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. 

Landed

So last night we landed at Cape Town International Airport. It was sort of creepy because there was nobody there except for hundereds of police officers. Granted that it was fairly late at night, I'm still not used to going to an airport and finding it completly empty of people and full of police. The food on the flight was good but I slept for a chunck of this flight much to my dismay and am now suffering slightly from jetlag. I fell asleep half way through watching Megamind and then I watched No Strings Attached. I played solitare about 200 times but only one once. I also colored a little bit in my coloring books and watched a little bit of tv.

Once we got to our lodge we had we a fun time because Kelsey, Chealse and I were put in the smallest lodge which we rightfully called the Harry Potter room. The shower was also a crazy expereince because it went from super hot to super cold and back and forth repeatedly. I'm  hoping it was just because so many of us were taking a shower at the same time but I have my doubts about that.

We took a bus tour this morning after our introduction class and it's beautiful here! It's supposed to rain today and tomorrow but we've lucked out and it has only really misted so far. Only downside is we haven't been able to see the top of table mountain yet. I don't mind that though because then you can just imagine it to be unbelieveably tall! The bus tour showed us a lot of really cool things like the new stadium, the beach houses, the colorful houses, different views of the mountains and more. I took a ton of pictures, but I realized that it will be a bit more challenging for me to upload them onto my blog and it may have to wait till I get to Amsterdam where the internet is free. Right now I'm in an internet cafe and it's 5rand for 30mins. So a little less than $1 which isn't bad but I'm using their computer not mine and I can't hook my camera up to it.

We also got cell phones the other night so we could text home and let family know that were safe and sound in Cape Town. We only get ten text messages though and since incoming messages count towards the ten I informed my mom in the text to not respond back. That may sound sketch and thats why I'm posting it here also. Some people keep telling me that they feel like they're still in Minneapolis but that's definitly not me. I can't believe were here and everything is super different from back in MN and WI. They drive on the other side of the road and I get frusterated everytime I have to get in the car and go to the wrong side lol. Also I have a palm tree in my front yard. That would never happen back home so deffinitly feeling like I'm in South Africa.

We didn't do to much today so that way we can try and get over our jetlag, but I'm super excited for what tomorrow and the rest of the next 3 weeks brings! Also sorry about the spelling but in Amsterdam the spell check switched to Dutch so all my words were "wrong" and now I'm in a hurry to go so I'm again not going to spell check.

Netherlands!

We just landed in the Netherlands and I thought it was important to say that I quite enjoyed our pilot! It wasn't that he was trying to be funny but he just was in the way he phrased things. We had a little bit of a rough start, litterally. The plane was going through a ton of turbulance over Canada so we got permission to go to a higher altitude. We also had a bit of a delay when it came to take off because there was a tornado 20 miles away from the airport and then we also had change take off direction a little bit and even though I didn't know that a volcano was going off in Iceland people on the plane were quite concerned so the pilot was telling us that we weren't going near that. I also got a sweet picture I'll upload later of the sunset in the air!

While on the flight I watched 3 movies: Black Swan, Life as we know it, and Tangled. An episode of the Office, I played solitare for half an hour and some sort of trivia game and I lost to George (Catherine) Gary and Gert but I always beat YY lol. 

I had to watch Tangled because my sister told me how great it was so long ago but I didn't see it. Now I did. 

Well I get free internet in the airport but only for half an hour so I have to get off now before it trys to start charging me. We have a couple hours to wait and I'm super excited to celebrate my 20th birthday 35,000 some feet in the air!!!!! I genuiouly do love airports and planes and so I am seriously excited about this!

Sorry about spelling I obviously need to sleep now

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow I head back to Minneapolis and then after that I head to South Africa! It still hasn't really hit me yet that I'm actually going to Africa, but that's probably because I haven't actually really started packing. Were supposed to post often on here as part of our assignment and as a way to reflect so now that the trip is  starting I suggest you check back often. I travel a lot and so my biggest concerns right now are still mostly logistical ones like my computer, money, everyone getting to the airport on time and hoping that there are no delays. Now lots of people have opinions for me, most of them about safety, but for what ever reason this really just isn't a concern in my mind at all right now.

Right now I'm just super excited! One of my friends went to South Africa about a year ago and she showed me some of the pictures she took and it looks amazing. I also can't wait to see the animals! Shark diving is on my list of things to do and some of us were also talking about going sky diving. The history, the penguins on the beach! Just super excited!! This is also going to be my first time celebrating my birthday out of the country!

Now I really want to thank everyone who helped us by donating money to open arms for us so that way we can deliver food parcels to families affected by HIV/AIDS. The shirts we were selling alone made about $350!

Shirts!

This is going to be a really short post but as promised here is the link to the store in which we are selling shirts to raise money for Open Arms! While we are in South Africa we are going to be delivering food parcels to families that have been affected by HIV/AIDS and all the proceeds from these shirts goes to buying the food!

apparelforafrica.spreadshirt.com