduce the city as concisely as possible…

We arrived late Sunday evening and drove the twenty minutes from the airport to the house in Rondebosch, where the 15 of us will be living for the next four months. The house has five individual locks and keys, with additional locks on all of the bedroom doors, as safety is a significant concern in South Africa, even in the relatively quiet, middle-class suburb of Rondebosch. The property is gated, and there are two locked front doors, a locked back door, and a locked door to the pool house. Eight students are sharing four bedrooms on the second floor of the main house, while seven of us share four rooms in the pool house, which is connected through a storage room to the main house. I have a single room in the pool house, and I have to unlock six different doors to get from the front of the property into my room. But already, we’ve begun to get used to having to carry around the clunky keychain full of old-fashioned iron keys. The house also has a pool and a small yard with a patio for braais (South African barbeques), and it is surrounded by abundant exotic vegetation like palms, ferns, brightly colored flowers, and broad, squat trees reminiscent of – for lack of a better comparison – those on the African savannah in the Lion King.

Table Mountain is visible from the upstairs windows and one end of the yard, as the immense rock face peaks over the house next door. Table Mountain is a ubiquitous sight from anywhere in the city and its suburbs, but it has yet to cease evoking wide-eyed awe from our group. The gray rock rises sharply out of the flat coastal cape landscape, with its peeks often shrouded in wispy, white clouds. In the mornings, when some of us have been running around the Commons – a wide, grassy park 1.25 miles around – the lights up the mountainside and the University of Cape Town (UCT) campus. The air tends to be cooler in the mornings and evenings, and the wind off of the ocean provides a pleasant atmosphere for exercise.

On Monday we visited the UCT campus and received our student IDs for the semester. We won’t be taking classes with other UCT students, as their semesters do not align with ours. But we will have classes on campus on Thursdays, beginning next week. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays we will all work at our internships, which include projects at NGOs and schools around Cape Town. I will be working at Black Sash, a human rights organization that has long been at the forefront of social issues and change in South Africa. I’ll begin learning much more about it early next week, when we participate in internship introductions.

Over the last few days, we’ve become acquainted with Cape Town Proper(the urban heart of the city, which feels a little bit like a more relaxed and less crowded Manhattan), Rondebosch, and several scenic spots on the Western Cape. Cape Town is known for its wide array of ethnic food, and we’ve already had meals in restaurants ranging from Chinese and Thai to Ethiopian. The city culture is as diverse as its food selection, as traditional meets technological and native culture blends into modern society. Between the tourists and the many ethnic groups represented in the city, it is not uncommon to overhear five or six different languages in the span of a block. Some of the traditional (though commercialized) African flavor can be found in the African art vendors that line Long St., the exotic flora of the city’s central gardens, and the group performers singing, chanting, and dancing on the street corners.

The first week of our semester is entirely an orientation to Cape Town, so we’ve had the opportunity to visit some of the most well-known and touristy places in the area. On Tuesday we also visited the American consulate for a security briefing, and I discovered the hard way that taking photos within the excessively guarded compound is strictly forbidden.

On Wednesday we delved into the history of slavery and apartheid in South Africa by visiting museums and a township on the Cape Flats. The lingering effects of apartheid, which officially ended only 15 years ago, are still present in Cape Town, especially in the dramatic disparity in the distribution of wealth between the rich (generally white) and the poor (generally black or colored). Then we drove to the top of Signal Hill, another peak near Table Mountain, to take pictures and see the city and the harbor from above.

On Thursday we had the chance to visit some of the most scenic spots on the Western Cape: Camp’s Bay, Hout Bay, Cape Point/Cape of Good Hope, and the Boulders Penguin Colony. Rather than try to explain these sites in words, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. One prototypically South African encounter must be noted, however, and that is the close run-in with a hungry baboon on Cape Point. While we were taking photos of the animal sitting on a wall about eight feet away (with many other tourists around us doing the same), the baboon decided it wanted one student’s packaged sandwich. Suddenly, it leapt from the wall, closed the space between them in two bounds, and began batting its arms at her like a sparring boxer. It jumped and snarled aggressively, but once the student realized what the baboon was after, she dropped the plastic sandwich container, and the flurry of activity subsided. The baboon sat back on its haunches several feet away and rapidly began gobbling its spoils, looking perfectly smug. It only took a minute for others from our group – attracted by the noise – to rush over, and a second near-miss occurred when the baboon caught sight of another student’s just-purchased bag of nuts. The animal bounded forward, again, entirely unafraid, and the student heaved the bag in its direction as we all bolted for the van. We left a circle of by-standing tourists snapping photos of the gluttonous pilferer in our wake.

Finally, today – Friday – we visited the V&A Waterfront, a touristy area right on the harbor, and Robben Island, on which Nelson Mandela and many other political prisoners were held until the prison was closed after Apartheid. The 1.5 hour tour ended with a walk through an old prison building, guided by a former political prisoner who’d spent four years on the desolate island, working in the limestone quarries. We took the ferry back to the city, and those of us who braved the top deck had the exciting experience of fighting the wind, which whipped so fast over the bow that it pulled back the skin on our faces as though we were sky diving.

We ate lunch on the waterfront, surrounded by tourists, shops, and children’s rides, and then many of us went grocery shopping a few blocks from the house. Trekking back across the grassy Commons to the house, I was struck by how very different the simple act of fetching groceries is for us here in South Africa. This picture should explain.

So finally, after this less-than-brief summary of our first week in Cape Town, a few more quick notes…

Some of the more superficial things that have taken some getting used to here: driving on the left side of the road, terminologies like tomato sauce instead of ketchup and chemist instead of pharmacy, learning how to buy and use phone and internet cards, and keeping cell phones, cameras, and other valuables well concealed in public areas. Going outside is also, in itself, a process, since I have to don sunscreen, sunglasses, sunhat, and a long sleeve shirt every time I step outside. As Connecticut suffers through its coldest weather spell in years, we’ve been having dangerously high sun indexes and generally warm-to-hot weather in Cape Town.

And some of the upsides to our daily life in Cape Town: the current 1 to 10 Dollar-Rand exchange rate, the very fresh fruits and vegetables (which lack most of the chemicals and artificial sweeteners that US foods contain), and the unbelievably inexpensive food. I had a delicious lunch in a city café a few days ago for under $4.00. The sun also rises much earlier in the morning and the sky is light until after 9PM, giving us plenty of time to be out and around, since we have to do things a bit differently if we go out after dark, for safety reasons. And as I’ve already mentioned, the scenery is overwhelmingly beautiful.

For another perspective and other pictures from the Cape Town program, check out our professor Marita’s blog.