From neon fish to Goldfish to town ships

So I came back from Afrika Burn thinking that I would have no incredible stories to tell. Then thinking about it, I realized that the whole thing was a magnificent experience unlike anywhere I’ve been. Afrika Burn is essentially the South African version of Burning Man, which for those of you that don’t know is a community arts festival in the middle of the desert. Honestly, it’s kind of hard to describe without sounding a little crazy, so I suggest looking at the website (www.afrikaburns.com). There were about 2000 people in the middle of the Karoo; I could look around for miles and see nothing except the mountains in the distance. The whole weekend seemed totally timeless because I was bound to no schedule and no clock, free to wander between tents and art projects at will. Everything seemed normal to me while I was there, but I realize that nothing like that happens in the real world. I danced on top of giant lego structures (with “letgo” written on top of them where it should say lego) at a dance party next to a flame-throwing gypsy truck. I rode on a pirate ship, found neon fish floating in a blacklight, saw a black snowman, helped build a 3-d dreamcatcher, painted community art, extended a path to nowhere, attended an Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter tea party, spied on people through a looking glass on a tower, walked around with facepaint all day, drummed in a samba percussion workshop, had another dance party in a tunnel from nowhere to nowhere, sent a postcard for free to the states, found a giant rubix cube, watched giant ship masts coming out of the desert burn, talked in solar powered telephone booths to other phones set up around the camp, exchanged jokes on a joke hotline, heard the ocean at the listening tree, envied the giant bunny slippers on scooters driving around, colored on random people’s pictures, played giant chess and scrabble, stumbled upon glow in the dark “gardens,” played soccer and friz, drank sangria and wine, hung out with a giant elvis statue, met an avatar, prayed at a chicken shrine, enjoyed free cherries, cherry brandy, and ice-cold popsicles, jumped in a bounce castle, made friends, and generally had a jolly good time. Everything was centrally art focused, though a couple of tents were blasting house or rock music the whole time. Afrika Burns operated on a giving system; everyone was supposed to bring a gift that they could share and exchange gifts with people they met. One guy had a mist-er hooked up to a water tank around his belt attached to an umbrella, and was offering rain. The popsicles and cherries were similarly gifted to me. There were official tents set up around the inner ring where most of the art was, and those ranged from a bar to the music tents to the tea party to a love tent to a giant message board to write dreams to a postcard place to a tent where you could build your own kite. There was so much going on at that festival, my descriptions don’t even do it justice. Yet at the same time, it was very much laid back: I didn’t walk much faster than a shuffle most of the day. There was just no hurry. If you want a funny story, ask me about the sailor dude or honeybear.

The Wednesday before I went I took a drum lesson from our next-door neighbor Sibu, who happens to be an rasta, ex-PAC resistance fighter against apartheid. One time, in an effort to get sanitation for his community, he helped build blockades against the police in the middle of the night using bricks and human shit as mortar; the white police were so disgusted when they realized what the walls were made of that they wouldn’t take them down, and brought in port-o-potties. I bought a djembe from him and was able to jam at Africa Burn. Also, on the way to and from the karoo, our car was so full that the only place the djembe could fit was between my legs – I don’t think I stopped drumming for all 6 hours. My carmates said they didn’t mind and liked it by the end, but I’m unsure of whether that was just infinite patience or not. Either way, did I mention that the people here are great?

The day after I returned from Afrika Burn, I went to see one of the premiere South African bands, Goldfish. They’re some kind of jazzy house music and I highly recommend checking them out. For the more jazz-y stuff, look up “Cruising Through,” “This is how it goes,” or “Hold Tight.” For the house-y stuff, look at anything off of their remix of Perceptions of Pacha (an earlier cd which the three hits above are off of). Anyway, a couple of things happened on that adventure. My friend Craig and I caught a train to Stellenbosch, the capital of wine country in South Africa and the town where the concert was. An aside: I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but no white South Africans ride trains (or really any public transport). It’s really odd, but I guess they all have cars, somehow. Anyway, we transferred halfway to our destination in Bellville. As soon as we got off, we asked someone where the train to Stellenbosch was and they pointed to one that was rapidly pulling away. Craig and I ran and hopped into said moving train, on the first car that we could get to. This happened to be a regular metro car (as opposed to the metro plus which is usually about 2 rand more, has nicer seating and a security guard always there) and some guy was pacing back and forth down the aisle shouting at the top of his lungs and preaching to us. We couldn’t help laughing a bit to ourselves, and we saw a few other smirks around the car. We hopped off at the next stop and rode the metro plus to Stellenbosch, where we immediately proceeded to get lost because we didn’t remember to check the map for how to get to our hostel. We eventually found it without too much trouble, but while we were walking around I was struck by how much wealthier Stellenbosch was. The difference is immediately apparent: instead of a city where sidewalks are lined with electric fences or barbed wire-topped walls, there were open lawns and grassy areas. There were no bars on the front windows of shops. And there were very few non-white people; more and more this makes me really uncomfortable. In fact, I may have seen five that weren’t working on the street. Similarly, I saw maybe 10 black people out of the whole crowd at the concert. Granted, it was at a winery and out in Stellenbosch, but it’s really weird to see and feels off somehow. To top off the weekend, we had another hilarious encounter with someone we met at the concert, but that’s another story for another time. Ask me about it later.

I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to update this in a long time, but BU (Beth Uriel) has more and more taken over my life. I’m usually there from 3-10 or later Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, sometimes even going in on Fridays too. I’m realizing that it’s really hard to accomplish all that we set out to with the business, for a number of different reasons. Even weekly meetings of the Me’Kasi team have taken four weeks to initiate and the order for more merchandise has taken 2 weeks. I’m slowly realizing too that a lot of our struggle has to do with a lack of ability for action that is due not only to the guy’s history on the street, but also to the fact that they’re simply high schoolers. I can’t remember being very responsible in high school, and I certainly wouldn’t have any knowledge about how to run a business or sell a product. Complicating the matter is that the guys feel like they aren’t trusted with the business at all. They are only allowed to take out one t-shirt at a time to sell, and must leave something of equal or greater value as collateral. This makes it almost impossible to sell anything because anyone interested in buying a shirt can’t compare colors, designs, or sizes. I’ve been told by the guys that they also feel like they appear illegitimate carrying around one t-shirt in their township at a time; it looks like they stole it or are re-selling it from somewhere in Cape Town. Unfortunately, the heads of BU don’t seem to want to change this policy because there have been many instances of guys taking out a portion of the stock which promptly disappears and the house doesn’t get any money back. Guys come back with stories that they have been mugged, and there is no way to verify the truth of their claims. House members also pinch shirts from the store. The house also doesn’t want to put a key to the Me’Kasi store, which usually remains locked unless a volunteer is in there, on the “duty keys” because there have been multiple instances of theft of the key and then the inventory. This means that there isn’t always someone who has access to the room in the house, which can be very frustrating: Mthandazo, one of the Me’Kasi team members, brought someone from his township to the store to look at the shirts but had to turn him away because they couldn’t get into the store. This is painful because BU loses a customer, and I’m sure Mthandazo loses street cred. It seems impassable because the guys feel untrusted and like they haven’t committed any wrong and are being punished for the actions others in the past have done; at the same time, the people running the house don’t want to give them the opportunity because the store will be taken advantage of. Trust has to be earned on both sides. Because of this lack of trust and ownership, the guys aren’t motivated to participate and the business has gone nowhere. We’re trying to navigate these issues somehow and create ownership by interviewing each of the guys working on Me’Kasi to get their impressions of how to run things better. The weekly meetings we set up will also help. We’re also going on a team-building/marketing adventure this Friday in Maninho’s township: we’re going with the whole team in a van with a guitar and my djembe to attract a crowd. After a couple of the guys freestyle for a bit, we will tell the township about a game we’re setting up: we’re having 4 team members wandering around the township wearing Me’kasi gear and the first people to bring them back get free t-shirts. We’ll see how it turns out.

As for the dynamic around the house, it has changed slightly when the owner (Lindsay) came back from three months on maternity leave. Everyone in the house loves her and I immediately see the difference between her attitude toward the guys and that of the social worker who lives there full time (Marieke) and was running the place while Lindsay was away. Marieke is far more harsh and acted a lot more like an authority figure than a friend, while Lindsay is really a mother to the guys – stern in her rules while appearing fair, understanding, more respectful and not imposing. She sat in on our weekly meeting this past Monday and had phenomenal advice on how to proceed. I’m excited about how we can move forward, though it’s really a complicated process. I’d like to think that I’m getting some business experience, and realizing how complicated it really is.

This past Saturday I spent the day in Maninho’s township with Masecani and Ken (another kid in the program working with me at BU). South Africa never ceases to surprise me. Maninho and Masecani have formed a rap group together called the Young Soldiers, and they sang a song at a community gathering at an elementary school. They were mixed in with a couple of other performers, a beauty pageant and a couple of breakdancers. Before we got to the school we wandered around with them meeting a couple of Maninho’s brothers and friends, stopping by his house, and watching a street soccer match. His home, like many others in the township, is about eight by eight feet, with a couch, fridge, tv, small and plug-in electric stove all crammed in together. The outside is simply corrugated tin and I’m sure is not insulating at all, but the inside is something he could take pride in. While wandering around, I was completely struck by the friendly atmosphere. The streets were full of people all day and everyone was super friendly. I must’ve met 30 or more people, stopped and had conversations with all of them, and shaken hands with a bunch more randomly on the street. It’s a little tough to imagine the levels of crime in that community even though I was super conscious of what could possibly go wrong. One guy I met and walked around with a bit did tell me that when the township gets sick of gangsters robbing people, they take justice into their own hands and kill them. Members of the community would rather not involve the cops. Masecani also told me that there were no laws because the cops don’t come around. Hearing stories from the guys, kids at other people’s service learning, and even a couple of kids in my program, while reading about the unemployment and crime situations for class gives me a totally different impression of the townships than I felt the other day. Another interesting note: many white South Africans have never set foot in townships and are terrified to do so.

In other news, I watched City of God today, a fantastic movie based on a true story arising out of the favelas in Brazil. Go see it. Oh yeah, and congrats to those of you who preassigned into EBF. Get pumped for a great next year.

PICTURES!

This is about a third of the images I want to upload from the first couple of weeks, but I have to go to BU so I'll do it later.

Camps Bay Beach. This is on the other side of Table Mountain (and Lion's head) from Obz, where I live. Those mountains are called the 12 sisters

Green Point Stadium - the new stadium all of the Cape Town World Cup games are being held in.
A view of Robben Island from Signal Hill
View of Lion's Head from Signal Hill
Table Mountain
Again, minus me.
That's Devil's Peak on the left, and Table Mountain on the right, again from Signal Hill. The city bowl is surrounded on three sides by Devil's Peak, Table Mountain, and Lion's Head (not in this picture, but off to the right)
Lion's head is off to the right here
Devil's peak and the city stretching into the distance
Pure entertainment value. Why don't we have this business?

Our tour guide, Colleen, in action.

Bo Kaap, the mostly Muslim area of town. See the Mosque on the left. The bright color comes from the Malasians.
View of Table Mountain from the Castle of Good Hope
View of the Cape Flats from halfway up Table Mountain when we climbed before the Kirstenboch concert

Our hiking crew.


Really? This is pretty odd if you know the history.From the World of Birds wildlife sanctuary, the second largest bird sanctuary in Africa



This is the owl that attacked us.
He wanted to eat our toes.
MONKEY!



Aw.

Just a little curious...
Now you see what I mean when I say we were in the cage with the birds.
Hout bay docks. I have other pictures on a nicer day later.
Table mountain with the cloud "tablecloth" above a township.

So happy and so confused

So once again I’m completely astounded by Cape Town. Yesterday I had one of the best days of my life in the Guguletu township. We went for lunch to this well-known (around Cape Town) meat and only-meat restaurant called Mzoli’s in Guguletu. You choose what kind of meat you want, which can be any number of things including Beef, Lamb, pork, sausage, chicken, kidney, ribs, and tons of other meats, and then you pay for it based on weight. You take your plate to the grill and leave it with them, picking it up about an hour later. To accompany the food, we went next door and bought a loaf of bread and a couple of beers, AND IT WAS DELICIOUS. Though it was apparently a little emptier than usual, there was a dj set up in the street and it turned into an epic house dance party. How could life get any better? I’m coming back every Sunday I’m here until the program ends, it’s altogether too much of an experience. Remember that this is in the middle of the township at 2pm, actually the one where Amy Biehl was stabbed.

This started me thinking about how much I don’t understand South Africa at all. It seems that the longer I get here, the more confusing it gets. There are just so many polar opposites that exist together at the same time. There are the absolute wealthy, with beach houses worth over 8 million dollars and there are the absolute poor with no water, electricity, or food; South Africa is the country with the highest inequality disparity in the world. How can the rich not care about the living conditions of the poor? How can the politicians make so much money and not try to help the people they were elected by? There seems to be an atmosphere of community and everyone is super friendly, but crime rates are among the highest in the world and I know people who have been mugged multiple times. I have seen very targeted racism at several of my Asian friends in the program, and one of the kids at my job has experienced racism over and over in schools, but there is supposed to be a notion of reconciliation. People realize how dangerous HIV is, but don’t make any attempt to get it treated because they will be completely ostracized. Knowledge about who goes to the clinics is quickly spread, and because people won’t marry or even date people with HIV, many South Africans just keep their infections private. Something like one-third of the country is affected, but there is either too little money or too little support to help them.

The other highlight of my week has been a tour of the Cape Peninsula, driving down to Hout Bay, crossing to False Bay, and going to the tip of the Cape of Good Hope. Once again, all I can say is that the views were stunning, and I am actually going to upload some pics within the next couple of days. South Africa is hands down the most beautiful country I’ve ever been in, and that’s true everywhere we go. Unfortunately, my camera died right before we saw a family of baboons hanging out along the side of the road, including a bunch of adorable babies. Besides seeing another group of ostriches, we also saw a colony of small penguins who were about one foot tall. I get such a kick out of how penguins waddle along and they were only a few feet away so I was completely pleased. Frankly, I just wanted to grab one and run, but I don't think people in the program would really appreciate having a penguin wandering around the house.

I started my service-learning project at Beth Uriel (BU) this week, and have already spent about 16 hours there hanging out with the guys, helping them with work, and trying to understand the business they are trying to run. I say “trying” to run because business isn’t great. Here’s the site though, their products are sick: http://mekasi.co.za/. BU is a home for about 25 disadvantaged youth of ages 16-26 who are still enrolled in high school and trying to become independent. The focus is on Christian values such as tolerance and helping thy neighbor. My time there will be spent getting to know the guys, tutoring, learning, helping in any way I can, and essentially redesigning their business. They don’t have a lot of infrastructure, so Ken and I feel like we’re building a business from the ground up. It’s slightly easier because they have a team and a product, but no real ability to market or sell their goods.

The dynamic at BU is a very odd one, which I haven’t quite figured out yet. Perhaps because many of the guys have spent the majority of their childhood living on the streets or using and selling drugs, they all seem to be independent and many don’t really consider each other good friends. In fact I’ve talked to one in particular (maninho) that doesn’t trust anyone in the house. Some of this is certainly warranted, there continue to be incidents of theft within the house. The odd thing is that they all live together and seem to get along great, laughing and hanging out. It strikes me that the strict rules that they have to go to school, be back in the house by 6pm, study from 7-9pm, and go to bed by 10:30 would give them common ground to bond over, but I’m unsure whether that happens. There is also a very odd dynamic between the guys, the youth leaders, essentially residents of the home who have taken on extra responsibilities and are supposed to act as role models, and the staff, who are all volunteers except for one social worker living with them. Everyone seems to be playing dual roles of friends and authority figures, and it’s difficult to see what roles people are playing when. The mix of brotherhood and distrust is certainly something I haven’t seen before.

I also am tremendously impressed by several of the guys that I’ve talked to. Masecani, one of the youth leaders, is a reserved kid with more self-drive than most people I know. I had the opportunity to sit and chat with him about his life story Tuesday night, and it turns out that he lived on the streets most of his life. His parents essentially left him to fend for himself, and he hustled drugs for a while. His story is one of socialization, only starting school when he was 14. He was never interested in school before, but people kept asking him why he wasn’t in school and one day a woman convinced him just to come. He then found friends in school, and saw their feelings of accomplishment when they did well. Eventually he realized the advantages of school in getting off the street and feels that he should take every opportunity to better himself. This has created in him motivation to study even if it is really hard for him; he will be the first person in his family to graduate high school. He is currently working weekly as a chef, and sees himself studying at a chef’s school after he graduates because it’s the best opportunity open to him. Interestingly, He told me that he isn’t true friends with many of the other guys because though he has the capacity to joke around and hang out with them, he doesn’t really connect with them on a deeper level or have intense conversations.

I also spent a long time Thursday talking to Maninho, the manager of Me’Kasi. He also lived on the streets until he was 10, and what struck me most about him is that he has developed a very definite sense of right and wrong. He’s also not willing to give up his beliefs for anything, and is very vocal about it. This has gotten him into lots of trouble at schools as he’s butted heads with teachers. As an example, he told me how one time someone had written “Fuck blacks” on the board right under where all the homework was posted, and no one erased it for several days. He asked the teacher if he could say something in front of an assembly. When the time came, he brought up what was written on the board and started talking about how racism is just pain and fear within whites and accomplishes nothing other than making blacks stronger. After talking a bit about the perils of racism, some teachers started nodding along and agreeing with him as if they thought he was making total sense. He then proceeded to call them out for not erasing it or doing anything for several days, which got him into substantial trouble. I’m really excited to learn more of his life story and run the business together.

My new pal

I made a new friend Saturday while frolicking on sand dunes and checking out tide pools in De Hoop nature preserve. His name is Oscar and he’s an ostrich that I was standing about five feet from. He was wandering around and having some lunch snacking off the ground. I also made some zebra and antelope friends (bontebok and Kudu?) friends, but they wouldn’t let me get too close. Oh, and we passed some baboons on the way to DH. I love it here. I’ll try to upload pictures sometime soon if I hit up an internet cafe where internet isn’t as limited.

This one likes to play

Wow, a lot has happened since last weekend, so bear with me. Just after that post I went to Hout Bay and along the way visited Africa’s second largest bird sanctuary (with a couple of monkeys and a wallaby thrown in for good measure). Very much unlike anything that could happen in the states, the sanctuary was set up such that people walk on a path through room-sized cages with the birds. In some of them there is a waist-high fence, but that’s more for the people than the birds. This provided a really cool experience, until we met an owl who would have none of it. It was chilling on the fence right next to the door to the next cage, and I guess was feeling territorial. We tried to walk by it several times, and it dive-bombed our feet, presumably thinking our toes would be a good snack. We had to step over it trying to eat us and run away into the previous cage. We tried scaring it off by shaking a giant leaf at it, throwing sticks near it, and spraying it with water, but it didn’t budge and kept trying to attack us when we came close. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time, and our screams attracted one of the workers. “This one likes to play,” is all he said, and we were able to get to the next cage. The next day we went to a concert in the botanical gardens and hiked up most of devil’s peak. The view is amazing, and we could see for miles over the Cape Flats.

Classes are starting up, which is really a shame. It’s hard to get out of this camp-y mentality and get into school mode. It’s going to be even harder because I’m trying to get out of Cape Town most weekends and go exploring. Xhosa is quite a challenge, especially because it’s pronounced with the click that you use to call horses. That didn’t make much sense to me either, but the way you do it is to keep the tip of your tongue right behind your front teeth and click with the side of your tongue. Anyway, I had the first meeting with my service-learning program head a couple of days ago, and I’m very pleased with what I’m doing. I’m working at Beth Uriel, a social work organization run like a family for disadvantaged 16-25 year olds still in high school. Some are orphans, some are coming from the street and were addicted to drugs, and few have other homes. I’m pretty excited to get to know them and hear their stories, and I’m heading in Monday to hang out all afternoon from 3 on. I’ll also be helping them run their business to try and make some money for the house.

In the past week we’ve been on another two tours of the city. The first was a historical bus tour taking us around different parts of the city, including the Muslim section, the beaches, and the top of signal hill. From there we had views of the new Green Point stadium where world cup games are being held, table mountain, devil’s peak, lion’s head, the city bowl in between all of them, and the cape flats stretching for miles, where all the townships are. Interestingly enough, many South Africans are actually quite bitter about the World Cup. It was sold to them as something that would bring prosperity and economic growth to Cape Town, but that’s not what is happening. There is actually quite a lot of construction, but Fifa (occasionally called the maFifa) has been ridiculously controlling. Anything sold with a soccer ball on it has to be approved by them by law and they take a significant portion of the proceeds. Any hostel or accommodation registered with Fifa (which have to be to take World Cup guests) has to give up 30% of their profits, and the ticket system totally screwed South Africans. To buy a ticket, which were prohibitively expensive for South Africans in the first place, you needed both internet and a credit card. Many South Africans, especially those in the townships, have neither. Fifa finally changed this requirement and lowered the price significantly, but only after most of the tickets were sold out. I couldn’t get one either, unfortunately, but plan on hitting up a huge fan park in the center of the city with a big screen.

The second tour was this past Thursday, and took us through District 6 and the townships. It actually was a little off-putting finding myself in a forced “tourist role” observing the poverty of the townships; it felt a little zoo-like. I guess the challenge in coming to South Africa for service-learning is to not act the traditional American stereotype and go beyond to actually try and make a difference in communities around Cape Town. This seems the only way to distance yourself from the traditional outsider stereotype. Two of my friends here are working for Philani (pronounced with a hard p), a childhood nutrition NGO in Khayelitsha, and I’m a little jealous that they’ll be spending so much time in the townships. Anyway, our first stop on the tour was District 6, where our tour guide lived when she was a kid. D6 was a primarily coloured neighborhood that was the subject of forced evacuations at the beginning of apartheid. The government just gave people eviction notices and then bulldozed their homes, regardless of whether they had moved out or not. My tour guide then said that she lived in 24 different homes before she was forced out on to the Cape Flats. One note about the Cape Flats is that they really are not suitable for living; they’re miles and miles of sand and sparse vegetation with rare access to water. They also house most of the population of Cape Town: out of a total 4.8 million residents, 1.1 million blacks live in the biggest township Khayelitsha, and 800,000 coloureds live in Mitchell’s Plain. I think there are ~230 townships total, and most are either exclusively black or coloured. I want to stress that the terms black and coloured are racial distinctions here, and are not offensive here in any way. Coloureds are the descendents of dutch settlers and slaves (mostly from Asia or Indonesia because Cape Town had few African slaves) and usually speak Afrikaans. Black Africans usually speak either Zulu, Suthu, Xhosa, and several other African languages. I think there are 14 official languages in South Africa, though English, Xhosa, and Afrikaans are the most prevalent. Back to the matter at hand, we were driven into Nyanga, Guguletu, and Khayelitsha and saw that the living conditions are very poor. Bathrooms only exist in the form of portopotties every few blocks, along with access to water. In Khayelitsha, which stretches on as far as the eye can see in all directions, the majority of residents are living in small corrugated metal shacks which I’m sure can’t protect from rain or cold. Though the countrywide unemployment rate is 30%, there are townships where the unemployment reaches 90%, creating high crime rates. Our tour guide did take us to meet a couple of people in Khayelitsha. One was an entrepreneur who created a bed and breakfast for tourists (Vicki’s) and who had won several businesswomen of the year awards, and the other was a woman named Beauty who was surprisingly open about the fact that she had AIDS and who ran a second B&B and sewing company. AIDS here is super stigmatized by the way, partly because former president Mbeki denied its existence, so admitting to be HIV-positive is very rare. The coloured township we went to was nicer, which Afrikaaners arranged to create animosity between racial groups on the flats. The difference between townships could even be seen just across the road.

One last note. As I’m writing this, I’m currently on the road heading to De Hoop sand dunes and Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa. We just stopped at a stoplight at the highway –bear with me here – which unsurprisingly created a huge backup of cars. Walking among all the cars were people selling a mix of cell phone chargers, sunglasses, flags, giant tennis balls, airplane mobiles, beaded wall hangings, miley cyrus backpacks, and framed butterfly collections? Unbelievable scenery though.

Beaches and Penguins

Went to the beach yesterday, and it's absolutely gorgeous. I was in heaven the entire day. It's perfect sand and the beach was bookended on both sides by boulders that jutted out into the sea which we climbed and got a great view. The water isn't actually that cold, probably around the same temperature as in Northern California. As per usual, we were right under the mountains, too. I'll try to get some pictures soon, because you really have to see it to believe how amazing this place is. I'm headed out to another beach to see some penguins now, but I'll try to keep this updated semi-regularly.

Cape Town is AMAZING

So because this is my first foray into blogs, bear with me. As the first week raps up, it seemed like a good idea to start to keep track of my life here for my own sake and to share with various friends and family. My internet is unfortunately limited by how much bandwidth I can use, so pictures may be somewhat sparse. I also can't video chat at all or use facebook very often, because those are huge drains on my data, but will try to keep in touch regardless with audio skype calls and gmail/fb chat. We start classes this coming Tuesday and have had a week of orientation, making me feel quite a bit like a freshman again. We even have rolled out to bars and such in the customary freshman mob. The advantage is that I'm really feeling like I'm starting to get a feel for the city and how to move around.

First things first, Cape Town is beyond gorgeous. Everywhere in the city you can look up and see a huge mountain range looming over the tops of the buildings, seemingly only a few miles away. I live in a Stanford house with the other 25 kids in the program in a neighborhood called Observatory, or Obz for short. Obz is a trendy neighborhood with a lot of college-age students and a lot to do, so we're really well located. There are weekly poetry readings on Monday nights and just last night I went out and saw live Reggae and African music at bars just around the corner from our house. Our house is also walking distance away from almost anything we need, including the train station, Stanford Centre, shopping center, and Jammie stop to head to UCT (the Jammie is the campus bus based off the Stanford marguerite.) It's also amazingly easy to catch minibuses, which I'm convinced should be implemented everywhere as a fantastic form of public transportation. It's essentially a van that you hop on and off of wherever you want, ending in the center of town for less than a dollar. You can then catch another minibus there to anywhere else in the city. There's a driver and a another guy who collects money and yells at people on the street trying to coax them on the bus. Guatemalans (I'm looking at you Ces) know all about this brilliance. Half the time the driver is blasting house, which I'm perfectly content with. Apparently, so is everyone else, because electronic music is huge here. When I've gone out this week, the music scene has been a mix of house and American music or a combination of the two.

I'm acutely aware of race issues while I've been here, and you can definitely see the separation of whites and blacks. All the public transportation (train and minibuses) is taken almost exclusively by blacks or coloureds (people of Dutch, Indian, and African descent with medium dark skin--note: this isn't an offensive term here, it's just a different racial category), and I don't really know how whites get around. I guess they all own cars, because there was not a single white face besides our own when we went to the train station. Downtown is mostly white, but is decently integrated. Camps Bay Beach and Clifton Beach are almost entirely white. And of course, the townships are almost entirely black or coloured.