Walk On...

As I was walking through Rosebank and Mowbray (Cape Town suburbs) this week, I saw and thought the following things:

A man is sprawled on his stomach, sleeping on the grass next to the road. I have seen him in that area often, sometimes eating, sometimes sleeping, and sometimes sitting and greeting people as they walk by. I think he may live on the street near there, but he never begs. Instead he seems to lead a quiet existence near that spot.

The security guard on my street always smiles and says "Hello poppy" when I greet him. He even stops talking on his walkie-talkie in order to speak to me. I don't think I'd be that cheerful and friendly if I had to stand outside all day in the sun and rain and wind, yet he always is.

I must stop using the word "block". People in South Africa describe places as "Up the street" or "over the street" and never refer to a number of blocks. Why can't I remove this word from my vocabulary, too?

A pair of students who I guessed to be dating walked down the street carrying a grocery bag between them. I was touched by the equal partnership of each person holding one of the straps on the bag. The walk seemed perfect until his cell phone rang and he started talking into the phone instead of to her.

On Monday morning, the falling drizzle and the rather weak sunshine in front of Table Mountain created one of the brightest rainbows I have ever seen. It arced right in front of the mountain and disappeared somewhere off campus. What a beautiful way to start a week of classes!

A woman in a blue work dress and a kerchief responed to my greeting with a reluctant smile. She was missing her four front teeth, but smiled just the same. I respected her for it.

The man who begs on Main Road sitting on a milk-crate with his crutch leaned up beside him and his cup of change outstretched. Sometimes I give him money and sometimes I don't. I'm always torn about what to do, and he is always there.

The pedestrian tunnel under the train tracks always gives me the creeps. Its walls are covered in graffiti and it smells like rotting fruit and smoke. I have to walk through it four times a week and it never gets easier.

Two university students walked down the road, laughing and conversing loudly in Xhosa. I wished I spoke Xhosa so I could share in their joyful conversation.

To Do List

In two months, I'll be back in the U.S. That means I have just UNDER two months to do all the amazing things here that I really want to do. In a way, I feel like I need to do SO many things. At the same time, though, I've done a lot of the things I really wanted to do.

I have been to the southernmost point of Africa and dipped my toes in the Indian Ocean. I went on safari and saw amazing animals in the wild. I saw whales and dolphins at Hermanus. I hiked to the top of Table Mountain, visited the District 6 Museum, and felt the power of Robben Island. I've witnessed the bearing of the South African soul each week at poetry readings and seen hope amidst desolation in working in the township of Philippi. I've even gone to 9 weeks of classes on African Religions, African History, and Ethical and Human Rights ideas, mostly from the perspective of South African professors.

Still, there are many things I still want to do. I want to visit the Two Oceans Aquarium and the Castle here in Cape Town. I want to take tea at the Mount Nelson Hotel. I need to visit the Irma Stern Museum, not because I'm familiar with Ms. Stern's artwork, but because I walk past it every day on my way to class and I have no excuse for not seeing it. I also hope to make one more big trip, since we have a monthlong finals period and I'll only be sitting through 9 hours of exams in that whole month. (That means if you have a suggestion for an inexpensive trip I should make during finals, I'd love to hear it!)

I think if I had to leave South Africa today, I would feel as if I'd had a complete experience. I would not regret the way I have spent my time. Still, there is so much yet to do! It's overwhelming to realize that no matter how long I stay here I'll never feel like I've seen everything. It makes me wonder what I'm missing at home, what opportunities and sights I'm missing in the places in the U.S. where I spend the most time. Do I make the most of every opportunity to expand my experiences in the U.S? Have I been to the museums and seen the natural highlights of the places I live and go to school? Or do I simply settle into the apathy of day-to-day existence and miss out on amazing things around me?

I have resolved to see and do it all. The world is SO amazing... even the things in our local surroundings! There are amazing and interesting things to do in the places we consider "ordinary", but we overlook them all the time! Obviously I can't live every day as a tourist or visitor, but perhaps I could try to see things in my everyday life in the States with the amazement, curiousity, and wonder of an outsider.

"It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might get swept off to..." J.R.R. Tolkein, The Fellowship of the Ring

I'm so OLD!

Before I left for South Africa, I determined to ignore my birthday and simply wait until I returned to the States to celebrate with my friends and family there. As the day drew closer and I made more friends in Cape Town, however, I decided to celebrate here on my actual birthday, then celebrate again with people in the U.S. when I get home. I had been scared that my birthday wouldn't be any fun so far away from home. I was wrong.

Monday ended up being a wonderful birthday after all. I got phone calls from four people I love in the U.S., I got tons of birthday messages via e-mail and the Facebook, and I even got a few greetings from the U.S. in the mail or hand-delivered.

The actual birthday celebration ended up being a dinner at an Italian restaurant in Claremont, which is a suburb near where I live. We had a group of twelve girls, all American students studying at UCT this semester. We feasted, laughed, conversed, and generally had a wonderful evening. I even ordered an alcoholic beverage for the first time ever. (Just a reassurance, I did NOT get drunk, even though it was my 21st birthday!)

This entry is not to brag or even describe, really, I just wanted to thank all of the people who put forth so much effort to make my birthday wonderful. I'm so blessed to have people like you in my life! Thanks for your thoughtfulness, care, and kind words!

Picture perfect?

This is a test. I have managed to get some pictures that Jenny, one of my friends in Cape Town, took of some of our adventures. If they work, there may be more pictures in the future. If not, I can at least say I tried.


This picture captured the lovely dassies at Table Mountain and their attempts to steal the lunch that Jenny and I were sharing. Needless to say, I was less than pleased about their food-stalking attempts.


Above is a picture of the sunset over the mountains and ocean that we enjoyed at Hermanus over the weekend. I was awe-struck by the beauty and magnificence of the scene. I hope my pictures turn out as well as Jenny's!

Since I don't know whether the pictures will work, that's all I'll put in for now. If all goes well, there may be more pictures soon!

Thar She Blows!

All the students from my study abroad program went on an excursion this weekend to the city of Hermanus, which is east of Cape Town on Walker Bay. The coolest thing about Hermanus is the prevalence of Southern Rightn Whales, who migrate to this location for mating and calving this time every year.

We arrived on Friday night and had a barbecue, then went to bed early. On Saturday morning, we awoke at 6:00 a.m. and were on the boat by 7:00 for a whale-watching tour. During the first hour we failed to see any whales, but we did see some dolphins. Dolphins are friendly, playful animals and they were following the boat and enjoying playing in its wake. They seemed so quick and graceful! Then, after nearly an hour and a half of getting covered with cold salt water and searching the waves unsuccessfully, we managed to spot two whales. They swam up within 50 meters of the boat and swam around us curiously. It was amazing to see such huge creatures that are still so peaceful. Animals with such size and power would be expected to be violent, but they were slow and docile.

After we returned from our journey, we went back to our hostel to change, then went our separate ways. I relaxed with four other girls and we simply walked along the coast and sat to watch the whales intermittently. All afternoon, the whales played in the bay within view of the visitors. They breached, which is the term for leaping headfirst out of the water and flopping on their sides. They spyhopped (stuck their heads up to look around), flapped their tales, and blew water out their blowholes. I was impressed by the playfulness of such enormous creatures. I always think of playing as something that young, small animals do, but even adult whales, some of the largest creatures on earth, play as well!

The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping in the craft market in the center of town. I'm not very good at haggling, but I still enjoy the color and noise of an open-air market.

We had an amazing dinner on Saturday night at a restaurant called Bientang's Cave, which is actually in a cave in the cliff overlooking the bay. It was a beautiful night with a nearly-full moon and the fish and seafood were amazing.

I went to church on Sunday with Sam and Joyce, then we joined Jenny and spent the afternoon whale-watching and relaxing. Despite being sunburned and tired, I had a GREAT time this weekend. Hermanus was beautiful, the whales were magnificent, and I got to relax with some really nice girls.

South African Slang Part 2

As my wonderful roommate (are you reading this? ;-)) reminds me, I forgot several important words and phrases in my earlier discussion of African slang. Here are a few that I left out before but couldn't bear to do without!

Tomato (pronounced toe-mah-toe) sauce - Ketchup

Takkies - Sandals

Trackies - Tennis shoes, sneakers

Anti-clockwise - Because counter-clockwise sounds too optimistic

Robots - traffic lights, I have no idea why!

Dodgy - not quite comfortable, similar to sketchy or shady in the U.S.

Serviette - like the French, this is the South African word for napkin

Queue - This is used as both a noun and a verb, it refers to a line of people waiting for something

Kit - suit

Costume - This is a bathing suit, but it took me a while to figure that out, causing great confusion.

Lockers - Overhead compartments, like in an airplane

Boot - The trunk of a car

Bonnet - The hood of a car (I find these two very funny, since they always make me picture hiking boots and a bonnet on a baby, instead of car parts!)

Lift - Elevator

Lekker/Lekkers - Lekker is similar to the slang "cool" in the U.S., while lekkers are candy. Perhaps these both come from the idea of "sweet"? I don't know.

Queries - Questions

Trolley - Shopping cart at a grocery store

Keen - Interested, used in "I'm keen to..." or "I'm very keen on..."

Shame! - This word is thrown in, like "Pity!" or "That's too bad!" whenever a person is responding to a story of something bad happening to someone else.

Hectic - While this has the same meaning as in the States, it is incredibly overused here, and is often applied for things that are intense, busy, crowded, quick, or overwhelming.

There are also some crazy pronunciations. Liesbeek, for instance, would look like it should be pronounced as lice-beak, but instead it is pronounced lease-beck. This is from Afrikaans, but with 11 official state languages, it is impossible to predict how things might be pronounced since they could have roots in any of those languages. This becomes particularly complicated when one considers that at least two of South Africa's official languages also include clicks. It's difficult to know, for instance, if a "q" in a word will be pronounced according to the English like "quiet" or as a click from Xhosa.

Another challenge comes in the concept of simple letters and numbers. The letter "Z" is spoken "zed" like the French here instead of "zee" as it is in the U.S. Numbers are also very complicated because a comma is used instead of a decimal point, so 8,99 is actually 8.99. At first I thought it was a place-holding comma and a digit had just been left off the end of the number, which confused me greatly.

George Bernard Shaw said, "England and America are two countries separated by a common language." I think if Mr. Shaw could see South Africa, he'd say the same about them, too!

Spring has Sprung (...and Other Random Thoughts)

I have no really big points to make or coherently-connected stories to tell, so I'm going to utilize my friend KJ's technique of "dashing". Here come some really random thoughts and stories that I wanted to get on paper.

What's that big, bright yellow thing in the sky?
Spring has finally come to Cape Town. The rains have slowed and we've had several days of sunny weather and warm temperatures. It's amazing how much nicer the city can seem when the rain stops and the clouds part. The nice weather reminds me of late-September tennis practices in high school and long afternoons of playing frisbee on the Quad at school in the U.S. I'm definitely going to make the most of the improved conditions!

Night Drive
I was thinking last night about the night drive we took in Kruger. It's nearly impossible to spot any animals from a moving vehicle at night, but the sounds were heightened by the darkness and the reduced number of safari vehicles. At one point we stopped the truck and sat listening. The night insects and bat squeals were all we could hear at first. After a few moments, however, we began to hear the low groans and agonized moans of a buffalo that was being killed by lions along the riverbed. It was terrifying to hear such a large animal crying out in pain and know that a kilometer away lions were succeeding in their hunt. We could hear the lions growls and the hyenas' hungry barks. I was struck by the seemingly limitless power of the lions and of the strange compassion I felt for the buffalo who, probably out of a huge herd, had been the only one captured. It was incredible.

Random Quotes from My Kitchen
1) "Oh, man, what a great day to do laundry!"
2) "You slept for 12 hours? You are STRUGGLIN!"
3) "Ugh, I always slip my 'is it' in too late."
4) Q: "Where are our pans?" A: "The same place as the plates, the silverware, and the toilet paper. Next door stole them."
5) "I walked in there and I thought I was in a crack house. They had a fire on the table and were melting stuff on knives over the stove."
6) "That's our illegal substances picture."
7) "Wow, what a surprise, you're eating toast with peanut butter and raisins. I'm shocked!"
8) "They stole my African cucumber. What kind of person steals a cucumber?"
9) Q: "How does rice go bad? There's nothing in rice that can go bad!" A: "Well, there's rice..."

Parents are People
I don't know why, but it takes a very long time for children to fully appreciate the humanity of their parents. Perhaps it's because parents are always authority figures and people in charge, we place them in the box marked "parents" and expect that to define them. We forget that before we were around, they had lives and experiences and dreams and goals, and we fail to recognize that those things are still very much a part of them. I was privileged to spend the last two weeks really getting to know my mom as a person and a friend. Instead of relying on her to take care of me, we both planned things together and spent hours just talking. I have to say, my mom is an incredibly special person; she's someone I would choose to be friends with, even if we weren't related! I am so glad that she could come visit and share this experience with me.

Vac Variations
Remember those silly first-day-of-school assignments where you had to write the stupid paper on "What I did for my summer vacation"? Here's a quick summary/list of what those reports would say if my housemates wrote them.
1) Bungee Jumping over the Zambeze
2) Hiking the mountains of Lesotho
3) Trekking through Namibia
4) Beach-hopping and market-shopping in Durban
5) Driving South Africa from top to bottom
6) Backpacking/Baz Bussing the Garden Route
7) Resting and Relaxing in Cape Town
8) Safari in Kruger
9) Exploring Kenya
10) Must-see Mozambique

Back from Vac

A rhyming title, how about that? Spring Vac is now over, although I'm still not back into the swing of things yet. Mom is here, and I'm trying my best to entertain her, although at the moment she's trying not to doze off while sitting beside me in the computer lab.

Mom arrived on Saturday night, healthy, though tired and missing her luggage. We had a slow day on Sunday, going to the late church service, then wandering around Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. (Meanwhile, her luggage DID arrive...) It was lovely to share a beautiful, cloudless day with Mom enjoying the colors and fragrances in the garden. On Monday I took her to the top of Table Mountain to get a view of the city (and no stalking dassies this time, hooray!) Then we went out for Mexican food before going to see a poetry reading.

On Tuesday we packed and flew to Johannesburg to prepare for our safari. We spent Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in Kruger National Park riding around in open vehicles, looking out for wild game. We managed to spot all of the "Big Five" (lions, leopards, buffalo, rhinos, and elephants), plus giraffes, hippos, crocodiles, mongooses (mongeese? hmm...), snakes, eagles, imapala, kudu, duikers, and even a couple of cheetahs, which were a rare and suprising treat. One morning we even got stuck because a lioness and her four cubs were napping in the middle of the road we had been traversing. I got some amazing, close-up pictures of the lions being lazy and holding up traffic. We also had a night drive, ate lots of great food, and generally enjoyed the warm, savanna weather.

We arrived safely back in Cape Town on Saturday night. On Sunday we drove east of Cape Town toward the "Garden Route". We drove through the colorful, patchwork fields of the winelands, then stopped at Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa. We both dipped our fingers (and toes, accidentally!) in the Indian Ocean before heading back to Cape Town.

On Monday classes started again, but Mom and I still had fun visiting the Waterfront for some shopping and a dinner with live jazz. I decided to go to the creche with SAEP on Tuesday as usual, but I brought Mom along and she got to meet the children and see where I've been working. We also went out for African food, which was lovely.

Today I misbehaved by skipping my classes and taking Mom to Cape Point instead. We watched the penguins waddling around and playing in the surf, enjoyed the incredible mountain and beach views, and had a magnificent lunch out.

I promise I'll tell more stories later, but at the moment Mom has fallen asleep in the chair beside me, so I need to get her back to the house.