exploring Cape Town

Hey all! I know it’s been a week since I updated this thing so be prepared for a very long rambling of the past week. You should be proud of me though, it means that I haven’t been a complete hermit.

We heard from SHAWCO, the largest student run volunteering organization in Africa and possibly the world, on Wednesday. They do a lot of work in the surrounding townships and brought all those interested to one of them to see the center where they work. Our bus went to Khayelitsha (the closest pronunciation I can think of giving you all is k-i-leet-sha), one of the largest ones with over 1.5 million people live there. You could immediately tell as we entered the township with dirt/poorly paved roads, shacks made of whatever scrap material was available, and people on the side of the road just watching our bus drive by. I felt such mixed emotions as we drove through the area because it seemed like we’re looking at them like they’re some sort of exhibit of poverty but our underlying intentions were to go see what we can do to help them. I’m definitely leaning toward joining this organization but there are so many other volunteer opportunities through CIEE and such that we could do as well. Choices choices choices.

That night, my housemates and Mel managed to get me to go out for the first time since we moved in. We went down to Long Street which is known for its clubs/bars nightlife in Cape Town. Our first club had pretty fun music for a while but when they started playing techno-like stuff that all sounded the same we decided it was time to go. Stop number two had great music but was jam packed so we didn’t stay for long. The final place we went to was suggested by Thapz, one of the SOLmates and was a great place to end the night. We got there and it wasn’t too busy but once we all started dancing, the place started to really fill up. Aren’t we so cool starting a trend?

What our schedule called Thursday was “day at leisure” but it didn’t turn out to be quite that. CIEE took us to the sites where we can volunteer, allotting us 2 hours before we were going to the beach. Well it took 4.5 hours and I was on the bus without air conditioning the entire time. I finished my water bottle in the first half hour and was ready to pass out but luckily we passed by a place selling food and drinks. Despite my belief that water should never be sparkling and flavored (it tasted like Sprite), I didn’t really care at that point. Rather than spend 2 more hours on that bus to get back and forth to the beach and only spend 2 hours there, I went back to my house with other people and we got to just chill outside before the Freshers’ Braai on Upper Campus. It’s a huge barbeque for freshmen (and international students, clearly) but tons of upper classmen were there too so Faith came. After the braai we went and got amazing fro-yo and that just completed my day.

Registration day!! I feel like I was warned over and over again that Friday would be insane with registration. Well, it was actually fairly painless for me. I had been pre-approved for all the classes I wanted and they miraculously didn’t conflict. I did decide to only do 3 classes and so I didn’t even register for poverty, development, and globalization. My registration period was 11-12, good to be at the end of the alphabet because I got to sleep in. The first queue (line) was where we got a lot of paperwork to fill out for the registration process. To make it easier to fill out everything, there were loads of chairs and we just keep getting up and moving over a bit, filling out our info in between. That queue led to an academic advisor who approved the classes. When it was my turn, the woman I met with looked at my classes then at the pre-approval list, said “wow, you’re an easy one”, and signed the forms. Then I had to bring those forms to another queue ending to where a woman input all my class information into the computer. Whew, all done. I am taking The Media in South Africa, Writing and Editing in the Media, and A History of Antisemitism. I’m getting credit for the 2 Comm classes (they call it Film and Media here) and a history requirement and credit for my Jewish Studies minor.

Now that registration was over and classes don’t start until a week later (Friday), lots of people were planning on leaving for the week and going traveling. The abridged version is thus. I talked about doing the Garden Route (it follows the southern coast of South Africa, well Africa in general and is supposed to be absolutely beautiful with tons to do along the way), going up to Namibia, and trying to get to Victoria Falls in Zambia/Zimbabwe. Needless to say, all of those plans kind of fell through. I was bummed for a while but I got to go around Cape Town and get more comfortable here, plus I met a lot of people in this past week. And I will definitely be traveling but for now I think it was for the best that I stayed here.

That being said, while a lot of people left on Saturday, I went with CIEE to a soccer game. Yes, they call it soccer here, not football like many people think. The game was Santos, a local team known as “The People’s Team”, versus the Pirates, a team from jo-burg. I think it’s safe to say that our group of 100-something Americas were the only white people in the stadium. Mel and I decided that since we’re kind of living in Cape Town, we should root for Santos but we were definitely in the minority. Still, the game ended with goose eggs even though a couple shots on the goal came really close on both sides. It was a lot of fun and a bunch of us are talking about going back to see another game before we leave in June.

Unexpectedly, I decided to accompany Faith to church services Sunday morning. His People or HP (the organization’s name) doesn’t have an actual church building, instead services are held in a theater only 4 blocks from our house. There was a ton of young people, many were UCT students, and Faith was introducing me and Allie (one of the other girls in the house who came too) to all her friends. The service itself was beautiful, I was even moved to tears at one point during the first song. There was a keyboardist, drummer, 2 guitarists, and a choir with 2 lead singers and all the lyrics to the song were projected onto a screen at the front. With everyone singing together in a room clearly built for fantastic acoustics, it sounded so amazing, like I was completely surrounded by the music.

We returned to the theater that night for a concert held by HP. The music was very different compared to the more worship atmosphere of the service. There was a rapper and 2 rock groups, the last rock group being the main performer. I was in the very first row with some girls both from our program and Faith’s friends jamming, dancing, and just having a good time. After the concert we met so many people who were excited to hear that we’d been to services earlier in the day and came back for the concert. Everyone was so nice and I definitely hope to go back again, especially to hear Faith sing.

Starting Monday through Wednesday (today) was the UCT equivalent to an activities fair but it’s nothing like what I’m used to at berg. All organizations here have a fee to join; luckily CIEE will pay for 3 of them. Around noon I went to Upper Campus where Jammie Plaza was packed with tents, tables, and people trying to get us to join all of their organizations. And I thought I was pushy at berg. I kept telling everyone to I need to narrow down the clubs I want to join and I need to do it through my international program anyway to avoid putting my name down everywhere. I’m pretty sure I’m going to end up doing the South African Union of Jewish Students (SAUJS) where they gave me free falafel and a t-shirt heehee, the UCT African Choir which we don’t need to audition for and travel around the peninsula performing and if we’re lucky will be invited to a competition, and SHAWCO. I don’t want to over involve myself though like at berg because I definitely want to have time to do other stuff too.

After we’d been there for a while, Mel and I left to get a late lunch with Brian, Lisa’s boyfriend who is also studying in South Africa this semester. He’s going to the University of Western Cape unlike us, we’re at UCT. His program sounds a lot like the service learning program CIEE has with seminars, speakers, and volunteering. We ate in Observatory (There are lots of small “suburbs” in the area. I live in Rosebank, Mel lives in Mowbray, and Brian lives in Observatory. They’re all close and within walking distrance) at a cute little place on a street filled with great shops and hang out places. It’s like a more laid back version of Long Street called Lower Main. We definitely will go back and check the nightlife there, especially considering how much closer it is. After that, we walked back to my house where Mel and I made some plans for the next few days in and around Cape Town.

Our Tuesday plans began with going to downtown Cape Town (City Bowl) to walk around, go to some museums, and check out the markets. We took the mini bus taxi down to the city which was an experience in itself. The mini buses drive down the streets honking, whistling, and yelling their final destination. Getting one is like hailing a cab but it’s a flat fee of R5 which is about 50 cents. Don’t take one if you’re in a hurry though because they stop for anyone on the street who so much as glances at them in case they can get more people into the bus. We were dropped off at the train station and it was interesting trying to get out of there. Finally we made it to the street after asking 2 cops who must’ve thought we were just stupid, crazy Americans. But they were nice to us so after that they must’ve also thought, “Well at least they have Obama.”

We didn’t quite know where we were going so we wandered and ended up at the Company Gardens by the Parliament buildings and such. We walked through the gardens which was really pretty although the pigeons here fly exceptionally low and it was really windy. Mel and I actually yelled, grabbed each other, and ducked at one point as one was flying directly at our heads. We finally found one of the locations on our list, the Jewish Museum and Holocaust Center as well as the synagogue known as the Gardens Shul. We had a quick tour through the place which was gorgeous and very well maintained considering that it’s over 100 years old. Mel and I talked about trying to get a group of people together to go to services there some time which I think would be incredible even though those silly orthodox kids would separate us up on the upper level.

The Jewish Museum was really cool especially with all the history it had on the Jewish community in South Africa. We saw what they have left of the Old Synagogue, tons of artifacts from the communities here, walked through a reconstructed shtetl, and heard a lot about the Lithuanian Jews who immigrated to South Africa, particularly during the Holocaust. The bottom floor also had an exhibit on Einstein which was really cool. What I found most interesting was how there were little mentions everywhere of how similar some of the Jews’ struggles relate to the struggles seen during the Apartheid.

This was even more evident when we walked through the Holocaust Center after a quick lunch. Since Jews were redefined as a race in Nazi Germany, there was a lot to say about race and how suffering for being a certain race is suffering for something that cannot be changed. Although it wasn’t too dissimilar from a lot of the Holocaust Museums in the states, that focus on race was just one of the many little differences about this center. I learned about the Greyshirts, an anti-Semitic South African group that was responsible for a lot of the anti-Semitism in South Africa and pushed the immigration quotas through to keep Jews out of the country during the Holocaust. This exhibit contained even more information on the Lithuanian Jewish community as well which I found fascinating. There were lots of other smaller things but it was really neat seeing what was deemed as most important from the South African perspective.

Rather than go to the District 6 Museum after like we had planned (too much heavy information) we walked around a little bit more, wandering more like since we didn’t entirely know where we were going. We finally figured out why we were walking in the wrong direction and found our way to Greenmarket Square which is pretty well known in the area for having lots of crafts and other stuff. Before walking around too much we stopped for a snack, gelato in honor of our lovelies in Italia. Mel was able to give me her experienced opinion of what was different about the gelato and even though it was pretty good, it’s definitely no competition I’m sure.

We mostly wanted to look around Greenmarket Square (or at least I wanted to look around, see what they had, and come back another time to buy stuff) and see if it’s geared toward tourists like us or if local people were there buying stuff. There were so many stalls on this little squares, rows and rows of people trying to get us to come look at what they had which was probably also available 3 stalls down. I did cave and bought a bracelet made of bone. Not like what you would see in the Flinstones though, it’s really cool and I liked it. There were tapestries, pottery, jewelry, clothing, and more so I can’t wait to go back and actually get some stuff, especially a tapestry or painting to cover my wall.

A bunch of us girls ended the day at the Waterfront where we got dinner, learned an awesome game from Yassi (a CIEE participant who goes to Georgetown), and saw a movie. Ok, I’ll admit, we saw The Secret Life of Bees. I know, it’s an American movie but it’s incredible how similar and also different life is like here. Movies is just one of those areas where it’s really similar. It was such a good movie though, I think it actually did the book justice.

Today was a pretty chill day, I spent most of it on Upper Campus. I learned a bit more about using school computers (thank goodness for Tawanda – a SOLmate who was working in the computer lab and helped me out) and how to check my class stuff online (like CapStone) and just figuring out the layout of buildings and such. I went shopping with Mel and Allie after that, both clothes shopping (for Mel) and food shopping. I seriously love the conversion rate here, R10 to $1. I spent over R200 on groceries but it’s only about $20, meanwhile everything that I bought would’ve come out to so much more at home. I’m gonna be so spoiled coming home that I won’t be willing to buy anything, just kidding!

Now that I’ve finally caught myself up, I think it’s about time for dinner before tonight, we’re going to Observatory (Obs) for karaoke! Anyway, sorry about the super long post. If you’re reading this now, serious props. Miss you all.

Lots of love,
Sarah