Molweni, from South Africa!

It’s day 12 of the Parks and People study abroad and, oh man, it’s been something. I haven’t had time to update this at all since I’ve been here, and that just speaks to the shear amount of time we dedicate to this program.

January 16th I flew out of Philadelphia at 3:30 pm on a series of flights that totalled 20 hours of flight time alone (excluding layovers). I arrived in Cape Town around 10:20 on January 17th. YIKES.

Most of the group was picked up from the Cape Town airport about that time and transported in our VW vans, Sheila and Marley, to our hotel. In the morning when we sat down to breakfast, our open-air verandah exposed the formerly night-hidden Table Mountain. It was a grand sight to see towering rock face looming above us.

Our time in Cape Town then progressed as follows:
Day 1: Sojourn to Robben Island. Robben island inspired fear in the hearts of black South Africans for decades because of its notoriety for brutally degrading its inmates, who were largely political prisoners. Nelson Mandela was Robben Island’s most famous inmate. It was the place where he wrote The Long Walk to Freedom and worked with his fellow prisoners to organize counter-Apartheid movements.
That night we enjoyed some exotic meats in Cape Town, sampling springbok, ostrich, kudu, venison, and crocodile, just to name a few.

Day 2: We visited Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. I don’t think anyone particularly expected to be interested in some lousy botanical gardens, but when we got there and our very jolly guide took us halfway up a mountain to see the breathtaking flora of the Western Cape, I think we were all astonished. Waxy, leavy green plants, spongy, resilient grass, dignified aloes, and flowers in all of the colors of the rainbow. We proceeded to have session (class) out on the lawn beneath a massive tree, with a backdrop of sheer cliffs and lush vegetation. Ducklings and guinea fowl managed to disrupt our session to the delight of all the students. For dinner, we returned to the Cape Town waterfront for Thai food. As we were leaving to return home, blankets of stratiform clouds descended over the horizontal ridge of Table Mountain.

Day 3: This was an emotionally tumultuous day for the lot of us. We took a tour of Langa township and drove through Nyanga township. The tour of Langa started in the community center where we saw the ceramics studio and the music room. There were vendors looking to sell us their wares of ceramics, sand paintings, carved candle sticks. She then took us out into the township, and she led us through an area of single shipping containers placed lengthwise to form a neighborhood. There was an alley between two rows of these containers and she signaled that we could snoop in the doorways to see what these people lived in. It striking that we felt like we were tourists nosing in peoples’ homes. And after seeing a woman who lived in one of the containers spot us and shut her door as quickly as possible really solidified that in my mind. I could not grasp why we were at that very geographic spot where we would be least welcome and where we felt the most awkward. Our faculty had sent us to do this on our own, and on the scale of Comfort – Warning – Panic Zones, the group was in panic zone. She talked loudly and freely about poverty and she used a lot of negative connotations and insinuations amongst the poorest niche in Langa. If someone was coming through my home, it would anger me if they had a guide (even if she’s from the community) that was talking to them like my home was barely higher than dirt in the hierarchy. In reality, the conditions would be trying, but they are peoples’ homes, and there is beauty in that. They put walls around themselves, they make the insides theirs, and to disregard all of that for the sake of comparison to more affluent poverty in the area, is ignorant. I don’t think our guide was ignorant by any means, nor do I think our group is ignorant, but when we are being told to gawk at these houses, that makes me uncomfortable. She proceeded  to take us from street corner to street corner where we asked question after question about livelihoods and jobs and subjects and tribal culture she seemed surprised and impressed we were asking her about. She took us to the hostels where the migrant workers were initially placed during Apartheid. There used to be three men to one room within the hostel, but when the men could move their families out of the homeland and to their place of work, suddenly three families were cramming into and living in an area built for three men. She led us to a hostel that is open for tourism purposes during the day. We walked into a dimly lit entrance corridor/dining area with corridors leading both left and right. To the right was the bathroom and to the left were two hostel rooms and a small indoor kitchen. We were allowed into the one room, where there was an elderly lady sitting on a bed who welcomed us to her home. The room was smaller than my dorm room (WHATTT) and had three beds, each with lots of living items stored closer to the ceiling on lofts. We were told that seventeen people cram into these rooms to sleep at night. I couldn’t believe that. The room was lovely and pink and was very homey and warm. It made me understand that people make do with what they have. Even if they have a tough living arrangement, they can adapt to make it work, and continue to leave those genuine, human fingerprints no matter where they are. We continued on our walk past the more affluent population’s homes, which were really pretty and were gated and well maintained. These gave way to the shacks that the townships are recognized because of. Once again, we began to feel like intruders, until people sitting out in front of one were friendly and called out to us. We were told to look inside, and were shocked when we realized that someone was sleeping in the home. That put the awkward back in. It was a lot of fluctuation with discomfort, anxiety, and panic levels that day. After an awkward encounter with our guide trying to sell us some add-ons for township beer and a healer, Jared told her we needed to get back, and she started trucking it (it felt like since we weren’t going to cough up more dough, she was done with us). She reaffirmed that we had to go back to the community center to buy some wares like we promised we would. That was also uncomfortable, because we weren’t going to go back on that, but she made me really uncomfortable by making me feel like the hopes and dreams of the people at the community center rode on me buying all of their wares. That was an interesting situation. Anyway, I bought a lovely ceramic bowl that I cannot wait to use when I get home! On another sidenote, on the way back, the children were being let out of school. I was waving and saying hi as we passed and a little girl came up to me and we did this gesture where we press our thumbs together and past each other. It was really cool learning that cultural gesture from an adorable little girl who I will never meet again. As we rejoined the faculty and were ready to reboard the microbuses, a massive air conditioned tour bus pulled in. Our group was lining the both sides of the external corridor in the entrance to the compound, and the new group had to walk in twos between us. We were all shocked at these white kids who looked not so different from us, wearing skimpy vacation clothes and looking fresh off the Jersey Shore to be here to tour the same township we just toured with sometimes a lot of discomfort. I didn’t like being stared-at back from the locals, but I wondered how these people were going to be perceived. The difference between our groups were so striking to me. My group was dressed so conservatively and we were all using notebooks and cameras and asking questions. In comparison, kids that look very similar to us show up looking like they’re ready for a beach day and some township entertainment. It made me really proud of our group for not being the on-the-verandah study abroad. I was proud of Parks and People as a program for making us uncomfortable and forcing us to reflect on our experiences. It was tough for a lot of us to come to grips with, but we then had a fascinating discussion about perceptions of Americans, students, and our group. Who are we as global citizens and what are we trying to accomplish here? How do the perceptions of locals reflect on us? It was really eye opening. We also drove through the other township, receiving lots of stares and shouts. We decided to stop on the side of the road at a meat vendor where we were getting honks and whistles and shouts, looking like ridiculous white people in the middle of a market district of Nyanga. A lot of it was positive though and it was neat to observe reactions.

Well, it seems as though I have finally covered what has transpired those first three days, and I will work on catching the rest of my blogging up with where we are, but we are again going to an Internetless place.

Until then,
Sala Kakhule!

Location: Cape Town, South Africa