Hello again,

I guess it is about time that I filled you in on what has been going on the last couple of weeks.

School started on July 27^th, so I have already completed the first two weeks of school. It has been going alright so far. There is a lot of repetition in the material, but that always happens in the beginnings of classes it seems. I am getting my first assignments, but have yet to really read anything for them. My motivation and drive to do work for school is very low, and it is a very good thing that I can take my classes for pass/fail, because I would really rather focus on other things while I am here.

The first week was quite uneventful really. It was like the start of any school. One has to get acclimated to the new environment; find classes, computer labs, books, library, offices, bus stops, etc. The class outlines are handed out, expectations voiced, and excitement or dread for the coming semester begins to set in. Introductions continue as well. One thing I have noticed at UCT is that being a foreign student is not something special, as there are so many that come through. I remember in Santa Cruz, there were not that many study abroad students, so when there was, it was always interesting and kind of exciting. I also was excited because I thought for a while that I could take all my classes for pass/fail instead of a letter grade, but turns out I can only take one. Dang it.

Anyway, enough of school talk right now. The weekend was much more memorable. There was a wine festival in Stellenbosch on the weekend, and many international students were planning on going over there. Since I don’t drink wine, the idea of going around to multiple wine booths in a convention center did not really appeal to me. Luckily, I received an e-mail from this travel agency for foreign students that organize township home stays, informing me that there were still spots for this weekend. A township homestay is exactly as it sounds. One spends the night in a home in a township.

On Saturday, August 1, I went to the orientations for the volunteer organizations I am going to participate in, and then met with the travel group at 4 o’clock right near my house. I walked up to a group of about 9 white girls, none of whom I knew. Then Hilary, Angel, and Kasey come walking out of ShopRite and join the group. Hilary and Angel also go to UCSC, and Kasey is a very cool person I met in the first week here, so that was exciting and comforting really. The group headed over to the bus station in Mowbray and caught a minibus to Thambo Village in Manenburg where we would be staying for the night. Side note: I am not sure if I have explained the minibuses properly. They are white vans that act as large and less formal taxis essentially. We arrive at Thambo Village, and mainly there are small cinderblock houses lined up next to each other along straight streets. There are basically no hills around, hence why the area is called the Cape Flats. Our guides, Mzura and Chico, took us to meet the Mamas that we would be staying with. Our group of 12 white girls attracted some stares, but also some friendly greetings. This kind of attention was consistent throughout our stay there, but I never really felt any animosity.

View from outside the house I stayed in for the night.

We gathered in Mama Nok’s house, and were then split up into pairs and assigned a Mama to stay with. Angel and I were the first pair chosen, and were introduced to Mama Lydia. We walked down the street and around the corner to a lovely pale turquoise colored house. It was at the corner of the neighborhood and there was a small waterway across from the house. Directly across this waterway was a lodger’s residence. According to Mama Lydia, lodgers are allowed to rent out space next on a person’s residence. The structures are like the shacks that you may have seen in pictures – corrugated metal and assorted scraps form a shelter. Apparently most of the people that lodge are people from other countries that move here to find work, and they have a hard time getting their own property, probably because they are not legal residents. Xenophobia is still a problem in South Africa, but I think it is less so in Cape Town than in Jo’burg for example. Mama Lydia told us that she was from the Western Cape area and she used to live in shacks in the Cape Flats during apartheid, and said that the police treated people horrbily. She lived in a colored (mixed race) settlement, as she is colored. She told us that she prefers not to think of herself in terms of race however. After democracy began, she was given a subsidy for housing from the government worth 17,200 rand, and bought the house she has now. Back then it was 30 square meters, but like many people she has added on to it brick by brick as she could afford it. She says she was still saving up for a real ceiling, as the ceiling they currently have is made of corrugated metal. The walls of the rooms do not fully reach the height of the ceiling, leaving big gaps where noise and light can leak through. It was actually quite charming and cozy inside. There were many pictures and homely touches that made it easy to feel comfortable in. There were two televisions, a DVD player, stereo system, refrigerator, running water, electricity. There was no shower or heat however. Although this house had some of the conveniences many of us in the States are used to, many more people do not have all of these things, take the lodgers for example.

Mama Lydia outside her house in Thambo Village

Lodgers across the street

Mama Lydia told us more amazing stories about her life. She was an organizer for the women’s division of the ANC in the Western Cape during apartheid. The police knew her name and she was nearly arrested on the bus once, but was clever enough to talk her way out of it. She had to go into hiding as well for a period of time. During all this, she managed to have 7 children. She was married to her first husband for 19 years before he died of cancer, and has been married to her current husband for 21 years. Her husband is a Xhosa man, fought against apartheid in the army, and was shot in the leg by some gangsters a few years back and now walks with a limp. Her children were also active in the ANC and in ending apartheid. The most incredible story she told us was when she was in hiding, and one of her daughters was getting married. Her family did not want to tell her the venue because the police were actively looking for her and paying close attention to the wedding. On the day of the wedding however, Mama Lydia hired a taxi and drove around to all of the gardens and parks in Cape Town to look for the wedding. She nearly gave up, but she finally found it and was able to see her daughter get married and stay out of jail. Now she has 22 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren. In addition to her husband, her granddaughter and her granddaughter’s son live in the house.

Thambo Village through the barbed wire seperating the train tracks from the township

Guguletu

We had tea and ginger cookies and then later dinner of lamb, sempe (I think that’s what it was called. It’s this white corn kind of much stuff. It’s kind of bland, but with the sauce from the lamb it was good), cabbage, butternut squash (very common here), and potato. It was all very good. Then we watched some soccer, the news in Xhosa, a bit of the rugby game, and then later the Mandela Day concert. We also looked an old photo album, which was very enjoyable. Soccer, unsurprisingly, is very popular. The Kaizer Chiefs are a local favorite. Rugby is less popular among non-whites because during apartheid it was basically a whites-only sport. It is becoming more and more inclusive, but still is not completely proportional. A lot of the photos were from Lydia and her husband’s trip to England with the Head Elder of the church, Nigel, and his family for a pastor’s conference. I am not sure what the exact denomination of the church is, but it’s definitely Christian. And it’s also definitely a mission church started by the English man Nigel. Many people in the township are religious, and we actually heard someone preaching through what must have been a megaphone across the waterway in the evening.

The living room of Mama Lydia's house and me.

Kids near a broken pipe across from Mama Nok's house

In the morning we went to a church service at Khanyisa Community Church. The church is multilingual and multiracial, so the service is in Xhosa and English. Apparently many churches are still kind of segregated, so this is one of the more welcoming ones. There were many songs performed by a band on a stage, and there was a lot of dancing and singing. This part was quite fun, especially when you just sang the songs without really paying attention to the meaning. I should clarify this: I am an atheist, so going to church is just for the cultural experience. Anyway, once the preacher started to speak, it got to be a little tedious. Nigel started speaking about how people should be Disciples of Christ and all this stuff about the salt of the earth, light of the earth, etc. He went on way to long and kept repeating himself, and it was also a little intolerant and I didn’t like it. The entire church service lasted 2.5 hours. Afterwards we had some tea and mingled with people, and then headed to Guguletu, a nearby township to Mzoli’s, a favorite township restaurant.

Mzoli’s is awesome. It is basically a huge barbeque or braai as they call it here. There are tables set outside under a canopy, with people everywhere. You have to be vigilant about your chairs, as they are contentious property here. People bring their own alcohol or buy it at someone’s house/bar down the street, and hang out and wait for their massive meat orders which can take several hours to be ready. To order, you go inside to a counter that has meat piled up behind glass like at a deli. There is chicken, lamb, boerwors, etc. You order the amount of meat by price, like say 100rand worth of chicken, 50 rand of boerwors, etc. and you keep one receipt while the other copy goes to the back with your raw meat in a bowl to be cooked. There it joins a large cue of bowls of meat, and every once in a while you check back with your receipt to see if your order is ready. It is all quite chaotic because there is so many people and meat milling around. Luckily for us everything was set up for us already. We had a table reserved and meat preordered, so our food came rather quickly. Along with the meat, we got more white corn meal stuff that looked like mashed potatoes and kind of reminded me of polenta, and some fresh salsa. We ate with our hands, and it was delicious. The atmosphere was fun, and we met some cool local people. I wish we could have stayed longer, but the East Coast girls in our group claimed they were tired and wanted to book it. So we hopped in a minibus and went back to Mowbray. It was overall a really great experience, mainly because I felt that I was accepted and did not feel as much like a tourist as I might have if I were to just take a tour of the townships.

Our tray of meat at Mzoli's

The back room where all the braaing goes down

Monday, August 3^rd, was the start of my volunteering as well. I am doing two projects through organizations at UCT, Ubunye and SHAWCO. Monday was with Ubunye in a project called TeachOut, where students volunteer to tutor kids in English, Science, or Maths (yes, it is called Maths here not Math). I went to a privately funded school that takes kids from disadvantaged backgrounds that show promise and gives them a great education and provides many opportunities for them that they would not get otherwise. The school is called Christel House, and it is actually quite impressive. Here is the website link: . I was nervous because I was to tutor 12^th graders in English, and since they are quite close to my own age, I had mixed feelings. There were only 3 other tutors in my group, Duncan (South African), Unati (South African), and Raofilwe (I don’t know if that’s how to spell her name, but she is from Botswana). We arrived at the school and met the principal, Mr. Fortune, and it was very impressive because he knew exactly which students were there or not and the personality types of each. I was given the “lively group,” which consisted of seven girls. The kids we are tutoring just need some extra help with their studies. There is immense pressure on the kids and Mr. Fortune for success, as funding really depends on it, and I this pressure was quite evident. I was given a packet of workbook material to go over that was on summarizing. I have never tutored before, so I was a little unsure on how to approach it. A lot of time was spent on introductions and talking, but I figure it’s ok that we didn’t get through everything because it was the first day. They asked me lots of questions on celebrities, Obama, and other Americana. They also liked my earrings, but one girl told me not to get too many, because of something about Judgment Day. After finding out that I was not very religious, they asked if I had played Ouija board, and if they could play it. I told them that I had, but unfortunately did not know how it worked either. It was fun, but I was bad at keeping them on track. I think I will do better in the future, especially because the group should be smaller in the future as another volunteer should join next time.

Tuesday I volunteered for SHAWCO for the Arts program. Three South Africans and one girl from Hawaii and I were the volunteers this time, and we headed to Manenburg Primary, where we were to help kids make picture frames using the cardboard from donated pizza boxes. Five people is not enough for the 60+ kids that came, that’s for sure. I was assigned the R-2 kids, which are kindergarten to 2^nd graders, and there were probably about 12-14 of them. They were supposed to be an easier group, so I was left to handle them basically by myself. We started out playing game on the floor, and then the chaos began. They fought over crayons and markers and all supplies, and it was basically impossible to explain to them to concept of a picture frame project. There were just too many of them and there was just too much to do at once. It doesn’t really matter though, because the point is that they have fun. They were so adorable, and reasonably well behaved. It was fun, and tiring of course, but I am definitely looking forward to the next time. I want to take pictures of these kids and the other girls I am tutoring, but I feel that it is a little too intrusive to do so right away.

Then there was the rest of the week, which was more school and socializing. I have met so many people in a very short time, it is quite tiring talking about your name, hometown, major, and the usual.

On Friday, I had nothing to do after class ended at 11, so I joined the Norwegians in my house to their Embassy downtown so they could vote. The Norwegians in my house are liberal and basically socialist, and are worried about the growing popularity of the conservative party in their country, so voting was very important to them. Norway has a proportional representation government, which our country should definitely adopt, and they vote for the party, not a candidate, which is also a pretty good idea because voting for a candidate can become a circus as we are well aware of. After that, we headed over to the BoKaap district, which is basically where most of the Muslims live. It is formerly known as the Cape Malay district, and this is where many former slaves from Malaysia and Indonesia ended up. It is know most for the colorful houses and mosques, and it was fin walking through there and exploring. We headed up past there towards Signal Hill, where the noon gun is fired off. The Noon Gun is a cannon that is fired off at noon every day except Sunday I think. I can’t remember the origins of this ritual, but it has roots back at least a hundred years or something. As we were walking up, we came across a bunch of children playing by their apartment complexes. They saw my camera in my pocket, and wanted their picture taken, so I got some pictures of the cute kids. There were some great views of the city from the top of Signal Hill, but these views are not as good as those seen from Lions Head, which we climbed on Sunday.

Girls sitting on steps in the Bo-Kaap district

Pigeons

Street in the Bo-Kaap with kids playing cricket

Kids that wanted their picture taken

More kids that wanted their picture taken. These kids were yelling "Remember me!" to us

Green Point Stadium, home of the 2010 World Cup! I am so bummed I won't be here, but it's definitely going to be crazy in Cape Town when it happens

On Saturday, August 8^th, I went to the TriNations rugby game: South African Springboks versus Australian Wallabies. The TriNations tournament is between South Africa, New Zealand (they are called the All Blacks), and Australia. The game was at Newlands Stadium, which is very close to campus, and so we walked there. South Africa and Australia are rivals, so this game was sure to be exciting. Most students, if not all, got standing room tickets which are the cheapest and are sort of comparable to bleacher seats at baseball games. We were behind the field goal, and were basically at field level and stood on concrete steps. For 125rand (about $15) they were pretty good seats, the drawback is that you can’t really see what is happening at the far end or on the horizontal. But when they are coming in for a try (like a touchdown), it is quite exciting. Another interesting thing that I remember: at the start of the game, they played “You’re The One That I Want” from Grease and “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” by CCR, and everyone knew the words, especially to CCR. There were a lot of funny Afrikaners near us, and it was funny listening to them. South Africa won, and they are now undefeated in this tournament. I knew nothing about rugby before coming to South Africa, but it is a pretty simple game and I have pretty much picked up all the rules. The positions and little things I don’t know yet, but I have only seen two and a half games. It is way better than American football in my opinion, because there is constant action and it is more exciting. It is also way more rough. The guys are so huge, and they don’t really wear much protection at all. Only a few people wear caps or tape around their ears to prevent their ears from being pulled back. My favorite player on the South African team is Victor (I don’t know his last name) because he is just so masculine he looks like a caveman or something. There is also a guy on the South African team known as Beast, and whenever he gets the ball, everyone shouts his name, it’s great. After the win, we filed out of the stadium, and people were pretty quiet. There was not much revelry as there seems to be in the US after sports games, especially since there are not many Springboks matches at this stadium.

Warming up before the game

Some tackle thing. Australia is yellow and green, and South Africa is green and yellow.

The one with the cap on the South African team is Victor, grrr

Penalty kick in action. He makes it too.

Victory!

Then on Sunday, I went with a group of international students to Lion’s Head, a mountain peak that is separate from Table Mountain with amazing views. Our intention was to get up there to watch the sunset and see the moon rise and walk down by moonlight because the moon is full. It is a popular thing for Capetonians to do this, but we were a little late because the official full moon rising was on Friday. We had bad luck this time too because it was pretty cloudy when we got to the top, and we couldn’t see anything. When we started, there were a few clouds forming, but we remained optimistic that they would clear for the sunset. So when we go to the top, it was like being in thick fog. We decided to head down and get below the cloud level to hopefully see something. Sure enough as we descended, there was quite a spectacular view of the ocean and the city. I am definitely going back on a clear day to see the view from the very top.

Flower season is starting

Clouds forming in fornt of us as we climb up Lion's Head

A glimpse of the sunset and the city lights of Sea Point. Robben Island is in the background.

Cape Town at night

Monday, August 10^th, was the day Women’s Day was observed, as the official holiday was on Sunday. We got the day off of school and I spent the whole day pretty much doing my laundry because there was a problem with the fuse box, and it took forever to fix it. That’s the thing about this house. It seems pretty sturdy, but there are small things that need to be fixed constantly. The walls are made of concrete even, and there are still leaks.

Tuesday was my second SHAWCO experience, and this time, three volunteers failed to show and one new one joined, making the grand total four volunteers. That is definitely not enough people to watch after all those kids, but we went anyway and tried to get them to make puppets and create a fable to perform. I was again given the R-2s, and there were more this time than last time. Of course they would not listen to my instructions, granted I did not try all that hard because I knew my efforts were likely to be in vain, but at the end of the day some kids wound up with some cardboard heads on sticks. I noticed more this time how really disadvantaged these kids are. Their bodies and clothes are pretty dirty, and some kids run around on the glass covered ground without shoes on. They throw garbage on the ground because there is already garbage everywhere, and they fight over every little thing. They can be very sweet at times, and I hope they can maintain that a bit when they grow up.

And here, I hope this map doesn't get cut off!