The overhead light in the main room of the pool house has been out for almost a week, and it’s beginning to get on our nerves. On any given day, there are plenty of things that require fixing at 10 Loch Rd – the front gate, the oven, the pool filter – but the burnt out light bulbs have been the worst. For five nights we’ve cooked dinner in the dark, cleaned the dishes in the dark, tried to find our food in the over-stuffed fridge in the dark, and gathered to try on clothes and prepare for nights out… in the dark. The landlord has stopped by a few times a week to check up on projects around the house, but he’s yet to address the overhead light (and a number of others in some bedrooms). So to finish off this little rant… I write tonight from the perpetual darkness of the pool house main room.
On to more interesting topics:
On Thursday we had an abbreviated class day because of some rescheduled classes, so most people took advantage of the free morning and ran errands to grocery and book stores around Rondebosch and Cape Town. We had class in the evening, sitting around Marita’s living room, again, discussing our creativity/problem-solving profiles and eating a delicious dinner (a.k.a. a “McComiskey special”) and dessert.
Thursday night most of the house went out, so Friday morning was a languid affair. Once we organized ourselves around noon, eight people headed for the city and the other seven of us walked to the train station near Main Rd. to travel up to MuizenbergBeach. Some of the group had been to Muizenberg last Friday (the day of the shark-sighting) and they helped the rest of us navigate buying tickets, finding the proper train car, and getting off at the right stop. The 35-minute ride was only 11 Rand, or just over a dollar, and when we hopped off the train a half hour later, the beach stretched out endlessly ahead of us.
You’d expect that, by now, we’d be accustomed to the breathtaking landscapes that seem to greet us at every new place we visit. But our frenzied rush to the water’s edge would suggest otherwise.
The flat plane of the beach extended out into the choppy surf, which transitioned from bright turquoise to dark blue between the rows and rows of white-crested waves. The slope of the beach was so moderate that swimmers could walk out quite far into the warm (for the southern Atlantic, anyway) water. Surfers perched on their boards a hundred meters out, clustered in groups of friends, novices, beach bums, and old pros, as the wind whipped the sand around us on the broad expanse of beach. (The brisk gusts kept the beach relatively empty during the afternoon, and eventually drove us back to the train a little after 4PM.)
Our time at Muizenberg was characterized by several interesting events, the first of which occurred as we were walking to find a good spot along the beach to settle down. By a group of beach huts, we passed a group of three boys chasing after a crippled bird, which hopped helplessly away from them through the sand. With several animal lovers in the group, we could hardly stand to watch them dive on the defenseless animal and pin it to the ground.
We watched in horror for a few moments before one member of our group had the tenacity to approach the boys – none of which could have been older than ten or eleven – and insist that they leave the poor animal alone. Apparently one of the boys was clever enough to see the request as money-making opportunity and insisted that they would kill the bird if we didn’t hand over 5 Rand, right there. We tried to talk them out of the scheme, but ultimately I handed over the equivalent of 50 cents and they ran off down the beach wearing mischievous grins. While we weren’t happy with how we’d settled the matter, we were glad to have the injured bird in hand, and so faced the next hurdle – figuring out what to do with a broken-winged bird on an isolated beach in South Africa. Two highly-invested members of the group took on the task of locating a veterinary hospital, calling a cab, and driving the bird in, during the next hour. But unfortunately there’d been no choice but to have the animal euthanized. The students later returned to spend the rest of the afternoon in the waves and sand, but the avian-intervention remained a sore subject until long after we returned home that night.
Meanwhile, three of us chose to rent surfboards from a surf shop across the street and try our luck at surfing without any lessons. The rental rate for a board and wetsuit was just 100 Rand – or $10 – for the first hour, and R160 for two hours, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. We struggled into the awkward suits and then lugged the long, bulky boards across the street to the water. Even as the wind transformed the upright boards into sails and nearly toppled us over, we stopped to take a few pictures on the beach before hitting the water. The next two hours were an exhilarating (and at times frustrating) rush of pounding waves and mouthfuls of seawater, figuring out the technique and scrambling to catch waves as they started to break. Of the three of us, Kevin was most successful, riding a number of long waves all the way into the beach. I managed a few solid rides once I figured out how to get up on the board, but after an hour and a half I began to tire of the endless paddling and heaving of the big board through crashing surf. After one last successful ride into the beach, we collapsed by our towels, feeling a mix of fatigue and triumph. The wind had picked up even more during the afternoon, so carrying the boards back across the street to the surf shop was a comic procedure that involved a lot of tilting and bracing and bumping into things. After a brief snack, the wind
simply grew too uncomfortable, and we packed up to head back to the train platform.
On the way back we encountered a young man with a guitar propped on his shoulder, and as I have been in search of one myself, since we arrived in Cape Town, I mustered a bit of courage and approached him to find out if he knew where I might be able to find a musical instrument shop near Cape Town. Though he couldn’t recommend any specific places, he was still very friendly and interested in hearing about our time and reasons for being in South Africa.
We stopped in a tiny ice cream shop before catching the train back to Rondebosch, and then trudged home from Main Rd., exhausted from the day in the waves, and ready for dinner and a good shower.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were the first three days of our internships here in Cape Town. After touring the placements last week and testing out the commutes by public transit, the travel into the city to Black Sash wasn’t too unnerving. Two of us are working for the organization, which is located on the fourth floor of an office building situated just a few blocks from the minibus taxi terminal. Another two students are working at Sonke Gender Justice Network, just a few blocks away.
Cassidy and I are working under staff members Jane Coombe and Ratula Beukman in the National Office of Black Sash, and we’ve spent most of our first week perusing publications and annual reports to familiarize ourselves with the organization and its goals. We work out of a large room that’s been converted into a rather homey office space, sectioned off by several old metal desks that are usually covered in stacks of colorful papers and writing utensils. The high-ceilings and tall windows allow for a lot of light, and on Tuesday morning we leaned out over the sills to watch a group of striking workers from the townships march down Adderly St.
Already we’ve joined Jane and Ratula for several meetings with Sash workers from other branches and departments of the organization. We meet around a large wooden table at the center of the office space, which, like the much of the wall space, is covered in vibrant African cloths. Adding to the laid-back feel of the office, Jane often walks around the carpeted room barefoot, so the atmosphere is far from the uptight professionalism of most American work places I’ve known. The organization – like most nonprofits in South Africa – has very limited funding and staff, so meetings rarely include more than the few fulltime staff workers and the two of us. The discussions are always unstructured and open, with lots of idea-shaping and group decision-making taking place in a short period of time. I can’t help but compare the environment to that of my internship this summer in Hartford. There, we’d held formal, lengthy staff meetings every Monday morning, and rarely did I come away with the same feeling of accomplishment that I have from the meetings with Black Sash. The contrast is remarkable.
The work we’ve been doing, in our first days with the organization, has been largely research-intensive. We’ve written several briefs on current social welfare issues, including critiques of the Unemployment Insurance Fund and the potential reforms of the Extended Public Works Programme. It is a great time to be working at Black Sash because of the intensification of social and political issues in the media during these three months leading up to the presidential election. Without getting too heavy handed with the details of the current political situation, it is important to explain that South Africa’s fledgling democracy is undergoing a period of rapid political realignment, and many prominent leaders are facing corruption charges or have distancedthemselves from their former parties.
As political leaders try to drag sections of the voting population with them to new parties and platforms, the mudslinging and agenda-setting has been incredibly divisive. The attacks are much more callous – and the issues far more sordid – than those we witnessed during the American presidential primaries last year. For example, the leader of the reigning ANC party is, at this moment, on trial for rape charges. It also appears he will be running for office as a viable candidate in April.
Another interesting aspect of the election process in South Africa is that no official election date exists, and this spring’s Election Day has yet to be determined. Many people believe that voting will take place during the days we are in flight back to Connecticut, but even this is still speculation.
In the meantime, Black Sash has assumed its usual role as political watchdog and advocate for social and economic welfare. The organization studies the promises and policies of all of the potential parties and candidates for office, then presses politicians to be open and responsive to the plight of impoverished, unprotected, and unemployed South Africans. One of our meetings this week dealt with the framing of the organization’s official response to the current president’s State of the Nation address, which will take place in early February. I hadn’t realized just how much preparation and planning went into the sound bites and “round table” responses we so often hear quoted on news programs on Sunday morning.
Though we’ve only been at the organization for three days, we’ve already been entrusted with important – and largely unsupervised tasks – like writing reports and researching government policies. Getting thrown head first into projects like these, we’ve discovered, tends to be the standard at all of our placements. On Wednesday, the fifteen of us met to discuss our experiences from the first days at our internships,, and the trend amongst the group seemed to be that we all were rapidly included into the organization or school communities at which we’ve been placed. In addition to being warmly welcomed and encouraged to take on active roles in certain projects, we also have been introduced into the gritty, impassioned, and often barebonesworld of the South African nonprofit sector. The global economy has taken its toll on many of the NGOs, and so far it’s been both enlightening and overwhelming to be thrown into such internships during this period of political and economic upheaval.
Over the next few weeks, as parliament opens and several important political speeches take place, our roles and projects at Black Sash are likely to grow even more intriguing.
South Africa is still very much a developing country, despite the sometimes deceiving appearance of Cape Town’s urban cityscape. Democracy is just fifteen years old, here, and television has only been around since the 1970s. Like many countries at this stage of development, the electric grid in the city is not always consistent, especially during the load-shedding season in March. But when the power went out at 10 Loch Rd. around dinner time on Sunday night, it still caught a lot of us off guard.
At the time that it failed, the twilight sky still provided enough light that few people noticed the outage until they tried to use the kitchen appliances. Still tired from a day on Table Mountain, students milled about between the pool house and the main house, waiting for some indication that the power would be restored. A security guard came to check on our security system failure, and most of us assumed that he knew what he was talking about when he assured us the electricity would come back on in a little while. But an hour later, with the darkness creeping in around the house, we gathered in the kitchen to devise a plan. Between the fifteen of us we had four or five available flashlights and a headlamp, which we used to light the kitchen cabinet that held all of the electrical equipment, while I flicked the switches and tried to flip the circuit breaker.
Nothing worked.
Finally, having realized that the power outage did not extend beyond our property, we figured we should probably give our RA, Ben, a call. He assured us he’d be over in a half hour to address the issue, and that left the house to gather around a flashlight-turned-candle at the dining room table, telling ghost stories and generally frightening one another. As they shrieked and shivered, I wandered the first floor looking for any potential sources of our power failure. During the “dark period”, much of the house was worried about our lack of security and the broken front gate, which had been stuck open since that morning. Between the darkness and the sudden sense of vulnerability, the atmosphere was ripe for anxiety, and one student seized upon the tension. No one noticed him disappear outside, but suddenly he was jumping up behind the front window and shouting in alarm. The trick sent half of the students screaming and cowering into a corner, while the rest of us – amused but unfazed – waited by the gated front door for Ben to arrive. He whisked past us about five minutes later, headed straight to the kitchen with a slip of paper in his hand. He punched in a code on the electricity box, and just like that, the lights flickered on.
Everyone cheered.
At that point, with all of us clustered around the kitchen table, we reiterated the evening’s ghost stories and “frightening” moments to Ben, who laughed along with us at the silliness of the situation. Of course, the story grew even better when Ben confessed that the outage had actually been his fault; he’d forgotten to buy more electricity and had accidentally let 10 Loch Rd. go dark.
If it wasn’t clear from previous posts and pictures that TableMountain is the fixture around which our lives in Cape Town revolve, then let this be the proof. Sunday we “conquered” the mountain in a five hour hike from KirstenboschGardens to the highest peak (1078m). We’d intended to hike during the morning and afternoon, and picnic in the gardens before an evening music concert. But when we arrived at 10:30 that morning, the concert tickets had sold out. (A recurring theme?)
So we began the climb a little after 11:00, expecting to do a 3.5hr loop that took us across the Table on a contour path, then back down to the gardens. None of us had purchased a map or guidebook of the mountain trails, but several had done some research online or in guides that we’d passed in book stores. We knew we had to take Skeleton Gorge, at first, so we followed the garden path to the base of the mountain, and started the climb.
At first the path cut through a wiry forest, dense with leafy trees wrapped in vines (some of which swung by the paths and could support a person playing Tarzan). The angle was significant, but the trail was “easy access”, with well-maintained steps cut into the packed dirt. We walked for about fifteen minutes, but with the heat of midday, we all had a healthy sheen by the time we stopped for water. For the next hour, we split up along the trail, which began to rise much more sharply up the rocky mountainside. We were still encased in dense trees as we trudged upwards in zigzags.
The dirt and sweat that coated my hands were hardly conducive to picture-taking, but I couldn’t put the camera away. It wasn’t until we reached a stretch so steep that it required a series of wooden ladders that I was forced to stow the bulky Nikon in my backpack. The trees began to thin as we hit a boulder-strewn gorge, where we joined several other groups of hikers climbing hand and foot between rocks four times our size. Water trickled down underfoot, making the climb a bit precarious, but when we reached the top of the channel, we had our first clear view off the mountainside.
From there the trail wove through a lush crevice between two peaks, the path lined with ferns and bright summer greens. We were awestruck by the sheer cliffs to our right and left, the hazy city skyline far below us, and the sloping trail ahead. I took far too many pictures.
The twelve of us who’d begun the hike met up at the intersection of two trails, having finished the ascent to the “low end” of the Table. We’d climbed most of its 705m altitude from Kirstenbosch, and we were ready for some food and water. While we ate, we considered our options as we hunched over a metal map stand and determined the distance to the summit. It was already close to 1:00, so we essentially abandoned our expectations for a short hike and decided to make a go for the peak, an estimated two hours ahead.
Over the next hour, we scrambled across rocks on the broad expanse of mountaintop. We still had more than 300m (about 1000ft) to climb, under cloudless sun, but adrenaline and determination had turned the hike into a brand new expedition. Once we caught sight of the summit, two of us decided to sprint up the final rocky stretch, and the view that met us at the top was 360-degrees of limitless ocean, sky, and South African landscapes: the city shimmered beside the harbor, the mountains snaked and stretched behind us up the cape, and the suburbs sprawled in three directions toward the sea.
Needless to say, our arrival generated a solid half hour of cheers, pictures, and celebratory fist pumps. We climbed the cairn of rocks on the highest point and then settled down for lunch, absorbing the views and the sense of accomplishment that followed the physical feat of our ascent (and which was continually evidenced by the 1000+ meter drop over the edge). As a child of the digital age, I couldn’t help but pull out my iPod and scroll through a list of songs with the most epic instrumentals in a desperate attempt to find the one that best complemented the scene. The closest I got was U2’s “Beautiful Day”, though the selection might have been influenced by Bono’s African activism.
We made a group decision to walk one more hour south along the Table, which finally leveled off into a flat plain that might have passed for sea level if it weren’t for the clouds hovering at the edges. We hugged the cliff along the most familiar face of the mountain – the one visible from downtown – until we reached the cable car station and lookout point. Strangely enough, we found a restaurant perched on the edge of the mountain, filled with tourists and (thankfully) water. After we bought tickets for the ride down, we made some phone calls to ensure that the group van knew where to pick us up. Then we snapped even more photos as the cable car sunk past the face of the mountain, towards the city.
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.
The lampposts all around Rondebosch and the city are always covered in the day’s headlines. They are written in English, Afrikaans, and sometimes Xhosa, but during the last few days, the word Obama has been jumping off the boldly printed front pages. Tuesday night, we had plans to visit the library near the Parade (the old military parade grounds) in the city, where the US Consulate planned to stream a live satellite feed of CNN for the inauguration. So after we finished visiting the last of the internships, we were dropped at the front of the library around 5:15PM (or 17:15, if I’m going to be culturally accurate).
We were a bit early for the 6 o’clock viewing, and the ceremony itself would be taking place about an hour later, so we walked up a nearby street and tried to familiarize ourselves with the area. We had a general idea of our location, since we’ve become a little more acquainted with the city, and we bought snacks and water at a convenience store before returning to find the viewing room already half full. The man who talked to us last week at the Consulate said a few words, and then the room continued to fill until all of the seats and much of the aisles were filled by a diverse and boisterous crowd. I did not have a chance to speak to more than a few people around us, but many of the people seemed to be interested CapeTownians. There were a few people from Delaware and Florida, and possibly several more from elsewhere in the US, but we were certainly the largest American group.
The room was packed by the time the ceremony began, and though the audio was cranked to its maximum setting, it was difficult to hear everything that Wolf Blitzer was commentating. To compensate, the crowd decided to cheer very loudly whenever anything remotely related to Obama, Clinton, or Carter crossed the screen. Accordingly, they scoffed and murmured their disproval at the less liberal faces. The international bias was clear.
The inauguration itself was interesting to watch, especially from such an emotionally charged, racially diverse setting. Anytime the new president mentioned something about his heritage or foreign policy, the room exploded in whoops and applause. Several photographers and camera crews perched on tables and chairs around the sides of the room, snapping shutters like we were in the White House press room. Some Americans in the middle rows hammed it up for the photos, as locals crammed themselves in the doorway, stretching up on their toes to get a better view of the blurry projector screen. Overall, it was a fun and unique experience.
Four of us decided to head back to Rondebosch after the inauguration concluded, and the sun was only just beginning to set, so we decided to take a minibus. We crossed the Parade and walked up onto the minibus terminal on the roof of the train and bus station. The area rarely sees tourists, as minibuses are the cheapest way to travel and tend to cater to locals. We’d had an exercise on locating the buses and asking the fares, so we knew we just had to find a minibus driver that told us he was going to Rondebosch. Eventually, one of them affirmed that he was, and we took the last four seats in the back of the crowded van. The windows didn’t open very far, so it was quite stuffy across the backseat, but the ride was not as wild as we’d been warned to expect.
But our trouble began when the man collecting our fares asked where we were getting off, and he informed us that our stop would require getting off in a different suburb and taking a second minibus the rest of the way. Though we were annoyed at the initial miscommunication, we had no other choice but to get off in Mowbray, so we paid our 5 Rand (50 cents), and rode the rest of the way to the stop, while chatting with a friendly man in the seat in front of us. He had a lot to say about the election and the inauguration, once he found out we were American, and it was interesting to hear his impressions of how Obama would handle the next four years. His opinions were more tempered than I had expected, as he explained how Obama will be good for America, but he will not live up to the expectations of most Africans. His insight into American politics surprised us, given how oblivious most Americans are about other nations’ politics.
At the Mowbray stop, the man explained where we had to wait for the next minibus, and we thanked him before getting out onto the dim side street. It took us five minutes to decide we didn’t want to simply hang around waiting in a spot we didn’t know for a minibus we weren’t sure was coming, so we decided to start walking. We found Main Rd., which we knew ran straight through to Rondebosch, and began walking briskly out of Mowbray. The streets were hardly empty, but we were racing the fading light and several times contemplated calling a metered cab, which are the only safe forms of transportation after dark.
We determined our location based on the orientation of TableMountain on our right, and about twenty minutes later came upon the Rondebosch stretch of Main Rd. Relieved, we stopped to buy more internet and phone minutes at Pick ‘N Pay, and then began the familiar walk home. By the time we rounded the Commons it was nearly 9 o’clock, and we’d probably walked over two and a half miles. But we’d returned safely and learned a valuable lesson about transportation in Cape Town.
Wednesday was a day relatively to ourselves – the first we’ve had since we arrived. Aside form a practice run of taking the minibus to our internships (which begin on Monday), we were free to venture about the city, shop at Mr. Price Home, Woolworths Grocery, or other Rondebosch shops, and lounge by the pool. A few students opted for an afternoon at Camp’s Bay beach.
Tomorrow is the first day of classes, and some of us will be up early to walk the 45 minutes “up the mountain” to UCT campus. Until then, I’ve got to think about dinner. It’s been an adjustment figuring out how to shop, prepare, and cook entirely for myself, here, but even though restaurant prices are so low, I can’t eat out all of the time!
Saturday was the last of our days as South African “tourists” as we spent the morning doing a wine tour near Stellanbosch. We visited a long-established, family-owned winery, where we climbed into the open bed of a WWII era army truck that had been converted into a farm vehicle, and clung to the rails for our lives as we hurtled over the green hills on a rutted dirt path. It was exhilarating, if not a little dangerous, by US safety standards. We spent that afternoon at a much more commercial winery that boasted many other attractions, including cheetah-petting, eagle-watching, picnicking by an algae-choked pond, and craft browsing. We ate a buffet lunch in a resort-like outdoor restaurant, complete with brightly colored sun tents, live African music, and a family of friendly ducklings that padded past now and then, quacking politely for scraps. We lingered on overstuffed, outdoor couches beneath a broad canopy of tree leaves until the breeze grew too chilly, and we sprawled on sunny grass. Have I inspired any jealousy, yet?
On Sunday we had our first introduction to the townships of the Cape Flats, and the atmosphere shifted dramatically. The largely-impoverished townships are the product of apartheid-era resettlement programs, and can be most easily compared to the ghettos established in Europe during the Holocaust. Cape Town and its suburbs were relatively integrated before the resettlement ordinances drove “nonwhites” into meager housing communities, about fifty years ago, and since then, poverty, crime, and drug use have been continually pervasive. The disenfranchisement of millions living in the Cape Flats has outlasted the laws and politics of apartheid, especially as HIV/AIDS and Tb have ravaged a significant portion of the population.We spent the morning in the township of Guguletu, attending a service at the Sivuyele Baptist Church, which aptly translates to Joy. When we arrived, the church had been distinguishable from the surrounding peach-colored buildings only by a simple brown cross above the door, but as we stepped out of the van, we were greeted by the harmonies of a welcoming hymn. Men and women sat in separate sections of the crowded church, dressed in clothes far nicer than the ones they could afford to wear most other days of the week. We sat and stood (and danced) our way through the emotionally powerful service, which lasted about two and a half hours. There were no organs or instruments to carry the songs that made up a majority of the service, but the hymns were full and rich with the sound of voices and dancing feet and hand “pillows” (which when clapped in rhythm, act like a bass drum). Even though most of the prayers and declarations were delivered in Xhosa – the most popular language in the townships – certain parts were translated into English so that we could follow along, and upon leaving, we exchanged mutual thanks with the preacher and members of the church community.
For the rest of the afternoon, we traveled in our group van through some of the major townships like Langa, Nyanga, Khayelitsha, and Mitchells Plain. Most of us had never seen such acute poverty on such a grand scale, and when we finished the trip with a walk to the top of a hill in Khayelitsha, the sheer size of the expansive Cape Flats – fringed by the hazy mountain range in the distance – was overwhelming. The most depressed areas in the townships consist of both solid structures and “squatters’ shacks”, with metal shipping containers and scrap metal huts stacked on top of one another along the sides of crowded streets. People mill about everywhere in the hot afternoon sun, securing roofs with old tires, hanging clothes on the line, walking to catch a minibus taxi at the next stop. Heat rises in waves off of the sea of rusted metal, as goats and dogs and even horses roam the littered streets and vacant lots, scavenging. Some people wear clothing that appears very western, while others wear more traditional African and Indian dress. Most children do not wear shoes, even as they kick a make-shift ball along a glass-covered street. Dirt whips up in the narrow passages between the shacks when the wind blows. People meet at the street corner to buy bread or fruit from a vendor working out of a beat-up car. I took these pictures from the window of the van, as walking through the townships brandishing a digital camera would only invite trouble. We held our first house meeting with our RA, Ben, on Sunday evening, to sort out the “communal fund”, to which we’ll all contribute money for household items like toilet paper, laundry detergent, and dish soap. With 15 people living in the house, the task of determining which items are “communally necessary” is more complicated than one might think. On Monday and Tuesday we spent the mornings and afternoons visiting all of our internship placements in Cape Town and the townships. We all will be working Monday through Wednesday at a school or NGO, attending classes on Thursday, and working on an “activist project” of our choice on Fridays and/or the weekends. Among the placements we visited were: Sonke Gender Justice Network, Saartjie Baartman Center for Women and Children, Cape Nature, Thandahulu and Christel House Schools, Treatment Action Campaign, and Black Sash. Two of the placements are in Khayelitsha, the largest of the townships, and the rest are in the city or its suburbs. At each organization, we met with the directors to learn about the history, purpose, and accomplishments of the programs, and we made mental notes about which places might make good activist projects. Our activist projects will function like a second, less-structured internship at a social-oriented organization, so many of us will probably end up spending Fridays at the same places our peers will be interning earlier in the 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.
TableMountain 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 CapeFlats. 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 TableMountain, 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, HoutBay, 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 RobbenIsland, 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.
