Part Nine: Cape Town: "Its A Frican' Experience"

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Ohm……..y gosh is that a whale?

The Cape Town story comes in three parts for your convenience. Part two is a diary, part three is a reflection, but lets start at the beginning. Cape Town part one is the day we refer to as, "Fuel Burning Day."

making circles!

The night before we were due to arrive in South Africa they told us that there were strong winds and that we might be delayed a bit getting into port because the entrance is tight. 40 hours later, we arrived. The winds were so strong the initial morning of arrival that they wouldn’t let us near land. They also wouldn’t let us up to the front of the ship to watch the sunrise. As we stood on deck 6, I was getting blown forward and backward and couldn’t hold my camera steady. The waves were so large that they used special tablecloths at breakfast to keep the plates from sliding off the tables. Our disembarkation time was 10am after the initial delay. 10 came and went. Noon came and went. Dinner came and went and they finally announced that we would probably be getting in between 11pm and midnight. Then it was between midnight and 1am. I went to bed and woke up at 3, we were still rolling around at sea. I got out of bed at 7:30, still rolling. Our spiritual leader decided to hold a prayer session on deck five to raise spirits. Literally seconds after the ritual was complete, the boat whipped around (as much as a cruise ship can whip) and headed top speed back towards the continent. 45 minutes later, we were in port. After the announcement that we were getting let in, Aysha and I ran to the front of the boat. The outside decks were still closed off so we asked very nicely if we could go into the fac/staff lounge to see off the front of the ship. The view was amazing. You could see the entire port, with its mountains topped in clouds and as we watched, we could see dozens of seals leaping out of the water ahead of us like they were showing us the way. We also saw tons of jellyfish, both white and red, and to cap it all off, a whale, just a hundred feet away, blowing water out of its blowhole! As the pilot pulled up to the ship to guide us in everyone went to the starboard side to wave and yell and it looked exactly like what I have imagined our return to San Diego to look like. People were that excited.

the big waves knocked sara off her chair

our GPS :)

 Our extra 26 or so hours at sea were actually great. I’m learning in my stress management class how to let go of things I can’t control, and this was great practice. Granted, I was one of the lucky ones, I didn’t have a safari I was missing, or a friend or family member I was supposed to be meeting, or a plane to Johannesburg to catch, so my stress level was relatively low. I spent the day on the decks, getting sunburned and eating too much. Even though the waves were the biggest they have ever been, I didn’t feel sick at all for most of the day. They were very good to us. We got sherbert at lunch and they played Hollywood movies in the Union instead of educational ones and they kept us updated every hour, even when there was no new information. Many students handled it really well, others did not. One person started a petition. Ilana said, “Do you really think its in their control? Do you think the captain was like, ‘the students are annoying me. How can I piss of them off the most?’” For the first time I could see the port city from my cabin window. It looks a lot like Santa Monica actually. There is a ferris wheel and a giant mall and behind it all are the mountains. Table Mountain most prominent and interesting. It’s the most Western-looking place we’ve seen. From the 7th and 8ths decks you can see beyond the city, where there are 1000s of people living in shantytowns. It’s bizarre.

The stadium where the world cup was held is walking distance up the road. WAKA WAKA! U2 is performing there tonight. Dean Dan told us the other day that he’d written Bono a letter asking if he would like to come onboard the ship. It began, “Dear Bono, I am writing to you from the middle of the Atlantic ocean where I have been living for the past month with 700 college students.” He said, if that wouldn’t get his attention, he didn’t know what would.

waka waka stadium!

The Voice told us to try not to use our credit cards. She used hers once in Brazil and got a call a few days later asking her if she did indeed purchase a topless cruise for 50 people. She said she was so confused and unconvinced she’d heard them right that she made them spell ‘topless.’

FUN FACTS:

The leading cause of death for women in South Africa is murder. 70% of the women who are killed, are killed by their husbands. 1 in 3 women here admit to having been raped but even more astonishing, 1 in 4 men admit to having raped a woman. Considering how unlikely people are to actually admit that, those numbers are unbelievable. It’s such a beautiful city, but it has a lot of depth and darkness.
***

Cape Town Part Two: Aka the part of the trip I wont decide to remember as a 26-hour long free whale watching excursion...

As soon as the ship docked Jason and I booked it off and headed straight for the aquarium. Walking through the waterfront was like being at home. There is a mall across the dock from our ship that is the biggest I have ever seen. There are multiple grocery stores inside and also a post office and a Hallal Subway restaurant. The aquarium is apparently the 3rd “best” in the world, after the one in Cali of course and the one in Dubai. We saw them feeding their giant sea turtle, and a bunch of huge sharks and beach penguins. There were great signs all around the shark exhibit that said things like: "Rethinking the Shark – Last year 673 people were killed by defective toasters, 4 people by sharks." After the aquarium we went to dinner on the waterfront where I had my first taste of South African wine and then we headed to the stadium to hear the U2 concert. We found a grassy knoll at the back where we could hear every word. We stayed for our 5 or so favorite songs and sang our hearts out with the other 100 people who’d found this sweet spot.

the woman whose house we were building

 On Saturday I had my Habitat for Humanity trip, which involved leaving the Cape Town bubble. We drove into one the infamous districts and I felt like I was back in Ghana. I’d heard that parts of South Africa are in worse shape than Ghana and this is true. A mere 20 minutes away from the beautiful city there are thousands of people living in huts that are just cloth tied to sticks. The dirt streets were so narrow our bus had a hard time getting down them. A girl behind me on the bus said to her friend, “I thought that I wanted to live here in Cape Town, but I don’t think I could do it anymore knowing that this is here.” Just like in Ghana there were kids everywhere. They watched us as we worked and a few students went down to a little shop with them and bought 3 soccer balls that we all played with. The building was hard work in that it was mostly heavy lifting but the “professional” builders we were working with didn’t seem to appreciate us. In fact, I had the sense that we were getting in the way. Unfortunately, I came to the realization that Habitat is more for the volunteers than the ones in need. The jobs could be done quicker and better without our slow and imprecise contributions. The woman whose house we were working on was there all day with her children. She gave us snacks and ginger beer and let us take pictures of her newborn. None of the children were wearing shoes despite the construction site. I found that odd as we were not allowed near it without a hard hat on.

 That night I bought two very cheap theatre tickets to go see Taming of the Shrew. I was supposed to go through SAS but that was canceled because we were trapped at sea. The venue was similar to the Theatricum but the style of theatre was not. The show was messed with in the kind of way Jen Madden would not appreciate but it was very entertaining. The most interesting part of it all was the audience. They were all very young. The majority of people were in their 30s and below and there were a fair number of kids under 10. The show was definitely not family friendly but it didn’t seem to matter. The theatre audiences I see attending Shakespeare in the States are usually retired couples, that was not the case here, it was rather refreshing.

The cab driver who took us there and back did his very best to cheat us out of money. He stopped for gas but refused to pause the meter and then didn’t want to use the meter at all on the way back, saying it would be the same price as going even though it was no longer rush hour. I talked loudly to Jason about how sick and tired I was of being taken advantage of in these other countries. Its true, from Brazil on and especially in Africa people see our white faces or hear our accents and assume that they can wildly overcharge us or get mad when we don’t want to buy from them. “You have money to be here!” they say, “I need to feed my kids!” Over time, saying no gets harder and harder, but then you reach a point when you get angry or indignant. I have no desire to underpay or barter below what something is worth but I’m not given a chance. I want to give them what they deserve, or in the case of the cab driver, what they should earn for their services, but just because I am from America even the nicest people want to bleed you. It almost hurt my feelings. We had a good conversation with this man but the message I got from his indirect route, gas stop, and meter was that talking to us was just a device to get a good tip. I guess my complaining hit home for the driver because when we reached the dock he lowered the price. I had been all prepared to open my mouth as I handed over the money and say something designed to make him at least feel guilty for charging us 30R extra, but he surprised me. My faith in humanity was restored.

The next morning I decided to wake up at 5:30 to see if I could hop on a day safari. I’d decided the day before that it was either that or cage diving and elephants trump sharks in my book. I did manage to get onto a SAS trip and it was one of the better life decisions I have ever made. I’d only slept for 4 hours or so but I was literally pinching myself to stay awake on our 2.5 bus ride to the reserve. We drove past the most amazing landscapes I have ever seen, and I mean that honestly. It took my breath away; I literally lost my breath. I have never seen such beauty anywhere in the world. No sunset seen at sea or valley of flowers or waterfall hike could ever match it. Sadly my photos don’t do it justice.

 Upon arrival we were given glasses of wine even though it was only 8am and then served the best meal of my life. It was mostly usual breakfast food but included things I haven’t seen since leaving the States like crystallized brown sugar and pineapple and actual tomato ketchup for the chicken nuggets (I don’t know why those were included). The lodge was like a 1000 star hotel and from the window next to my breakfast table I could see two wild elephants grazing on the hillside. Our game drive began after our meal and lasted about 3 hours. We saw 4 out of the “Big 5” wild game and got so close to the zebras and elephants that we could have touched them if we’d liked. Interestingly, it was the rhinos and not the lions that were the scariest part. Rhinos kill more people suddenly than any other animal in the reserve. They gave us more wine on the trip and then more again when we returned for lunch which I could not enjoy because I was still full from breakfast and finally we headed back to the ship. 

 

a school

 The next day was our last full day and I had a trip planned to take a bike tour of a township. The bikes were a challenge. Mine was too big for me and many people got flat tired or had bikes with no brakes but we all made it. We visited an AIDS testing center and learned some disturbing statistics. 5,000 people die each day from AIDS, and many of them were never diagnosed. People don’t want to get tested because it is like getting a death sentence and they are then stigmatized. Many people still don’t know how HIV is transmitted and think it can be cured by honey, or prayer, or worst of all – sex with virgins. Its such a problem in South Africa that it is just a part of their lives now. Like we worry about catching a cold, they worry about catching HIV. Women are forced into prostitution because they have no money or husbands and it means being able to feed their children even if it cuts their lives in half. In some places around where we were, the average life expectancy is 30 years. Our bike tour took us to both the richest and poorest places of the township. It was shocking – literally, and I mean literally, next door to a shack the size of a porta-potty, was a brick house with a satellite dish. The poor build their houses where there is space, which is often in between the brick houses, and they live side by side. They can see each other from their windows. We played soccer with some school kids and gave them the soccer balls and visited a computer lab where none of the children seemed to know how to use the computers. We saw women preparing lunches for the school children and although the food smelled good, it looked like mud and was delivered to them in tin buckets. We got some lessons in the local language, Xhosa, which is the awesome clicking one, and then had some bread and tea in a woman’s home/restaurant before heading out.

that sign says "Presbyterian church of africa"

the children's lunch

On that last night I went out for a night of theatre in District Six with a great group of people. The theatre was a converted Church left over from the Apartheid days and we got some history from the “emcee.” Apparently when this district became integrated they had to re-do all of the roads to make it a physically new place so that no one group of people felt like they had a prior claim to it. The show was pretty standard community theatre but the dancing was top notch. After the show Ana and Laura and I rode the Ferris wheel, which made us all ill and then went for desert. The wind was blowing so hard it blew Laura’s glass of milk away. We ate something that was called “Death by Chocolate” that might was well have been crack. Laura sold me one of her phone cards and I called Wheaton, which felt chocolate for the soul. :-)

That afternoon I overpaid for Internet that didn’t last and was in a bad mood as I was walking around the mall with Alec and I said to him, “Tell me something good.” “South Africa” he instantly replied.

upward bound table mountain

I again got up with the sun that last morning to go climb The Mountain. Table Mountain was the backdrop to the whole week. You can see it from everywhere, the town, the townships, my cabin window. It is over 3,000 feet tall and is a constant presence. We began our climb at 7:45 and were the only ones on the trail. The trail by the way has no flat parts. It is a series of boulders that function as steps all the way up. It was foggy and cool and eerie to be out there just the three of us. The climbing was so rigorous that we stopped every 10 minutes and did actually meet some other climbers. One was a man who was on his way down. I was feeling like I couldn’t take much more and that surely we must be almost there. “You see that peak over there,” he said “that’s the 1/3 way mark.” He then told us to put our cameras away. “If a mugger hears your accent, you become an easy target.” We plowed on and got increasingly loopy. The altitude, the exhaustion of the past 5 days, and the part of the hike that was behind us made us feel intoxicated. Climbing was pretty scary at times when the wind picked up. More people die every year from this climb than do on almost any other mountain, including Kilimanjaro. The cliff is so steep that the wind just blows people off. We did make it to the top, which was in a cloud, and we were again the only souls to be seen. We each went and sat on the edge of the cliff on our own and I put on some music and watched the clouds clear, revealing the Indian Ocean side of the country. That half hour was one of the most profound experiences of my life. I was so proud of myself, and feeling so healthy and so broken down by physical and emotional exhaustion that I could just let the sight of the mountain and valley and ocean fill me up. The sun came out as I sat there.

robben island - mandela

The rest of the day we just messed around
spending the last of our Rand and that is when I ate an ostrich burger. It was good! What has become of me?! Pulling away from port was just as dramatic as pulling in. We could see the city lit up and even the mountain was visible. We listened to Waka Waka and Tiny Dancer as we pulled away and as soon as the lights were out of view, I law down on the deck and looked at the sky.
***

Can we talk about the sky for a minute? There is no place on land when you can see stars like you can out here. We are at the bottom of the world and there are no lights for hundreds of miles in any direction. The sky is black and the sea is black and the stars are so clear it is like a smack in the face. They are so plentiful and bright that it is like a different sky entirely. It is like being in a planetarium. What is most special about it is not the clarity, but the sheer volume. From places on land you can see great stars, but you can only see the ones that are above you. Out here there are no trees or mountains or buildings to block the horizon so you can see stars in front of you and in every other direction. The other night from the port side we could see the Southern Cross, the Milky Way, and a lightening storm in the distance that flashed orange lightening every 15 seconds. What I will long for the most when I am home will be the sky.

The first time I lay out to look at the stars I noticed that they seemed to be moving. I pointed it out to Sara and she freaked out. The stars, and the planets in particular, were making little consistent circles in the sky. We were just about convinced that we’d made a very important scientific discovery when Sarah said, “wait…isn’t the ship moving?” I died laughing, but we are not as crazy as we sound. Because we are moving with the ship our frame of reference is odd and it looks like everything around us is moving and creates the illusion that the sky is rocking. The best part is two weeks later Jason was looking at the sky one night and exclaimed, “the stars are moving!” it took a long while to convince him that we was wrong.

Part Three: South Africa from the other side

South Africa was the first port that we were in where we didn’t stick out like a chicken in a row of ducks. Usually in port my eyes are trained to see the white people in the crowds because they are almost always us. In SA however, almost everyone was white and I found myself looking at other student-age people and wondering if I was supposed to know them. Dean Dan likes to talk about Ghana as a port in which we were “irrelevant” meaning that life went on as normal for the people around us despite the influx of Americans. I couldn’t disagree more, Ghana was positively waiting for us, everyone knew who we were. SA didn’t notice us. I walked through the security gate one afternoon and a group of people stopped me to ask my what the ship was. Telling people what we are doing is one of my favorite things. It was even more fun in South Africa because the people who live in Cape Town are very westernized and understand it in the same way that we do. In places like Ghana and Brazil, it seemed to be too strange a concept for them, as studying abroad period is a foreign concept, as is, for some, going to University at all. It is interesting to note that only 9% of South Africa is white. They are all just concentrated here, in the richest part of the country.

South Africa is one of the places I could really see myself going back to. There were a ton of things that I didn’t get to do in our 6 – make that 5 – days there. Cage diving obviously, lots of students did it, and one group saw 17 great whites, some of which came right up to the cage. I did hear however that almost everyone on those trips wound up vomiting from sea-sickness by the end of the day. The seas are rough here and the boat is just a dingy. I think I made the right choice with the safari. I also wanted to go see Robben Island, the prison island that Mandela served his sentence on. You actually get to see his cell and most interestingly, your tour is led by an ex-political prisoner. At first that seemed too weird to me, but apparently they have volunteered for the job. Lastly, I’m bummed I didn’t get to go to the Jewish museum. There is a huge population of Jews in South Africa, most from Lithuania. Ilana went and told me that the best part of the visit was learning about how it was the S. African Jews who were spearheading the anti-Apartheid movement. They refused to vote, because blacks were not allowed to. They hired them for jobs that other whites would not and it was the Jewish congresswoman who was the sole anti-Apartheid vote.

the fog at the top of the mountain

sara being simba atop "pride rock"