I Gotta Try Some of Those Industrial Strength Drugs!

Monday, July 30, 2007

First day of classes today. All this time the campus has been empty, but it felt small and I wondered how it would feel with 20,000 students on it. The answer, I learned today, is crowded. The campus feels like a packed high school hallway during passing period actually. Even McGill was never this packed. It’s not even that the campus is tough to get around with so many people, it’s just overwhelming. Fortunately, the small campus means you run into people all the time, but lines for food and other services are daunting - nothing new here though.

*I shouldn’t say the campus is small, it’s just the academic area of the campus is very compact – upper campus it is called. Middle and lower campus are actually quite large, but there isn’t much there worth note except for a few academic and administrative buildings.*

My first class today was Religion, Spirituality and Ecology, and only has about 7 people in it, half of them American. The workload also seems heavy, despite it being a second year course, but we’ll see. I’ll spare you a detailed description of all my classes, except where entertaining or helpful for those looking to come here next semester (what’s up Zach and Laura!)

I’m signed up for an African history course that is also full of Americans but might be worth taking. The professor managed to introduce the entire course in 10 minutes and essentially told us the class was un-failable. Unless we tried really hard to fail by using industrial strength drugs, he told us, we would have no problem passing. He continued to tell us that this class is for those study abroad students who are here on vacation, not school, and those of us who wanted a real class should take the honours course. I’m not actually signed up for it, but might have to take it. It depends on the workload of my other classes (I still have much of Cape Town to explore, after all.) He also seemed really bitter about having to teach the course to a bunch of SSAs (Semester Study Abroad), not that I blame him.

I’m going to the armchair theatre tonight which serves pizza, beer and shows cult movies every Monday – should be fun. My first rugby practice is tomorrow. If I don’t post for a while after tomorrow, please inquire as to my aliveness.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Today I became an official UCT student. I was expecting a parade and flowers, but instead they signed us up for the upper campus walk-a-thon. I spent all day running around from building to building signing up for courses, getting info about courses or meeting with professors – kinda like McGill. Of course after all that I still don’t know what classes I’m taking, but I was expecting such.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Being here is finally starting to feel real. That is, I’m starting to feel like I live here instead of being at summer camp. I think having our first free weekend since we got here really helped. We went out on Friday to Long St. which is always crowded on weekends. The bars and clubs actually remind me a lot of Montreal, except the people are more friendly. The street is full of clubs and bars pumping music and flashing lights and people overflowing into the crowded street, lined up for street fare and mingling on balconies. It seems that every night I go out we end up meeting someone new and without fail end up making a contact (minus a few weirdos and skeezeballs, but that’s usually only a problem with the girls.) Just this weekend for instance, we met an African drumming instructor from Ivory Coast who teaches at a bar on Long St. and records all over the world. Thank you mom and dad for sending me to French school – he was very impressed by a French-speaking American.

We went to the V&A Waterfront on Saturday – my first time there – for dinner and a movie. The waterfront is one of several very very wealthy areas of Cape Town that also happens to be mostly white and have a distinctly Western feel. I went knowing this, but still felt very weird walking around a mall that could have been anywhere in the States, particularly after visiting the townships but even when comparing it to the neighborhood that I live in. The movie theatre also plays almost entirely American films, but we went to see an African film from the South African documentary film festival. It was confusing and I slept through much of it. Movies are only 25 rand (about $3.50) and because I miss home a little I will be going to see the Simpsons movie tonight. Classes start tomorrow and I still don’t know what I’m going to take.

Arrrghhhh!! Huuuhhghgh! Mmmuhhhhh!

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

I make it sound like this whole trip I’ve only hung out with Americans. While this is partially true (although classes should change that) the South(ern) Africans we have met through orientation or random events have made quite an impression. Our SOLmates as we like to call them (stands for Student Orientation Leader – isn’t it cute?) come from all over Africa (Namibia, Botswana, Ghana, Ivory Coast...) and South Africa and were the life of the orientation. Because there are too many to profile each one I’ll give you a sampling of the kind of people they are.

The most interesting SOLmate is a guy named Mzo. He speaks 7 languages, is an unbelievable dancer, sings opera and is the biggest horndog I’ve ever met. One night, in between singing Italian opera for the girls in the room he’d go into full-on performances of his favorite adult films and tell stories about his circumcision in the bush at 18 years old (a cultural tradition he tells us). Needless to say he’s a ladies man and quite frankly I think some of the guys in our group were falling for him too. I could not be happier he’s living in rez with me.

There’s also this girl named Vavi. I have no idea where she is from, and I’ve only had a few (sober) conversations with her, but I always seem to find her at whatever club we go to. We’re tight in a non-verbal kinda way – it’s beautiful and thought it worth mentioning.

I have also met another Paolo, to my surprise. He swears I am the only other Paolo he has ever met. Not coincidentally we have become good friends. He is tall, I am short. He is a ballroom dancer, I play rugby. He is goofy, I am… well, goofy too. Put us together and you might get some semblance of a normal human being. Anyway, he’s given me quite the impression of UCT rugby players. Apparently they are ogre-ish Afrikaners who grow up wrestling cattle in the South African countryside. He tells me they speak in grunts and exhalations much like those mythical creatures in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or whatever (whose names I haven’t the faintest clue.) As if I didn’t already have reason to be excited about playing UCT rugby. It’s all jokes with Paolo (it’s still weird referring to another Paolo) which is refreshing considering most of my days are spent with disoriented and uncomfortable Americans (myself included).

District 6 in the Mix

Monday July 23, 2007

Cut out on orientation this morning – a great decision. We went to the District 6 museum in downtown which was fascinating. District 6 is (was) a neighborhood in Cape Town near the city bowl (downtown) that was home to an impoverished but diverse (read coloured and black with some Jews and Indians) community. The slogan on the coins here is “Unity by diversity” and in many ways District 6 was emblematic of that mantra. Despite overcrowded homes and low-paying jobs the community unified around their struggle against the oppressive apartheid regime to create one of the city’s most vibrant neighborhoods. In the 60s however, under the Group Areas Act, the government designated District 6 a whites only area and systematically began removing any non-whites from the neighborhood (almost everyone). The area was then bulldozed and has since seen little development, leaving a patch of barren land right next to the city centre.

Had a splendid lunch at a café on the streets of downtown Cape Town, It’s striking how different the city feels when you’re not touring in a large pack of Americans – it’s liberating actually. Today I was finally able to experience the city (or at least part of it) as it is, not as it was told to me. I was extremely satisfied to finally see the downtown area full of businessmen on their cellphones, beggars on the street corners and everyone in between running around. As is often the case here, I was stunned by the diversity in this city. Literally, people of all colors (black, white, coloured, Indian, Asian…) make up the bustling downtown, something I have never seen before (certainly not back home at least.)

We took a self-guided tour of UCT’s upper campus. I was not only awed by the beauty of the campus, perched on the slopes of devil’s peak with it’s stone steps and ivy oozing down the walls, but relieved to finally see a few students cruising around campus in flip-flops and hoodies. I was also excited to find that the UCT rugby club offices are housed in the on-campus pub that is quite a shrine to UCT and springbok rugby, not to mention that there are three pitches outside.

First Post from South Africa

Sunday, July 22, 2007

This is my first post – we’ll see how it goes. Please post comments if you have any, especially if you think this blog sucks. This is my first time doing this so it’ll probably be all over the place. Also, if there’s anything you’re curious about that you want me to write about/investigate please let me know and I will do my best to post something about it. Apologies for the jump start, but I’m not going to write an intro/transition post because I am lazy. Enjoy (or don’t and let me know why you didn’t!) :)

Today was easily the best day thus far, even though the day was spent with 350 international students (mostly American). We hopped into buses and were led on a brief tour of Cape Town (our first real excursion outside of the highly touristy Long street area), stopping at major landmarks and scenic lookouts. I usually loathe such tours, but today I was simply happy to no longer be talked at about program policies and regulations. We stopped in the township of Oceanview on the way to Cape Point to have lunch and interact with members of the community. The younger kids break danced for us and were very impressive (no Bc One, but impressive in person. For those of you interested in some unbelievable breakdancing check out the red bull bc one on youtube) – I wish I had brought my camera. Everyone in the community was extremely friendly and interested in why we came, but as is often the case on these trips, all the poor residents were black while all the visitors were white. It has been hard to ignore the white liberal guilt that dominates the mood on trips like these. I feel it in myself of course too, and I have yet to come to a decision as to whether it is better for these people and me to suppress this need to help (which seems to have many sources, none of which seem truly genuine) and rather to cultivate an unconditional willingness to help that rejects any self-gratification. What that looks or feels like I have no clue. I will try to tackle this in a future post, but for now I must leave it open.

The Cape is one of the most naturally gorgeous places I have ever been. We lucked out and got good weather, as you can see from the pictures. What the pictures don’t capture is the immensity of the place. Although the Cape isn’t actually that big (it’s no Grand Canyon) it sure feels big. It must be knowing that it’s the southwestern most point in Africa or that it’s where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet that make it feel so important (not to mention its historical significance to European trading ships.) I mentioned to a friend as we were hiking up to the vista point that the visit would definitely be a deeply spiritual experience had there not been so many tourists. *Reflecting on it a week later, despite the tourists, my experience at Cape Point was a uniquely powerful encounter with nature, one that I had not previously experienced and don’t anticipate experiencing for a while.*