Vacation from Vacation

The days of Spring Break in South Africa are almost over... Tomorrow classes resume, but I had an AWESOME break. Besides, Easter Break is on Friday and lasts through Monday... How convenient? :) Anyway, break was wonderful... I got up really early Saturday morning (5 AM) to meet up with the rest of my program that decided to go on our trip together at the Alma house (I live at Welgelegen). We went to the airport and had a not so great breakfast and flew off to Joburg. After our bus finally showed up to pick us up, we headed to Soweto (SOuth WEst TOwnship), which is about a 40 minute drive from the airport. Soweto is the largest black township with over one million people living there. It is the home of Desmund Tutu and Nelson Mandela's early home (they are actually right down the street from each other... SA is the only country that can proudly say it has two Nobel Prize winners that came from the same street), and the site of the Soweto Uprisings, in which youths and others rioted against the National Party government and the unfair education reforms. On 16 June 1976, thousands of black students protested in Orlando West in Soweto and the police used violent force against them. The youngest person to be killed by police that day was a 13 year old boy. There is now a memorial there and we got to see it as well as both Mandela and Tutu's houses. We also got to see some of the hostels where there was a lot of conflict between the IFP (Inkatha Freedom Party, primarily Zulu) and the ANC (African National Congress, headed by Mandela), drank homemade beer, tried cow's head (well I didn't, but some people did!), and went to a shabeen (kind of like a bar but different). All of this we did on a four hour BIKE tour. It was actually really great and made me miss having a bike a lot... Curses, Lexington! We stayed in Soweto for two nights at a hostel right across from a park that the owner cleaned up and made for the kids in the area. They were adorable but very demanding... always wanting to play... We also went into Joburg for a day and saw some museums, including the Apartheid Museum... VERY interesting and learned a lot actually... We also went up to the 'Top of Africa,' which is the top of the highest building in Joburg. Kind of reminded me of the Radio Turm in Duesseldorf... I think that's what it was called anyway! Next we went to Nelspruit, which is right outside of the borders of Kruger National Park. We stayed in an awesome hostel type place and the owner was named Crazy Dave... not kidding! He was really nice though and they made AMAZING food. It was especially great for vegetarians because Crazy Dave is also Veg and so he always let us go first in line no matter what! Two mornings in a row, we all got up at 3.45 (before dawn!) and left to make it to Kruger when it opened. We would spend all day driving around looking for animals, which was nice! However it was extremely cold in the mornings and then by 10 or so incredibly hot. But, that was a minor sacrifice for what I got from this trip... I saw LOTS of animals, the Big 5, giraffes, elephants, bugs, lizards, hippos, zebra, impala, and tons more... Since I've come 'home,' I really haven't done hardly anything since most of my house is in Zambia, but I'm ok with that. It's nice to be lazy and take a real break for a little bit because as fun as the trip with IES was, it was exhausting.

Jammin'

I love the Jammie. I am always forgetting what I already wrote and what I haven’t, so in case I haven’t explained what a Jammie is, it’s a bus… They are big light blue buses for UCT students and faculty that come and go all over Cape Town… Forest Hill, downtown at Hiddingh, at the mall in Claremont… And sometimes they even play music! Jammies are never ‘on time,’ but they always seem to come at either the best or worst times, especially the Forest Hill Jammies, which go right by my house. Luckily I am not too lazy and will settle for anything that just goes to Lower Campus… (there is Lower, Upper, Middle, Health, and Hiddingh Campus) Anyway, Jammies are almost always crowded… it is not uncommon to have to stand or be the last person on and stand in the door (that is actually kind of fun). However, it’s really nice because most of the time if the bus is not too too crowded, a guy will stand up and give you his seat. Nice! No American male would EVER do that. Never in my life have I experienced that on a bus or subway in any American city! So that is pretty great… also, Jammie drivers ALWAYS stop for you… If they are driving right past the stop and they see you, they will always stop and let you on… it is the nicest thing ever, really. Jammies are also an excellent source of entertainment. Sometimes when drivers are nice and let you on, they start driving before you are completely inside the bus… the other day I actually witnessed a guy who got half shut in the back doors and barely managed to get inside before we drove right past another bus, which could have been potentially damaging I suppose… but all that we could all really do at that point is laugh. People also have the most interesting/odd conversations. It's kind of like the Transy cafeteria on a Saturday morning/afternoon… especially on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays because going out during the week and on Saturdays is what's popular here... Friday night, not so much surprisingly. If you ask a local what they are doing, oftentimes they will tell you studying. I'm not kidding. Also, a recent development... Jammie malfunctions! Apparently someone that works for my program saw a Jammies breaks or something (I forget what it was but some boy told me it was most likely I don't remember, transmission or something, I have no clue, I'm no mechanic or whatever) went out and the Jammie literally started to roll back down the hill and there was nothing they could do at first... And this is a very hilly place... Also, it was in the school paper that a UCT bus (but not a Jammie, I just looked at it...) basically the same thing happened right outside of my program's office/student programmes,etc. The bus rolled back and crashed into two cars, which then crashed into the building. Yes, it's all very exciting here. Another common thing that I have noticed is protesting is rampant here. Every other day I feel like I see a new poster for some protest, and before I leave, I will go to one. I'm thinking free and equal education... sounds good and justifiable to me, and it's a pretty hot issue. There was supposed to be a big demonstration last week all over SA and I read that it ended up getting kinda crazy in Joberg... setting things on fire, rocks, spraying people with fire hoses... but that is Joberg for you! Here it was pretty tame and there was even a Jammie that took people to Parliament.

Just livin' the dream...

Time seems to go by really fast here, although Africans tend to be very slow and laid back about everything... I had my homestay in Langa township last weekend and it was amazing! My family was really great and it consisted of: Patience, the momma (who was away at a funeral, but I talked to her on the phone!); Nandi, the big sisi, Bopsie, the younger sisi that just had a baby, a younger brother Andiswe, and then since the momma and her oldest daughter were away, the daughter's little boy and girl were also there. There is also an older brother that I met at Chickenland in Gugulethu (where I had my first cheeseburger in seven years or something!!! AND IT WAS GREAT!) but he doesn't live there. The house was AMAZING, especially for what I would have expected for a township, but this place never seems to be what you would expect... I am constantly surprised... and pretty much always pleasantly. I went out with Nandi and Bopsie and their super fun neighbor and Amanda, who hosted a guy in my program that I didn't really know all that well but I do now, thanks to last weekend!
I spent some time in Langa, and a lot of time in Gugulethu too because Nandi likes going there a lot more than staying in Langa. We went out to some really fun places, and it was so good to be by myself in a place that wasn't with a bunch of kids from my program. Don't get me wrong, I love a majority of them! But... I am only in South Africa for so long and I want to get as much of an actually South African experience as possible...
Oh a very interesting story from a few days ago: So my roommate went for a run on Friday after I got home around 5 or 6 and she was running up to Rhodes Memorial on top of this hill type thing and some guy behind her yelled. So she turned around and it was this random white guy that was in his late 20s-early 30s and he was wearing khakis and a polo, but he was really dirty like he had been rolling around in the dirt. So she turned around and then he took his pants off and she screamed at him and started to run away and then she turned around to see if he was coming after her (because he was only about 3 meters away from her) and he was going to town on himself and so she yelled that she was going to call the police and sprinted up the hill into the woods and was out of breath and then she ran into some Rastafarians that weren’t wearing any shoes and had walking sticks and had just come back from collecting herbs from the mountains (haha) and asked them if they would walk her down the hill and they did… what a great day for her!
Also this morning I went to Robben Island, which is where Nelson Mandela served a majority of his time as a political prisoner. The tour itself was kind of boring, but it was interesting to be there and know they history and see what it actually looked like. It was really small and very hot! And.... apparently before it was a prisoner's island, it was a leper colony! There's still a graveyard there! Great history... But anyway, on the boatride over we saw two wales and some seals! And that is pretty exciting because whale season is way into the winter and that should be after I am gone. So yeah! Still excited, still having fun...