Arrival!

My mom has arrived safely! Here are some pictures from Namibia- anecdotes later.

Saturday- Cage Shark Diving

Brigid in the cage!

View of the shark from above-they were huge!

Clearly a mean bugger.

We saw 5 (or maybe 7?) different great whites- the biggest was 3.5 meters. and they were FAST.

Historical Anecdote from New Professor

During apartheid, Obz, Woodstock, and Salt River had a mix of whites and coloureds, so the way the the government would classify someone whose race wasn't obvious was by sticking a pencil in their hair. If the pencil fell, they were white-if it stuck, they were coloured.

Midterms and Markets and Mayhem (oh my)

My embarrassingly touristy photo in greenmarket square- But seriously, I would have done this at home too.

Brigid with an awesome construction collage

This update will have to be hasty, as a pseudo midterm season has set in upon us, and my Adaptations of Family Structure in Traditional African Religions sorely needs attention. Friday I finally made it to Greenmarket Square- an awesome market where I got to practice my haggling to generally satisfactory means. Also on Friday, Sara came over and we painted on my floor (not on my floor but on paper while on my floor). I dig her ideas of a watercolor party and definitely intend to art myself up a bit. Saturday morning was Parents Day at Leap and the choir that a few of my mentees are in was performing, so Sean and I went down there to see our kids. All the other CIEE kids who were supposed to come totally bailed, but at least we had had enough to book a car the day before and thus managed to get there for free. Sidenote: I am so crazy about my LEAP girls already: Landiswa, Sinovuyo, Ziyanda, and ZiZipho. I get so excited talking to them, and I think they are so brilliant and fantastic. Plus the ones that were in the choir KILLED IT and I was glad we went. Saturday evening a bunch of us went to SushiZone for an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet-I only wish I’d been hungrier. After, Sean and I went and saw a South African comedy called David Newton (or Daniel Newberg or something like that). It was such a riot to here race and sports and politics jokes. He was talking about South Africa ‘tidying up’ or 2010. “Sweep violent crime under the rug, hide Zuma in the shower, and stick Julius in a school because nobody will think to look for him there.” Sunday was super mellow with just a little frozen yogurt (I love Marcel’s! I am craving some now), lots of paper work, and church at night. I’m so happy we found Christ Church here; it’s the one real South African environment that we always feel at home at. Yesterday was my day at the Brooklyn Chest TB Hospital, and I found out that Darren, one of my favorite kids, is going home on Friday. While I’m so happy he’s better, it kind of shocked me that I wasn’t going to get to see him anymore. Sadly, I guess I’ll need to really prepare for that on a grand scale come November. Today I met with my LEAP girls and worked on academic goals. They said they aren’t totally secure with English, which makes me hope that I can be helpful just be not knowing Xhosa. Apparently they never get to practice at home because if you speak English in Langa, you get uncle-Tom syndrome and people think you’re being stuck up (even though everyone knows at least some English!)

Watching Wildlife with White People

Awesome article on Krugar!: Watching Wildlife with White People

Ocean View - Weekend Homestay

Last weekend I had my homestay in Ocean View! You usually do a homestay with your partner, but my CIEE partner got violently ill the first night and had to go, so I was mostly on my own my family. They had a four year old girl, Cailtin, and a seven year old boy, Darren (see below).



Ocean View is a coloured township of families who were evicted from Simons Town (beachfront property with the cute penguin colony), Fish Hoek (beachfront property where we stayed the first week), and Noordhoek (the big beach with horses). Ironically, there is no ocean view from Ocean View- it’s about 45 minutes away from Cape Town and most work-centers, so transport is a huge pain for most citizens.


Housing isn’t so much a problem- all of us CIEE kids were in brick and mortar houses with our own rooms. They do however, have a major drug problem. A lot of people are on ‘tic’ which is meth, and meth addicts have often been breaking into houses to steal to support their habit. Ghadija and Donovon, my host mom and dad, explained that, since most people can’t really afford security systems, neighbors have started building a fire and gathering in the streets-some people staying all night-as a neighborhood watch.

The area has 2 middle schools and one high school...but 200 churches. So much spirit!




Here is Donovan grilling! Saturday night we went to a big braii (BBQ) in Mitchell’s Plain, another large coloured township where Ghadija’s sister lived, and Sunday they had a braii at hoe to see me off. I can not tell you how delicious this meat was!



Here is my host mom, Ghadija. I loved getting to talk with her- she had so much to tell me about her family background and her kids. I FINALLY got a more precise explanation of what ‘coloured’ entailed. It is a mixed race, but specifically mixed in the 16th century between whites (usually slave owners) and Khoi San (usually slaves). Though she wasn’t sure whether a mixed race child today would be thought of as coloured, and she agreed that it would be strange to separate a child from his/her parents by putting him or her in a totally separate category. Both her and Donovon’s family were evicted from Simons Town under the Group Areas Act. A couple years ago, the government paid reparations of about R20,000 to each family (split up between every one, covering multiple properties), but the property today would be worth well over R1,000,000.

It's hard to describe the whole thing overall, it was really wonderful to be welcomed into someone's home like that. There was a lot of playing and fun (so many neighborhood kids!), and the adults around asked me about Michael Jackson many times. I definitely think I will go back for a seafood braii-both of the grandfathers are fishermen!

Strike!

Cape Town is having a bus and taxi strike! More aptly, it's just a bus strike, but taxis refuse to run in solidarity (otherwise, there is just a flood of business for taxis and managers pit the groups against one another). Luckily, nobody cares about a taxi or two going down main road in Rondebosch (UCT's neighborhood), so we still have a 5R ride when we need one. However, they told us that if someone tried to drive a taxi in Langa, they would not get very far.

The train station by our house looks really weird and empty without mini buses...