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