The Wish

It’s Christmas Eve Day. I don’t have an evergreen tree in my living room or snow outside my door...but a ripe plum tree and a fresh rain make pretty nice alternatives.

Some things can even be duplicated. I have my favourite Christmas pop songs to listen to – Calista Flockhart’s “Santa Baby,” Mariah Carrey’s “All I Want for Christmas,” Jessica Simpson’s “Baby it’s Cold Outside.” I have Christmas crackers to distribute so that Mark, Doreen, Emily, Dodi, and I can wear those goofy crowns with dinner.

Some things can’t be duplicated. I missed the always memorable Bell family Christmas gathering yesterday. I don’t get to savour the sound of my mom wrapping gifts tonight. There will be no homemade apple pie for dessert tomorrow night. And at no point this holiday season did I get to exasperate my dad by repeatedly playing Hanson’s Snowed In CD.

I know and appreciate that this is a unique opportunity for me to experience a South African Christmas with an entire South African family. An entire South African town, for that matter! Tonight we’re dressing up for a neighbourhood costume party. The chosen theme is “Asian Fusion.” (I don’t get the connection either, and have been calling it “Asian Confusion.” ) Tomorrow morning, I’ll wake up to a church service in Afrikaans, then a gift exchange in the sunroom with my pseudo-family.

Furthermore, if I weren’t here, I wouldn’t have a puppy to spoil. Naartjie got her Christmas gift a couple of days early, actually. Over the weekend, she chased a rooster – literally ruffling his feathers – and destroyed a pillow - with much gusto - clearly indicating that she needed the new toy I had been keeping for her sooner rather than later. The animals and inanimate objects of the household are as pleased with her new cong as she is.

But paralleling this entire experience is the fact that my family, my friends, the ski hills, and the Boxing Day sales are a whole hemisphere away. Sigh.

I wish I could be in two places at once.

Doreen and Mark having dinner on the back porch.

Doreen is celebrating her birthday today, on Christmas Eve. We hosted a birthday party on Thursday night - here are the girls and I with the two "TV"cakes we created for the event.


Naartjie attacks her new cong!

Gingerbread

The Christmas holidays compound with the summer holidays down here, creating the ultimate vacation environment. It is generally accepted that no one works from mid-December until early or mid-January. There is a note on the door of the doctor’s office with an in-case-of-emergency number, because he too is gone. The guesthouses in Philippolis are booked every night with vacationers in transit from Joburg to the coast. They arrive in the evenings, stroll past the Christmas lights that decorate our main road in their flip flops, and are gone the next morning. I’ll join the migration in a couple weeks, when I head out for a 10-day road trip along the Wild Coast with my friend John.

The vacation spirit, however, has already hit me. I’m still getting up at 7 am most mornings, but the ensuring hours are not necessarily spent on my research project…

First, there was the family trip to Bloemfontein to do Christmas shopping. At a real mall! A day in the big city, I deemed, was occasion for wearing a watch and earrings. But I drew the line at mascara, which I haven’t put on since Cape Town, and don’t miss.

Then there was the morning that Emily, Dodi, and I spent in the Coloured township to help with the renovations being made to its nursery school. We played with the little kids, got covered in paint, and washed off with a swim at our neighbour’s pool in the afternoon.

On December 12th, Emily celebrated her 15th birthday. We baked two cakes - an E and a butterfly - and packed off to VanDerKloof Dam, on the Orange River, for a day of picnicking and swimming. The dam is a 2-hour drive from Philippolis, across into the Northern Cape, and we listened to Shania Twain’s Greatest Hits CD whenever we hit stretches of paved road.


Emily and Dodi with the birthday cake(s).

The very next day, my neighbour Jane asked me to come along with her to Colesburg, a larger town about 60 km away from Philippolis. A black woman she had once employed as a housekeeper passed away of AIDS a few months ago and Jane wanted to take her two orphaned sons on an outing to buy clothes and have lunch. I was really impressed by her initiative. The traditional fostering system among black families has been exhausted by AIDS – there are far too many orphans and far too few healthy adults to care for them – and new relations between whites and orphans could alleviate some of the burden, I think. The boys, in their early teens, spoke some English and I asked them about school, living with their grandmother, and their Christmas celebrations. We all ordered milkshakes at lunch.

Finally, I have been distracted by the necessity of picking up my new Jack Russell Terrier every 5-ish minutes to tell her that she is the cutest dog in the whole world and that I love her to pieces. (!!!) I think this picture says it all.


My tiny African dog, Naartjie.

Naartjie, as I’ve re-named her, is actually one of four dogs belonging to my neighbours. They have graciously allowed me to foster her for the duration of my stay here because I was looking for some company in my house at night. Naartjie (pronounced ‘naar-chee’) is the Afrikaans word for a clementine and one that I thought would make a cute dog’s name when I first came across it. Naartjie is so smart that she already responds to it. She is brave enough to bark at dogs ten times her size and silly enough to bark to her own reflection in the mirror. I want her to emigrate back to Canada with me!!! (Please, Mom?)

Back in October, one of my reasons for postponing my internship with the Treatment Action Campaign until February was because they would, of course, not be operating from something like December 17 – January 12, and I really didn’t think I’d want a month-long vacation. I still don’t think I need it, but I’m nevertheless happy that the vacation spirit has followed me up here to the Karoo...


Philippolis under two (two!) rainbows.

Living Conditions

The night sky is fiery with stars and I wish upon every single one that I could write for a community paper in this town. Here is what I would gleefully report…

This Week in Philippolis:

1. Goats took over part of the main road, the church grounds, and the newly-opened coffee shop for the duration of Friday afternoon. No one paid them much mind and their owner retrieved them before sundown.

2. The village’s grocery stores are running on empty. Basic goods such as milk, yogurt, and rusks (biscotti-like biscuits eaten with tea) are nowhere to be found. When, if, they’ll restock is uncertain.

3. The annual Christmas concert at the Dutch Reformed Church was held on Sunday evening, featuring a song freshly composed in Afrikaans about the joys of a summertime Christmas. The concert’s only hitch was the power failure caused by a surprise thunderstorm, corrected by a generator within 15 minutes.

Alas, a community paper is hardly necessary in my tiny new home, where word of mouth travels faster than a paperboy ever could.

More personally:

The most exciting part of my week was a visit from five UCT friends! Leo, Neil, Nikki, Kate, and Aukelin have been road-tripping across South Africa since the end of exams and spent a night at my place enroute back to Cape Town. We caught up over dinner at one of the town’s two restaurants. (Reservations and meal preferences were required one day in advance, so that the owner knew to open and to purchase the requested food.) I delighted in showing them the town and explaining all the maddening politics behind it – how white parents pulled their children out of the local school when integration began and it eventually closed because of low enrolment, how the town is still divided between black, white, and Coloured areas, clearly distinguishable from the tops of the country roads, and how if we were to go to the local pub my Chinese-American friend Leo might find himself unwelcome in what is customarily a place for whites only. The geographical set-up of Philippolis really is like stepping back in time to pre-1994 South Africa. And in my conversations with some locals, it is made clear to me that not everyone has accepted the end of racial rule.

In terms of work, I’ve now interviewed more than 25 people for my project on reverse urbanization. I can greet many people on the street by name. And when I had trouble with the VCR over the weekend, I knew of two people who were willing and able to help. The working atmosphere with my professor is fairly relaxed, and if I want to spend time between interviews on some of my favourite summertime activities – reading, cycling, running, sun tanning – then that’s just fine.

My desk

And finally, national news:

As desperately as the right-wingers want to deny it, this is in fact 2007, and the African National Congress is set to choose their next leader this month. This is a very important event, as the new leader will undoubtedly be elected the next president when South Africa goes to the polls in 2009. Yesterday I heard the distressing news that Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma are thus far the only candidates running. Mbeki has already served two terms as president and is not constitutionally allowed to run for a third term. A break from this tradition, I worry, would be the start of a president-for-life mentality. On the other hand, Zuma, with a record of corruption, a rape charge, and an infamous declaration in court that he took a shower to avoid contacting HIV can hardly be considered presidential material. No. I love this country as if it were my own and don’t want to see it left in either of their hands.

“The transformation this country is undergoing is fascinating,” said one of my neighbours, “But I wish that, like you, I could watch it from afar.”

The Freshman

What a difference 800 km makes. The roads have turned to dirt, the language has switched to Afrikaans, the mountains and the sea have been replaced by sheep farms and a desert climate.

I’m being treated to a very good life in little Philippolis, a town 60 km away from any other settlements in the south-western Free State. I have my own 19th century home, stacked to the ceilings with books, one block from the main street. The property neighbours my professor’s office and her family’s home. There are no security fences here, and the three properties share extensive gardens with olive, apricot, lemon, and fig trees, grape vines, flowers, a hammock, a wooden swing, trellises, and terraces. Wandering about are the family’s cats, dogs, roosters, chickens, ducks, and turkeys.



In these idyllic conditions, I’m working on a research paper on reverse urbanization in South Africa. Although many papers have been published on this subject in other countries, Doreen, my professor, tells me this is the first study to be done on the phenomenon in South Africa. I’m moving along with it quite quickly. I spent one day reading background papers, designed a questionnaire, and am now interviewing 2-3 locals every day about their motivations for leaving the city and their experiences with rural life. The project ties in nicely with my undergraduate thesis, which was on the development potential of South Africa’s small towns, about which I was optimistic. Now I’m investigating how to attract migrants to build those potentially productive towns. Its working title is: The Ruralisation Crusade: I Like it Here and So Should You. Ha.

The days are passing quickly, and they are sprinkled with amusing anecdotes. Very generally speaking, South Africa’s cities are English-speaking whereas the countryside is predominantly Afrikaans. Yesterday, I was most thankful that I had taken an Afrikaans language course while at UCT. Out on my bike, searching for the home of the man I was scheduled to interview, I mistakenly entered his neighbour’s yard. I called out “Hello?” and an older white man, partially hidden as he sat beneath a thick leafy tree, responded. I started towards him, but stopped short, seeing that he was dressed in neutral colours and holding a hunting riffle! What might wander into his yard that was worth shooting, I don’t know, but a common joke around these parts is that the Anglo-Boer War is still being fought – i.e. the war between the British and the Afrikaners of 1899-1902. I hastily greeted him again, this time in Afrikaans, as he certainly fit the stereotypical mould of a rugged Afrikaner. I explained who I was and who I was looking for, and then he laid the gun down and cheerfully pointed the correct way to his neighbour’s. I left unscathed, marvelling at the re-enforced stereotype, and he returned to his hunting, bemused by the Afrikaans-speaking Canadian.

In addition to working, I’ve had a few social outings, which is exciting. On my first day here, I was invited to assist with an end-of-the-year party being thrown for the remedial kids at the primary school in the Coloured township. Treats and new toys were organized for them, and it was painfully obvious from their wide eyes that these luxuries were new experiences for them. Later that day, I went to a colonial-style afternoon tea party in honour of a lady’s birthday at the family’s sheep and cattle farm. The proximity of third- and first-world living still throws me for a loop. In fact, there has been some contention this week right on my street amongst the white neighbours over the lone black neighbour who slaughtered a sheep and a goat in her backyard as part of her religious customs to keep her grandfather’s spirit at peace.

I spend most evenings with Doreen’s family – husband Mark and daughters Emily (14) and Dodi (11). In the late afternoon, we girls set off for the 5:30 pm aerobics class that one lady runs out of her home. My one-through-ten counting in Afrikaans is quite good at this point. Afterwards, we all eat dinner together on the back porch, and usually watch a movie as well. I’m relishing the time with a South African family and community at large. It’s nice and warm and I’m easily settling into small-town life.

Graduation Day (Part I)

I’m done! Exams and my undergraduate career are behind me. I’ve been on holiday in the Cape Town area for the past couple of weeks, indulging in touring, clubs, the beach, cafés, the mall, and the video store. Now I’m only two days away from my flight to Bloemfontein. My professor will pick me up in the city and take me to my new home in Philippolis – where I won’t have access to any of the aforementioned Cape Town luxuries. I’ve been preparing myself for this transition, and am looking forward to it.

I expect to miss my friends, my window’s view of Table Mountain, and the plethora of activities to keep a person busy here. Below are some pictures from the past couple weeks of post-graduation bliss:

Testing out the water at Camps Bay - on Hallowe'en!


Me in front of the Welcome sign at the B&B my friend Hilary and I stayed at as part of a weekend in Khayelitsha, the township where I taught during the school year.


Hilary (and the camera) attract a crowd.


Hilary, our host, and a friend at a shebeen (tavern) in Khayelitsha.


Hilary and me in the front row of the musical Rent, which just came to Cape Town.

Much fun has been had, but I’ve enjoyed enough vacation time now. I’m ready for something new, ready to immerse myself in a small South African community and engage in serious research work. It will be fantastic to leave behind Cape Town’s crime rate and listen to country music in the actual country, where it sounds best.

Of course, I do have some concerns about my next home – whether there is an ATM and a place to buy toiletries, how I’ll be received by the locals and what I’ll find to eat, how hot it’s going to get during the day and what I’ll be able to do for exercise. But the challenges are part of the fun, and I’m confident that I’ll be able to make it work. I’m interested to see how deeper involvement in development projects will affect me, how much progress I’ll make in Afrikaans, and whether or not it will be a struggle to maintain my Canadian accent.

I’m all set to go find out…well, nearly…some packing, goodbyeing, and mailing off of grad school applications must be attended to first.

Spiral

The slower pace of life in South Africa is, generally speaking, quite nice. Minutes are never used to describe time here. South Africans use now, just now, or now-now to estimate how long something might take. I still haven’t figured out exactly how to interpret these phrases, but I know never to think “This will just take 5 minutes” anymore. It won’t.

But as the end of the school year approaches, this relaxed pace is no longer suitable. Many of my international friends are attempting to jam-pack their final weeks; I have a million things to do to prepare for the next two phases of my life here.

It has all been escalating since South Africa’s spectacular victory at the Rugby World Cup last Saturday night. Since that eruption of national pride and wild celebration, I’ve attended my last day of classes at UCT, aced my Afrikaans oral exam, and took up kickboxing. I’ve hiked up Lion’s Head by moonlight with my housemates, went on a daytrip to the winelands to get to know the interns that I will be living with downtown, and dressed up for an American Hallowe’en party as Angelina Jolie’s identity crisis.

Jenna as a cat; me with Maddox.

Most significantly, I’ve reversed the order of my post-graduation plans. I now expect to leave for Philippolis, the tiny town in the Karoo where I will be researching rural development, in about three weeks. I’ll return to Cape Town for the months of February and March to intern with the Treatment Action Campaign. In order to legally stay here longer, I’m applying for a visa extension. One requirement is showing intention to return to my native land – so I’m even in the process of booking a flight home for early April.

There are several reasons why this last-minute reversal makes more sense. For one, I’m ready to be shaken out of my Cape Town comfort zone, and change the scenery, the company. The beach would have been a nice place to spend Christmas, but they are swamped with tourists in the summer anyway, and the Karoo offers me Christmas with my professor’s family. Finally, I was offered a fantastic internship with the hugely successful Treatment Action Campaign, an HIV/AIDS NGO whose work I greatly admire, and they advised me that there would be more work for me in the New Year. I immediately agreed, and began the great switch.

Just as much is happening here, I’m becoming more and more aware of how life goes on without me at home. I don’t recognize any of the songs – not even some of the artists – on Billboard’s Top 100 Songs anymore. I try to keep abreast of political developments, like the Liberal landslide in the Ontario election, but most of the jokes and references are beyond me.

My dad even changed careers over the course of my Afrikaans oral exam. Unable to tell my professor that my father was the owner of a company which rents and sells construction equipment (How do you say that in Afrikaans? You don’t!) I turned him into ‘n dokter (a doctor), a vocabulary term that I did have.

As much as I’ve enjoyed my classes here, I won’t be heartbroken to leave UCT. I have mixed feelings about the school. I haven’t always been impressed with the student body. In my sociology class, the professor showed a video on the second-last day. It was a short documentary, made for TV, showing life in the townships through the eyes of an 11-year-old resident. It was a great piece, but the reaction of my classmates was slightly troubling. Very well-intentioned, I’m sure, they thanked the professor at the end for “opening our eyes as to what living conditions still persist in South Africa 13 years after democracy.” This astonished me. You can’t drive from the airport to downtown Cape Town without seeing what living conditions still persist in South Africa. There are ample opportunities to go into the townships, with school activities or for special events. They are not inherently dangerous places and residents are largely welcoming. Why don’t South Africans know what is going on in South Africa? I asked my professor about it after class, and he tried to explain that when you grow up in the midst of poverty, it is normalized, and disregarded as a fact of life. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.

To end on a more positive note: When I attended a church service in one of the townships last Sunday, I was encouraged by the presence of quite a few white people in the congregation. The church, between Mitchell’s Plain and Guguletu, would only be the local church for black and coloured people. The white people present undoubtedly drove out to the township from the city or a suburb in a conscious effort to cross the racial barrier. Christianity is so pervasive in South Africa; I think it could make for common ground between all South Africans.

The brand-new Khanysa Church Centre building, built between the black Guguletu area and the coloured Mitchell's Plain area to bridge the communities.

The victory parade for the Rugby World Cup is another place for common ground, which I’m going to head out to just now.

Family

“This one time, when we got stopped by the police in Zimbabwe,” is just one of the many anecdotes that my family’s visit has given me to share at parties for the rest of my life. “Ten minutes later, when we were stopped by the police in Zambia,” is how I’ll follow it up.

I was well-fed, well-dressed, and spectacularly entertained for the past two weeks by visitors from home – my Mom, Dad, Uncle Boyd, and Aunt Lynn. I wanted to make sure that their first trip to the African continent was a positive one; I hadn’t even thought about how much I would get out of their visit.

(Honestly, most of what I’d thought about was how quickly my dad was going to whisk me out of the country if anyone mugged us….thankfully, the only thievery we experienced was this one time, when my mom tried to shoplift in Zambia.)

Sure, there were some close calls. When our frightened driver in Zambia tore down the road away from a wild elephant, he was missing the passenger who had jumped out with his camera - my dad. We nearly lost my aunt to a fight that she seemed to think she could win with a woman four times her size at the Waterfront. And we all nearly became permanent residents in Zambia, when my uncle ran out of money and the airport ran out of fuel.

View of my dad as we drove away from the wild elephant.

But largely, everyone was kept safe and happy, as I had planned. And it was truly rewarding to share the country I love with people that I love. Their travels started out with me in Cape Town, took them out along the Garden Route while I spent a week at school, and then reunited us at Victoria Falls for two nights before returning to Cape Town. I enjoyed my role as a quasi-tourist, quasi-guide.

The biggest reward was a return trip to Victoria Falls, which is in such a different part of Africa, and one that feels all open and country-ish as compared to Cape Town. There were several tour highlights – a river cruise where we saw hippos, a visit to a village, Victoria Falls itself. The social highlight was meeting a white couple from Zimbabwe, who were more than happy to share everything they know and have experienced under Robert Mugabe’s brutal dictatorship. We monopolized them for at least five hours, and soaked up more information than any newspaper could have given us about the history of the country and daily life as it currently stands.

Bell Family Reunion at Victoria Falls.

It was fun to embrace a tourist role back at home in Cape Town, and see some things that were still on my to-do list – touring Robben Island, climbing Table Mountain, seeing the gardens at Kirstenbosch. Our tour of the infamous Robben Island prison was led by a former political prisoner. It was surreal to hear someone speak in the first person about the brutality experienced at the hands of the guards, the secret means of communication between the prisoners and the outside world, and the advice that Nelson Mandela offered to fellow prisoners. I will personally never tire of South African history and politics, and it was wonderful to have four brand new people interested in learning about them.

Our breakfast spot at the Waterfront in Cape Town.

Cape Town, I’ve come to see, is a fantastic city. But I’m the only Bell here now, and it’s a bit lonely.

Older and Far Away

It’s my 23^rd birthday, and it’s Spring! I ate strawberries with breakfast and wore a skirt to school in celebration. I do of course miss my cowgirl hat terribly on this special day, but, as birthday luck would have it, when my friend Sara and I stopped at a clothing store on our way home from school, I found (and purchased) a t-shirt that reads “I (Heart) Cowboys.” Fair compensation.

My friends Kate, Leo, and I were all born within 24 hours of each other and so threw a massive joint birthday celebration on Saturday night. We hosted our friends in Kate’s backyard for an appropriately South African and springtime activity – the braai. Not to be confused with a mere barbeque, a braai features exotic meats (or tofu dogs, as you like) slow cooked over a grill or fire. To emphasize how seriously the braai is taken here – there is actually a National Braai Day. Lots of people came out on Saturday to wish us well and a good time was had by all.

The birthday kids!

In a season of new beginnings, it seems appropriate to unveil the plans that I have worked out for my post-graduate life in South Africa.

On December 1^st, I will leave behind the nice little life that I have cultivated in the University of Cape Town suburb and move into an apartment downtown. I am in the process of finalizing a journalism internship with a human rights organization, with more details to come. I am really looking forward to moving downtown, which I imagine will be more like the city life I enjoyed in Montreal. The apartment building even has a pool, which will be a relief when Cape Town is weighed down in summer heat. And the work, of course, is a perfect blend of journalism and international development, my two academic interests.

On February 1^st, I will do an about-turn and re-locate to small-town South Africa, to begin my first post-graduation someone-thinks- my-skills-merit-remuneration job! A wonderful professor that I met through Rhodes University in July is hiring me as a research assistant on three development-related projects that she has underway. More details to come on those as well. There will also be lots of volunteer projects, such as HIV/AIDS work in the townships, to occupy my free time. I can’t wait to begin storytelling about my inevitable (mis)adventures in this tiny Afrikaans-speaking town.

I haven’t booked a flight home yet, but I approximately plan to trade in a South African winter in favour of a Canadian summer, and start grad school in September.

My oh my, look how the time flies

Look how the world changes in the blink of an eye

My oh my, look how the years have flown.

Turning around, before you know it, up and gone.

The birthday celebrations will continue presently, as we head out for Mexican food...and then some more when my parents arrive in Cape Town on Friday. Yay! It will be nice to be taken care of for a little while. I see myself as something like an adult now - but in other ways, I'm not aging at all.

Touched

I love travelling in Africa. I used to think that it would be difficult, or scary, but it’s just fantastic. I used to think that my interests didn’t extend beyond South Africa’s borders, and that it alone was fascinating, but I’ve been enriched by exposure to its very different neighbours. Africa’s people are wonderful, the pace is relaxed, and the land is untouched. I’m hooked.

I’m going to illustrate my trip through Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe with photos. Otherwise I would hardly believe any of this had happened either.

Here are Katy and Jocelyn, dancing in the front of our bus-like vehicle, which took 19 students and 4 guides all the way from the Johannesburg Airport to our furthest point in Victoria Falls.

This is my tent-mate, Jenna. Some nights, we didn't even set up the tent, and just slept underneath the stars. I fell in love with the camping lifestyle and resent being forced to wear a watch and matching clothing since arriving back in Cape Town.


Here we are playing with the canoes and swimming in the water-hole that served as our bath water during the two days we spent in the Delta without any bathroom facilities.

I had already seen amazing wildlife in the Eastern Cape in June, but our sightings in Botswana were even better! We took a boat cruise through - essentially - the set of The Lion King. It was difficult to know where to turn your attention. Hippos, crocodiles, elephants, and buffalo were all around us. These hippos surfacing in the water were my favourites, though.


We were able to do on-foot safaris, led by local guides, as well. Unbelievably, we saw a lion and a leopard - rare finds! But check out this elephant and note his extended ears. This was the last picture I took before the guide warned us to freeze...and then screamed at us to "RUN AND SHOUT! RUN AND SHOUT!" because the elephant decided we were a threat and was charging us. As I was running, I turned and saw the guide preparing to throw a match on the dry grass to light a fire and create a barrier between us and the elephant. Luckily the elephant ceased his pursuit before we lit Botswana on fire.

This is me at Victoria Falls. I'm sitting on the Zambian side, looking across at the Zimbabwean side. Only aerial photos can actually capture the entirety of the Falls, which extend for miles. I'm a proud Canadian, but will concede that Niagara Falls has nothing on these ones.


There is an old school steam train passing across the bridge that connects Zambia and Zimbabwe in this picture. Below, the Zambezi River is where we spent a full day white water rafting. 22 rapids, including level fives - not to mention the crocodiles - not for the faint of heart!



This is, to me, the coolest picture ever. Of all the African countries I never thought I'd visit, Zim was definitely high on the list. But here I am! Sadly, yes, it is in a true state of economic disaster. I brought simple goods like shoe laces, boxer shorts, and Asprin to barter for bracelets and necklaces at the local market and really enjoyed talking to the local people. They were totally open to talking about the old Rhodesia, Robert Mugabe, and how they survive under his regime.


Instead of listing the price of gas, the sign outside this gas station in Zimbabwe simply read "NO". There is no gas available for sale in the country. Similarly, 75% of the shelves in the grocery store were empty. People in Victoria Falls largely rely on smuggling goods across the Zambian border in order to survive. My favourite line came after I asked one vendor whether the situation was getting better or worse. He replied, "Oh, it will get better. The old man has to die sometime!"


Also in Zimbabwe, we visited a lion conservation centre, similar to the tiger conservation project that I visited in July. But I was actually able to cuddle with the animals here! This cub that I'm petting is about one year old, and very tame. His grandchildren, however, will have been trained to survive in the wild and released.



I am very restless back here in Cape Town and can't wait to set out again...perhaps for Namibia.

Revelations

The University of Cape Town unveiled this semester’s exam schedule, and now I know. The last exam of my undergraduate career is two months away, on November 6. This means that as of November 7, I am in South Africa – the world, really – without any defined purpose, until I enter grad school in September 2008.

One thing is certain. Any secret dream I may have been harbouring of becoming a dancer is off the table. At my roommate Alberta’s insistence, I went to check out her African dance class on Tuesday night, intending to have fun trying out the moves from the back row. As luck would have it, this was the week that the dance instructor decided to run a more focused class and he had everyone dance across the room in tiny groups of only four people for each sequence. Instead of learning the moves, I was demonstrating them, and to a rather large audience of 40 dance students. I had a riot, but I don’t think that Alberta is going to invite me back anytime soon.

As I hunt down internship and employment opportunities more suited to my field, in preparation for November 7^th, it seems fitting that Workers, Trade Unions, and Rights has emerged as my favourite course at UCT. This does not mean that I’m ready to trade in my Liberal membership card back home. But I can’t ignore how real the labour struggle is here in South Africa, where the right to strike and minimum wages are newly won – and still contested – battles. The material ignites great debates in class and has proved to be a very useful tool in my understanding of contemporary issues in South Africa. And the professor, Jonathan, is pretty outstanding.

I was early for class the other day, and as I passed the time reading ads on the bulletin board, he sauntered down the hall, deep in conversation with a custodian pushing along her cleaning cart. I was impressed, and asked myself: When was the last time I initiated a casual chat with someone who wasn’t a fellow student? How likely am I to even notice the cleaning staff, unless it’s because they’ve sealed off the washroom that I want to use? They say that class is replacing race as the qualifying factor in South Africa’s stratified society. I don’t think it’s a problem specific to this country.

There are whole parts of Jonathan’s lectures that I turn over for days in my head.

“In Xhosa and Zulu (the two dominant black African languages in South Africa), there is one word that expresses “want” and “need” – they are not separate.”

“Doesn’t it seem that those workers whom we realize we most rely on (when they strike) – say, waste collectors – are the very same people who we never showed respect in the first place?”

“Workers in essential services such as the emergency room at a hospital are denied the right to strike, and for reasons that seem evident…but given that the majority of South Africa’s population cannot ever realistically access these services, isn’t it a double-standard to say that they are essential for the minority?”

Egged on by Leo and Neil, I approached Jonathan after class this week and asked him why he refers to himself in the third person. I was expecting a profound answer. This is, after all, the man who makes the biggest impact on my interpretation of South Africa. He told me that he does it to make fun of himself, or the image that is associated with a title, and to remain humble. That satisfied me. It seems like we would take ourselves less seriously, would be more objective, more cognizant of our position as a single person in a world of six billion, if we spoke without using “I”. But then we might not take responsibility for our actions, either, which is equally problematic.

Tearing myself away from school...(oh, there's going to be some serious withdrawal in November)...

I set off in the wee morning hours of tomorrow for my Spring Break adventure! I’m doing a tour of three neighbouring countries with a group of international students: Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. We will be camping under the big African sky the whole way. I’m really interested to see how the level of development in these countries compares to South Africa’s. Will share many stories upon my return in 10 days!

Alberta and me, pre-dance class fiasco.

The Harsh Light of Day

The sun is setting on a Friday evening, and the Cape Town elite are running for cover. Commuters are on the road, safe in their cars. Students are leaving the library, the gym, the coffee shop, in pairs. I am longing for Montreal, where the dark never deterred me from leaving our apartment. Here, my gallivanting ends at 6:45 pm, unless a group of us have planned an activity. I resent it fully and completely.

The unfreedom ate away at me all weekend. I stayed in on Saturday night to work on a paper because the complications of ride co-ordination had me exhausted before we had even finalized our destination.

On Sunday morning, when I was out for a safe jog in the daylight, the city still seemed ugly to me. My route took me through a nice neighbourhood, where pretty homes are concealed behind security gates taller than I am and protected by guard dogs. There is no open property, anywhere, in South Africa’s suburbia. I don’t even think neighbours here can wave to each other. I toured on, and at the edge of this upper middle-class neighbourhood found a massive stretch of undeveloped grassland, dotted with tree stumps, right in the middle of the city. Under apartheid, these empty areas served the purpose of physically separating the residential areas of different racial groups, and many have not been touched since. It’s all nonsense, and totally impractical, and sickens me.

I always feel slightly better on Mondays, after an afternoon teaching in the townships. When the busload of volunteers pulls up, the kids are waiting, jumping up and down, to catch their first glimpse of their teacher and give him or her a high-five or a hug. It’s very sweet and I’m growing very attached to my kids – 15 nine- and ten- year olds – whose names I’ve finally learned!

I do worry that the lessons we teach them are substandard, or invaluable altogether. (Should they really be learning multiplication, not the dangers of joining a gang?) One poorly designed/culturally insensitive activity was an English dialogue that they read aloud, which introduced them to new words like “costume party” and “vacation” and “park” – none of which they can conceive of. It is under these circumstances that I really want to throw out the lessons and talk to them about gangs. Seriously, this is already an issue. Even in their clapping games – Stella-ella-ola style – their songs touch on themes of police brutality and gunshots.

Last week I was thrilled to get to talk to the kids about South African politics. The opportunity presented itself while we were making collages of things we like out of magazines (the most elaborate resource we’ve seen), and one girl found a picture of Nelson Mandela. She identified him as “Madiba,” which is the affectionate term by which he is often called here. I seized upon this opportunity to ask the kids about their opinions on Mandela, President Mbeki, and who they think will be elected the next ANC leader in December. Their knowledge of political leaders was definitely passable.

Mahle: "I like Thabo Mbeki because he is a BUSINESSMAN!"

Luleka: "JACOB ZUMA IS A LIAR!"

Oh, South Africa. It is strikingly open – in terms of free speech and free press. And yet closed - when strangers eye each other up and down in the streets and families hid themselves behind locked doors.

View of Cape Town from the very top of campus

A mural on campus that I like

Into the Woods

Every morning, I wake up and find myself in South Africa, and it doesn’t cease to amaze me – whether it’s going to be a regular school day or the start of a rambling road trip, I’m stoked.

Although I’m really enjoying school here, it’s the latter case that deserves elaboration right now.

Last weekend’s road trip along the Garden Route was stunningly successful. Four of us set out on Thursday morning with a map, a guide book, and no experience driving on the left-hand side of the road, and returned Sunday evening with stories of ostrich riding, our new Rastafarian friends, and a cracked side mirror. (No worries – insurance covered this blunder, and it presented me with the unique opportunity to confess to a crime I did not commit, which sounds good on a Life’s To Do List.)

Our travels took us through everything from snow-capped mountains to farmland to seashore, with roadside sightings of monkeys, ostriches, and very few street signs. We stayed a day and a night each in the towns of Oudtshorn, Knysna, and Mossel Bay.

Some highlights:

They really like their ostriches in Oudtshorn. The town is something of an ostrich capital, with ostrich on every restaurant’s menu and in the name of every business. My favourite example: the Cyber Ostrich Internet Café. We spent the day exploring nearby caves in Indiana Jones fashion, and touring an ostrich farm, where we had the opportunity to feed and ride the ostriches. This both delighted and scared me, as the picture below illustrates.

Someday, I plan to spend much more time in our second stop, Knysna. Perhaps my retirement. It’s a picturesque seaside town, situated around a turquoise lagoon that leads into the deep blue Indian Ocean beyond twin cliffs. We ventured into the neighbouring township as well, and had a vegetarian lunch and an illuminating community tour with the local Rastafarians. No kidding, I knew we had arrived at our destination when I saw toddlers running around in dreadlocks. We talked about peace, love, Bob Marley, and played soccer with some dreadlocked kids.

Our final day, in Mossel Bay, we took an early morning boat cruise (i.e. 11 am) out to Seal Island. We thought we were being clever by taking the seal cruise, because the whale cruise was three times the price and we figured we could just keep our eyes peeled. But it didn’t quite work. We saw lots of seals, lots of seals, but only seals. Apparently their most fearsome predators are Great White Sharks, but I’ll be honest and say that we didn’t see any of them either. Nevertheless, speeding across the Indian Ocean on the bow of a boat was highlight enough.

All this time outside the city – which I hope to be a recurring theme – reinvigorated my green sense.

My sociology professor (who, on an unrelated note, weirdly refers to himself in the third person all the time) declared to our class the other day that he is a red, or a humanist, in contrast to a green environmentalist. Of course I see this as a problematic statement because humans can’t survive without a healthy environment…

But I will concede that the human problems are so great and immediate here that I can feel my ties to environmental causes loosening, feel my outrage at having to throw away recyclable materials subsiding. It’s harder to think long-term here.

However, in spite of lacking recycling facilities, South Africa is in some ways far greener than Canada – out of necessity – which I find striking. At the individual level, there are small incentives, like fees for obtaining plastic bags for purchases. More broadly, because electricity is pre-purchased from a meter within your home, everyone is far more conscious of their usage. Of course, because homes and buildings aren’t equipped for heating or cooling, people dress for the weather and although it’s not always comfortable, it drastically reduces energy usage. In addition, every evening over the TV, the media requests electricity users to turn off all non-essential appliances and lights in order to moderate usage of the power grid and avoid a brown-out. At the municipal level, I read that the city of Cape Town is switching to low-voltage bulbs in city streetlights for cost-saving purposes. Necessity is the mother of invention, it seems.

Ahead of me is a week of regular school days, but I’m sure they won’t be too regular anyway and I’m quite looking forward to waking up again tomorrow.

Me, Hilary, Sara, and Zach, with Hazel, whose home we stayed at in Oudtshorn.



The ostrich wants the food, but I'm pretty afraid of him.



I think I'm almost ready for bull riding now!



Looking back at Knysna from the Heads, across the Lagoon.



Zach and me with Rasta Paul, who showed us around the community.



Driving through this scenery alone was a highlight.

Teacher's Pet

I feel back on track.

My first week of school went well. After a bit of shopping, I’m enrolled in three courses, worth a lucky 13 credits:

Afrikaans Intensive I

This class happily reminds me of kindergarten. We started with the alphabet, and have progressed to greetings, descriptions, and some verbs. It’s true that you can get around most parts of South Africa with English alone, but every little bit more helps with cultural understanding and communication. Plus I was able to find the cookie aisle at the grocery store in Stellenbosch over the weekend before anyone else.

South African Political Thought

South Africa? Politics? Count me in. We’re starting with primary documents from the Anglo-Boer War and ploughing through to modern issues. The professor quasi-shot down something that I said in class yesterday; I’ve decided he looks a bit like a zebra anyway.

Workers, Trade Unions, and Rights

At the risk of being disowned, I’m taking this course for insight into labour relations here and especially into COSATU, or the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which forms part of the country’s governing coalition. When my American friends and I speak in this class, the professor “translates” our accents to be funny. I think he’d go easier on me if he realized that I’m from Canada, land of universal health care.

Outside of school, I’ve gotten involved in two volunteer projects through SHAWCO, or the Student Health and Wellness Centres Organization, which was one of my draws to Cape Town. They are:

STEP (Student Tutors Education Project)

On Monday afternoons, this program transports student volunteers to a black Xhosa-speaking township called Khayelitsha on the outskirts of the city to teach an after-school program. I share a class of eleven Grade 4 students with another girl and we cover a range of academic and life skills subjects, mainly math and English. The kids are cute and their English is better than I’d expected. When I had everyone introduce themselves on the first day, I greeted them with the African handshake, which got them excited.

Masizame Project

I don’t start on this one until next week, but on Thursday evenings, I’ll be going to a children’s home with other student volunteers to organize an evening program of fun, games, and life skills for the young girls who live there. I’m sure I’ll feel strong Angelina Jolie-type impulses. Many of the girls do still have parents who they see on weekends or during holidays, but are unable to take care of them on a regular basis.

So all of these things have put some structure and meaning back into my trip and I’m very happy about it.

I'm also very happy about the awesome weekend I spent with seven of my American friends in Stellenbosch, a small Afrikaner town about 30 minutes from Cape Town. Firstly, it put me at ease to be back in a place where the buildings don’t block the horizon. And our destination, the Stellenbosch Wine Festival, was a worthy one. What a brilliant concept! Booth after booth of representatives pouring glasses of local wine. Some glasses coming with crackers or chocolate to complement them. And in the middle of it all, like an oasis, a conveyor belt – yes – bringing fancy cheeses and meats around and around and around for you. At closing, and after much bonding, we made our way back to our hostel – the appropriately named ‘Stumble Inn.’

In fact, we all bonded so much on that first trip that we’re arranging for a second one this weekend, which is a holiday weekend here. The holiday, on Thursday, is for Women’s Day – I’m telling you, it’s a great country – and our destination is the Garden Route, a scenic area that runs east along the coast from Cape Town towards Port Elizabeth.

Now the only problem is regaining my voice, which I mysteriously lost at the wine festival…

New purchases in hand, ready to head out!

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered

One full week in Cape Town later, I’m still trying to warm up to this new locale. Given the constant torrential downpour and the whipping wind, it’s taking a conscious effort. I was told amazing things about this city, ‘the most beautiful one in the world,’ but arriving in the middle of winter and harbouring my own general apathy towards cities, I’m currently – dare I say it – unimpressed.

I understand that I am not in Canada, and I’m very tolerant of things like our apartment having a bath but no shower, and a stove but no kettle or toaster, and an electric blanket but no indoor heating. What I can’t stand is the insecurity. (And, I can’t stress this enough, the weather.)

It starts when I leave our place in the morning. I have to lock the door to my bedroom, then the door to our apartment, then the gate to our apartment, then the door to our apartment building, then the gate to our apartment complex. Needless to say, being in a hurry sucks and realizing that you’ve left your umbrella in your room after you’ve made it all the way outside sucks even more.

For that matter, walking doesn’t get me very far because, unlike McGill, the University of Cape Town is not in the centre of the city, but in a more suburban area. I fear that I’ll never know the city well, because I can’t walk around most of it.

It gets worse after dark. Going out then involves calling one of the drivers that has been recommended to us and requesting to be picked up. He will work us into his own busy schedule and we will be picked up, dropped off, and retrieved at a time that is possible for him. Walking at night is just not smart, so whether we want to go to a dance club downtown or just down the road to visit friends, we are required to wait, sometimes up to an hour, for a driver.

Having gotten that all off my chest…

There are elements about life here that I adore. I love the view from my window, which boasts a lemon tree and Devil’s Peak, part of Table Mountain, pictured below. I love UCT’s massive, green, beautifully architected campus at the foot of Table Mountain. I love the view of the ocean from the top of campus. I love Sundays, which are still a ‘day of rest’ with almost all shops closed and the roads and sidewalks void of crowds. I love the ‘cultural experiences’ of hailing a crowded mini-bus for a lift, being assigned a seat at the movie theatre, and realizing just how little rhythm I have compared to the predominantly black African crowd at the clubs.

I love how closely my living conditions resemble the set-up on Friends. The apartment building I’m living in is a four-plex, with four sets of roommates living in separate apartments of the two-story building. My roommate Alberta (so very Rachel) and I have our own rooms and share a kitchen, bathroom, common room, and balcony. Our neighbours, guys and girls, all gather at a nearby coffee shop on a regular basis. Pre-arranging it is not necessary.

And there are awesome benefits to living in a city, like finally seeing the new Harry Potter movie and going to see a professional soccer game between a South African and an English team at the nearby stadium. (We lost; I loved it anyway.)

I’m furthermore really excited for school to start tomorrow. I’m registered for a beginner’s Afrikaans course, two sociology courses, and a political science one. I hope to be able to start some volunteer work this week as well. I feel reasonably well prepared for the semester after spending all week participating in UCT’s orientation (far more practical and tame than McGill’s).

The best part of orientation – and the least serious – was on the first day when we took a bus tour of the greater Cape Town region, stretching out to the Cape of Good Hope where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. I’m posting pictures of our hike along the Peninsula below.

So Cape Town is home, because I’ve chosen it, and instinct tells me that I’m going to like it better with each passing week.

Table Mountain and Devil's Peak as seen from the top of our road.

Some of the UCT orientation crowd pose at the Cape of Good Hope.

Neil, Luke, and I pause during our hike.