24 Jan 2009 – A Bit of History, A Bit of Scenery

On Thursday morning, twelve of us opted to walk the 45 minutes to UCT campus for our 9:30 class. The air was cool and dry as we set off down to Main Rd, walking in a line with our backpacks and school clothes like first graders headed off for their first day of school. As we crossed the multi-lane streets during rush hour, however, we more closely resembled ducklings scurrying clumsily after one another. The sun was beating warm enough for us to break a sweat by the time we reached the base of the mountain and began the fifteen minute ascent to Upper Campus, and when we arrived at the top of the umpteenth stair case, we dragged ourselves straight to the cafeteria for water.


We had wandered around the familiar section of campus for about ten minutes before we found someone who could direct us to the African Studies Building, where our classes were held. At the top of several more staircases, including one that spiraled up the center of a large central room, we finally landed in our seats, physically fatigued, but mentally prepared to jump right into our first class of the day: Politics of South Africa, instructed by Dr. Vincent Williams. He led us through a 350-year history of the country in just over 2 hours, and contextualized a great deal of the information we’ve encountered during the last two weeks.


We discussed the power struggle between the English and the Dutch in the Western Cape, the rise of the Nationalist Party (NP), the major events that led to and occurred during Apartheid, and the election and rule of the African National Congress (ANC) since 1994. But of course, we will delve into these topics in much greater detail throughout the twelve-week semester.

Instead of meeting for our second class of the day, we had to turn in our first assignment – a journal reflection on the time we’ve spent in South Africa so far. Many students worked on the assignment during the unusual block of free time before our evening class, while I headed to an internet café on Main Rd. At our “usual” café, we were shocked to find half of the computers were missing, and the owners – two hipster young men who are used to dealing with foreign students – nearly had us convinced that there’d been a robbery the night before (actually, they were just upgrading their inventory). We ended up at a small, family-owned internet café called Wash and Web, and a half hour later, walked to our professor’s flat for the evening class, Gender in the Global Perspective.

Our professor had been kind enough to offer us dinners on Thursday nights if we held class at her flat, so we sat (not uncomfortably) around her living room as we discussed the course expectations and outline. The dinner was delicious, and far more involved than anything I could have hoped to produce for myself, so though the class ran a little longer than planned, no one seemed to mind.

Friday was our first completely free day since the trip began, so we all headed to the beach: ten to Muizenburg, and five a bit later to Clifton 4. I ended up at the latter, but couldn’t help but be a little jealous when we heard that Muizenburg had had a shark sighting that afternoon, and hundreds of swimmers had fled the water in a panic.

Our minibus taxi rides (two to get there, two to get back) were an experience in their own right. But I’ve just finished detailing that aspect of the trip in a post on our professor’s blog, which will be posted as of the 25th. So for a description of the downtown minibus terminal at rush hour, please refer to her blog, which is linked off of this page. During the second leg of the ride to the beach, I sat next to a young man from Tanzania, who struck up a conversation with us after he noticed I was carrying a soccer ball. He and his friends, all students at a business school in Cape Town, were curious about our time in South Africa and interested in telling us about Mount Kilimanjaro and their native country, before we got off at our stop.

Clifton 4 Beach is known for the beauty of both its landscapes and its people, and we spent the afternoon lounging in the sun (or under a rented umbrella, in my case), darting into the cold surf for a few moments at a time, and exploring the boulder-strewn beach, which we capriciously dubbed “Paradise Island”. We played a bit of soccer with a group of English students doing an interim term abroad, here, and then walked about ten minutes down the road to Camp’s Bay for a mid-afternoon snack. The oceanfront restaurants were all crowded with tourists, and we were regaled by a local street performer before hitching a ride back into Cape Town on a westward minibus.

The evening was slow, as most of the group was suffering the effects of too much sun (burns and lethargy, mostly). We rented The Constant Gardener (one of my favorite movies) from a rental place near Woolworth’s, and most of us gathered on the comfortable couches of the common room to watch the film. Watching it in South Africa gave us a chance to view the story from a more relevant and personal perspective, as the effects of corporatization, corruption, and HIV/AIDS (some central themes of the movie) can all be seen around Cape Town and its townships.

Saturday, too, was unburdened by prior plans, so most of us went our separate ways to run errands and work on homework assignments. In the pool house, a group of us worked on homework until noon, and then walked all over Rondebosch on what turned out to be the hottest day since we arrived. We stopped at the video store, a clothing shop, two book stores, and the grocery store, not to mention the rather distant pick-up spot for the Jammie (the free transit bus to UCT), which we were disappointed to discover does not operate on weekends.

Several of us planned to go see the UCT-sponsored enactment of The Tempest at the Baxter Theater on Main Rd. at 8PM, but after walking all the way there, we found that it was sold out. We had called ahead, but by some miscommunication, we’d expected to be able to purchase tickets around 7:30. A few people decided to stay and watch an African play that was also beginning at 8PM, but the rest of us walked back to the house in the waning summer evening light. As we crossed the Commons, we couldn’t help but stop by a massive, toppled tree for a while, posing for pictures and generally “monkeying” around while the sun sunk lower behind Table Mountain and the sky silhouetted the peaks in a pinkish glow. I read somewhere that the African sky seems twice as big as anywhere else on earth, and I’m finding this to be irreproachably true.