I celebrated Easter morning with another run to the Rhodes Memorial, but on the way back, stopped at Pick ‘N’ Pay for – of all things – eggs. Though most of the house went out to Kirstenbosch in the late afternoon for an evening concert at the Gardens, a lot of us spent the afternoon watching agreeably frivolous movies in the Common Room. Before dinner I Skyped home for the holiday and then worked on putting together some of the slideshow presentation our group will be using for the May 1st symposium at UConn.
On Monday, our group enjoyed the novelty of the South African holiday and distributed time between assignments, errands, and small trips around Cape Town. Dan and Steph O. rode out towards Strand for Coke Fest, where several internationally popular artists performed during the afternoon and evening. Tuesday and Wednesday made for a short week at our internships, but with the presidential elections looming just a week away, many of our organizations have been exceptionally busy preparing for the big event.
At the Black Sash, Cassidy and I spent nearly all of Tuesday and Wednesday on the phone trying to contact more than fifty individuals representing NGOs and other civil society organizations around Cape Town. Our organization recently released its summary of the seven major political parties’ platforms on socioeconomic rights, and in an effort to encourage productive debate amongst members of South African civil society, the Black Sash arranged a breakfast meeting for this morning. Our goal was to bring a broad spectrum of political and economic views to the table for an open discussion.
Fulfilling our traditional intern roles, we phoned other organizations for attendance confirmations, made copies of booklets and agendas, created formalized guests lists, and assembled name tags for the event. (On Wednesday night our house met to discuss a braai we will be hosting on Sunday afternoon, and in an odd case of déjà vu, we wound up formulating more guest lists and delegating preparatory tasks amongst the group.)
This morning, a cab picked Cassidy and I up from Loch Rd at 7AM and drove us out to Sea Point, just north of the Central Business District, where the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung organization and the Black Sash had booked a breakfast/conference room from 8:00 to 11:00 at the Winchester Mansions. The venue was classically beautiful with its ornate architecture and floral vines cascading down the interior courtyard walls. Even the unusually cold, gray morning couldn’t detract from the hotel’s charm as we scurried about, laying out the documents and name tags and sign-in sheets. We put on our most diplomatic smiles as we greeted the three or four dozen attendees, several of whom had the air of stiff, non-nonsense political types and others who looked nearly as flustered as we felt.
We worked the front table for about an hour, and then slipped into the conference room to grab a bite to eat before jumping back into the cab waiting outside for a ride up to UCT for class. We arrived – as expected – about half an hour late to the morning class, but were there in time to take notes on the topics that will be covered in next week’s final exam. In the afternoon, Vernon joined us for the first time in two weeks, having just flown in from North Carolina where he’d been doing interviews for UNC Chapel Hill’s Cape Town study abroad program. We discussed our internships and final papers, and then many of us returned to the house for the hour and a half before Marita’s class.The entire three hour class at Marita’s flat was dedicated to a very rough first-run of our symposium presentation for May 1st. We went through the 250+ slide presentation and delivered our 5 to 10 minutes-worth of information about internships, activities, and cultural experiences, taking the time to critique the content, delivery, and pictorial representations of each segment. It was a rather exhausting process at the end of such a long day, but the mood remained light, overall, especially as we descended into comedic reenactments of riding minibuses and telling jokes in Afrikaans. It was long past dark when we finally concluded the presentation and prepared to walk home for the night.
With our final days in South Africa fast approaching, I am sure the next week will be full of activity here at 10 Loch Rd. I’ll do my best to continue updating in a timely fashion.
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