Days are flying faster these days, and it's not just cause the days are literally getting shorter. Yes, the colder weather is creeping up on South Africa, and our bright days don't last as long, but so much and so little happens in one day, where does time go? I love Cape Town more with each day, but that's not because every day is awesome and what not; actually this week was harder than others. Many of the reasons are typical--missing family and friends (so frustrated when my calls weren't going through), figuring out summer plans (back and forth every day), limited internet (used almost 10,000 credits calling and attempting to call), etc--but also for other reasons that were unique to Week 3 of Cape Town…physical endurance, heavy material, theories, soccer.
Last Sunday, I went hiking up Table Mountain with 7 other people. The first hour was HARD, and by hard, imagine being on a stairmaster, on the steepest incline (there were even parts with straight-up ladders) and with the highest resistance (I thought my legs were going to collapse). Most, if not all of us, in the group are pretty in shape, but we all found it pretty difficult. After the first hour though, it got a lot better. Maybe we just got too numb to realize. We made our way up Skeleton's Gorge, and then found a reservoir a little bit off the path. If I didn't know that I was hiking up a mountain, I would think that I was walking on a beach, based on the white sand that our feet was sinking in. A couple hours later, we finally made it up to Table Mountain. It took us around an hour to walk across it, and then we took a cable car down. Overall, the trek was 5 hours, and it went by fairly fast. The landscapes we saw on our way up and once we were up Table Mountain were absolutely beautiful. Thankfully, the sky was clear that day, allowing us to see all parts of Cape Town--the flats, the city, the beaches, the mountains and cliffs, the vineyards…
I came back and did my reading for my Monday "Preparation for Community-Based Research" class, and this is when I started feeling this week would be "hard." It's not even because the material was dense, but rather what I was reading and learning was challenging a lot of my beliefs. Questions like: what is development and progress?, did we the "developing world" create the "third world" with our classifications and our mentalities in helping these "third world" countries, how do know if we are really help the people we intend to? or are we just serving our own interests? or imposing our own standards?, why we have the authority to decide what "progress" is, why do we measure "education" to be school attendance?, do we perpetuate the idea of "third world" by the way we treat them? My friend Lucy and I had to lead discussion for Monday's seminar, and while we were talking about the different readings, we came to the conclusion that we suck. Well, not really, but you know what I mean. I appreciated the writers' insights and how it challenged my ways of understanding what development and progress truly mean. I'm even considering changing the name of my Area of Concentration from "International Health in Developing Countries" to "Global Health." Apparently, there's also a difference between "international" and "global"…I didn't know this before coming here…No question, I absolutely love this class. We only meet once a week for an hour a half, but I could've talked about the topic for much longer if it wasn't that people wanted to leave and get back for dinner.
On Tuesday morning, we went to the township Lwandle to the Migrant Labor Museum. This was for my Race and Division of Labor class. It was a really interesting museum, and my eyes got watery a few time as I read/heard the stories of men who lived there. Migrant workers were separated from their families, treated very badly, and lived in horrible conditions, where disease was rampant and resources were limited. We were shown Hostel 6, a hostel kept intact to show visitors of the type of living spaces of some of the migrant laborers. In one small room (no bigger than my room at Stanford this year, which was "tiny" compared to previous), twelve people would sleep. On one uncomfortable mattress, an entire family would sleep. The conditions of the hostel were hostile, to say the least.
On Tuesday night, I did the reading for my Thursday service-learning class. In the class, we learn about the concepts and theories behind service. I was pretty troubled by Salazar's reading about destination tourism and developmental tourism. To put it in a nutshell, destination tourism is for those who just want to travel and be what we would call "tourist-y" and comfortable. Alternative tourism (or developmental tourism) are those who want to learn about other cultures, get new experiences, leave the comforts of home, etc. In it, he criticizes developmental tourism because it becomes ego-tourism, a finding of the self and how it doesn't lead to behavior change when that person returns to his/her home country. Again this is simplifying his argument, but this is just the gist (I would recommend it for people who are thinking about studying/working abroad to read!). After staying up late to read it, I'll be honest in saying that I was pretty troubled. I questioned my reason for wanting to come to South Africa and what I was hoping to get out of this "new experience." I even woke up bothered! Yeah, I know I'm a loser, but I can't help that that's how it made me feel. I welcome being challenged in my beliefs and perceptions, especially when it deals with me trying to help others.
On Wednesday, we attended our first required Bing cultural event. We watched a play titled "The Train Driver" by Athol Fugard in the Fugard Theatre. The play was about a white, Afrikaans train driver called "Rufi" travels to a cemetery for the unclaimed to find a black woman and her baby that he hit a few months ago. Initially, Rufi wants to find the woman's grave so he can curse her for ruining his life, but throughout the play, one sees how he has a change of heart as he starts to better understand the circumstances of her situation. The ending isn't what you'd expect, but it's appropriate for the message that I think Fugard was trying to convey, which simply said is: white and black both need to change their perceptions of each other if South Africa will move forward from apartheid. Again, that's simplifying it…Mimi and i had a deep discussion in the bus about it afterward. We picked at so many phrases from the dialogue between the train driver and gravedigger, and extracted meaning from them. I appreciated "The Train Driver" even more after this discussion.
On Thursday, we attempted to get tickets to the 2010 World Cup. It was crazy and epic. There was a point when I was making a sort-of chart, and five people were around me making phone calls and sending text messages to other groups. Our service-learning class was even interrupted to ask if we would still be willing to buy tickets even though the prices went up, and later, an announcement was made that we were ten people behind the last people who were able to buy tickets from the bank before they closed. Right before six, nearly everyone was on their laptops, creating FIFA accounts and counting the time before 6pm. "Five seconds!" someone yells. And at the same time, "Ahh, crap! Website's down." Some of us tried calling the South Africa and international numbers. Still not successful. At the end of the day? Nothin, ticketless. No one was able to buy tickets that day. Kinda sucked, but it was a pretty epic day trying. I like to think we bonded. Everyone in South Africa went crazy over the tickets. Many people have their own epic stories of how they tried to get tickets at this last phase.
Today, we went to Mzoli's in the township Langa for lunch. I've never been to a place like it before. You go in, pick your raw meat, bring it to the kitchen, and they cook it for you. When you get the food, you just eat it from the one serving plate using your hands. We ate like vultures, grabbing and tearing at meat, and trying the others meats in the dish, absolutely not caring who had just touched what. The food was absolutely amazing. The beef and sausage were my favorite. Afterwards, a couple of us started a dance party. There had been techno and house music playing for a while, but people were just dancing from their seats. Eventually, people made their way to the dancefloor, especially when this especially popular song came on (I had never heard it before, but many of the locals started cheering), and after that, we were all just getting our groove on. It was a blast, and the atmosphere was lively, comfortable, and casual. Everyone had fun. And by everyone, I'm not just talking about our group. Tourists, internationals, locals, and even people form the township made it to the dancefloor. Before we left, these group of Capetonians gave us shots of tequila coffee. We thought it was going to be disgusting, but we all were surprised by how good "Poncho's" was. Buy it. It was a good goodbye to an already awesome day.
It's almost dinner time, and I'm about to take a nap. Three weeks ago, around this time, I arrived at my house on Hershell in Obs. I can't believe how much has happened in the 21 days I've been here. I've enjoyed week 3, though it was "challenging" in what confronted me in my readings, in my personal life (I can't put everything in here ;), and some of the other situations in which I found myself. At times I was frustrated, angry, annoyed. I found myself questioned in my beliefs and proven wrong in my assumptions. However, I'm joyful and thankful for the lessons learned. The challenges of week 3 do not end here…but that's okay. As someone told me earlier this week, "the great secret of this world is that everyone is strong and that no one is strong."
They always do say the 3rd one's a cHarm…
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