Some Idiosyncrasies of South Africa

I started classes at UCT this week. I signed up for two history courses, one poli sci class and one course offered through the English department. According to UCT’s system I’m taking 96 credits, but it seems equivalent to the workload for 4 Hopkins courses so I am actually getting a little bit of a break this semester. I had a revelation the other day and decided that I am going to complete a minor in African Studies at Hopkins, while still doing my concentration in International Studies on Security Studies/Policy.  Part of the reason why I decided to do this is that it will give me both a regional and topic specialization, and I realized that I have an enormous interest in the African Continent. I think that Africa will continue to be more and more important in the coming years, and that unfortunately, many times International Studies and International Relations curriculum in the West glosses over the continent and does not require much inquest. I’ll be able to use my classes this semester as part of my minor at Hopkins, especially as they are all focused on Africa in one way or another. I’m registered for African Literature and Languages II, South Africa in the 20^th Century, Third World Politics and Africa: Colonial and Post-Colonial Encounters. So far I have been enjoying them all, and am really excited about this new perspective for political theory and history.

Third World Politics is taught by a fantastic female professor. Not to say that I only have a girl crush on her only because of her awesome sense of personal style (which is really cool, I would use the world “fly” to describe her) but she is also really interesting, and the course looks like it will be really great. I am excited to look at major 20^th century events from the point of view of third world states, as many times in history that were really beneficial to 1^st world states and organizations actually had a very negative effect on the third world and its development. Hopefully I will gain some insights into the troubles that the third world is currently facing, and better understand the reasons for these situations.

Now on to some of the idiosyncrasies of UCT.

 First of all everyone (all 22,500 undergraduates) have the same break every day at 1pm. This is known as Meridian. The ENTIRE school goes outside and lounges about eating their lunches for a whole hour in the middle of the day. At first, I thought that this was going to be nice, especially as classes end at the 45, so you really have an hour and 15 minutes to leisurely eat and chat. However, it has become increasingly obvious how uncomfortable this makes me, and the other Americans who are here studying abroad. Quite simply, we don’t know what to do with ourselves for that long. The first day, I thought that I would unhurriedly eat a sandwich I brought from my house, have a Coke Light (what they call diet coke) and chill before heading to class. By 1:10 I was completely over Meridian, it made me anxious. I grew restless and started wishing I had homework or something else to keep me occupied during this time. South Africans however LOVE Meridian. I have decided that UCT students in particular are really adept at lounging. No matter what time I have a break, whether it is early in the morning or later in the day, I think that 90% of students also have that same break, and they are all outside, lounging, everywhere. The main place to lounge is the famous “Jammie” steps that are part of the monolith of Jameson Hall (pronounced JAM-e-son). It is always packed with students. Lounging isn’t just reserved for those stairs however; as I have noticed that UCTers will lounge everywhere and anywhere it could ever remotely be considered appropriate to sit down.

Besides the lounging, there has been some confusion with finding my way around here. Like at most schools they abbreviate everything, and this, combined with the accent can make for some difficult situations. In addition, they tend to label rooms with a floor number and then a room letter, but then some buildings will have floors that are also labeled by a number and a letter leading to the confusion of whether African Languages and Literature was being held in the room CS2A or somewhere in the Computer Science building on its floor 2A…

Some other observations about UCT include the surprising amount of hipsters here. At least 5 times a day I see girls wearing really cool boots I want and everyone carries really awesome leather bags. I definitely need to step up my sartorial game.

That’s all for now, I really need to go work on my first essay! There probably won’t be any more updates until next week as I am doing a home stay in the Ocean View Township this weekend (mandatory as part of my program). It is intended to give us a positive perspective of a previously marginalized community, and it should be a really interesting experience! 

The Hypocrisy of Charity

One of the main reasons I decided to come to South Africa had to do with charity and volunteerism. When I was looking at various study abroad programs, I realized that I was interested in using my time in a foreign country to give back to others. Upon arrival at UCT we were bombarded with all of the various community service opportunities, and everyone excitedly talked about which organizations and causes they wanted to work for. Part of our orientation even included tours of various volunteer sites, and a great emphasis was placed on volunteering.

All this is well and good, but it fails to address many of the real problems that South Africa, and indeed even many parts of America face. Walking down the street here I am a target in many ways. I am white, and according to some, obviously American looking. This means that countless times during the day people will come up and ask me for money. This is nothing new, as similar things have happened to me in many major cities in America, but here my gentle refusal comes with considerable more guilt.

While grocery shopping in Woolworths this past weekend I was approached by a man. He called to me and said, “Miss? Miss excuse me, hello miss? I am so sorry but I only brought R70 to shop for my family, could I have R3? Miss, miss please? Please miss my family is very hungry.” I simply did nothing, continued on looking at the frozen prepared foods as though they were the most interesting things I had ever seen, examining the kilojoules count as though I understood what it meant. Finally, the man gave up and went on his way.

This situation made me uncomfortable for a few reasons. At first, I was upset about being bothered while I was grocery shopping! There I was, minding my own business, trying to pick out things for dinner when out of nowhere I was accosted and asked for money, the nerve! Immediately following this however I felt extremely ashamed. There I was, an entire basketful of food, prepared to spend almost R300 (~$50) when I couldn’t even be bothered to give someone less than a dollar. In that moment I was confronted with the hypocrisy of the charity that I was so prepared and excited to perform. I chose South Africa because I wanted to make a difference in other people’s lives, yet I was angry and bristled at the thought of actually giving someone a small fraction of my money. It occurs to me that this is not unusual, that people are often excited about charity in theory, and yet when confronted with moments in which they can act charitably they are unwilling to. This realization was difficult for me, and it is a moment that I am sure I will think about often while here in S.A. At what point is it acceptable to divorce yourself from day to day charity while espousing a liberal, help others frame of mind? 

Everyone said that studying abroad is about more than the classroom experience, and visiting tourist attractions and I am beginning to see how true that is. 

A Very Interesting Train Trip

So I haven’t posted in a while, and a lot of things have happened! I moved out of my orientation residence and into a house with other American students who are on my program. I have an RA, and there are 19 of us split into two houses. Essentially the “house” is a compound, with two separate houses, a large garden and a backyard. Enclosing all of this is a huge fence and a gate with a key swipe entry. We have a security guard who sits inside the gate from 6pm-6am everyday as an extra precaution. Break ins are common here, so almost all houses have a gate around them, and the few that don’t have bars on the lower windows. Our first night we had to learn how to lock all of the various gates and doors on our house. Most of the rooms are singles, but I drew one of the set of keys for a double. Our room is enormous though, and even has a fireplace, it’s super cute!

I’ve been exploring Cape Town a little more this past week, while still going through UCT registration and orientation. Registration here is wicked complicated. Nothing is computerized, so it involves a lot of paper forms and running around to various departments. The walk alone to “Upper”, where the actual classes are held is super intense. Campus is spread out, upwards on the side of Devil’s Peak. Lower is where students live, Middle is the administrative buildings and Upper is the old part of campus and where classes are held. Upper is really beautiful, and the background of the mountain is unreal looking.

Today my roommate Emily and I went to Muizenberg on the train. There is a beautiful beach there, and plenty of people were surfing, something I definitely want to try while I’m here. We headed back on the train a little before 5. I cannot accurately describe the crush of people in the train car. When Em and I got on, there weren’t any seats, but there was a comfortable amount of standing room. By the time we made it half way to our stop in Mowbray, you literally could not move on the train. The doors remained open the whole time, and people were literally hanging half out of the open doorways, and standing in between the cars on the little platform. Em and I were obviously out of place, and about 4 stops prior to where we wanted to get off, we were told to start moving towards the exit or we wouldn’t make it. Someone told me “you must fight!” It was terrifying/hilarious. I’m not entirely sure how I managed to get off the train, but Em’s from NYC so she was at least was aggressive enough to lead the way off. At the very end, I thought I wasn’t going to actually make it off the train, or that only half of me would make it off. Needless to say, I will not be taking the train at rush hour ever again. 

my house at Signal Hill to watch a sunset! 

Upper Campus 

at the Muizenberg beach! 

academic building on Upper Campus 

surfer at Muizenberg 

beach shacks at Muizenberg

front gate of Wulmunster house 

at the V&A waterfront 

Where 1st and 3rd world collide

Hey!

Short update for today, my program is going out tonight to a vineyard for a welcome dinner and I need to make myself presentable before then! Yesterday and today we spent a lot of time hearing about a lot of the volunteer opportunities here in Cape Town. Cape Town, and South Africa in general, are in a really awkward place in their development. Because of the apartheid, incredibly infrastructure exists alongside mass poverty. Most South Africans live below the poverty line, and access to things like clean, running water can be difficult. There have been books written on this subject, so I won’t bore everyone with the details. 

Essentially, the downtown and touristy areas of Cape Town are insanely beautiful and well kept, while there exists a great number of townships and shanty towns where the inhabitants live in shacks. We toured several places with volunteer opportunities today, including a charter school that caters to low income students from townships, and a government funded hospital for citizens with TB. I am most interested in an opportunity to work in the administration of a small non-profit that provides counseling and medical care to children with HIV. I will update more about this later!

Xoxo,

Sara  

Robben Island and UCT

Robben Island

Today we took a ferry out to Robben Island. Besides being the notorious prison where Nelson Mandela and countless other political prisoners were held and subjected to hard labor, the Island has a varied history. At various times it was a naval base, a prison for criminals, and a leper colony. We took a tour of both the prison and the Island itself. When it was a working prison in the second half of the 1900s about 1000 people lived on the island, now about 120 people live there, mostly support staff of the museum . The tour of the prison was conducted by a former political prisoner, who was held there from the mid 80s until 1991. At the end of the tour he told us a little about his own personal history, and was able to bring a real perspective to the trials of people who fought against the apartheid. 

Karibu UCT

I arrived at Graca Machel dorm yesterday afternoon on UCT’s Lower Campus. I had about an hour to unpack before we were told to meet up for a hike. Originally the plan was to hike Table Mountain, which is a fairly difficult 3 hour (one way) hike. Luckily, both for me and the jet lagged students that were arriving that day, the decision was made to hike the “much more manageable, not really a real hike” Lionshead. It was a little more than easy, but it did offer beautiful views of Cape Town and Table Mountain. On our way down we were able to see the sunset, and it was lovely.

Today we’ve been doing a lot of normal orientation type activities, especially talking about safety and getting around in Cape Town. While South Africa has a rather bad reputation for crime, in some cases there is too much made of the danger. Like any other large city, Cape Town has crime, but most of it involves drugs and gangs. As long as you are cautious and thoughtful there is nothing to really worry about.  I suffered my first major disappointment today. On our name tags we had letters that indicated where we were living. When called, I went to my group, R for Roxy, and went through house rules and introductions. Come to find out, my name tag was wrong and I was actually living in a different house. I am a little upset as everyone in the Roxy group seemed really chill and I was looking forward to a quiet and fun semester. Oh well, hopefully my actual house won’t disappoint! 

Hallo again!

I’m sure I won’t be posting as much when I start at UCT, but while my parents are here we’re doing a lot of touristy activities. Today we went to a game preserve that was close to Cape Town and did a mini “safari”. Most of the animals on the preserve were free roaming, except the Lions, as they would kill many of the other animals. The lions are allowed to roam freely in a large area that is then hemmed in by fences keeping them from the other animals. The preserve has a mixture of both rescue animals and some animals that are indigenous to the area. 

We saw so many beautiful things, but my favorite was the elephants. The preserve has two male elephants, around 26 years of age. The elephants were rescued by the preserve after some of their family was killed during a culling of elephants in an over populated area. When culling, it is necessary to kill an entire family of elephants at once, otherwise the remaining elephants can either die from depression (they are one of the only animals besides humans that mourns) or have behavioral issues and become “problem children”. The elephants that the preserve has were in the second group, and could not continue to be left in the wild with other elephants, as they would destroy others’ family structure. An interesting fact about elephants; they do not really die from old age (oldest elephant in captivity was 106) but they die from starvation. Elephants are born with 5-6 sets of teeth. When these run out, the animal starves. This is the reason that there are things like elephant graveyards. When they are becoming older and they only have a few sets of teeth left elephants will migrate to places where the grasses are softer and easier to eat, this helps their teeth last longer.

After the game preserve we drove back through the Stellenbosch wine region and stopped at a winery named Spier. Besides the wine tasting (the chardonnay and chenin blanc were divine), the property also has a cheetah sanctuary. There we got to pet an actual cheetah! It honestly was just like a very large cat that purred when it was petted. Cheetahs are one of the animals that is most endangered by urban sprawl in South Africa and one of the sanctuary’s goals is to educate the public about the loss of their habitat.

I absolutely love it here!

Xoxo,

Sara 

I'm petting a cheetah! It purred :) 

early morning at the game preserve 

Wine! 

with our ranger Abrie 

the one where I eat springbok

Hallo!

So much to update on and it’s only been another two days! Yesterday we were up fairly early again and took a tour of the greater Cape Peninsula.  Our first stop was Table Mountain, the backdrop for most of Cape Town. We took a cable car to the top instead of hiking the mountain. The cable cars are extremely fast (top speed of 10 m/s), and turn a full 360 degrees as they’re climbing so you get a complete view. I definitely want to hike up at some point during my stay. The view from the top was incredible, and completely unlike anything I have ever seen. Looking out over the ocean,  one feels like they can see where the earth starts curving; and since it was a completely clear day the ocean and the sky become a single entity in the distance.

Cape Town is surrounded by and built upon mountains. Besides Table Mountain there is Lionshead and a multitude of unnamed peaks. Our tour continued with driving along a coastal route, stopping at various scenic overlooks. We ate lunch at Cape Point (right next to the Cape of Good Hope) and stopped at an Ostrich Farm. To finish up the day we went to Boulders, which is famous for its colony of African Penguins. Like Cape Point, Boulders is part of Table Mountain National Park, and its conservation is taken very seriously. I was so excited to see the penguins! They’re an endangered species and only nest along the Southern Beaches of Africa. Several walked right up next to us and waddled around. It’s the nesting season so we got to see chicks and other younger penguins that were just molting.

Today we intended to go to Robben Island, the site where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were held during apartheid. However by the time we made it to the V&A Waterfront all the tours were sold out for the day. Instead we wandered around the waterfront for most of the day and ate a long lunch of traditional African food and wild game. Dad and I each had a venison sampler that included springbok and impala. The Impala reminded me more of a flavorful beef, with an almost spicy or gamey flavor, while the springbok, my favorite, was a white meat that brought to mind a spiced and extremely flavorful poultry. Grilling or BBQ-ing is called a braai here, and is extremely popular. So good! Mom tried ostrich, and said that she couldn’t tell much difference between that and beef. Along with the game we had traditional side dishes, including bread that was baked over hot coals, and phutu which is similar to couscous that was served with a bean and spiced tomato mixture.

We came back to the hotel on the early side and just caught a beautiful sunset over the ocean. Tomorrow we are going on a mini safari! The game preserve is about an hour and a half away and we’re leaving at 6am. I am so excited to see elephants and cheetahs. There is reportedly a place nearby that you can visit cheetahs and also pet them, something I am dying to do.

view from Table Mountain 

View from Chapman's Peak 

Penguin at Boulders! 

V&A Waterfront with Table Mountain 

sampler of African Venison 

Sunset on July 9th

view of Table Mountain from our hotel 

Ostrich Farm 

cable car heading up Table Mountain 

View of Cape Town and World Cup Stadium from Table Mountain 

xoxo

Sara 

Hallo Suid-Afrika

Greetings from the southern hemisphere! I honestly can’t believe I’m in Africa right now, everything has been such a blur and my sleep schedule is so off that if you told me I was dreaming all of this up I would totally believe it.

The journey was long to say the least. I got on a bus at 2:30pm East Coast time on Tuesday afternoon, from there it was a two hour bus ride to Boston, sitting in the airport, and a seven and a half hour flight to Amsterdam. We landed around 2 in the morning EST and 8am in Amsterdam. I wish we had had time to spend a night or two, the city and countryside looked adorable from my window as we were landing. Then the real fun began. We had just enough time to deplane and go through security in Amsterdam before boarding another flight, this one headed for Cape Town. Spending eleven and a half hours on a plane was never something I thought I’d have to do, but it went rather quickly all things considered. Also, I’ve decided that I adore flying international, once we were airborne from Boston the wine was free flowing and frequently served.

Now for some first impressions of Cape Town; we landed about 10:30pm local time and quickly went through passport control and customs. The airport seemed small, and despite everyone reminding us that it was winter, it seemed quite warm when we walked outside. Everything is super close here, and our hotel, situated across from the center of town on the lagoon and facing Table Mountain was a quick drive from the airport.

Everything is super clean here. We went down to the Victoria and Albert waterfront this afternoon and it seemed like everything was being constantly cleaned, there is hand sanitizer everywhere. I’m wondering if this is common only in the tourist heavy parts of the city or if it is more a part of the culture. Besides that everything seems incredibly environmentally conscious, there are public recycling bins all over and many places seem very concerned with promoting conservation and earth friendly practices. There are several game preserves and botanical gardens that focus on preserving and breeding endangered species and reintroducing them into the wild, even Tigers from Asia!

One of the strangest/greatest things is the dichotomy between the city and the nature that surrounds it. I would have believed I was in a European or other Western city at many points during the day, except that the backdrop of Table Mountain was omnipresent. Most incredibly, the amount of cultures mixing here is incredible; I have already met tourists from India to Canada and all over Europe. Tomorrow we’re planning a tour of the Cape Peninsula and hopefully a trip up Table Mountain, and we’re doing a mini safari this weekend!

Everyone we’ve met that lives here is very proudly South African, and loves to tell us all about the wildlife and changes that South Africa has been through. They also ask if we watched the World Cup, which they’re obviously proud of, I can’t wait to go to the stadium and see a match!

Xoxo,

Sara

Pictures to follow!