I have been in Cape Town for one whole month. As with most things in life, I came in with a lot of presuppositions about what my experience might be like. Some of them have been accurate, some blown out of the proverbial water, but no matter how ignorant or educated I might have been on January 23rd, I can honestly say that I have a few fun facts under my belt that were not there before (a few extra kgs there too. I mean it's inevitable with all the sugar I'm drinking in my 4+ cups of tea a day). I would like to take this time to enlighten you, my few and faithful readers:
Things I have learned...
1. Rondebosch is an area of Cape Town and the place where I and the the University of Cape Town dwell.
2. UCT is about a 25 minute walk from my house, and one making this journey via main road will pass about 15 restaurants/bars, 3-7 beggars/homeless people, 5+ suspiciously aimless characters, 4 self-proclaimed car watchmen, a mini mall, an Anglican and Methodist church, a Pick N Pay, and Jacob Zuma's house.
3. South Africa has not yet embraced the 21st century when it comes to bandwidth.
4. In spite of fact #4, the Chinese teenage boy community still manages to pride themselves on their DOTA skillz.
5. The neighbors' baby has some serious pipes.
6. If you go to a braai, you should allot more time than you would for your stateside barbecue and should likely bring your own meat and maybe a sleeping bag (just in case).
7. "Shame," "hey," "Cheers," "is it,?" and "hectic" are indispensable parts of the Cape Townian vocabulary.
8. Safety is a constant priority, but one has little real control over it.
9. "Necklacing" is not a fashion statement.
10. South Africans are just as uncomfortable with Zuma's polygamy as the rest of the world.
11. The beach is beautiful, but the water is cold and the wind can be brutal.
12. 1 in 4 (need to check this statistic) people in Cape Town are HIV positive. To help combat this problem, free condoms have been placed in toilets all around the city and campus for your personal convenience.
13. Hot Chocolate is not just for wintertime.
14. Bar Ones and Nik Naks are where it's at.
15. Students are not adults and thus, should not expect to be treated as such.
16. Most things do not happen on time, but it's chill, bru.
17. Teachers have no shame in calling individuals out in front of the other 200 students in the class.
18. Southern friendliness translates into getting hit on by creepy, middle-aged men.
19. As an American, you can expect to have all kinds of conclusions formed about you before you even open your mouth.
20. There is a bird that sounds like a possessed goat and frequents our neighborhood in the wee hours of the morn.
I hope these fun facts help illustrate the context of my current 5-month stay. Happy reading!
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Awakening the Cape Townian Spirit
Uptight. Anal. Pannies-in-a-Wad. 80-year-old-woman-in-the-body-of-a-20-year-old. These are all descriptions my friends and family have lovingly bestowed upon me throughout my life. But it's alright. I have accepted it and vowed to use my compulsiveness for good and not evil. After all, it's endearing right? However, my inner perfectionist has finally met its match in an adversary called Cape Town.
Day by day (and queue by queue) during orientation week I began to slowly accept the fact that my schedule and business were totally out of my hands. Whether or not I had brought the necessary paperwork, fulfilled the necessary requirements stateside, or done every little thing asked of me while jumping on one foot blindfolded with a monkey on my back was all irrelevant. Something would inevitably go wrong, each activity would inevitably take 5 times longer than expected, and I would inevitably get sassed by some person in authority. I realized after about a week or so that this was the way things operated in these parts and I could either roll with it or develop hypertension.
However, though I was slowly relaxing, classes had not yet started, and I held onto the hope that lectures/seminars would be my sweet spot, a place where I was prepared and ready for action. Think again, Schleiff. Think. A-gain.
Yesterday saw the official commencement of UCT undergrad courses. After our previous tardiness on Friday, Dana and I decided that we would not take any chances for our 8:00 class, opting for the 7:10 jammie instead of the 7:50. We confidently left the house at 6:55 AM (I know, hold the phone, fellow college students. This is not a joke), expecting to be chilling at the coffee shop on campus by 7:30, with muffins, espresso, and joy. So, when the bus didn't come at 7:10 we began to get ancy. But we resolved to wait thinking "surely it will be here soon. It must just be running late."--Let me just pause here to say that the word "surely" is quickly becoming endangered in my vocab. It's like "jou keep using dat word. I do not tink it means what you tink it means."--When it hadn't come by 7:35, we had reached that precipice where we had to decide to either put our faith in the jammie or give up and just walk. Opting for the narrow road, we decided to stick it out. We had come this far, we had already made friends with fellow disgruntled jammie-riders, and we had consequently journeyed farther away from school to get to this blessed bus stop.
Surprise, Surprise. 7:50, still no bus.
At 8:05, after class had definitely already started, a man drove up to the stop to reprimand us on our impatience with the jammie. "It is out of our hands," he said. "Please stop calling, and please don't give us any attitude." He then proceeded to turn to a middle-age woman also waiting at the stop to offer her a lift to campus. I have found that there have been rare moments on this journey when my American patriotism has suddenly risen up out of nowhere, and at that particular point in time I longed to go freedom-of-expression all over the man. However, like a good southern lady, I stored my anger within, letting it simmer to a slow bitterness, resolving to only fantasize about throwing myself onto his car rather than actually following through on it.
Let's just say I am not so proud of my attitude at this point. And at 8:30 when the jammie did finally come and we met our 9:00-class-attending roommates boarding the bus, I decided to ignore my previous resolution to not be another "loud American" as I lamented to my friends about how this whole thing would have gone down differently in say New York (I reveled in images of deaths by stilettos, international lawsuits, jammie station bombings, and college students chaining themselves to stationary objects. Can I get a witness?).
But, alas, I am finding in these experiences (although I think I might have read it somewhere before) that anger is a dead-end road. You can't get mad, you can't get even, you've got to get Cape Townian. Shoelessness in Arkansas may be an unwanted stereotype but here it is a badge of honour. Missing you jammie, missing your lecture, or missing the birth of your first child is small potatoes, bru. It's also alright not to know and it is ok to be ok with not knowing.
I have yet to understand how homework works here, I am not sure I am attending the classes I am registered for, I have not signed up for one of my mandatory seminars, I haven't seen my passport since I loaned it to my new friend, Sikote several days ago, and I have forgotten my middle name, but I am dealing with it. (Before anyone panics, only joking about the middle name).
Who needs Marijuana when you've awakened the Cape Townian Spirit, hey?
Day by day (and queue by queue) during orientation week I began to slowly accept the fact that my schedule and business were totally out of my hands. Whether or not I had brought the necessary paperwork, fulfilled the necessary requirements stateside, or done every little thing asked of me while jumping on one foot blindfolded with a monkey on my back was all irrelevant. Something would inevitably go wrong, each activity would inevitably take 5 times longer than expected, and I would inevitably get sassed by some person in authority. I realized after about a week or so that this was the way things operated in these parts and I could either roll with it or develop hypertension.
However, though I was slowly relaxing, classes had not yet started, and I held onto the hope that lectures/seminars would be my sweet spot, a place where I was prepared and ready for action. Think again, Schleiff. Think. A-gain.
Yesterday saw the official commencement of UCT undergrad courses. After our previous tardiness on Friday, Dana and I decided that we would not take any chances for our 8:00 class, opting for the 7:10 jammie instead of the 7:50. We confidently left the house at 6:55 AM (I know, hold the phone, fellow college students. This is not a joke), expecting to be chilling at the coffee shop on campus by 7:30, with muffins, espresso, and joy. So, when the bus didn't come at 7:10 we began to get ancy. But we resolved to wait thinking "surely it will be here soon. It must just be running late."--Let me just pause here to say that the word "surely" is quickly becoming endangered in my vocab. It's like "jou keep using dat word. I do not tink it means what you tink it means."--When it hadn't come by 7:35, we had reached that precipice where we had to decide to either put our faith in the jammie or give up and just walk. Opting for the narrow road, we decided to stick it out. We had come this far, we had already made friends with fellow disgruntled jammie-riders, and we had consequently journeyed farther away from school to get to this blessed bus stop.
Surprise, Surprise. 7:50, still no bus.
At 8:05, after class had definitely already started, a man drove up to the stop to reprimand us on our impatience with the jammie. "It is out of our hands," he said. "Please stop calling, and please don't give us any attitude." He then proceeded to turn to a middle-age woman also waiting at the stop to offer her a lift to campus. I have found that there have been rare moments on this journey when my American patriotism has suddenly risen up out of nowhere, and at that particular point in time I longed to go freedom-of-expression all over the man. However, like a good southern lady, I stored my anger within, letting it simmer to a slow bitterness, resolving to only fantasize about throwing myself onto his car rather than actually following through on it.
Let's just say I am not so proud of my attitude at this point. And at 8:30 when the jammie did finally come and we met our 9:00-class-attending roommates boarding the bus, I decided to ignore my previous resolution to not be another "loud American" as I lamented to my friends about how this whole thing would have gone down differently in say New York (I reveled in images of deaths by stilettos, international lawsuits, jammie station bombings, and college students chaining themselves to stationary objects. Can I get a witness?).
But, alas, I am finding in these experiences (although I think I might have read it somewhere before) that anger is a dead-end road. You can't get mad, you can't get even, you've got to get Cape Townian. Shoelessness in Arkansas may be an unwanted stereotype but here it is a badge of honour. Missing you jammie, missing your lecture, or missing the birth of your first child is small potatoes, bru. It's also alright not to know and it is ok to be ok with not knowing.
I have yet to understand how homework works here, I am not sure I am attending the classes I am registered for, I have not signed up for one of my mandatory seminars, I haven't seen my passport since I loaned it to my new friend, Sikote several days ago, and I have forgotten my middle name, but I am dealing with it. (Before anyone panics, only joking about the middle name).
Who needs Marijuana when you've awakened the Cape Townian Spirit, hey?
Saturday, February 6, 2010
For Everything Else, There's Cape Town
I would at this point like to exert my prerogative as a female and totally contradict my myself. Please humour me as I relay two pleasant, sappy anecdotes from the past week...In the profound words of Walgreen's commercial writers, "There are some things money can't buy." There are some moments that are so spontaneously wonderful that they could seemingly exist only in a "land called perfect."
Last Saturday my housemates and I decided to ride the train to Muizenberg beach. Now there is something especially romantic about the idea of training to the beach in itself, but this day was especially perfect. The temperature was in the upper 70s, the breeze was blowing, the sun was shining, and our spirits were high. Suddenly, in mid-journey, we heard music coming from one end of our car. Just as we realized that a fellow passenger strumming his banjo was the source of this background tunage, we heard the sounds of an accompanying jazz ensemble join the spontaneous chorus. Now from where said jazz musicians appeared was a mystery, but who has time for irrelevant questions when you're tappin' your toe to the beat of a tambourine? After several miles of melodious travel, we hopped off our train car and into the sand with the echoes of these Cape Townian troubadours trailing in the distance. A perfect beginning to a perfect day.
The second spontaneously wonderful moment occurred yesterday when my housemate Dana and I were on our way to our first day of UCT classes. Our first class, Modernism, started at 8:00AM sharp, and although everything else in Cape Town runs on African time, apparently class schedules do not. Now, at OBU if I had an 8:00 I could easily roll out of bed at 7:40, throw on a hat (to cover unshowered hair), brush my teeth (maybe?), leave my dorm at 7:55 and be comfortably in my seat by class time. However, in Cape Town getting to class means walking 20+ minutes to lower campus, catching a jammie bus to upper campus, and then missioning to your class from there. Naturally, as is generally the case for those who are unfortunate enough to travel with me, we got on our way a little too late. In addition to this bump in the road, there was a intense queue (oh how I love that word) for the jammie. So at around 8:05 we were still jammie-ing, and I was super stressin'. Meanwhile, as we were embarking on our first of many UCT days to come, Bob Marley was celebrating his 65th birthday (well in Spirit, anyway). And at 8:05 as my blood pressure was on the rise, the words of Ras-Bob's prophetic "Three Little Birds" strolled their way over the radio into all of our jammie-ing hearts with "Don't worry about a thing...cuz every little thing's gonna be alright." Now Bob may have needed cannabis to fully live out this worldview but his lyrics were enough for me. In fact, the entire jammie of previously stressed-out first years and I took these words to heart, and though the minutes of our tardiness were ticking ticking away, we were totally chill as we bobbed our heads to these Jammie Jam Jams. Singin' "don't worry about a thing"...Thanks, Bob. You're a real pal.
Last Saturday my housemates and I decided to ride the train to Muizenberg beach. Now there is something especially romantic about the idea of training to the beach in itself, but this day was especially perfect. The temperature was in the upper 70s, the breeze was blowing, the sun was shining, and our spirits were high. Suddenly, in mid-journey, we heard music coming from one end of our car. Just as we realized that a fellow passenger strumming his banjo was the source of this background tunage, we heard the sounds of an accompanying jazz ensemble join the spontaneous chorus. Now from where said jazz musicians appeared was a mystery, but who has time for irrelevant questions when you're tappin' your toe to the beat of a tambourine? After several miles of melodious travel, we hopped off our train car and into the sand with the echoes of these Cape Townian troubadours trailing in the distance. A perfect beginning to a perfect day.
The second spontaneously wonderful moment occurred yesterday when my housemate Dana and I were on our way to our first day of UCT classes. Our first class, Modernism, started at 8:00AM sharp, and although everything else in Cape Town runs on African time, apparently class schedules do not. Now, at OBU if I had an 8:00 I could easily roll out of bed at 7:40, throw on a hat (to cover unshowered hair), brush my teeth (maybe?), leave my dorm at 7:55 and be comfortably in my seat by class time. However, in Cape Town getting to class means walking 20+ minutes to lower campus, catching a jammie bus to upper campus, and then missioning to your class from there. Naturally, as is generally the case for those who are unfortunate enough to travel with me, we got on our way a little too late. In addition to this bump in the road, there was a intense queue (oh how I love that word) for the jammie. So at around 8:05 we were still jammie-ing, and I was super stressin'. Meanwhile, as we were embarking on our first of many UCT days to come, Bob Marley was celebrating his 65th birthday (well in Spirit, anyway). And at 8:05 as my blood pressure was on the rise, the words of Ras-Bob's prophetic "Three Little Birds" strolled their way over the radio into all of our jammie-ing hearts with "Don't worry about a thing...cuz every little thing's gonna be alright." Now Bob may have needed cannabis to fully live out this worldview but his lyrics were enough for me. In fact, the entire jammie of previously stressed-out first years and I took these words to heart, and though the minutes of our tardiness were ticking ticking away, we were totally chill as we bobbed our heads to these Jammie Jam Jams. Singin' "don't worry about a thing"...Thanks, Bob. You're a real pal.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
A Queue, a Queue for You and You and You: Getting Settled, Orientated and Culturally-Adjusted
Waiting. The most consistent theme in our quest to the Continent. It began with waiting to be accepted to UCT, continued with waiting for the South African embassy to finally return our visa-ed passports, was sprinkled with waiting in airports, on runways, by fellow airplane passengers, and near pyramids, and ended with waiting for permanent housing whilst barricaded in a dorm room. It was both appropriate and somewhat nostalgic, then, when we realized that "waiting" would also be defining our introduction to the University of Cape Town.
Before this blog begins to sound too melancholy, I would like to note that I enjoyed many positive experiences in our week-long orientation to UCT. However, I will not trifle you with frilly summaries of our beautiful trip around the peninsula, our enlightening information sessions in the lecture hall, or even our picturesque housing situation. Nay. KARK may waist your time with sentimental anecdotes about puppies and the elderly, but I will stick to what has been the bread and butter for Wall Street, the New York Times, and Bill O'Reilly for a hundred plus years: the cruel, bitter, unapologetic realities of life. This is a no spin zone, people. Look for your Delilahs and your Danielle Steeles on someone else's blog.
Now back to my story. We found "Waiting," like an unwelcome distant relative, popping in to say hello all throughout our first week in Cape Town. This time, though, he introduced himself as a "Queue." Now queue is a rather nasty word South Africans utter frequently. It comes in the forms of verb and noun: "to queue"--to wait in a line that is of an unholy length and "queue"--said line that is of an unholy length. We queued for pre-registration, queued for transportation, waited in a queue for registration and ended with a magnificent, 3-hour queuing for ID cards. Some might have been anticipating a South Africa of primitiveness with eager anticipation, but I was looking forward to a country that had fallen deeply in love--much like our beloved America--with the wonderful World Wide Web. Apparently, they are still in an open relationship...and it's complicated.
Thus, to sum up my first Cape Townian week I will call on the lingo of my new South African compadres: hectic admin, bru.
But alas, as classes begin this Friday, there is a light at the end of this bureaucratic tunnel. Until then, I will hang out with Waiting for 3 more days and pass the time with Braais and the Beach. Sunnier days are sure to come, my friends. Sunnier days, indeed.
Before this blog begins to sound too melancholy, I would like to note that I enjoyed many positive experiences in our week-long orientation to UCT. However, I will not trifle you with frilly summaries of our beautiful trip around the peninsula, our enlightening information sessions in the lecture hall, or even our picturesque housing situation. Nay. KARK may waist your time with sentimental anecdotes about puppies and the elderly, but I will stick to what has been the bread and butter for Wall Street, the New York Times, and Bill O'Reilly for a hundred plus years: the cruel, bitter, unapologetic realities of life. This is a no spin zone, people. Look for your Delilahs and your Danielle Steeles on someone else's blog.
Now back to my story. We found "Waiting," like an unwelcome distant relative, popping in to say hello all throughout our first week in Cape Town. This time, though, he introduced himself as a "Queue." Now queue is a rather nasty word South Africans utter frequently. It comes in the forms of verb and noun: "to queue"--to wait in a line that is of an unholy length and "queue"--said line that is of an unholy length. We queued for pre-registration, queued for transportation, waited in a queue for registration and ended with a magnificent, 3-hour queuing for ID cards. Some might have been anticipating a South Africa of primitiveness with eager anticipation, but I was looking forward to a country that had fallen deeply in love--much like our beloved America--with the wonderful World Wide Web. Apparently, they are still in an open relationship...and it's complicated.
Thus, to sum up my first Cape Townian week I will call on the lingo of my new South African compadres: hectic admin, bru.
But alas, as classes begin this Friday, there is a light at the end of this bureaucratic tunnel. Until then, I will hang out with Waiting for 3 more days and pass the time with Braais and the Beach. Sunnier days are sure to come, my friends. Sunnier days, indeed.
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