Visiting Cape Town: Don't Sugarcoat the City

There wasn't any time to reflect on Cape Town while I was there. Instead, my friend/roommate/travel buddy Kristen and I jotted down notes of our experiences on our program calendars... from where we ate to who we met on what day, down to the most ridiculous details like getting on the wrong city bus.

Back in the US, I took one glance at the calendar and knew that I'd be writing a rambled novel if I tried to blog in hindsight day by day. So I did what I know best and wrote a reflective op-ed column.

In less than 800 words, here's what I want to pass on to anyone with plans to visit or live in the city.

As featured in IES Abroad's Student Voices. 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s no secret that Cape Town is a beautiful city.

Ranked among Travel + Leisure’s top 10 world cities this year, recommendations for tourists visiting the popular destination typically include exploring glamorous shopping and dining areas like V&A Waterfront, reaching one of several mountain peaks with the most striking of cityscape views, and taking a day trip out to nearby Stellenbosch for some wine tasting. Extreme excursions that offer shark diving, bungee jumping, and safaris are only a couple hours’ drive away.

It’s also cheap, the one dollar: 12.5 rand exchange rate working heavily in favor of Americans.

But in a country 21 years ripe out of apartheid, you’re robbing yourself of education and experience if you come solely to restaurant hop, hike, and visit countryside vineyards.

Having just returned from a month long social entrepreneurship program through the University of Texas at Austin and IES Abroad, what I appreciate most about my experience visiting Cape Town for the first time is simple: I was offered the understanding that there’s a lot going on in the city.

I met brilliant young people who have grown through numerous hardships and surfaced as humble businessmen and women with empowering missions to give back to their communities.

I was amazed at the amount of talk about South African reconciliation and forgiveness for injustices committed in the past.

Perhaps most importantly, I made genuine friends. And I’m forever grateful to Facebook and Whatsapp for allowing me to keep in touch with them.

I can’t say I was thoroughly versed in social entrepreneurship, South Africa, or Africa in general before I touched base in Cape Town. There’s only so much one semester of classroom work can do. And now, I’m not someone who briefly visited South Africa and thinks of herself as enlightened. I don’t know everything there is to know about Africa, and that’s okay. What the trip encouraged in me is the desire to learn more.

Africa as a continent is so often misjudged and generalized, treated more as a single country than a continent made up of 52 individual nations. It conjures up images of poverty, HIV/AIDs, war, and exotic wildlife. Those aspects of Africa do exist. But just as Texas–one state–is not all cowboys and horses, the entire continent of Africa shouldn’t be pigeonholed. The media rarely puts forth images about its art, its cuisine, its people who are making a real difference on a local level.

Some of the questions I received upon returning to the States caught me off guard.

“But… was it clean? Was it developed?”

“Wait, did you go on a safari in Cape Town… Or Tanzania?”

And the cringe-worthy worst: “Did you feel safe? You know… with all the black people?”

But should we label ignorance as bigotry or see it as an inevitable consequence of global misrepresentation?

If you’re going to travel to Cape Town, do yourself a favor and experience it in full–both the beautiful and the ugly.

Go to Langa, one of Cape Town’s largest townships. Visit Mzansi Restaurant, a family-owned business where owners Mrs. Nomonde and Mr. Ace Siyaka will have you dancing, singing, and chatting like family.

Don’t hesitate to talk to locals. Instead of relying on Yelp, ask them what they think you should see in Cape Town. Gauge how they feel about President Jacob Zuma (hint: not good). Ask them what it’s like to live with the reality of scheduled power outages, known as “load shedding.”

Americans traveling to South Africa can draw parallels and contrasts between the history of the two nations, and current race relations in the U.S. beg for a deeper discussion of race, privilege and the acknowledgement that we don’t yet live in a post racial society. People aren’t afraid to talk openly about race, a discussion that seems to get lost in a maze of political correctness and white guilt in the United States. 

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being a tourist in Cape Town. During my time there, I hiked Table Mountain and Lion’s Head, went out on Long Street and had a fancy evening dinner on the V&A Waterfront.

Just don’t forget the bigger picture.

It’s your decision: A perfectly packaged vacation, or a real experience where you leave your comfort zone behind to connect with people that will teach you things you didn’t even know you didn’t know?

You decide.

Grand Ol' Bucket List

To remind, hold myself accountable and crowd-source more recommendations. 

Food // Drink // Entertainment

• Observatory (Obs) 
• Long Street
• Kloof Street 
• Beef Cakes 
• Brewery Tour
• V&A Waterfront 

Excursions // Experiences 

• Langa township experience with Sabu (football game, eating at Mzansi Restaurant)
• Hike Table Mountain and/or Lion's Peak
• Robben Island
• Safari tour
• Shark diving

Adding A Drop to the Bucket

This month is going to turn me into an unwilling morning person. Yesterday was a full day, from the usual 7 am wake-up to the usual 3 am bedtime. One of my roommates and I have decided that sleep is something we're willing to sacrifice in order to get in everything in that we want to experience, from hanging out with locals we've met to hiking Table Mountain. Even the locals say the weather's been exceptionally bad for the winter, but there's sun in the forecast in the upcoming days! I'm crossing my fingers and toes for good hiking weather this weekend. There's countless other things I need, so my my next post is going to be an organized Grand Ol' Bucket List that the Facebook world can help me develop. No naps for Larisa.

Study abroad lessons: Sacrifice sleep for experience, make the time for reflection and talk to as many people as you can (beyond a simple greeting).

SERVICE LEARNING SITE VISIT 

I'm working in Egoli, a township set up in 1996 after the people were kicked off of their farmland. The informal settlement lacks basic utilities like electricity, running water, and a sewage system. I expected the conditions because we were given a blog with photos about Egoli from a past student, but feeling the cold and darkness inside the shack homes solidified the reality (if only for an hour and a half). If you're curious to see photographs of what townships look like, feel free to take advantage of Google. I didn't like the idea of bringing my camera during orientation and shooting poverty porn. I'm glad that our community organizer Abe walked us through the muddy, puddled streets and we got to greet people in the community, instead of having our first impression of the place and the people's first impression of us be through the lens of a camera.

We met "Mama," who we knew was the woman in charge of selling and renting a device called a "Juz Box" to the township's residents. Think of the concept of a rechargeable battery pack, but in a 5 L plastic jug powered by solar panels on the roof of her home (isn't that awesome?). But there are only a few of the boxes, and so about one fourth of the community gets electricity through that way. Those without electricity resort to light from candles, open fires and paraffin stoves in the homes. When we visited, a couple of guys were chopping wood in preparation to rebuild some houses that a fire claimed. The smoke from the paraffin also poses a public health hazard for the families.

Our focus for the project is offering a model for a cheap form of light that can hopefully turn into a viable business for a social entrepreneur to pick up. We only have five days, so we've kept our idea practical: Successfully install one Liter of Light bottle on a volunteer's roof and produce a simple reproducible manual that highlights important information like cost and installation instructions.

Sometimes, people participating in service learning projects set high expectations and get such tunnel vision with their project plans that they forget to have a genuine experience by abandoning the savior mindset and just speaking to the people they're trying to help. Remember: You're "adding another drop to the bucket" (an analogy from Errol, our papa bear from IES Abroad who's always there with good advice) by any little good that you do.

Irrelevant but awesome tangent:

I held my first baby in years, when a woman named Nicky handed a chubby-faced girl to me with a stern "Take her!" and I fumbled awkwardly to concentrate on not being a complete klutz while having a little human in my arms. Also, Nicky told me that I looked 16 and that if she was a bouncer at a club, she wouldn't let me in, so there's that.

MY HUMBLE APPRECIATION

The study abroad group knew our experience would be something else when we were told that there's a psychologist available for the entire hostel if need be, but I can't overstate how much I appreciate the people on this trip. They're curious, genuine, trustworthy and smart, but I suppose I shouldn't have expected any less from those who decided to chose a social work study abroad program. We have regular group debriefing sessions with our professor and a couple of the IES staff members, and it's always so powerful to hear my friends speak openly about their feelings on an incident, a conversation or just a feeling they felt. I'm in my happy place with all the empathy being channeled. 

Fresh Off Plane: Let's Talk Race & Gender (In A Bar?)

Even though I've only been in Cape Town for about 48 hours, mustering up a coherent blog post is hard. Especially in this near-delirious state of jet-lagged sleep deprivation. But our schedule is only going to get busier, so I figured I'd reflect on some things I've seen and heard while the memories are fresh.

I haven't felt incredible culture shock. A lot of the streets and shops remind me of Argentina (or Latin America in general) and the 1:10 dollar to rand conversion is easy and dangerously good. It's winter down here, so the weather is cold, cloudy and rainy. I prefer jeans and a jacket over shorts and a tank, but hopefully the sun will make an appearance over the next month.

I'm going to avoid the nitty gritty housing logistics, but look up Off the Wall Backpackers if you're curious - awesome place owned by awesome people. It's located in a Cape Town suburb called Claremont, a 15 min taxi drive from the city center. We saw some townships coming up from the airport on the way to the hostel - some were just shacks, ours were brightly painted and neatly sorted government-provided RDP houses. We haven't seen the glamour of central Cape Town yet, but I can only imagine after doing a quick Google search for restaurants and bars to check out. I never doubted the glaring inequality exists but it's different when it's staring you in the face than when you're reading about it thousands of miles away. 

Last night, a few of us decided to go out for a couple of drinks and play some billiard. Perhaps sleep would have been a better decision because we had an all-day orientation at the University of Cape Town today, but we didn't stay out too late and an eye-opening exchange we had with someone made me start to realize that race is going to revolve around most conversations during our time here.

The context: Our group was made up of four girls and one guy. This guy approaches us and starts congratulating our friend for scoring four white women as a black man (two of the girls are actually Hispanic, but as it often goes with race, it's about the arbitrary color of your skin).

A bar isn't the ideal environment for having an important conversation about race and sexism, but my friend did have some solid thoughts in response.

On race, he told the guy: "The funny thing is, they're not all white" to which the guy retorted, "Look at me. I'm so black, everyone lighter than me is white."

On sexism, he pointed to me and asked: "What do you think she's here for?"

It's sad because the answer of education probably never crossed the guy's mind. He saw my friend as the ultimate player and my friends and I as brainless bimbos, and the fact that he's black and we're "white" made the accomplishment all the greater.

To wrap it up, it was an eye-opening scene. Lots of nervous laughter and unspoken words because getting into a bar fight was not on my bucket list for the first night in the city, but I did learn.

The purpose of today's orientation was to get our badges and go over rules and procedures, as well as listen to several speakers on various topics like safety and culture. It was a long affair, but IES Abroad did a good job at trying to keep the mood light and funny (despite the sobering reality of the safety talks that reiterated the alarmingly high rates of AIDS, rape and robbery). Our cultural speaker used an extended Fifty Shades of Grey metaphor to describe our experience in South Africa, which was a little weird at first. He kept going with it, and I finally picked up on his message: to not treat our service learning projects as a stiff, disconnected contract where no real intimacy or relationships with people are developed.

I'm ready for both the beauty and ugly of this experience, but for now I'm ready for bed. 

If you made it to the bottom of this, thanks for reading and I'm glad to have kept you engaged for some long, especially considering it's 2015 and humans have lost their attention spans.

Weather permitting, we may or may not have an excursion tomorrow to Robbin Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.

D-Day: Cape Town Bound

Live shot of my packing progress. Especially proud of that gaping hole in my checked bag, but toiletries are still missing.

After a rough but satisfying end to the semester, I'm a University of Texas at Austin graduate. Austin (and Texas in general) weather has been one perpetual storm this past month, so adapting to Cape Town drizzle should be easy. I was hoping to get one last swim in at Barton Springs Pool, but it dangerously flooded this weekend so that was a no-go.

And now, departure day is tomorrow. At 8:26 pm to be precise. I'm traveling with my friend Carola from Houston -> London -> Cape Town, and we have a nine hour layover in London that we're looking to take advantage of. Thank you, organized London public transit.

As a journalist and a social media geek, I'm not going MIA abroad. Check out this blog and follow me at @larisam13 on Instagram to keep up with my travels and our work in Cape Town. 

Week 11: Providing a Prototype for Sustainable Electricity in Cape Town Townships

Last week before class, I know that the Egoli Electricity project group was feeling pretty overwhelmed about the daunting task of providing electricity to the 3/4 of the residents in the township lacking electricity as seven university students with no background in engineering, little funding and even less time.

Well, I'm happy (and relieved!) to announce that we were just confused about our goal for the project. After speaking with Professor Gilbert last week during class, we realized that we weren't expected to magically solve the electricity issue in the township, but rather propose an alternative energy source for residents that could be developed in the future. From Dr. Gilbert's recent visit to Cape Town, we have some context: Right now, there's only one woman selling electrical batteries to a small sector of the township (her customer base is only 1/4 of residents) and there's concerns about her making all the profit.

We'll do research, experiment with a model on a small scale (aka, bring one energy-harnessing soccer ball, etc.) and see what seems to be most successful. At the end, I hope we can produce a comprehensive report that we can then suggest to a program like UT-Austin's Projects for Underserved Communities, a longer-term service learning initiative that uses the practical skills of engineering and social work students.

Here's a comprehensive Guardian article that talks about the legacy of apartheid on the living conditions of South Africa's black township residents, with a particular focus on Khayelitsha*, Cape Town's second largest township. Although this article isn't specifically about the township we'll be working with, it provides the big picture context of the fact that the city's township residents feel like they've been forgotten 20 years after the apartheid system ended as expectations for the potential of the Reconstruction and Development Programme have fallen incredibly short.

* Some hard facts about housing in Khayletisha.

Week 10: Bringing Light with Egoli Electricity

Frustrated Egoli residents marched to the site contractor's house on April 9, 2015 to demand that Buffalo City Metro send electricians to install their old meter boxes. Photo: Alan Eason. 

Electricity is something that most people, myself included, take for granted on a daily basis. Never mind charging electronics; let's talk about light. You get home and you flip on your light switch. It's so routine that you wouldn't think of the action as luxurious or extraordinary. But your perspective changes when you realize there are people in the world who don't have access to this basic utility. 

After looking over the service projects - each meaningful in their own way - I felt particularly drawn to working with Egoli Electricity because it's a way in which I can attempt to make a small but tangible difference in one South African township. 

Currently, Egoli Electricity - a small township-run business - provides electrical batteries to about one-fourth of the community. And by small, we're talking one woman. 

The idea isn't that seven students are going to go in and light up this entire township just by visiting a couple of hours each week for a month. The purpose of a service learning project isn't to impose change on our agenda, but to work with members in the community to promote sustainable social entrepreneurship. 

There's a lot of innovation when it comes to providing light in developing nations, so our project group is still thinking about what would be the best alternative to electrical batteries. So far, we've thought of seeing what residents in Egoli think of these ideas: 

• Liter of Light, a simple and eco-friendly way of providing a light source. The only materials needed would be a transparent 1.5 - 2 L plastic bottle, filled with water and a little bleach, fitted through the roof of a house. Properly installed bottles can last up the five years. 
• Soccket, a soccer ball that acts as a portable energy source (30 minutes of play powers a simple LED light for 3 hours).

This article published a mere week ago explains how public health ties into this project: many residents without electricity have resorted to using paraffin stoves for light, which fill houses with fumes that cause respiratory issues such as asthma. 

“They gave us beautiful new homes with white walls but now those walls are black from paraffin smoke.” - Michelle Classen

The wider context of the problem is that these houses were provided to the township residents through the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), a policy framework intended to address socioeconomic issues post-apartheid. 

A story in the Daily Dispatch last year said that a national office grant would fund electricity for the new RDP houses, but the residents remain in dark limbo a year later.

In an ideal world, the solution would be for the government to provide the funds for long-lasting electricity. But for now, local entrepreneurship is taking matters into their own hands.