The rest of September...

Since Spring Break, I’ve been very busy. I started going to a local hot yoga studio, completely changed my capstone project at Yabonga, went to the annual Hermanus whale festival, and got some visitors from the States!

I am still helping to run the theater workshops at Yabonga, but now my primary project is that I am writing a manual for the people who run the Orphans and Vulnerable Children’s Program (OVC) support group. I’m writing a booklet that covers all of the information about different support group topics, along with activities to help open discussions or teach about the different topics. The subjects range from grief & mourning for children to personal hygiene. It’s definitely a learning experience.

I’ve also gone to lots of cultural events in Cape Town over the past few weeks! I visited my first professional soccer game, with the Cape Town Ajax against the Sowetho Pirates. We dressed up in Ajax colors, painted our faces, and went crazy when the team won! It was a lot more fun than I had expected and I had a great time. We also went to the annual Human Rights Film Festival, where we saw a documentary called “I Was Worth Fifty Sheep.” This past weekend, we spent our Saturday at the Whale Festival, browsing the craft market, eating, and listening to live music. When we wandered towards the ocean, we could see whales’ tails out in the water.

The weekend before the festival, we had a township homestay in Langa. Two of us went to each homestay house, but they were all neighbors and friends, so we saw each other a lot through the weekend. My family was a lot of fun – I had a mother, brother, brother’s girlfriend, and nephew. Hlomla, our brother’s son, had his 8^th birthday the day that we arrived. We had a great time there. My homestay family lived in a little 4-roomed brick house, and they fed us more traditional Xhosa food than we could imagine. Saturday was Heritage Day in South Africa, and we spent it exploring some of the other townships. We visited Lookout Hill and the beach in Khayelitsha, and spent six hours at Mzoli’s Meat in Gugulethu. That was a wild experience, but definitely longer than I would have spent. Needless to say, I slept well that night.

Last week, my mom and Aunt Betsey came to visit. I’ve had a great time getting together with them, chatting about South Africa and showing them the things that I like here. We went to the Kirstenbosch Gardens and Mzoli’s, rode a minibus taxi, and spent many meals in beachside restaurants. It has definitely been a nice break from all of my cooking! This week, they spent several days on the Garden Route and today they came to stay in a guesthouse just a few minutes' walk from my house! I'm excited to spend a few more days together before their trip ends.

Spring Break on the Garden Route (a bit belated)

It’s been a long time since I last posted, so I’ll be posting a few blogs in quick succession to catch up! First of all, I have to post about spring break.

It happened, and it was fantastic! Six friends and I backpacked across the Garden Route (a highway that goes from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth). We used a backpacker’s bus called the Baz Bus that picked us up and dropped us off at the doors of our hostels. The hostels were so nice that they blew our minds – hammocks, internet, bars, bonfires at night, fully stocked kitchens… one even had a pool! They were all in great locations and provided meals and shuttles to the local activities for small fees. And all of this for about $15 a night. It was ridiculous.

We stopped in four towns along the route. First was Backpacker’s Paradise in Oudtshourn, where we did an adventure tour of the Cango Caves, and followed that up with a casual camel ride. We opted out of ostrich-riding and racing at the local ostrich farm because those things are terrifying looking.

Next, we spent three nights in Storms River (near Tsitsikamma) at Tube-n-Axe. We had a fantastic time getting to know the staff there, because it was our longest stay. The first day, we ziplined over waterfalls and abseiled, then I spent a relaxing afternoon reading in the hammock while a few girls from the group took on the largest commercial bungee jump in the world. I wasn’t in the mood to dive headfirst off of a bridge into a 96-story oblivion that day, but they said it was fantastic. The next day, myself and another girl hiked the Otter Trail in Tsitsikamma National Park, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful hikes in South Africa. The trail ends at a massive waterfall, where we waded in freezing water and hung out on the rocks, enjoying the view. We had so much fun that we returned to Tsitsikamma the next day, to lounge on the little beach, and explore some of the other trails.

Our next stop was the Orange Elephant, right near Addo Elephant Park (near Port Elizabeth). We stayed for two nights in “The Hut”, where we had to light a small flame to heat the pipe to heat the water for our outdoor shower. It was a super cool, funky hostel, but it was definitely an adventure! We spent two nights and one full day there, which we spent doing a day-long safari in the park. We were later told that it was the best day for seeing animals that anyone could remember. We saw hundreds of elephants and kudu, three mudsnakes (apparently the most dangerous snake in Africa), tons of zebra, two water buffalo, meerkats, warthogs, and five of the nine lions in the whole park! It pretty much felt like we were living in the Lion King.

Our final visit was to Plettenberg Bay, which sort of reminded me of a small town in Cape Cod. We spent two nights at Albergo, which was right downtown and potentially the nicest hostel we visited. We spent the day that we arrived riding elephants in Knysna Elephant Park. In Plett, we discovered the best French pastry shop that exists outside of France, a great secondhand bookstore, and a lot of time at the beach. It was a little windy and chilly on our beach day, so we ended up leaving pretty early to find a restaurant with a nice view of the water, but I still had time to get a little sunburn.

The next morning we packed our bags and hopped on the Baz Bus for a 10 hour drive back to Cape Town. As with every Baz Bus ride, we met lots of other travelers, full of interesting stories, and we heard stories about dozens of other places that we want to visit now. If anyone wants to backpack sub-Saharan Africa sometime, just let me know and I’m there! Maybe a trip through Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and the Wild Coast of South Africa…? I’d be okay with that =)

Spring Break is around the corner!

With spring break coming up (read: tomorrow) I figured it was time to update my blog again. =)

As I mentioned in my last post, my former roommate came to visit me in CT for a week, which was absolutely incredible. I got to show her all of my favorite places, from the best Indian food in town to Old Biscuit Mill. The strike & related violence was still in full swing in the townships, so unfortunately I wasn't able to take her to see where I work. It was so much fun to hang out with her, and it was especially interesting at this point in the trip because I got to see what surprised her about Cape Town. I found that I had forgotten how different things are here, so her culture shock reminded me what a big transition I'll have when I move back home.

Yabonga:

The strike has ended and except for one day where the program was cancelled, because of intimidation & threats. By now, my friend & I have gotten to lead two workshops, which were semi-successful. We're currently rewriting our curriculum based on what worked and what didn't. The most exciting thing, though, is that we've gotten to know the students at the program a lot better. One girl has even invited us to visit her church, once we're back from spring break. Work in the office is going great, and as of last week we found out that they have tea and a hot water heater. Needless to say, we've been taking advantage of that to the fullest degree possible. #interns

Classes:

Class has been going well so far, and the end of this week marks the end of the mid-term assignments! Most recently, we had a language exchange between the 5 of us taking Xhosa and the 5 Afrikaans students. This culminated in a very ridiculous "dating game" skit written by my class. Unfortunately this was caught on video. After the exchange we went back to the house with our teachers & CIEE staff and ate a ridiculous amount of homemade, traditional African food. It was a nice way to end the first round of assignments.

Thirty Seconds:

My new favorite board game is called Thirty Seconds. It's sort of like Taboo, but with more of a South African twist to it. We play it as frequently as possible, particularly with our RA.

My latest near-death experience:

Any blog post would be incomplete without giving my parents a littleee reason to worry. I am abroad after all. If anyone is familiar with the famous minibus taxis in South Africa, they are my default mode of transportation. If you are not familiar, they're an experience and a half. However, riding any minibus taxi has a few rules, especially for the kids with heavy American accents. (1) We don't ride them when it's dark out. (2) We don't get in if there are less than 3 other passengers, because of the risk of getting mugged. (3) We don't get in if the guy who shouts out the window is trying too hard to get us in, but isn't interested in other passengers.

Normally, following these rules is very easy, because they pack minibuses to about twice the legal capacity for most of the day. I decided to take Adrienne to Old Biscuit Mill, so we hopped on a minibus to Woodstock. There were about 5 other passengers and all was good. A few blocks later, 3 people got out. The shouter guy was still diligently calling "Cape Town! Cape Town!", so I figured it was okay. We got into Woodstock, and he got out, presumably to find more customers for his fairly-empty vehicle. The minibus pulled forward. And left. And he wasn't in it.

At this point, I took every valuable item out of my purse and into my pockets, including all of the cash in my wallet, my license, and my debit card. I then looked out the window and noticed that we were all the way on the far end of Woodstock, far beyond my stop. Uh oh. I climbed up to the front and told the driver that we had missed our stop and would like to get out. He responded, still driving, that he would arrange for me to get there, because it was his fault for missing my stop. Suspect.

Eventually he pulls over, gets out, and starts shouting to the driver of a parked, empty minibus across the street. We cross the road with him, he talks to the driver of the other vehicle for a few seconds (in another language), and tells us that we will be driven there for free. No way am I doing that. I politely tell him that we will walk. The minibus starts to roll after us and I firmly insisted that we were fine.

Poor Adrienne, meanwhile, is looking around Woodstock, and asked me if it was terribly safe to walk. I told her it was, and casually failed to mention that Woodstock has the one of the highest violent crime rates in the southern suburbs. So we got directions from a delightful woman working in a fabric shop who expressed serious concern for our safety, blowing my cool cover for Adrienne. We then took about a 45-60 minute walk through Woodstock until we finally reached Old Biscuit Mill. Our first purchase was a glass of champagne each.

....Luckily, for the rest of her week here, every minibus we took was completely fine. It was the only time that I've felt really unsafe since getting here, which is great, considering that we've been here for nearly two months.

Apologies for my inability to summarize anything, ever. Thanks for reading! =)

Hello!

A lot has happened since I last posted, so I’m going to try to touch on all of the exciting things happening here. Apologies in advance for the length of this post – it’s been a packed two weeks! I'm really starting to feel comfortable and at home in Cape Town, and I like feeling like I know what I'm doing now. It's so strange to think that we've been here for nearly 5 weeks now, because there's so much that we still haven't done, too. My camera broke a few weeks back, and I just replaced it, so I'll be able to post pictures again as soon as I load them onto my laptop!

Yabonga:

My friend and I started at Yabonga just over a week ago. We are working as interns in the office 2 days/week, and at an after-school program in Nyanga 3 days/week. Yabonga is an organization that works to empower children and families infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. We are working with a phenomenal group 14-16 year olds, and will soon be starting a theater/movie project, where they speak out about issues related to HIV/AIDS, community misperceptions, and “living positively.” We will be playing theater games, discussing social issues, and writing monologues throughout the semester. On the days where we don’t lead our workshops, we will be helping out with the soccer & literacy programs, conducting program evaluation interviews, and workshopping a former CIEE Service-Learner’s career manual.

We are absolutely thrilled with our site. The learners we work with have been incredibly friendly – and they love to laugh at our attempts to speak Xhosa. It’s a great motivation to study our vocab! The office has been an incredibly friendly environment so far and we’re really excited for all of our upcoming projects!

School:

We had our first test in Xhosa last week, which was surprisingly manageable. Luckily we all freaked out and over-studied, planning for the worst. I feel like my vocabulary and confidence has doubled since those intense study sessions! We also have our first Poverty & Development research paper due at the end of next week, so I’ve been researching and beginning my draft over the past few nights. I’m hoping to give my professor a first draft so that I know I’m on the right track for it. We’re discussing development & modernization theory in South Africa, which is actually a super interesting topic. Although of course, I’d also be fine with not writing papers this semester…

Johnnie:

On August 11th, the world lost an great man. My great-uncle Johnnie was one of my favorite people to visit as a child, and we used to spend every April Break visiting him & my Aunt T at their apartment in New York. He has been struggling with cancer for some time now, and I've been missing my family as we all remember the years of fun we had with him. He and T were like another set of grandparents, bringing together that side of the family and keeping close connections throughout the extended family. He was loved dearly and will be missed.

Last Weekend:

Last weekend, my program had a few pre-planned activities for us to participate in. On Friday, we had tickets to a rugby match. It was rainy, and I didn’t understand the sport at all, but we certainly had fun cheering and buying snacks. The Western Province (our team) ended up losing, but it was a very close match. I’d love to go back when the weather’s a little bit nicer and see another game.

On Saturday, we went to a vineyard in Stellenbosch for a wine tasting. The vineyard we visited, Simonsig, frequently wins awards and is known for being one of the best wineries in the area. I can’t say that I’m much of a wine fan, but I really liked the sparkling wines and one of the whites that I tried.

Sunday, I met up with my friend Elena who has been living in South Africa over the summer doing a research project. We cooked dinner together and attempted to make our own spaghetti sauce – which mostly worked. After dinner she and her friends took me to a very cool open mic night. The guitarists were absolutely incredible, and the whole atmosphere was a lot of fun. The restaurant that holds the event every Sunday even has small djembes, singing bowls, and other percussion instruments for onlookers to join in the jam session.

The Strike:

The municipal worker’s strike, which started last week, is a strike mainly in the cleaning sector. We first heard about it when our trash didn’t get picked up. It was a peaceful protest at first, but has intensified over the week. Two days ago, there was a riot in town, and yesterday we were told that it was unsafe for us to go to Nyanga, because rioters were burning tires in some of the townships. Today, again, the after-school program was cancelled, so we’ve spent a lot of time in the office working on our curriculum for the coming workshops.

Today during our lunch break, we went to the mall across the street to get lunch. Shoprite, the grocery store in the mall, was closed, so we were debating the pros and cons of a particular take-away place’s menu when an announcement was made. We ignored the announcement and kept talking, but the workers went into panic mode. The woman at the front counter said they couldn’t serve anyone else and promptly shut down the take-away station, and everyone in the mall started streaming toward the exit. As we left, we saw workers frantically pulling on their coats and locking up. We didn’t know what was happening so we went across the street, got sandwiches, and discussed what could have been announced.

When we got back to work, our boss told us that she had also been in the mall when it happened and that she had been worried when we didn’t come back to work after the evacuation. She’s not sure exactly what happened, but the people who were evacuating said that there was a bomb scare in Shoprite, probably related to the strike. Luckily, the whole place was evacuated, and it seems that the situation was well under control. It’s definitely interesting to live in a place where public demonstrations escalate this way. It makes me laugh to think about how different this is than the protests we see in Washington, DC – the people flood the metro and GW’s campus with their signs, do their thing over by the White House or on the Mall, and head home after a couple of days.

The coming week:

My roommate from freshman year is paying me a visit for the coming week, before she has to head back to GW for the school year. She flew in today, and I left work for a bit to meet her at the airport. I’m beyond thrilled that she’s here and can’t wait to show off all that Cape Town has to offer!

A few quick stories!

I've been very proud of my adventurous eating here, so I thought I'd put up a quick update. Today my house went out for our weekly "family dinner." It was raining, so we decided to splurge on Marco's African Place in Bo Kaap. Three other girls and I shared a platter of crocodile tail, warthog & springbok with a side salad and two desserts. It came out to about 17 USD each... which was amazing. The food was really good, the live music and dancers were great, and overall we had a fantastic evening.

Myself and the other girl who are working at Yabonga are in a bit of limbo right now, because we won't be able to start our work until next week. Until then we've been visiting everyone else's sites. On Tuesday, I visited a juvenile detention center in Ottery. We played team-building and getting-to-know-you games with the teenage boys, which made for a very fun afternoon. Wednesday, I paid a visit to Brooklyn Chest TB Hospital, where three of us played with pre-school aged TB patients. The day was a little hectic because several nurses were out that day and the toy closet was locked, but the children were adorable and we had a lot of fun with them.

Today I paid a visit to a high school in one of the townships. They're in a really tight situation there, because the classes often have 40 kids in them, but they're so tight on teachers that all of the administrators are also teaching, and oftentimes teachers don't show up to classes. One of the girls who is working at the school and we literally found classrooms of kids with no teacher in the room and taught impromptu English classes throughout the day. She has already learned to come every day with English exercises prepared for exactly that situation. I also helped her prepare & run her after-school English program with eight absolutely fantastic grade 11s. I have to admit, I had never appreciated South Windsor's school system as much as I do now. As much as I want to start at Yabonga, I'm glad that I had the chance to see a bit more of my housemates' service sites too.

We've also done lots of cool things outside of our service work. Last Saturday alone, we went to Old Biscuit Mill in the morning, spent the afternoon at the Waterfront, and went to an indie rock concert that night. At the Waterfront we saw the Real Housewives of Atlanta filming their vacation episode!

Commitment to Community blog post :)

I haven't posted in a while, so here's the first entry for my scholarship blog!

Hi!

I am very excited to be kicking off my new blog with a little bit of experience in South Africa behind me already. Even though it's the 31st of July, I've already been in my program for three weeks now! It's winter here in the southern hemisphere, but most days are still in the 60s and 70s

when the sun is out. This semester I'll be studying with CIEE's Service-Learning in Cape Town program, which has already proved to be a fantastic choice. Our program has just ten people, and we live together in a big house right across the street from the University of Cape Town. We're taking three classes (Research Methods, Poverty & Development and our choice of Xhosa or Afrikaans). We also volunteer 15-20 hours a week at a local NGO or school, and end the semester with a major capstone project. I chose to take Xhosa, a local click language, and am very excited to start mastering the new sounds - although it certainly is a challenge!

I chose to come to Cape Town because I knew that I wanted to be in Africa, and the service-learning program was more like my major at home than any other program I could find. Human services is a service-learning based nonprofit management major, and our research methods class will even count towards my degree. I also thought that it would be interesting to do service in a country where history is still being made, so post apartheid South Africa certainly fit the bill. We've already visited a number of townships, including Khayelitsha, Guguletu, Manenberg and Langa.

After two weeks of orientation, tours, sightseeing, and settling in, we started classes and service work last week. I was struggling to choose between Young in Prison, which works with youth in conflict with the law, and Yabonga, which works with children and youth who are infected or affected with HIV/AIDS. I visited both sites this week, and even took part in a drum circle at Pollsmoor Prison! However, I have decided to go with Yabonga. After spending some time in the townships I couldn't imagine working anywhere else for the next four months. Yabonga hosts after-school programs for children, youth and adolescents in a number of townships, including Khayelitsha. I am hoping to do most of my service in the field, although I am excited to see the inner workings of a foreign NGO as well. I'll be going in next week to work out the specifics of my project and hours, so I hope to have a clearer idea of my plans soon!

< Our two-week orientation ended with a weekend at a high ropes course. This was the Burmese Bridge - 15 meters in the air!

>

On Sunday, we attempted to climb Table Mountain. We got lost, but we did see some zebras along the way!

Week One: Orientation

Hi everyone!

This is a new blog, so I'm still figuring out how to do everything - hopefully I'll be able to upload pictures to this as I go :)

Well I arrived safely in Cape Town, South Africa nearly a week ago and since then our program has had a hectic flurry of orientation activities, trips and sightseeing to kick off our semester abroad. We started with a cable car ride up Table Mountain, and since then we went to a fancy restaurant with African dance and drums in Stellenbosch, toured three of our potential service sites, visited the Bo Kaap for a day, and most recently we had a tour of a township, which included drumming ending with lunch at Mzoli's Meat.

It's a very meat-heavy cuisine, so I've eaten a lot of chicken, but I've already sampled springbok sausage, ox tail, ostrich, and antelope as well. One of my favorite meals was in the Bo Kaap, a traditionally 'colored' Muslim neighborhood. The people who live there are, for the most part, the descents of Indian and Malaysian slaves, many of whom would cook for the Dutch settlers. The local cuisine had a lot of traditional Indian spices but it was very mild, and I kept thinking about how much my mom would love that. Our lunch also had meat & veggie samosas, and ended with homemade donuts and tea. We were hosted by a wonderful woman who couldn't join us because she was fasting.


The people in my program are fantastic & a lot of fun - there are ten of us who will be living and taking classes together, so we've done a lot of bonding since we got here. Four of us go to GW, which is a really crazy coincidence in a program this small! We moved into our CIEE house on Friday, so last night we hosted a braai (cookout) to get to know our neighbors from the arts & sciences program. The group seems really fantastic and everyone is excited to start our classes and service work!

We're still in the process of choosing our sites, so I don't know yet where I will be working, but right now my top two choices are Yabonga and Young in Prison. Yabonga works with children who have been affected by HIV & AIDS, whether they or their parents are affected by the disease. Young in Prison works with young men 12-24 years old in prisons and safehouses. Tomorrow we'll be touring the last two service sites: an elementary school and a high school.