Late response

I deffinitly wanted to post a long time ago. I had hoped that while in Amsterdam I could post a quick little post about what I had felt I learned and if there were any fears or anything about coming back to the states. Unfortunately on the flight from Cape Town to Amsterdam they didn't have me regesitered as a vegetarian and when I refused to eat chicken the flight attendent felt bad and went to the back. Once back there they put crackers, cookies, mentos, all the random little snack items they feed you on a plane on a plate and gave me that. Then in Amsterdam I was freaking out because some who went to go and get coffee were really pushing it when it came to time.

Some time on the plane between Minneapolis to Milwaukee I feel asleep and when I woke up my nose was running like no tomorrow. I was just passing it off as 28hours with no sleep, but that ended up not being what it was. When I got to Green Bay I was just so happy to finally be off a plane and with family. My runny nose and everything got worse. Then when that finally started to get better my throat got worse. For about a week when I talked I sounded like a guy teen who was going through puberty. My throat would crack in middle of sentences and at work I would get dirty looks from customers who clearly knew I wasn't healthy and didn't like that I was touching their food. I work at a grocery store. Then I was deaf because of ear infections.

Now 2 weeks later I am finally feeling 85%. Every now and again my voice does one of those cracks though and sometimes it feels like I have a piece of sand in my throat and I can't cough it away. I think being sick made it actually harder for me to readjust back to the states and everything. I just wanted to sleep all the time and so I didn't really see anyone to talk about my travels. Also when people do ask How was your trip they usually just want a quick good or okay or bad answer then nod and continue on. After getting a few pressuring texts/posts from fellow travelers I uploaded all my pics on facebook but now my whole family has looked at them while I was still sleeping away and feel like they know enough about what I did.

Much to my surprise my hardest part has been listening to what other peoples opinions are about South Africa and not being able to get through to them that their stereotypes aren't true. This has been such a challenge with some people that I actually just stop trying and nod my head. I have to go to work but I felt like I needed to do a quick post.

Graduation

So today was our last day of lecture and we were on the upper campus. Unfortunately I was hoping to buy both my aunt and myself some University of Cape Town apparel but the store was closed. Either way today was a big day. We got to see all of the students that were graduating and took our family photo on the steps just like we did with our first family photo. We also all got a little teary eyed when we were wrapping things up with Alan and Jane, saying how much we appreciated everything they have done for us on this trip. Everyone’s health also seems to have greatly improved and I can’t say enough how lucky and thankful we have been for the amazing weather! I’m really going to miss getting to see and take pictures of the mountain everyday, and I can’t wait to hear all of the quotes from Brian that he has accumulated over the trip.

It was after lecture when we headed off to the mall which I somewhat compare to MOA. It was here where Suzie, Riise and I went to build a bear and made a springbok. They made us do all the same things kids did, and then they also made us scream I love my springbok out loud, and take the pledge that my build a bear will be my best friend for life. A bit much since the day before when Cat made hers she didn’t have to do all of that. Nonetheless it was really fun and you can’t get a springbok anywhere but Africa.

After the mall we went to the Rainbow house. It’s the house that Alison has that I blogged about way back on the second or third day. It was so great getting to take time out and play with kids. I fell in love with one named Lulu and they were trying to convince me for a while that I needed to take her home, but she also has a twin brother and I told them I just don’t have the finances to take two kids let alone one. Really they are perfect because since they are afraid of dogs I would never have to worry about them asking me for one, with my own fear of dogs. She was so precious and would just stare up at you with big eyes and a huge smile. I think the reason why I fell in love with her and her brother is because they both are afraid of dogs.

My time is slowly dwindling down here in Cape Town, and I really don’t want to leave. If only my brother could have his ceremony here. Since so little time is left I have to make the best of it. Tomorrow I’m going shark diving and packing and sometime before we leave I’m hoping to get back to Long Street. They have these animals that people make out of old used soda cans. They are really neat. Luckily on this trip I’ve stayed under my budget.

Mmm Mhmmmm (head nod)

Today felt like a long day for me in lecture and I think it’s because I just wasn’t having the same thoughts as everyone else. Our focus for the day was on presence and identity. For presence we meditated a little bit, which I typically do at night before I go to bed. You just clear you mind and focus on things around you or your breathing. We then said what our presence is usually focused on and mine is typically on family and friends where as others are more so on the self. The main take away for everyone today was that to be present and useful all you have to give sometimes is yourself. Just a few minutes of listening can be more than enough.

After a while we started to talk about identity. Aaron had us make a web with 5 things about ourselves that we think define ourselves. Then we were talking about how those things are perceived or viewed here in South Africa. We had such a long conversation on what it means to be privileged. I was really struggling right her because everyone was talking about it in a far different way from how I would define it. They were having the typical view of being rich and always getting what you want, but I’ve always considered privileged to be when you are able to complain about unnecessary materialist things your privileged because there are people out there who can’t complain about those things either because they’ve never experienced them or because they know better then to complain about something they can never have. If you can complain about something that means you’ve either had it or you have the possibility of getting it. So I’ve usually considered myself privileged but the others in my group say that they’ve never or rarely consider themselves privileged. I also realized during the reflection part that I just have far different values from others. What I consider important or even just the way I define a value compared to how someone else defines the same value. When we were talking about typical American stereotypes I was having a bit of a flashback. A few days ago tension was being felt or rumors or something so we had a group meeting to discuss such things. I pointed out how I don’t always like to be with some people because when in public and private they have a tendency to yell random swears or dirty words just because they can. I said I didn’t like this because it feeds into the stereotype and then one in particular got all defensive on me saying that no matter what they did it wasn’t going to change anyone’s stereotypical views of Americans. Even after pointing out that that doesn’t mean you have free reign to do what ever you want because you don’t think it matters how people are going to view you they still were upset with me. What I really meant was the stereotype of me. If I’m hanging out with someone who swears at the top of their lungs then I feel like people will just assume that I also swear at the top of my lungs. Then I’m not even sure how it was that we got to on to this topic (I forgot), but we were talking about one of the home stay families that has a really nice house. She doesn’t like to spend money herself upgrading her house even more and we thought that this might be because she has a nice job and her house is even nicer so upgrading people might start to think of her differently and that say that it’s because of her job not because of her hard work ethic. This sort of made me think about how I myself don’t like to spend money on myself. Although I can think of many reasons why I don’t like to a possibility might be because I don’t want people to think I just have money cause I’m native.

It was after class that I started to get sort of upset. Everyone was going to Mzoli’s for lunch, which is a meat factory more or less that does BBQ. Then we were going to ask Godfrey to just drive us to the long street market instead of back to the lodge, but the problem was that someone had to drive back to the lodge to drop me off. Jane gave Shane and I 40R so we could eat something else somewhere else but the problem was me. Since Shane is sick now to I was worried that he wouldn’t even want to go out to eat so I was just going to end up sitting in the lodge by myself. Every time I suggested just going and sitting while everyone else ate they were all like no no no no no. I know that this isn’t how they meant it to come off to me, and I might just be weird for thinking this way, but I felt like people were taking pity on my since I had to have special treatment. Maybe pity isn’t the right word but I don’t like being the center of attention for reasons like “Oh going to Long street would be so great, but Lindsay has to be dealt with first. I would love to leave her behind but that’s not nice” I know I’m weird for thinking that way.

Once at the Long Street market after lunch though I had great time. I bought a sweet gift for my bro, and a cool street wire gift for my older sister. Along with a sweet gift for my little sister. I just loved the atmosphere of the market and I got to perfect my bartering skills even more. I helped Cat get this giraffe down to 40R from 100R. I’m super great since I still have skills left over from China bartering. I just really can’t believe that tomorrow is Friday. This week has just blown by me faster then the last two weeks, and Dylan’s eagle scout ceremony is in a few days!

Mmm Mhmmmm (head nod)

"Something" Together, Lovely!

Today we got up early and went to Robben Island. We took one to the island that prisoners were once brought on. It’s always awesome to me getting to see the city from different angles, and the mountain. I filled my quota of about 20 pics of it today. What I didn’t know is that there is so much more on the island then just the prison. I had an Alcatraz sort of thought in my mind; one island and one prison nothing else. It actually has different military things, a school, homes, a church, and obviously the prison. It’s also home to wild animals like ostriches, springbok and is the 7^th largest penguin colony. We saw a warning penguin crossing sign, and I just love that wild animals here are penguins not bears! The tour of the prison wasn’t really what I was expecting either. We had a former political prisoner showing us around inside and to the different wards/sections. Others had told me that the experience was going to be really moving and sad, but I didn’t really get that all that much. He didn’t tell us to much about himself or what happened to him or others around him, just what room this was used for, and what room this was used for, and who walked in this hallway. Not that was bad, just not what I was expecting. We also got to see the cell that Mandela was kept in.

After we were done we went back to the waterfront, which is just shops, restaurants, and a giant ferries wheel. We had lunch at a super offensive resturant. The food was decent, it was only offensive because the theme was Native American, and the way they were portraying it was just so wrong. We were given almost 3 hours to just wander around until pick up so that’s what we did. I bought a shirt for my bro that hopefully fits, a painting for myself from my new “best friend” and really regret not buying a springbok from build a bear like Cat did. 

Winelands

On Saturday, the day after we arrived back from Gugs, we went to the Winelands. It’s one of the richest places in South Africa and the point of going was just to see the difference between there and Gugs. Since I’ve never gone wine tasting before it was an experience for me. The first wine estate that we went to was so beautiful. It sort of made me think of old plantations back in the South, just the architecture of the building. There was a bit of coffee tasting, but since the smell of coffee is revolting to me and gives me migraines I stood outside and looked around at the beauty of the place. We went inside and sat at a nice table and then we were given 3 types of wine that were paired with 3 types of chocolate. I don’t drink wine other than what I get at church so that might be part of the reason why I only found one of the wines okay.

The second wine estate that we went to was very different from the first. We didn’t wine taste while we were there, but there was so much more to see. It was on a lake and we got to take amazing senior pictures. It also had an area designated for birds and the smallest of cages in which you could pay to go in and pet a cheetah. Since I didn’t agree with the conditions that the cheetah was kept in and I also don’t know if there was a reason but some of the birds were chained down to keep them from flying away. We ate lunch at a restaurant on the estate called 8. It was pretty good and I loved the décor and lighting so much so that I took pictures of it just so when I get home I can show it off to my family.

The last wine estate we went to we were given a tour of all the buildings on the land. It was organic and the weather also made for great pictures. We sat outside to do the wine tasting and we got to try seven different wines. This is where we took the cute picture that Aaron uploaded and tagged us all in on Facebook. I bought a pear cider that I surprisingly loved. I just figured since I hate apple cider that pear cider wouldn’t be that much different but it was good, and with a price tag of about $3 I couldn’t pass it up. I also bought a sparkling wine called Cape Jazz and will be honest in saying that I only really enjoyed this because it reminded me of sparkling grape juice. Now I’m just living with the daily concern of how I’m going to get it back home to the states through customs.

Throughout the whole day I found myself struggling with a lot of things inside of me. How can so many people be living such a high life when so many others need there help. It was showing us the tale of two cities the exists here in Cape Town. I also noticed a huge difference just in my perspective while we were in the Winelands. The first and biggest difference in my perspective that a lot of us noticed, is that we thought the bathrooms at the winelands were high class ritzy joints just because they had soap. One of them was even more amazing and suitable for a president because it had soap and towels to dry your hands on. When we got back to Riverview I also was so thankful to have a shower that previous complaints I had about it were gone, same with the toilets. Then thinking back to my home I live in a palace and I’ve always taken that for granted. Talking with some other students in my group about this they all reminded me of the basic thought that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Just because of the way we lived in Gugs I was so glad that we dressed up to go to the winelands because it was a place that I instantly felt I needed to be dressed up for. I know when I get home I’m going to be far more appreciative of what have.

In Country Assingment Number 2

This last week in Gugulethu was an emotional roller coaster for me. Living with a new family I’ve never meet in conditions I’m not used to and in a place I’ve never been. Getting to hear from so many indiviuals experiencing things that I can’t even imagine what it must be like, and yet seeing so many happy people who were so thankful and appreciative of everything they had even when they are in the worst of situations. Trying to pick just one thing that impacted me most is impossible because everyday something new changed me. What I think will have the longest impact on me will be my experiences with all of the children.

            We went to Noxie’s school and got to see how thing go in a typical school. Then we went to the school for children with special needs and knowing that they were just as happy about things and cheerful when singing for us brightened my day. I also loved helping the kids in the afterschool program because some of them talked with me about things giving me a child’s perspective. Some of the kids I worked directly with received food parcels and they weren’t ashamed like some people in the states are when they need to go to a soup kitchen, but so grateful. I have a ton of younger kids and made all my money as teen by babysitting so working with kids is one of my passions, and I’m so glad that we got to interact with them so much during the week. They always tell it like it is, which I appreciate. I also was then able to do a lot of comparing and contrasting from the children here and those back home. What sorts of toys they preferred, songs they sing, jokes they tell, and lives they live. Also the way that they interacted with there elders. I noticed that the majority of kids tend to feed their parents or help their parents feed the guests before they themselves eat. Typically back home we feed the kids first to get them to sit down and be quite, which also pointed out to me how much more control and respect typically all of the parents and elders of this community get from the kids than do kids back home in the states.

            On the topic of community I noticed that the strongest one I’ve seen in Gugs is the one at JL Zwane. Typically because of tradition women can’t preach, but Fundi preaches and the church accepts her. Or when we were doing food parcels on Tuesday; when our group took a break members of the community jumped in without being asked and helped.  The biggest strength of this community is just how accepting they are. When Charlie came in and spoke to us about his experiences with the church I was so moved because that is unheard of both in the US and here in South Africa. The community is so strong that people experiencing such issues that can cause huge friction are accepted and appreciated for who they are.

            Reverend Xapile being the Reverend is one of the biggest leaders in this community, but not the only one. He organizes and makes sure all is right with the groups that JL Zwane has, such as the Rainbow After School Program, the AIDS support groups, and also planning and implementing new groups the church can offer. The reason why I say he’s not the only leader I saw in action in this community is because I was blessed with the opportunity to get to talk with Nombeko. She’s a woman who was gang raped and contracted HIV from it. She’s been positive for quite a while now, but she has a more positive outlook on life then she originally did. She is in charge of the HIV/AIDS support groups that the church offers. She goes into the community and encourages those who have been infected to come in and in a private and welcoming area speak with others also infected. They share their stories and the challenges they have overcome hoping to help each other.  They give advice on where to go to receive the drugs they need if they can’t afford them, and also provide just a listening ear to those who want nothing more than to share there stories. Organizing all of this takes great amounts of time commitments, organization skills, patients and more than anything passion. She’s also in charge of deciding which people infected with HIV/AIDS gets to receive a food parcel. She has to make difficult decisions that go with being a leader, but because she is so strong in the community people accept her decisions.

            When we were at Siyaya the director said that when people are in buses driving around Gugs they have a look on their face that screams shame or pity, but when your on the streets everyone is happy and doing good. This is the only way of life that they know so they are content with it. I keep trying to remind myself of this when I encounter difficult situations or reflect back on them because it’s true. So much happened this last week in Gugs that it’s really hard to summarize all the events into a few words, but it was challenging and life changing. 

Last Day in Gugs

People are still in a difficult mood this morning because of yesterday and because we had to say goodbye to home stay families that we have been getting so close to. We went to Thembalethu School for children with special needs. Thembalethu means our hope. They take in children that have CP, polio, amputees, and other things. From what I understand they teach at the same pace normal schools in the area do so they can’t take in students with learning disabilities. I thought this was so different because in the US we pretty much only consider special needs as learning disabilities. We got to look around in the classrooms, at the playground area, and then in the specific rooms where they work with certain disabilities in helping them use a computer, work on speech, or fix/maintain wheelchairs that are custom for each student. Then some of the kids gathered in the cafeteria area and started singing songs for us.  Seeing these younger kids that are faced with such difficulties singing happily together for us put a huge smile on my face. It was a great way to say goodbye to Gugs. I guess we were supposed to stay there for a few hours and do crafts with the kids, but the Reverend wanted us to come back so we could talk with him about the week. When we got there it was basically just us asking him questions. I recorded the whole conversation, but I’ll admit I had a hard time remaining present. It was only when someone asked how the GLBT community was treated or if there were any support groups when I got really interested in the conversation. Reverend was acting like he didn’t want to talk about it or like he didn’t know so he called Charlie and got him to come in asap to talk to us. I was so surprised what Charlie had to say. Charlie was born a girl and now identifies as a boy. He came out one day and told the Reverend who accepted him for who he was. God makes everyone and that was enough for him to accept him. Charlie then had to give a presentation to the members of the church explaining everything and he even put on a play about it. He says that everyone is perfectly accepting of him, and even though according to all his documents he’s still a girl they let him join the men’s group. Members of the church/community that had children who were GLBT and they kicked them out came up to him and said how eye opening everything he did was. How they wished that they could go back and time and make things right. What baffled me the most about this is back in the states churches are typically the last people to accept anyone of the GLBT community. One also typically thinks it’s the highly educated and well off people that know more and there for should be more accepting and it’s the complete opposite in this township. I also was just so surprised because we’ve been talking about how racism can still be seen and remnants of apartheid are everywhere. Charlie couldn’t stay long because he had other things to do but I’m so happy we had a chance to talk to him. It gives me hope that one day everyone will be accepted by everyone else.

It was sad leaving Gugs back for Riverview Lodge but my eyes have definitely been opened. Sometimes you have to lose something before you can really appreciate what you have and this helped me realize things. This whole week was such a challenging experience that I wouldn’t trade for the world. Tomorrow were going to the Wine lands intentionally just so we can see the opposite end of the spectrum.

Day 5 in Gugs

Today is Suzie's 21^st birthday so last night I had my home stay mom teach my how to sing happy birthday in Xhosa. So in the morning when Suzie got to the center we all broke out singing it to her. We started the morning by having Kenneth come in and talk to us. He works for the Institutes for Justice and Reconciliation and knows a lot about the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. For the most part he just gave us a general review of everything and then he showed us the introduction chapter to a DVD about apartheid and the TRC. He works a lot on community healing and he shows the DVD to community leaders in hopes that he can help them understand better what happened and how to address the issues in his or her community. I was having a hard time being present for the beginning part of his conversation because we get a lot of noise from the kitchen filtering into the room and he had a quite voice. The one thing I did take away from him that I really liked is “If we don’t know how the past came to be, then were not going to recognize it when it comes again.” This is why he goes around and continues to talk about everything that happened during apartheid even though he told us some would rather ignore it and not teach it. The DVD also gets pretty graphic at parts he says and a lot of people are apposed to showing students it, but he thinks they need to see it (everyone does) because then it shows you that real humans did this. If you read it in a book it feels like it happened forever ago and it’s easy to write it off as though the people who did it are nothing like me today so there’s no way I can do it. This kind of brought the thought up in my head that this could be the very reason why in school today back in the US we still watch a good deal of movies on the Holocaust.

After he left we did hospice visits. A lot of people’s blogs aren’t going to be happy about today, especially if they are just copying from their journals like I am. We split our group up into two smaller groups because they took the feedback from us the day before how we didn’t like how our giant group was just going around like tourists at the zoo. The first home we went to we had been told half were going to go in from our car and then come back and the other half would go to ensure that we weren’t overcrowding the homes. The patients we were visiting were living in the shacks so they had little space. I was waiting in the car and after about a minute everyone came back, nurses included and then we left to the next one. I didn’t even get to go look because I guess the patient didn’t need the nurse’s help. The second place we went was so uncomfortable for me. I hate to not really write about it but my mind hasn’t even found a way to write out what I saw and still have the same effect it had on me. The patient was a man who was unable to move from the waste down and was HIV positive. His family didn’t really know how to take care of him so they let him just sit in his waste for up to 48 hours till the nurses came back because they only come every other day. Since he doesn’t move his lower body around he had huge bedsores worse then anything I’ve ever seen. His knee was basically fully exposed with skin no longer remaining. I saw both of his sores and I couldn’t comprehend how nobody had informed the family that even just moving him around every couple of hours would help prevent that from having happened. Apparently the nurses don’t tell the families what to do at all they just come do their job and then leave. They also told Megan who is a nursing student that when they run out of the antibiotic cleaning stuff they use salt water. I’ve been in the ocean with an open cut and it burns. I can’t imagine the pain that this would cause a person. The smell too. Since the family is poor and don’t know where there next meal is coming from they rent out the front part of their shack to others who use it for a shabeen (township bar). Any sick person needs sleep but I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to sleep when right on the other side of your wall is people drinking. The mom had just gotten into town and this was one of the first times she was seeing her son. She didn’t know how serious a condition he was in and she was crying a lot of the time while staring at us and again I felt helpless. I wanted to take him to a hospital or something, but couldn’t. The head woman who came with us said she was going to do everything she could to get him a bed in the hospice the next day because he had progressed so quickly, but even if she does the family still has to find there own way to get him out there. I was holding it in fairly well, but had to go outside for a moment to try and recompose myself. I saw this dog under our van and he started walking towards me where he then curled up next to the open front of the shack. He had a huge cut on his ear that flies were flocking to and I don’t know why but this pushed me over. I hate to see animals hurt like that but the image of that man’s fully exposed knee was in my mind and I could just imagine flies going to it making things worse. At that point I wanted nothing more than to leave, but we had to stay and wait for the nurses to finish cleaning and wrapping up the sores. Before going we gave the family some money and although I’m sure they used it for food, I hope they used it to transport him to the hospice.

I felt really bad because apparently the other group had a far worse experience then we did. I don’t want to talk about it because I wasn’t there, but everyone was really upset when they got back. After lunch we went to Siyaya, which is musical group that travels the world performing. I definitely needed some music in my life and Monalisi dancing and singing helped to brighten my mood back up.  Even now typing my journal into my blog it’s really hard for me to hold back tears. If you want to read another great post about Thursday I suggest Aaron’s. I was so thankful that I got to work with the kids in the afterschool program again today though because kids just have a hold of my heart and helping 2^nd and 3^rd graders with division and measurements helped get my mind back to simpler things. At the end though I was in tears again because they were all saying “goodbye Lindsay, see you on Monday” (they don’t have this on Fridays) and even though I tried to explain they didn’t understand that I wasn’t coming back. I feel like I just helped these kids and the teacher, and everything was working and I love kids and now I can just see there faces on Monday when they realize I’m gone and I don’t want them to think I’ve abandoned them because I’ve already heard so many stories about people who have lost their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings. Today was overall a really hard day for everyone, but we knew before even coming to South Africa that this week was going to be hard. 

Day 4 in Gugs

So today was another crazy emotional roller coaster day. We did a lot of outings in the community to visit certain people. We went to Pricilla’s house and she is the foster mom of 12 children. I was surprised how much this related to the conversation Buyiswa and I were having the night before. The house was so small considering that so many people were living in it. Pricilla is actually quite old and she is recovering from a stroke so walking standing for a long time isn’t easy. She also in the morning babysits a ton of kids from the area while their parents are at work. The kids were super cute as always but the room smelt so horrible. We got to look around and see the one bedroom with 5 bunk beds shoved into it for the boys. The girl’s room only had like 3 beds in it but someone pointed out the mold in the corner. Buyiswa and I were talking about how we thought this wasn’t a good idea because one woman can’t give enough attention to all of those kids to be a good environment for them. I later realized an easier way to describe this is to animal hoarders. They love every single one of them but eventually it gets to a point where love alone isn’t enough. We also visited this one room home of someone we didn’t even get to know the name of. The room was the size of my dorm room freshmen year but that was their kitchen, living room, bedroom, everything. It was really uncomfortable for me because of the smell but also because we were just walking in to their small home and then walking out. We didn’t even get to talk to them really because we had to get out so the others could filter in.

We also went to Noxie’s school. It’s considered one of the best in the area and I don’t know about the education standards but it looked like a prison. They didn’t really have a play ground that looked safe. It was really faded and looked like it was about to fall apart. Their courtyard was also mostly cement.  The kids though were great! The first graders and kids in R (kindergarden) were singing for us in both Xhosa and English. I darn near filled my camera memory taking video of it so I can smile again.

After lunch we went and visited Mary Sili and discussed her life during apartheid. It was really sad, but I enjoyed getting to talk to her because we haven’t really talked all that much about it since we got here to Gugs. She then showed us her old passbook, which everyone of color needed to carry to prove that they were doing what they were doing for a reason. We also talked about how you can have two colored or two black parents but then you as the child can be a different race. So she identifies as black where as her sister as colored.

The part of the day that moved me most was when we visited a woman and her son, both of whom are HIV positive. She was infected through a blood transfusion and just sort of chose to ignore it since she didn’t feel sick. Then when her son was born he was really ill and small and they tested him proving he was HIV positive. It was then when she remembered. He was so tiny and sick so she tried to go back home but her family wanted nothing to do with them and kicked them to the curb. She then had no other choice but to go to the Red Cross to get the medications she and her son needed, because after he was born she then began getting very ill. He too was ill with something else when he was born and had to have a lung removed. Although it was school hours when we visited she keeps her son home from school when the weather is bad because she doesn’t want him to get sick. He has “fits” as she called them which I think are like seizures except he doesn’t show signs typical of seizures like convulsions.  She was so nice and welcoming of us into her home, and her son was for the most part just a typical kid at heart. Because he can’t always go outside the neighborhood kids and his friends come to him. She was joking that if you can’t let him go out you have to be willing to let everyone in. She was so thankful for everything she had, and was told when her son was born he would only make it 2 years tops and now he’s 8. I was just so impressed with the resilience of both of them. Under such situations I’m not sure I would have been able to care for myself and another human life just as ill.

During reflection a lot of us were struggling with the overall way we did the visits today. We felt like we were being paraded around to most of the homes to see people as if they were on display. Especially the family that lived in the hostile. We literally walked in, looked around, walked out. I know the point is to see the community as it really is; how people are living, but I guess we never truly felt welcomed to the locations in which we went. In my last leadership class we spent a great deal of time about welcoming and although we were told we were welcomed before going out, in some places we just weren’t feeling it. I also struggled a lot with wanting to do something, but knowing there is nothing I can actually do. A sense of helplessness is not something I’m used to feeling and I don’t find it comfortable to be in many places where I want to be able to do something, but cant. Some of us chipped in money, but that’s just a short-term fix since the amount wasn’t that great to make a lifetime difference. Right now I’m just feeling sort of useless. There is so much that needs help or work or even just time, and I can’t give any of that right now.

I may have forgotten to mention this yesterday but my home stay mom also received a food parcel because she is poor. Since were spending 6 days and 5 nights with them of course part of our tuition fee for this trip went straight to them so that way they could pay for the extra food we would be consuming. Last night she asked us if we liked ice cream and of course we said yes, so tonight as soon as we got home and started watching Muvhango she gave us each a bowl of ice cream. I know that we gave money so food could be bought for us, but I feel super uncomfortable because none of them are eating any ice cream at the same time. You can’t tell me out of the 3 boys not one of them wanted it. I also feel sort of in the way when it comes to dishes because I never know what to do. I have no problem washing my own or everyone’s dishes for the night but when I go into the kitchen with that thought the sink is full of many things and I don’t know if they are clean or dirty or drying or what, and while my mind is running through possible options mom takes the bowl from me and then I just stand there in the way. I have no problem if my money goes to buying ice cream that we all share and I would much prefer that. It just makes this experience all the more real. This morning I washed my hair in a bucket of water because that’s how they, and in truth most of the members of the township, wash themselves. I only did my hair and it was a challenge. Once you get it all wet and then soap your head up your rinsing the soap out of your hair with soapy water. It was a challenge and I needed Elisa’s help because of the length of my hair. I choose not to wash my entire body, and although I’m sure they’ve worked a system out I can’t imagine how it would be done. The bucket had maybe 3 inches of water in it that had to be heated in a teakettle. Now I really appreciate the showers and bathroom back at Riverview that only a few days ago I wasn’t so pleased about.

Day 3 in Gugs- Move to the Taste

So I slept much better last night! Probably because I was still really tired from the night before. We had steamed bread with cheese for breakfast and it was to die for! I’ve never really tried putting cheese on my toast before but it’s definitely going to be my new thing. Today was food parcel day. It’s actually painful for me to write this right now because of how sore my arms are right now. In simple terms today was an amazing arm work out. The truck came and we had to unload it into the church. What we did was formed a zigzag line from the truck to the spot where we wanted to set the food. At first it was like no big deal because we were tossing 4 small bags of sugar wrapped together, then samp, beans, corn flour stuff, vegetable oil, frozen chicken and flour. At first it was like no big deal but after a while it was a work out because there were 250 food parcels to be delivered so 250 of each thing inside of the food parcel. Kevin Winge was there with a woman taking tones of pictures and he grossed me out by telling me that the chicken was going to be all bloody when it started to thaw, which is what it was doing on the truck, so I was like guys I really don’t want to touch it if it’s all bloody and what not. People were fine with that but I saw the chicken after it was mostly unloaded and no such issue like Kevin freaked me out about was occurring. The place was crowded with people who were waiting for their food and also with those who hoped that they were on the list to get food. At the end of the day I saw people yelling at the Reverend because they thought their name was on the list but it wasn’t. It didn’t help that about 7 food parcels were specified for orphans and were going to be delivered to them. This means that the people who were upset they weren’t on the list thought that the food for the orphans was left over’s and they wanted it. A lot of our group got really upset because the Reverend announced how a short break was going to be taken so we could eat lunch. I was excited to eat since it was 8 hours after I had eaten breakfast, but others were really upset because all of these people who may not have eaten in days were now being publicly told we were going to go eat in the other room.

A lot of people were crying on and off and all sorts of different things were stirring up different emotions. What was hardest for me was that the Thahbange was one of the families receiving food parcels. All of the schools you have to pay for to go to and its about 150Rand a month. I was really upset because it would just make so much more sense if schools were public and free because then families would have that 150Rand a month for food and cloths. I haven’t really had time to ask anyone yet but I believe, as do others, that the schools used to be free.

After this we had the option of hanging with the kids in the afterschool Rainbow program again or sit somewhere and journal. I decided to hang with the kids because I had such a great time yesterday.  I went back to the 2^nd and 3^rd graders only this time I was Shane. Again I spent the day keeping Thahbange on topic and today I was helping Alutho with her math homework while making sure Lutho was doing her measurements correctly. I kind of was really upset when we got to dinner because I was informed that everyone who choose not to work with the kids got to deliver food parcels and shared a really deep moment with someone they delivered food to. I still had a great time with my kids and again the teacher told me thank you so much, while the kids all said see you tomorrow Lindsay. Dinner was fantastic as usual and then we got back home in time to watch Muvhango. We had a conversation about what we thought about orphanages or about people in the community who take in many kids. It’s an early night though because arms are just super sore.

Day 2 in Gugs

I did not sleep well last night because just about every noise woke me up. We also have a heater in our room that fully lights it up so every time I woke up my mind tricked me into thinking it was morning because of the light. All the noise of Buyiswa getting ready for work and then the boys for school also woke me up. With any new place though, I know if you give me a day or two to adjust to the sounds I’ll be sleeping like a log again. WE went to the JL Zwane center in the morning, and my heart literally fell. Noxie picked us up around 7:45, which is when the school children go to school. They either walk or take the bus but seeing the hundreds of children of all ages walking to class. It’s just saddening to me how many kids live in areas like this, specifically the shacks. Once at the center we were talking about our first night and how things went. This morning in general I’ve been super emotional and ready to cry. I’m just sad people live in these places and by how humble and thankful they are. One girl’s mom died 2 months ago, and she was so grateful and felt blessed because of all she had, which compared to me is almost nothing. I also was struggling because nobody else seems to have experienced the culture shock or difference or what ever it was I was experiencing last night. They all have homes comparable to Thotho’s and one house even has an indoor shower. Apart from Zukile’s and possibly ours they all have bathtubs. They were all talking this morning about how fantastic their nights were with their families. I’m not saying mine was bad, after we started talking I enjoyed Buyiswa and her family and everything she had to share with me, just I didn’t feel like I could share how I was feeling because none of them were feeling that so I wasn’t sure they would even understand. Also our group turns everything into a joke and were a really sarcastic bunch so probably as a defense mechanism I didn’t bring it up or even want to because I didn’t want it to be made fun of even though I know they wouldn’t be doing that to hurt me.

The first place we went to this morning was Khayelitsha and meet with Lumkile. He was tested HIV positive in 2003, but for two years he didn’t even acknowledge it. He was wearing a red HIV positive T shirt that we all wanted. Someone asked why he choose to ware it or what reactions he gets from it. He said that his main reason for wearing it was to break the silence and stigma around HIV/AIDS. If people don’t wear the shirts then people act like it’s a topic you can’t talk about so people have more problems then because the topic doesn’t get fixed. He told us how the reason it took him two years before he acknowledged he had HIV was because he thought only deathly ill people had the disease and he still felt healthy. Only when he was hospitalized did he realize he really was HIV positive. Then after he realized that he was the only one he could blame he got better physically and mentally. He then became an activist for HIV/AIDS. For a while and still some today believe you can’t get it if you live in the suburbs. The reason why this is a pandemic here is cause man and wife don’t use a condom even though cheating or having multiple partners is common. Also in South Africa 2 women are rapped every 60 seconds. Two rapes are reported a day just in Khayelithsa, but more probably occur that just aren’t reported because the justice system is horrible. cases get stuck in the system for years and people are scared to come forward because they will shift the blame to the victim. They ask questions like why were you in that area? Why did you dress that way? This all just blows my mind because back home you become a registered sex offender and it stays on your record forever. In Khayelitsha the population is about 700,000 making it the largest township, and it’s also the youngest. Side note: Lumklie’s nickname is Valley because his birthday is on Valentines Day.

After a group photo Wanda came in to talk to us. He works with the social justice correlation and the 3 major problems that occurs in the townships is water sanitation, rape, and flooding. Some township areas have such poor water systems that they have a public toilet for 600+ people. This is actually really dangerous because they watch homes waiting for persons to leave for the bathroom to rob them. People also get jumped to and from the toilet along with getting raped. Overall it’s just a horrible situation. Some homes have porta-portas, which is a briefcase basically that you poop in and keep in your house like under the bed or in the kitchen. He also talked about the poor justice system. Some people can just walk free even though they were arrested for rape. Or it’s just getting dealt with now even though it occurred years ago. They would be willing to work with the local government but the government doesn’t want to work with them. Like already said they just turn the blame back onto the victims. Since most of the community is illiterate they have to spread information by word of mouth, which I think helps build community along with getting the word spread. Unfortunately it’s a really long process and not always as effective in short time frames. They also bring in community leaders from the townships to teach/inform them what they need to know. Then the leaders spread the info/teach their community members.

After this we did a quick bus tour of major points in Gugs such as the Gugulethu 7, Amy Biehl, Kiki Hostels, and a market where they make/sell smilies (goats heads). We had about two hours to sit and whatever in the JL Zwane center before lunch would be served. Hershel quickly sat down next to Riise and Suzie, Catherine, me and told us to ask him questions. He just kept saying “when you get back to UCT Alan is going to keep asking us what we learned and be mad if we say something like A is for apple, B for burgers.” Since he wanted us to ask questions that’s exactly what I did. I noticed some of the shacks have solar power and I was wondering how they got that, because in the US solar power technology is so expensive. He said that the government got them for certain people who make less then 2,000Rand. Even though he thought it was a good idea it just created a huge issue of electricity stealing. Riise also asked about all the stray dogs, which he aid was because people are poor and dogs are cheap security. Most of them aren’t strays just pets with a lot more freedom then ours back home. Then someone pointed out that most of the cars are white or black or gray (no/few colors) and was wondering why/ Apparently here they sell cars by brand, type, and color. If it’s a color it costs more. The darker the color the more expensive it is. A lot of make shift stores here are made of shipping containers. Apparently you can buy these and also pay for the transportation and they just drop them off wherever and you set up shop. I’ll be honest in saying that we asked Hershel a ton more questions and although I probably should put them on here, since they are already written out in my journal I’m not going to. We talked about things like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Mandela, Mailboxes, sports, the new stadium, fires in the townships, jobs and more. What he said to us at the end was “The day you want to leave is the day you break down because your so much more grateful for everything you have.”

After lunch we helped out at the Rainbow after school program. JL Zwane set it up and students come after school and then get help with their homework. We went into a classroom and just helped the teacher out. Some of the rooms have so many students that I questioned the effectiveness of just one teacher helping out. I was in the 2^nd and 3^rd grade classroom with Megan, Kendall, and Nekey. Those kids are super cute in that they always call Nekey Nicki Minaj. I had a super great time because I absolutely love kids! It also was a great way for me to get back to simpler things in my mind. I was helping kids with their English homework and also with division. I worked almost exclusively with Sazola (Sa-Zoh-La) and Thahbange (Ta-Bong). Sazola needed help on his division and was really confused where as Thahbange had a hard time sitting still and on task so would try and distract the other kids. I kept him on task while guiding Sazola to the right answers. I just felt in my element here even though I was in an area out of my comfort zone. The other students in my classroom that were there that day were Vuyisile, Alutho, Lutho, ZinZi, Inam, Lutwe, and Nomangwane. They all finished their homework about 45 minutes early, but they have to stay in the classroom till 5. Usually they just draw or whatever in a notebook that the teacher keeps, but they’re only allowed to use one side of one page a day, so since I still had my crayons and coloring books in my backpack from the flight I got them out and everyone colored! They don’t get crayons often because they are too expensive for their families to afford so the joy that they had on their faces was priceless to me. I was overwhelmed with a sense of regret. My great grandma often gives me random school supplies and usually they just sit in a drawer for years till the off chance come around and we need it. I was just thinking of all the things I have in my room alone that I could have brought. I just didn’t think that crayons would be something amazing to them because most kids in the states all have their own box of crayons. I was really touched when the teacher at the end of class came up to me and said thank you so much. It made such a difference that I was there because usually she has to spend her whole time monitoring Thahbange so the other students don’t always get the attention that they need.

For dinner every night we always go one of our home stay mom’s place for dinner so that way the group can get back together as a whole and have time to reflect about that day and share different experiences we might be having with the rest of the group. We always get like a feast of food for dinner, and since for lunch I’m typically eating rice and some sort of green vegetable slaw I’m respectably hungry and therefore probably respectably overeat at dinner. My home stay mom doesn’t usually come to dinner though. Her home is one of the farthest away where as the others all sort of live on the same street or a block away from each other. She also doesn’t have a car so she would have to walk to the location. Not that this is a big deal for her but she works in Camps Bay super early in the morning and is fairly active in the AIDS support groups with Nombeko. She also works with the youth groups and all of these things meet at about the same time we go to dinner. Getting back to her place I was nervous again just because of how much I struggled the night before. There were no surprise guests over this time so that deffinitly helped. I don’t know if she knew I was still trying to find comfort and be less overwhelmed or what, but we took it easy and watched soaps. This is when I realized that I have fallen in love with Muvhango a soap about a chief that has two wives. Then he is cheating on his wives with his second wife’s younger sister who just came out of her teens. It’s just so crazy and they love watching our reactions to the show more than the show itself. I was just experiencing a lot of wanting to help. We got to see the library they are going to open and I wanted to just give them all the books in my basement that we still have even though they are directed more towards grade school readers. I just really wanted to do something, but wasn’t sure what or how. That’s basically the way I felt all day, and having become less overwhelmed going home wasn’t as emotional as it was the day before.

Day one in Gugs

So everyone be prepared to read a novel. Since I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to blog everything that happened in the last week in a few days I just copied entrys from my journal.

This morning, after my banana chocolate muffin we went straight to church at the JL Zwane 1^st Presbiterian Chruch in Gugulethu. As we were driving through Gugs looking for the JL Zwane center my anxiety rose quite a bit. It really didn’t help that Hershal got half the group going in the wrong direction. I also was finally able to see the informal dwellings up close. There tend to be a lot of stray dogs wondering around, and when Godfrey dropped us off he was worried about our safty. He kept telling us not to go out at night, don’t go any where in a group of less then 3, don’t drive at night, don’t show off our stuff, and he kept going on. So far though I haven’t been worried about my safety all that much. When we got to church we locked all our bags and food for lunch in the office. The service was so different from services at my church back home. They all seem to know all the words to all the songs. Although I was given a hymn to sing along in I can barely speak Xhosa let alone read it, so I didn’t quite know what was being said. It was still a great experience everyone should do. The songs were lively; people were dancing in the isle, standing during every song and clearly passionate! The sermon though was my favorite part. The reverend had so much to say that I hadn’t thought of before, but made perfect sense to me. The community here in Gugs is so close that you go to your neighbor’s house for anything and everything’s. Although in our own history we always say in stories you go to your neighbor’s house to borrow a cup of sugar I’ve never done or heard of someone doing that. We typically juts go to the store and get what ever we need ourselves. Here they always go to their neighbors. The Reverend said, “the day we no longer need to go to our neighbors for bread or something is a sad day because that is what makes us go to our neighbors.” This is so true. I live in a suburb full of children so I do usually seem y neighbors, but in my apartment building I never knew or spoke to my neighbor’s apart from the football player who helped us move the couch out of our room during the last week. He also then spoke a little bit about how we need to start celebrating differences more. I think this came up solely because our group was there and were from a different country and race and some also in religion. I enjoyed this part to because one of my goals for this trip is to learn how to be a global citizen and what I can do to contribute to solving global problems and this got me thinking about that right away.

There was a couple from Texas who were at church with us. There church has teamed up with the one we were at and they came to see it. Both churches raise money as a church and then send some members from their churches to others in the country, continent, and world. They were currently discussing sending some to one in Johannesburg. I don’t know how I would do it, but I loved this idea and would love to find a way for my own church to do something similar. They go for two days and do a home stay with members of a church they’re going to visit the next day. This way they also get to experience a little bit of the culture, which is nice if the church you’re visiting is farther away. There was a short meeting before church where they talked about a new nuclear plant they’re getting. It was a time for questions to be answered.

When church was done we got to eat our lunch. I’m not gunna lie, but I keep getting egg sandwiches, and I’m worried I’m going to get ill. I don’t care for eggs to begin with, but you can’t keep that sitting out for long, which is what we’ve been doing. The milk is whole and warm so I have the same concerns about that too. We were then given a brief introduction to the center. One thing they do is an after school program that helps children with homework and provides them with a meal between 3-5pm. They also are partnered with Open Arms so they deliver food to people in the community with HIV/AIDS, orphans and those struck with sever poverty.

There is both a funeral and a wedding today that most all of our home stay families are at so we all went to Thotho’s house for lunch till the families got back. Nekey and I both got a ride to her place first, since we all had to get rides in 2-3 at a time. We got to the home and I was honestly surprised how nice the inside looked. I suppose since the outside doesn’t look like anything I’m used to and my stereotypes/expectations had already kicked in, I just figured the inside would look poor like the outside, but I was so wrong. I can’t say that all the informal homes have such nice insides since so far this is the only one I’ve been in, but I like it here. While we were waiting for the others to get here Nekey and I were having a sorta deep conversation. I call it sort of deep because it was about feelings I don’t often have the ability to express and be understood. She was telling me how she felt super out of place (like she stood out most) at church even though in physical appearance she blends in the best. I could understand that feeling because I have the same one when I go to places my tribe owns. I look like I belong, I’m the right race, but since I’m not actually living there or speak the language or follow the practices really at all I stand out more. At least I feel like I do. I could fully understand how she was feeling and was happy I actually had advice to give and we both bonded.

For lunch/dinner with Thotho we had such a wide variety of foods that were ethnic South African foods. We have had some since we arrived on May 23^rd but not a whole ton.

K so I stopped writing when I was at Thotho’s and was feeling pretty good. Then Zukile gave Elisa and I a ride to our home stay family and I was still feeling all right at first thanks to Kelsey’s massage. Not going to lie I got uncomfortable right away. Thotho’s house and the ones around it are like super small versions of ours back home. Hers had a brick front and as I mentioned a while ago all the homes have fences, gates or stonewalls around them. Then we got to Buyiswa’s home and on the left side of the street are even smaller versions of Thotho’s house and on the right side were shacks. They’re were tons of people and dogs walking around outside starring because we obviously weren’t from Gugs and my anxiety level skyrocketed. She also didn’t have a fence and she did have a gate on her front door, but her front door didn’t close all the way, which for me personally I just feel more comfortable when the front door closes all the way in a place I’m uncomfortable. She showed us to our room and pointed out that the door had no handle so if we close it all the way we’ll lock ourselves in. The bathroom is located outside, but since it is to dangerous to go outside at nigh she put a chamber pot in our bedroom. She had us sit in the living room and the TV was playing native dancing and singing. All of a sudden 3 women showed up and one started showing us a long slide show of pictures she took at what I later gathered was her book signing. I didn’t know that right away though and then when they were all talking to each other in Xhosa I wanted to start crying because I was regretting coming. Others were in homes I considered to safer or at least more comfortable, although we had all been reassured our families were chosen because they were safe and could accommodate us. I was hit by the realness of the situation with a bit of culture shock and I think the one thing that kept me from bursting out into tears right then was when the baby Zazaza came into the room.

Before we got to South Africa I was told I would be staying with her along with her 33 year old daughter and 2 sons. Her sister from Port Elizabeth is also here because Buyiswa goes to work early in the morning and she wanted someone to be there with us in the morning. I didn’t know about the baby, but I’m grateful he was there. One of the two women remaining that I was expecting to see was Nombuko. She is HIV positive because she was gang raped when she was younger. She, along with 14 others, wrote a book that was published in both English and Xhosa. I’m still unsure who the last woman was because she wasn’t introduced, but she also is HIV positive with a book coming out soon. The women are all working together to start a new HIV/AIDS support group, but this is directed more towards children who don’t have it, and speaks about prevention and use of a condom. She said we only deal with problems after thy happen and she wants to deal with them before. WE also talked a ton about drinking. Here the legal age is 18 and Elisa commented on a commercial that stated that. Buyiswa asked what ours was and when I said 21 she instantly said she wanted that here. I’m not going to lie, even though I know the horrible ravages drinking can have on families, and individuals I’ve always been in favor of lowering the drinking age to 18 so I was curious why she wanted theirs raised. It was eye opening what she had to say. I’ve already stated that drinking here is a problem, but she told me it starts around age 11, which isn’t what I thought. Peer pressure is number 1 since younger kids go to the same school as older kids. Another big problem, which ties in also with drugs, is kids getting sucked in by dealers who then in return or alcohol or nice cloths they have to sell the drugs for the dealers. “Dealers know we are poor so they target our children. They plant someone dressed in all nice cloths with all the gadgets and then our children want that. But we are poor and have to say no. We say no, no, no all the time causing fighting, and somewhere out there someone will say yes. Then after a few months of giving them everything they want, they say now you have to do something for me because you owe me.” She also said she wants the drinking age raised because at 21 you’re finished most of your schooling and by then you have goals. If you start drinking at 18 you might not have goals and the alcohol can stop you from ever making them. I asked about the road block system because it was an idea I fell in love with when Alan told me about it, but she explained how it doesn’t really work. First they don’t do it often. Months can go by between sessions. Second they don’t do it in the townships where drinking can be the worst. Third they tend to only do a street or two so word spreads and people just avoid those streets. She along with myself, think it’s a great idea if it could be better implemented.

Then we took a break from the seriousness with a biscuit and her elder son Cepho showed us some of his drawings. They were AMAZING considering his age. I’m double his age and draw far worse. He didn’t believe me about that. Then we spoke a little about leadership since that is why we came to South Africa in the first place. She is obviously a leader in her community, but she was telling how hard it is to come out and say it because she knows it will cause much more work for her. She gave us an example about how she gave one woman a blanket and soon many more showed up and cried to her like the first also hoping for a blanket and knowing she’s a leader, but she had nothing to give them so they get upset with her. A good leader needs to be willing to put themselves in a position where more work than they would like to take on or feel comfortable doing can occur.

So on day 1 in Gugs I was nervous, comfortable, happy, ok, uncomfortable, on the brink of tears, relaxed, inspired and now I’m nervous again. I knew this week was going to be hard I just didn’t know what form “hard” was going to take. Even now as I write I can hear the wind blowing against the house, stray dogs barking, men shouting, and every now and again a car horn beeps and I jump proving I’m still clearly not quite comfortable with my surroundings yet. I'm just super overwhelmed right now by everything. Regardless, I was looking forward to this week and still am.

Safari

Today we woke up bright and early at 6:30 in the morning because the drive to the Inverdoorn Game Reserve is about 2 hours long. Since the ride is that long waking up that early didn’t bother me a ton since I planned in advance on sleeping in the van. Driving through cities is always fun in my opinion because I’m definitely in love with cities. That’s the biggest reason why I went to the UofM for college. On our way there we had to drive through a mountain literally. I can’t remember the name of the tunnel but it is one of the longest ones in the world. Now the only thing left on my list of things to drive through is a tree. Once we got through the mountain we were driving all around mountains and I don’t know but it sort of felt like a scene out of the movie Spirit.

At the safari we got to see lions, giraffes, springbuck, buffalo, zebras, cheetahs and more! The cheetahs were the best because we were literally feet away from them. The girl driving our vehicle while we were next to the cheetahs told us the story about the cheetah attack and showed us her scars. Probably not the best time to be telling us about a cheetah attack but it was still awesome. While we were driving around she also pulled over and gave us a leaf off this bush, which she told us to chew on. It was extremely salty in taste, and she told us not to swallow it. After it was in our mouth she joked that the reason why it was so salty was because a giraffe peed on it. That wasn’t the case (possibly) because the plant is actually salty to encourage some of the animals that eat it to drink more water.

The location of the safari is actually the coldest location in South Africa. Since the vehicles don’t have windows and were driving it was quite windy and I was a little cold. I was super sad because we didn’t get to see a rhino. The rain was coming and they are very sensitive so they try to avoid the wind by going deep into the brush. Not gunna lie I was super sad. There also were no elephants (sorry Colleen) but they’re getting them in two years, making them the first game reserve in South Africa to have them.

After the ride we got to eat lunch. I got a stuffed eggplant dish and it was amazingly delicious. I regret not taking a picture of it.  Then I slept for the majority of the ride back till Jane woke me up at the tollbooth to show us more wild baboons. We also on the ride back saw a DOUBLE RAINBOW ALL THE WAY!

This is the end of part one of my time in South Africa. Part two is our time in the township of Gugulethu. While were there were not going to have access to the internet so although I’m not posting on my blog I’m not dead.

In Country Assignment Number 1

During this past week we have explored Cape Town. We went to the top of Table Mountain and to the very tip of South Africa. We went on a safari and we did a bus tour of the city. We saw penguins and went to class at the University of Cape Town. We also read the book Dinosaurs, Diamonds, and Democracy as a contexts for everything we’ve experienced so far, and so far I’ve learned a lot.

            I talked about this a lot yesterday, but when we had class with Alan I learned a lot more about South African history that had a larger impact on me then anything else we have done so far. We spoke about the apartheid, which means separateness. I learned a lot about the laws that were put in place during this time. From our reading of Country of my Skull I learned a lot about what happened after with the truth commission, and a lot of the unfair laws that were put in place. What surprised me the most was just how similar they were to our own laws that were implemented before the civil rights movement. They had segregated buildings, bathrooms, benches, and much more. The most shocking to me though was how they decided if someone was white or black. The pencil test, where they stick a pencil in your hair to see if it falls out, thus determining your race just came across to me as nonsense. After the safari ride I’m sure a pencil would have stuck in my hair and not fallen out.

            Since our own civil rights movement was a while ago we don’t have many visible remnants left from that time. I was reminded that South Africa’s apartheid ended only 16 years ago. Because of this we can still see many remnants from that time today. All of the homes everywhere have fences of some sort around them, most of the buildings do, and to get into the shops near my lodge you have to be buzzed in. You also can still see it when you look at the communities we’ve been visiting so far. The million Rand houses on the beach have a predominantly white residence and this is because other races during the apartheid had been forced to move farther away to poorer land.

            Another law that I felt I could tie to personally was the Natives Land Act. This is extremely similar to how they forced the Native American’s off of their land and then compensated them later with land. Alan told us how today he had relatives from places like District 6 who are trying to prove they once resided there. If they can they then will be compensated with either land or money. This is almost exactly what they did to the Native Americans. Being one myself, and a frequent visitor of the Ojibwa tribe in northern MN, I know how they feel about the way they were treated long ago. A lot of tribes are not friendly with the “light skinned” and I worry that similar feelings of anger will continue to brew and possibly intensify as they have with some tribes. The only difference between the Native Americans and the Africans here is that the Africans are much greater in number then the Native Americans that still live today. I can see the possibility of things getting worse because they have the numbers to be efficiently heard.

            This leads me to the fact that tomorrow we are going to Gugulethu. On our way to the safari today we drove by a quite a few makeshift homes and it raised a little anxiety as I pictured myself living there for a week. At the same time I’m really excited because I have a lot of questions I want to ask where I believe there answers will give me a better perspective then if I were to ask those who live in million Rand homes on the beach. I’m excited for a new perspective on things, although I realize it will be an emotional time getting to it. 

Top of Table Mountain

Today was another fierce day! For starters we got to sleep in a little bit because we didn’t get picked up until 8:30am. For those who know me well, they know that nothing puts me in a better mood then getting sleep. We had lecture this morning and Alan continued to teach us about the history of South Africa. We talked a bit about the apartheid and all of the crazy laws that were put in place at that time. In South Africa you are either white, black or colored. Colored is anything that’s not black or white. This of course can get really tricky when trying to make segregating laws so they came up with crazy tests to determine race. One such crazy test was if they could stick a pencil in your hair and it didn’t fall out you were black. They also would just look at the color of your skin when you were born. Some children are fairer when they are born and it only mattered what you looked like. This means it was possible to have white and colored children in the same family with the same parents. There were other laws that were put in place at the time also, but that was the one I found to be the most outrageous. It was during this part of lecture that I was overcome with just a wave of realization or eye opening that this happened about 20 years ago.  I knew some of this history and of course the dates of important events before this trip, but everything you learn in a history course just seems like it was really long ago, especially if you didn’t live through it, or did but were only about 1 or 2 years of age. Having this discussion seemed to make it more real to me that this was happening during part of my life. When we were going around the city the last few days every house is fenced in. To get into most of the shops near my Lodge you have to be buzzed in to get through the gate at the front door. There are also all the townships that we haven’t yet gone to, but this is all remnants of the apartheid. Alan was making it clear to us just how much of an impact is still seen today. Jane has a daughter that goes to one of the best schools in the country and it’s mostly because back during apartheid it was a white only school. This was also when many were forced into the townships, which is located in the eastern flats, about 30-45minutes away from this school in Cape Town. Today the school accepts all races but it is still predominately white students because all the others are predominately still located in the townships so far away. To most of my friends back in the US 30-45minutes isn’t horribly long, but these individuals don’t all have a car and the bus system is poor here. Although the apartheid is over the process of getting South Africa to where it wants to be has been going for 16 years and still continues to.

After Alan’s part of the lecture we had Siviwe come in and give us a brief language lesion in isiXosha. This is a language with a lot of clicks in it and one sound that comes out sort of like a cat hissing. In other words I’m not very good at the x click noise, which is one of the most common ones they use. I left my book bag upstairs and ventured down to the lounge (only room I’ve found where my two prong adapter works) and since I’m by myself charging many things I’m not going to go venture and find it. We learned basic phrases like where are you from, thank you, I love you, excuse me/I’m sorry and also how to address people in the language. By the end of the lesson I learned that in order for me to speak the language the best I cannot have a dry mouth.

Once lecture was done we went to the top of Table Mountain. At the top your over 3,000 feet in the air, and the pictures we took up there were amazing. We got really lucky in that today was a clear day because I can see where clouds would have ruined some of the breathtaking photos we took. To get to the top you have to take a gondola ride. You get into the gondola and the floor spins 360 degrees as you go up so you can see the city of Cape Town in every direction. My ears were popping like crazy on the decent, and I’m not sure I cared for the spinning floor, but I loved every minute of it. We couldn’t just let this amazing view go to waste so we retook our senior photos. Actually at pretty much every location we’ve gone to so far we have been retaking our senior photos. We took the gondola, but if we had more time (4-5 hours one way) we could have climbed the mountain.

We didn’t really have time to scale the mountain though because we went to Camps Bay right after. Little fun fact is that today I put my feet on the beach and in the ocean of one of the top ten beaches in the world! This place was amazing simply because of the view and makes sense that the homes located in this area sell for 8 million Rand. Shane and I took a cute photo of us walking down the beach with our footprints. We checked out some of the shops and then were just sitting out in the sun soaking up the rays and doing some people watching. We had pizza for dinner in Camps Bay and it was 45R or $6.50 for what was about a 16in pizza. I’m not sure if I was supposed to look but I saw that our total for all of Alan plus Jane, Godfrey and us was 1770R.  Hershel drove us back to our lodge after dinner because we all wanted to go to bed early since we have to get up bright and early tomorrow because were going to the safari!  I’ve been telling everyone today that if we see a rhino tomorrow (real of course) I’m going to be the happiest person in South Africa.

New word meanings:

Bottle Store = liquor store

Back to Reality

Today brought about a wide range of thoughts for me. It started off with the lecture and when we were talking about how much of an impact apartheid still has today I was sort slapped back into reality. When I’m walking the streets I don’t see shooting or burnings or things that occurred during apartheid so much like things from our history I feel like they happened hundreds or years ago, but it was only 16 years ago. I realized what I already knew; it’s not that old. Alan was telling us about how he didn’t go to a restaurant for the first time until he was in his twenties. We then were awakened to the impacts that can still be seen today and I was almost sort of ashamed of myself for not knowing this was going on in the world while I was alive. You can argue that I was just an infant -4 years old when most of the changes were happening, but a lot of things happen during the process of changing that I didn’t know about either. To be absolutely honest I barely knew a thing about apartheid or Mandela before I got accepted into this study abroad and I was overcome with a range of emotions when we were talking about it today.

Bringing us all into laughter was listing to each other try and master the three click sounds made during our isiXosha language lesson. I absolutely love to learn new languages, but usually my struggle is in speaking and not so much in reading. For this particular language I’m struggling a little bit with both. It’s because when I’m trying to pronounce a word like Ndi the n is silent. A lot of letters tend to be silent when they are at the begging of words and my mind for whatever reason doesn’t want to wrap around that.

When we were at the beach we sat in the sun for about an hour and I was personally just sort of reflecting on what I was seeing. The beach was so beautiful and the mountain a 180-degree turn from the ocean was just as breath taking. This place is just so beautiful that I can’t imagine anything horrible happening in the frame of what I’ve been seeing. This actually finally stirred up a little bit of hesitation for next week when we’re in the township of Gugulethu. 

Breathtaking Cape Town

So today we all got up at around 6:50 since breakfast started at 7:30. We had the same cereal and peanut butter toast, but sometime last night we got it in our minds that we were getting picked up at 8:30. We actually got picked up at 9 which is exactly what our schedule says were doing so no one is really sure why we all woke up so early when we didn’t really need to. I actually was quite awake today and was in a good mood, probably because I knew we were going to go see penguins. I also had convinced myself the whole day before that I was going to wear my new blue shirts with my pink work out v neck shirt so that’s exactly what I wore today. It’s my favorite outfit I packed so I really wanted to wear it and Chelsey told me the day before that the high for today was 18C which is 68F. That is super warm compared to the weather I had been experiencing back home so this morning even though it was a bit chilly I wore it. I packed my raincoat and a pair of sweatpants in case if it was actually cold for the day. When I got in the van Allen was sort of calling me out and joking saying I was going to be freezing because the mountains were freezing, the beach was freezing and the water on the beach was freezing so I would freeze due to my lack of warm clothing. This made me quite self-conscious, but at the end of the day I was the one dressed best for the weather in my opinion.

The very first place we went to was Boulders Penguin Colony. It’s home to the South African Penguin and they were super cute. They also had some baby penguins still in their fluff and we saw one with its baby chillin in a whole in the sand. I took a picture of every penguin I saw pretty much, and some super fierce videos of them running in and out of the water. They were just to amazing and I’ve never seen a penguin in the wild before. I guess my whole life I always just associated penguins with Antarctica so I figured there was no other way I would ever see them in the wild. Seriously though I took to many pictures here. :D

I’m surprised that none of us took one considering how many of us wanted to. Shane, Nekey and I were paying attention when Alan and Jane wanted us to continue on and were issuing us to leave, but when we got to the parking lot it became clear that the rest of the group stayed behind. While Jane and Alan were trying to figure out how to get in contact with the rest of the group we looked at the stands with little trinkets for sale outside. Just like when I was in China you have to barter for everything. It was so funny because when Nekey saw the rest of the group coming up to us she said: “Oh good you guys are back because Shane’s about to buy a table.”

The next stop on our full day excursion was Cape Point or Cape of Good Hope. This is where the two oceans meet and it’s also a National Park so there was the possibility of seeing wild animals such as zebras. Sad face because we didn’t see any of those, but we did see baboons, springbucks, and a buck. The baboons are so smart that if they don’t hear the beep beep of your car locking they will get in and ransack it for food. They also will attack you if you have open food on your person. We only saw the baboons from our car as we were driving towards the beach so we didn’t really have that issue. Everyone was super excited to see them because Alan had been talking about them the whole day and the drive to the point was almost done so we all were just assuming we weren’t going to see one. They had signs everywhere too that said danger of baboons and do not feed signs everywhere so we got all hyped up like they were going to be everywhere. Alan told our car that we were lucky that they weren’t as bad as usual. They have these guys that stand around on the road and watch for the baboons to protect both them and the people that they try and attack or steal from. Our car renamed these watchmen baboon bouncers! Godfrey really enjoyed it! Also on our drive to Cape Point we stopped and a statue of a cross out in the distances was shown to us. We were informed that this is where the first person landed. Unfortunately I don’t remember the man’s full name his last was Dias, or all the details since our stop was short and brief but I’m always just blown away by the beauty here. No place so far in my life has been more beautiful then when we got to the point. There was an old light house on top of a hill (turned out to be a mountain) and before we started it didn’t look either that far away or that high up. I think we realized just what a work out this was when we were about ¾ of the way to the top. It was far more than worth it though. It’s at this spot where you are at the most southern tip of Africa, and also one of the few spots I’ve seen so far where you can take a picture and the mountains aren’t in your background, but that you can see endless sea. This picture hardly does it justice because my camera made the picture seem like I was there in the evening but we were there at high sun. That was perfect because the work out made me hot and sweaty so the wind we were getting at this spot felt super great. Also I was wearing shorts and was hot, some people were wearing jeans and jackets and were on fire. We meet a lot of Pablos (gopher/rodent thing we named) on the walk to this spot too which I found to be exhilarating because they frightened others. If there were any place in the world that I would want to be proposed to this would be the best spot given the weather was also good. Apart from Pablo we also saw some black lizards that may or may not have been poisonous, I don’t quite recall what Catherine was telling me about them since my mind was being blown by the view.

After we climbed back down the mountain and got back in the vans we drove around Chapman’s Peak. It’s on the Atlantic coast and it had some of the best views I’ve ever seen from a moving car! If you’ve ever seen one of those car commercials where the car is zooming by on a road that looks like squiggle with amazing views around it; that’s the best way I can describe this in words. Our little schedule book says it’s considered one of the world’s most scenic marine drives and I believe!!! It’s located between Noordhoek and Hout Bay. It also sort of reminded me of California driving because it had those giant metal nets or better consider rock catchers. As much of a downer as this may be our van was told that it had been closed for three years because once a giant boulder fell and flattened a car so they put up more nets and stuff for safety. When we were driving on the road there were signs every couple of yards saying drive at your own risk. When we got to Hout bay we went to a restaurant called Snookies (it’s a type of fish not jersey shore) and got fish and chips. There were seagulls everywhere and they were being just as vicious as we were told the baboons were going to be. I don’t much care for their seagull accents. It sounds somewhat like a crying child and quickly gets annoying for me.  We ran through/around them and went down on to the beach where the majority of us put our feet in. It was cold but now I can tell people I’ve been in the ocean whilst in South Africa.

On the drive back to the lodge Simone and I practiced our accents, and then I made a quick trip the grocery store and bought some crisps and a chocolate chip muffin because I didn’t want to have peanut butter toast for breakfast. After dinner we had a women come in named Alison and she works with children who have been removed from their families because of abuse/abusive situations. She has her own home called the Rainbow House and she has up to 12 children at a time. Unlike in government institutions these children are given a counselor or therapist as soon as they arrive and are helped everyday individually. She sort of has a token economy (psych term) going on and she individualizes things to better suit the child. She also sends all of them to private school but receives no funding from the government. I was really amazed when she told me that all the councilors and therapists she has their working with the children are all volunteers. I found her story to be really inspiring and while listening to what she was telling us a lot of thoughts that weren’t occurring to me before came up. She used to live in the townships and would help the children there by always being available for them, but now the Rainbow House is located in a better location because she wants them to not feel like living in the townships is their legacy. After a few reflective questions with Aaron I was a bit surprised by the fact that 11 of us were sitting in our lounge area either reading the homework or blogging and not one of us was talking. We said when we all sat down we work better in silence, but I wasn’t sure silence was going to happen. Today was just simply amazing.

New word meanings:

Tomato Sauce = Ketchup

Chips = fries

Crisps = chip

Also I'm doing two posts now about a day if I can. *depends on availabilitiy of Internet. The first which will probably show up as the second is of what I did and the second is of how I felt doing it.

Words Cannot Describe

Today I couldn’t believe some of the sights I’ve seen. There is no way I can describe in words what I have seen today and the pictures I took just all look fake to me. They don’t even come close to capturing the beauty of what I saw. All day I was just overcome with the sense of loss of breath or breathtaking experiences. Standing at the Point I had that overwhelming feeling that everyone usually gets when they leave home that they left home. I was just overcome with the fact that I was actually in South Africa and wasn’t just dreaming everything that was happening. This is my favorite feeling because it makes everything so real in my mind. Staring out at the oceans meeting in one place and the wind blowing through my hair, the sun shining down brightly. I was at a loss of words to accurately describe what I was feeling. I think I just kept saying over and over again this is so pretty or breathtaking or amazing.

On our drive to Hout Bay we saw what Alan referred to as “the tale of two cities.” Hout Bay has a large fishing community and the homes are in much poorer condition compared to the million rand ones just across the street. This got me thinking that next week is going to be a total shocker for me. We saw a little bit today of some of the poorer community’s and also some of the richer communities and I can only imagine that when we are in Gugulethu I’m going to see this part of Cape Town so differently. Aaron tonight asked us to talk a little bit about what were struggling with so far and my biggest struggle is standing out because I don’t know what to do. I stand out because of my American accent, but I don’t know what the typical customs or interactions are here so I feel like I stand out even more. The last thing I want to do is to upset or offend someone or to flirt with someone or attract someone unintentionally. The other day we went to an Internet café and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I feel like I just glanced and realized it was someone standing up and got back to work. He came up to me and with a huge smile on his face told me that he was wondering if the look I gave him meant something. It’s things like this that actually make me somewhat uncomfortable because I don’t know what the normal interactions are supposed to be like.

So far in this trip the biggest thing that I’ve sort of realized is I can be more open with others and it’s fine. I know that this doesn’t really have too much to do with the things I’ve seen from this trip yet, but it did happen while I was in Cape Town. The other day when we were all together as a group doing hot seat I was nervous sharing some of my stories. I’ll be honest that back home I do have a wall up and I do not willingly share things from behind the wall with anyone. When we were all together as a group though I saw others putting themselves in a position that I would consider to be very vulnerable and nobody responded in a negative way. This actually was really powerful for me because I’ve always felt that I learn better from experience. When it was my turn to share things nobody reacted in negative way. I asked a question to the group that I have not felt comfortable asking my best friends and this was really powerful for me because I’ve only known most of these people for a few days or possibly a few months if you count the meetings we had about once a month before the trip. The even crazier part of this is that this is only like day 3 or 4 depending on if you count 23, which was when we landed late at night.