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!