Baboons and Dorm Rooms Oh My!

Friday night the study abroad program took us to a restaurant in Stellenbosch, the vineyard area outside of Cape Town, for dinner. We went to a restaurant called Spier on an organic and sustainable wine farm. It was beautiful! All of the seating was outside in a tent and lit by candlelight. There was a live band and African drummers who also danced. I was able to try Antelope kabobs, which tasted like very tender steak, and Springbok sausage, which mostly tasted like regular sausage. As we were eating, a woman came around to the tables and painted our faces with a white paint in traditional Xhosa patterns.

On Saturday, we moved into the dorms. I am living with an American who goes to George Washington University in DC named Rohanna and with two UCT students who I haven’t met yet. The dorm that I am in has four rooms, two big ones connected to a balcony and two smaller ones. Rohanna and I are both in the larger rooms. There are also two bathrooms, one with a shower and one with a bath because South Africans take a lot of baths. There is also a shared kitchen, but no dining room or common space to hang out in.

Today we spent the day touring Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula. On our way out of Cape Town we passed Bo Kaap, a township that was originally built for white workers, the castle, and a penthouse owned by Oprah as well as a house owned by Leonardo di Caprio. Our first stop was at a beach where we could take pictures of the African Penguins. They used to live out on the rocks in the ocean where they bred on top of the bird droppings. In the 1800’s the British began to scrape off the bird droppings to use as fuel, forcing the penguins to move to the beach.

We stopped for lunch in Ocean View, a township that was created when the Apartheid government decided to make certain sections of Cape Town white only. The government built small houses in an unused area about 40 minutes outside of Cape Town and did not invest in any businesses in the community except for a liquor store. Many people who were forced to relocate lost their jobs because they could not commute to their jobs. Today most people living in Ocean View are fishermen. We had lunch in the community center where there was a talent show that included a drag queen and a boy who danced like Michael Jackson.

After lunch, we drove to the Cape of Good Hope, which is the point where the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean meet. It is also the spot where Africa used to be connected to South America and the Falkland Islands. On the way to the Cape, we spotted some baboons, antelope, and a whale!

Volunteering

Today we visited and heard from several different non-profits, and I need input on which organization to volunteer with. One non-profit, called CHOSA is an organizations started by a GW student after she studied abroad with this program. It is an after school tutoring program that meets 2 times a week that serves children living in orphanages. You can make your own lesson plan/curriculum and choose the ages that you want to work with. The organization also coordinates funding for the orphanages, applies for grants on their behalf, and ‘networks’ by connecting community organizations and non-profits to one anther. This seems to be an interesting program because I would be able to work with kids, but I could also have the opportunity to learn more about starting my own non-profit.

Another interesting program was the LEAP school which is a private high school that is located right outside of a township and focuses on science and math. The philosophy is based around teaching the students social responsibility by volunteerism in their neighborhood. I found it very interesting that the man who spoke about the program talked about the achievement gap, the missing black male phenomenon, charter schools, etc in such a way that he could have been speaking about DC. Since the schools are very successful I would be interested in learning how the organization tackles these problems, but the volunteering seemed very open-ended and without much direction so I’m not sure how I would fit into the organization.

The last program that I was interested in is called People Against Suffering, Oppression, and Poverty. Its an organization that works with African refugees to make sure that they are aware of their rights in South Africa and to combat xenophobia in South Africa and abroad. For example, the presenter mentioned that they organized a protest against the Arizona immigration law in front of the United States embassy. Most of the refugees are from Zimbabwe or Congo and live in refugee camps around the country. As a volunteer, my time would be split between interning in the office doing things like writing news letters, research, and attending meetings and doing things in the field like going to refugee camps, organizing events and protests, and offering advice to refugees. This might be a neat experience because it would give me an opportunity to learn more about the politics of Africa and issues that face refugees since I know virtually nothing about these issues, but at the same time I would really miss working with kids.

Any input into where I should volunteer?

This is a picture of a shanty town that we passed.

Kids who live and go to school at a Christian ministry. Some of them are homeless or abandoned and some live here with their parents. This was one possible volunteer site.

First Day in Cape Town!

After an almost 12 hour flight from London, I arrived in Cape Town today around 9:00 am. The program RA’s were there to meet us and we were taken back to campus in a Jammy, or a university shuttle bus. As we drove to campus, we passed a shanty town. Even though its residents were obviously poor, it had an upbeat feel to it. All of the houses were painted bright colors and many of them had really beautiful murals. When we drove by, there were horses wandering around the outskirts of the area and through the town, which struck me as odd. Hopefully I will have a chance to visit and learn more about the community. I would have liked to take pictures, but we had already passed it by the time I got out my camera, but I did get a picture of some acacia(?) trees.

For orientation week we will be staying in a dorm, otherwise known as a res, before we move into our permanent living spaces. I am sharing my room with Sydney, who I know from AU. There are a lot of other students from American here which is nice because I already know some people right off the bat. After I got settled in, the RA’s took us to a barbecue restaurant that is just a few blocks away from the res. Because there were so many of us we had to get it for ‘take away’ and brought it back to campus to eat.

At 3:00 the program took us on an outing to Table Mountain. We had the option to hike up or take the cable cars to the top, but since we were told that the hike was an easy 45 minutes most people decided to do the hike. It was VERY steep—imagine doing a Jillian workout that only involves your calves and quads for an hour and a half, which was how long it actually took us. Thank goodness that I had a backpack that carried extra water bottles, emergen-c, and sunscreen comfortably! But when we got to the top the view from the mountain was amazing—the pictures don’t do it justice.

At the top, I met an Afrikaans man and his English wife who took my picture for me. They explained to me that most white people in South Africa are fluent in both Afrikaans and English and learn a little bit of an African language in school while most black people in South Africa speak English and their tribal language and most can also understand Zulu, although Xhosa is more predominant in Cape Town. His children go to an English school because it is the only one in the area, but his sons also speak Afrikaans when they are trying to persuade him to do something (otherwise they prefer English). He also taught me that a braai is a barbecue made out of coal (not on a gas barbecue) and that hello is pronounced the same in both Afrikaans and English (hallow).