July 22-29: Waxing Philosophical

Molweni! Kunjani? Ndingu Christina mna. Sikhona.

Confused? For the layman, or non-Xhosa speaker, that’s “Hello everyone! Howzit? (More foreign terms… that’s like ‘How’s it going?’ in Cape Town-ese.) My name is Christina. We (my entire family) are well.” Besides a few other equally unfamiliar phrases, that’s about the extent of what I’ve retained from my Xhosa class. In short, it’s really, really difficult. The above phrase doesn’t have any clicks in it, fortunately enough for you, but when you start adding in some double and triple consonants, things start to get pretty sticky. Try this one: gxabhagxabhisa. Yep. That’s got two clicks, in the gx. Those two letters together make something of a gum-snapping sound, requiring harsh friction between your tongue and middle palate, with some interaction between the sides of your tongue and your molars. The word itself means “hurry.” (By the time you figured out how to say it, the person will have already made it to where they’re supposed to be.) To make things more complicated, instead of conjugating verbs and positioning prepositions, conjunctions, nouns, adjectives, etc. independently, words often just get smooshed together into one lump. For example, the phrase ninjani namhlanje means “how are you today?” The presence of certain letters in certain places means different things, different tenses and emphasis. To be honest, although at this point I recognize the phrase, I can’t dissect it, and I can’t form a sentence beyond those provided as examples in my course reader. Spanish never looked so simple and appealing, even with its umpteen-thousand verb tenses and mumbling teachers. My professor has confidence that we’ll all speak like native Xhosa speakers by the end of the semester, but I have my doubts. I’ve never been so pleasantly lost in a class or felt so comfortably confused. I like that this is difficult.

Xhosa (there’s a click in the Xh) is one of the indigenous languages spoken in South Africa, and I decided to take the introductory course on a whim, because one of my planned courses didn’t fit my schedule and I needed another few credits to complete my course load. I figured that while my knowledge of the language would hardly be beneficial in the States and would count as only an elective back at Penn, it would be useful here in helping bridge the gap between me and the people I will meet in exploring the townships of Cape Town. (I also hope the clicking will be a cool party trick back at home, at least.) But it wasn’t until I sat for my first class, when the teacher began simply by going through the various sounds of the language, that I realized how absolutely different this country, this world is from what I thought to be reality back at home. The mere building blocks of their lives, whether syllables of their mode of speech or historical foundations or personal stories, are, in my very humble and limited opinion, somewhat fantastic. This place belongs in a history book; indeed, in my experience, it is in a history book. This language belongs to a five-year-old who speaks to her imaginary friend in a special code of random nasal sounds and made-up words; from my mouth, that’s exactly how it sounds, even when I’m doing it correctly. Now that I’ve been here for about three weeks and am settling into my life and school, stabilizing, I’m realizing how much this is not my world, and the rules that govern this one are so similar yet dissimilar to those at home. I lie in bed at night and hear talking outside my window, my roommates on the balcony. The phenomenon is similar to Philadelphia on a weeknight, detached voices having mundane conversations about nothing. The difference: They speak in Sotho (they’re both from Lesotho, the tiny country wholly encompassed by South Africa). It sounds so similar to Xhosa, but although the two languages are closely related, they have their differences. But while I sound like a seven-year-old imbecile when I attempt Xhosa, they sound sophisticated; the language sounds like it could be universal. It’s not that I’m merely starting out; it’s simply that this language is an extension of a culture and a reality of which I have very little understanding. Despite all my efforts to immerse and absorb and understand, I will not completely comprehend Africa, and that’s okay.

Trying to avoid the discourse constantly fed to us by books, media, history, and each other, I’m trying my best not to make comparisons between Africa and the United States. I really don’t want to degrade anything I’m seeing by trying to understand it in terms of something else, something that’s not really comparable. I don’t want to compartmentalize or weigh observations by deeming it within or without my sense of reality. Doing so would attach some sort of stigma of abnormality, which I feel would automatically undermine any effort I make to acclimate here, despite my good intentions. I wish to be completely passive in this experience, to observe, to learn via osmosis, and to not judge based on what I know about my life so far, but based on what I hope to learn about humanity and true reality. I won’t know what I’m looking for until I’ve already found it. So far, I haven’t been quite so successful in eschewing comparison (I’m human, after all, and it’s how human psychology works), but I’m doing my best.

But to complicate the whole process, this philosophical, spiritual journey that I so relish, there are everyday features of life are just not the same here, and it’s those little things that are starting to get me. Having to pay for internet by MB consumed is something I find continually troubling, because internet is the one thing that’s more expensive here than in the States, at least when you use as much internet as I do. (Also troublesome is the realization that I use the internet so much, something I never thought about or faulted myself for back at home.) The novels I need for my African lit class are not in the campus bookstore as the result of an oversight in pre-semester ordering. (Or, more accurately, the fact that they don’t place caps on class size, and don’t have people register for class until the day before it starts, makes it hard to know how many copies they’ll need to supply, so it’s just easier not to order any.) In either case, having to run around Cape Town looking for obscure titles required for course work is beyond frustrating, especially when you’re not a seasoned local. I miss my over-priced Penn Bookstore and the convenience of Amazon.com. It baffles me that students will pose barely-relevant, philosophical questions to the professor in the middle of a huge lecture, in my experience most appropriate for office hours when you can be sure that the professor will know your name, seemingly just to prove that they had done the reading or are capable of grappling with the material, or to make sure that the professor is worthy of his Ph.D. I also have trouble internalizing that the black people around me are not African-American, but just straight-up African. I don’t know why that should be so important to me, but I think that it is a constant, subtle reminder that despite being similar in appearance, speech (accent aside), taste in music, even dress to anyone I might see on the trolley in Philly, they have a history, a set of roots that is separate from African-Americans, and because of that, their lives and sense of reality are immeasurable different. It’s subtly mind-boggling, especially when I look at the Jammie Steps of UCT crowded with a perfectly heterogeneous mélange of black and white students, purportedly a 1:1 ratio, and remember that South Africa’s white population makes up only nine percent of its total. It gives new meaning to taboos of privilege and affirmative action, especially when most of the black students you meet are pursuing business or engineering in light of their country’s needs. All these sensations have been simmering as I try to stabilize myself enough to focus on my schoolwork, but I can’t anticipate how they will boil over and blow the top off my emotions as I venture into the townships. I start working in a children’s home next week, and although I’ve received a few chidings not to become overcommitted to activities, I think that having this one commitment is really important. How else am I going to see the real South Africa? (You can’t exactly waltz into shanties without having a purpose there, and I’m not the type to do a slum tour.)

Funny enough, and shake your head if you must, but the one thing that has thrown me off the most here is their practice of driving on the left-hand side of the road, with the driving wheel on the right-hand side of the vehicle. My brows have been in constant fearful furrow, my fists clenched, my foot mercilessly pumping an invisible brake as I hurtle headfirst into traffic and miraculously avoid collision, thanking the powers that be as I pay the driver and stumble out of the cab. It doesn’t help that tailgating is something of a national sport in which everyone participates. When a chartered bus that was giving us a tour of the city suddenly ran out of gas and slowly rolled into an intersection, my jaw dropped cartoon-style, but my eyes didn’t pop out of my head until oncoming cars honked irritably but did not slow down at all. They seemed to think that the bus was playing a crude practical joke and would move immediately, so they needn’t brake. Luckily, some Samaritan was able to guide us and our manual transmission out of traffic before anyone got hurt. But as fast as people drive here, they walk slowly with equal enthusiasm… and on the left-hand side. I’ve suffered a few collisions and fake-outs in the aisles of the grocery store, giving my best “Sorry!” and dumb-American look in apology. How is it, I wondered, that Americans are automatically conditioned to veer right??? I don’t remember anyone teaching me that, and I know we don’t just intuitively follow the pattern of traffic from age five or whatever, and I assume that South Africans are not similarly trained. But it’s a reality, a phenomenon, and it’s strange and intriguing. But just when I thought I was doomed to do an ungraceful, bobbing shuffle with puzzled strangers for the next five months… I swung left. Going down the street, in the drugstore, up the stairs. I acclimated to a tiny, tiny bit of African life! Go, me! With renewed courage, I hope that I can start to make sense of what I’m seeing and experiencing not by thinking too much, but by just accepting first and analyzing later. Hey! I might even become a decent speaker of Xhosa! (And just think of what that will do for my Spanish.)

Hleka (“Love” in Xhosa… the “h” and the “l” are said together to make a slurring, Daffy Duck-sound),

Christina

July 16-21: Getting my toes wet...

Hello there! Back for some more? Good. I’ve missed you.

The past week I’ve spent acquainting myself to my new life in Cape Town, which has revealed even more differences and more similarities to my life in Philadelphia, all at once especially interesting and startling. By this point, not only am I all registered for classes, but I have also already started my fall semester, having attended first lectures today. School In July!? After winter in July (and believe me, it’s nippy here), school seems like not so much the strangling. But let’s rewind.

I’m starting to realize how much at Penn I have taken for granted, especially in terms of infrastructure. After going through a snoozeworthy introductory lecture series (this was no Penn NSO, folks), we were compelled to sit through a three-hour standardized test similar to New Jersey’s 8th grade GEPA, basically to see if we could speak and write English. Aside from that, registration was a beast, with a lot of running around to different departments on different parts of the mountain (University of Cape Town sits at the base of Table Mountain) with different colored forms to get signatures from people who were either still on vacation or perpetually at lunch. The main issue is that they don’t have the technological support to allow everyone to register online at their leisure, so eventually my three different forms and I made it to a computer lab, where someone registered me on something similar to Penn-In-Touch. Most of the registration was done by hand, though, which as a computer-dependent American was completely foreign to me. Registration was well rounded off, however, by an AWESOME drum lesson! All 300 of us American students got these loaner drums and banged our hands raw with the help of these great guys from this place called “Drum Café.” They were really good; it never occurred to me how much skill is required to get such a sound out of those things. I wasn’t quite successful, but I still had a great time.

I kind of forgot that there was a “study” part to this whole “study abroad” thing, but regardless, I’ve been ready to start settling into some sort of routine. This first day was overwhelming; the student body is more than twice the size of Penn’s, and everyone was running around hugging and kissing each other, asking how each other’s “holiday” was. I was tempted to affect a British/South African accent after being told that my accent was “strange” (!), but I fought the urge and tried to look confident. The demographics of the school are especially striking. I had read that the school had “proudly” maintained a 50:50 ratio of whites to blacks for a while, but the mix is very stark. Everyone either looks very African or very Australian-esque. Since we hadn’t seen a lot of white people yet, it was refreshing and really interesting to see everyone swarming around together. You get the feeling that the university is truly a vehicle, or an emblem, at least, for where the country hopes to take itself.

Not to be a nerd, but I’m super excited for my classes! I was nervous going in, but the majority of the people in my selected courses are Americans. It’s just how the cookie crumbles; Americans come here and want to learn about Africa and therefore take classes pertaining to the topic; most Africans wouldn’t be attracted to such. I’m taking a class on African literature, a class on Africa and colonialism, Xhosa (the click language!), and a class on development economics. All the professors seem great, very passionate and accomplished. My professor for my econ class used to be the chief economist for the South African state, which is so impressive. The perspective of the developing country seems to seep through everything. At home, our econ classes are pretty cut and dry, all capitalism, all the time. Here, the country is moving towards a capitalist economy, but there is the passion of assuaging the problems of the past that is of utmost importance. Employment is the largest issue here, and people are actively striving towards it. Nevertheless, some views of capitalism are skewed, I think. When a cab driver tried to charge us 100 rand to drive us home from a place it had taken 30 rand to get to, one of my South African friends said earnestly, “What can I say? He’s a capitalist, and as an American, you should understand that.” Huh? Again, the big, bold AMERICAN stamped across my forehead spoke for me, but not exactly the truth. Capitalism and opportunism are not equivalent, and there seems to be some sort of misunderstanding about that… at least among meter-less cab drivers. I just got plain pissed tonight when one cab company tried to charge me R 150 to drive 10 blocks, which normally costs about R 20. I curtly turned him down and hung up the phone, all the while damning this Jersey twang.

Friday was Nelson Mandela’s birthday, which was a huge event! (Anyone know when Dubya’s birthday is? No, neither do I, and nor does anyone care.) On July18, people celebrate the “Rainbow Nation” and its poster boy. We all wore black and white to represent the post-apartheid state. (Originally, it was supposed to be rainbow colors, but essentially, it would look like any other day.) There were “birthday parties” all over town for “Madiba,” which is what Mandela is called here, and we all sang “Happy Birthday” to him at the soccer game we went to the next day. I’ve decided I really like soccer. And yes, they call it “soccer” here, and not “football.” The game we saw was between the Kaizer Chiefs of Johannesburg and Manchester United, and it was soooo exciting! We had great seats, and the stadium (which, interestingly enough, looks like an office building from the outside) was PACKED. Weird, but most people here are Man U fans! The crowd was a sea of red. I think it’s because the Kaizer Chiefs are known to be pretty bad, but let me say that their goalie was on his grind that day. For those who know me when I’m either really pumped up or around celebrities, I was like that for about 2 hours. It was exhilarating through and through… until it ended, in a tie! No overtime, no shoot-out, just tied, one-one, good game. Lame! But I’m definitely looking forward to going to another game; at about $20 a ticket, why not?

As I’m settling into my academic life, I’m also starting to explore some extracurriculars to keep me busy. (Come on, you all know me.) I’m especially looking forward to activities here, though, because everything I will be involved with will help me to learn more about myself and this new place and everything about it. The most significant thing I did this past week, besides making sure I was properly enrolled, was to explore different arenas of volunteerism, ranging in focus from homelessness and tuberculosis treatment to orphan education and charter schools for township children. Above is a picture I snapped with two kids at a shelter called Arc, which is humongous and run entirely by private donations. Although there’s a lot to do there (cooking, computer literacy, drug rehab, the list continues), I really enjoyed meeting these kids for only a few moments. The little girl’s name was Lashawna, and the little boy couldn’t tell me his name (he probably spoke only Xhosa, no English), but both were so glad to see us there, if only for a brief introductory visit. At the TB hospital, I picked up one little girl who seemed really distant and unresponsive when I talked to her, but completely broke down when I put her back on the floor. (All the kids are on treatment, so it’s quite safe for me to be there. I’d be more likely to catch TB on the SEPTA bus back in Philly, from someone who doesn’t know they have it.) At the charter school, a young Ph.D student who directs it talked to us about the “life training” they put their kids through, trying to reconcile the large issues they face with the reality of their everyday lives. There is also a program with orphans that sounds a lot like the Beacon program (GATOR!), although I regret that I didn’t get to visit it. Walking away from the tour of places that all need help equally, I thought about how academically, at least in the U.S., we tend to “pathologize” problems, turning them into phenomena that seem almost insurmountable. Here, though, I’m seeing more and more that struggle and hardship is universal, and it’s just life, and it’s up to the individual as to how one handles it. These kids here are quite like my kids in Philly; the neighborhoods and shelters they live in are very much their homes. There’s very little shouting about victimization, though; Africa carries her head high. I’m not sure which program I’ll work with yet, but I know that this, like every other volunteer opportunity I’ve ever taken, will be instrumental to my understanding more about how this mess of a world doesn’t spin off its axis.

Again, I miss you all and hope you’re doing well. Emails, Facebook messages, blog comments, scrolls in bottles, etc. are, as always, welcomed with toothy smile! Let me know what you think, and keep Cape Town in mind for vacation! (Mom tells me that it’s just been named one of the best bargain vacation spots… and I assure you, in this seemingly dire recession, the R 7.5/$1 exchange rate feels oh-so good.)

Keeping my fingers crossed that next time I write, I will know how to say “Love” in Xhosa,

Christina

July 8-July 15: I'm here!

Hello everyone! So after hurriedly getting in application materials and conceptualizing and making lists and packing and saying goodbye to everything I’ve ever known in the United States, I am finally here in Cape Town, South Africa. First, I have to thank everyone for the support you’ve given me in preparing for this huge step in my life, my first trip outside the United States (and pretty much its Northeastern states). This is by far the most important thing I’ve ever done, and I owe my courage to your love and inspiration. Thanks for lighting the fire under my ass… I’m out of New Jersey!

I’ve been here for almost a week now, and I finally have reliable internet so that I can fill everyone in. The flight was grueling, in the most pleasant way possible. Although it was long and cramped, I sat next to a girl who was traveling to Port Elizabeth to teach for a year, and she was a lot of fun to talk to and watch the in-flight movies with. My real adventure started, however, when we finally flew in over Cape Town. It was nothing short of breathtaking, especially since it was my first real landing in a country other than my own. Pure exhilaration surged from my toes to my head as I snapped photos out the window of the bay, an island covered in foam, and the city coastline. I probably let out an annoying squeal or two, but so what? I couldn’t believe that I’d finally made it to Cape Town.

The city itself is fascinating. It’s got this old world feel to it, definitely Dutch, but with modern vibrancy. You can almost feel the “rainbow nation” motto pulsing through it, and what better setting could there be? Table Mountain looms in the background, and the city rolls on from there, spanning out at its feet until you hit the bay. The coast is beach-y. It sounds cheesy, but it’s just like the pictures. It reminds me of New Orleans in that it seems to be resisting extreme urbanization and has the colored buildings thing going on, but it’s more cosmopolitan than New Orleans. That’s what I love about cities—each one is different, regardless of serving generally the same purpose worldwide. Despite the beauty provided by nature for the country to propel its way to “equality,” inequality is definitely present. As we drove from the airport, we saw a ton of construction going on in preparation for the World Cup, these massive, modern structures. And then, right there, next to the highway, were shanties slammed up against each other. For my New Jersey peeps, think of the part of the NJ Turnpike near Newark, where there’s all that space on either side filled with railroad cars. Okay, replace the railroad cars with tin shacks and clotheslines. Then, as quickly as they appeared, they’re gone. I’ve yet to see something as stark as that since I arrived, but I’ve already noted that although poverty is common here, it generally is lived with dignity for oneself. If people are not begging or trying to pick your pocket or steal your groceries, they’re proud of the little that they have. It’s a little jarring for me, as I’m still trying to grapple with the fact that these problems exist in such a beautiful place. Homeless people camped out in the grass next to a road, tending to a fire as their children play with garbage almost seem ironic among the lush plants and clear blue skies. It’s gorgeous in the most tragic way, and I don’t know what to make of that yet.

CIEE, the program that I’m traveling with, has kept us really busy, which is why I haven’t written and still haven’t gotten over my jetlag. Highlights:

I’ve met a group of American girls, all on the program, that I’ve really bonded with already, and together we’ve been crawling around the city, sharing in our mutual fascination and excitement. We were all on the same Delta flight over and could commiserate that we were all sprayed with the same insecticide by security as they searched the plane at 4 am in our transfer in Dakar. We’re already scheming what kind of adventures we can concoct for ourselves over the next few months. We’re all hyped to be here, although they all think it’s “adorable” that I’ve never traveled before and therefore am always ready for the next thing. It’s been very comforting to have a group to share the experience with so far, and I feel very lucky to have had them right off the bat.

I’m living in one of the University of Cape Town dorms, called a residence (“res” for short) with one girl from my program and two African students, which is just what I wanted! Yes! My African roommate is named Bokang, and he’s from Lesotho. I’m pretty sure I scared the crap out of him when I first moved in; I wasn’t aware that he’d be here, since it’s winter break, and so when I saw him, I rushed up and gushed hello and how excited I was to be here and how was he and where was he from, etc. He looked very overwhelmed and taken aback and answered with an uncertain smile. I felt bad later, and apologized for being spazzy, but he thought it was hilarious. He calls me “an American lady.” He’s very kind and quiet. We both love eggs for dinner, and we’re getting along quite well. My other roommate has a name I can neither pronounce, nor at the moment remember, but I get to meet him on Saturday, when winter break ends. As for my room, this dorm is an apartment-style suite, so I have a room with a view of the city and the Stellenbosch mountains through floor-to-ceiling windows. Not a bad deal, right? I’m really excited to be living here, even though it’s pretty far from campus (go figure). I’ve already met some of my other floor mates randomly, and they’re all great. I really wanted to live with Africans, as opposed to living in a nice house with other Americans from CIEE (what’s the point), so I’m on my way to immersing myself in the South African college experience.

We took a tour of the peninsula yesterday, and it was wonderful. The ocean is everywhere, and everything is so green and lovely. It’s actually pretty cold here, maybe around 55 each day (Fahrenheit, not Celsius; I haven’t mastered that yet). But the weather was so nice, and I was just so taken aback by the natural beauty of Africa. Despite all the incredible manmade structures that exist, a testament to our own abilities, nothing will ever compare to that which is natural. These mountains have been here forever, and long after we’re gone, they’ll still be here, and that’s what really gets me. We went to Cape Point, that pointy part at the very end of Africa (pull out your globes)! So I can say that I’ve been the closest I’ll ever be to Antarctica. It was gorgeous. I have a ton of pictures, which I will upload to some picture site once I’m not paying for internet per MB. I will let you know. Also, I saw penguins and baboons! They were just hangin’ out, chilling on the cape, and we got really close up. I got an awesome picture of this mommy and baby baboon pair. Everyone was really scared, but I got within about 5 feet of them and snapped a shot. To be honest, being attacked by a baboon in Africa sounds pretty extraordinary to me, so I took my chances. (Don’t worry, Mommy, I’m unscathed.)

The nightlife here is a blast. I like these places a lot better than what’s in Philadelphia, probably because it’s easier to meet people and actually have a conversation, without sacrificing good music and general revelry. It helps that CIEE has UCT students guiding us around, all very cool with equally cool friends, so we already have this network of people we can hang out with. To my extreme surprise, all the music they play in the clubs is American music. I’ve yet to hear anything by an African pop artist or rapper or whatnot. Let me tell you, they’re nuts for Kanye and Estelle’s “American Boy.” I heard it about 3 times one night. I asked one guy why they only play American music, and he got all uppity and sarcastically asked if I’d been expecting to hear “Hakuna Matata.” Sorry, man. But another guy I asked explained that while African pop music exists, it’s not as good as the American stuff they’re trying to imitate, so they prefer to just go with the real thing. Fair enough; another comfort to me in a foreign country, and something I already know how to dance to. But if I have one complaint, it’s the fog of cigarette smoke everywhere you go. Never have I appreciated the New York and Philadelphia smoking bans more. I’m sad I didn’t bring some Febreze. But it’s all part of the experience. :-)/:-P

I’ve saved the best for last, prepare yourselves… I hiked up Table Mountain! Yes, me! She who hath only previously only hiked the urban jungle and eschews most physical exertion! I did it, and not only did I do it, but I did it in almost the most difficult way possible. I thought it’d be cool outside, as it had been the entire time I’ve been here, and expected a nice dirt trail, so off I set with my friends and about 35 other CIEE people, but soon we realized that our imagined dirt trail was actually a steep collection of steps constructed from huge rocks. A man we met along the way had been climbing the mountain every weekend for 15 years, and he told us that out of the 300 ways to climb the mountain, we’d happened to choose the hardest trail. It was mile upon mile of rocks, in the heat from the sun that decided to make the day warm, for once. I employed a little yoga philosophy to get myself up there, along with the cheering from my new friends from Colorado, the expert climbers. But getting to the top, knowing I’d pushed my limits physically, mentally, and spiritually, was one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve ever had. It was nothing short of breathtaking, and not because I was tired. I really felt like I was on top of the world, and finally felt like I was really in Africa. (That’s me in that picture at the top of the page, in the hat and the pink jacket on the left. No, it’s not Photoshopped.) Admittedly, I took the cable car down. (I just knew that I’d be the one who would lose control of momentum and hurtle headfirst down the mountain, and as someone else had already fallen and required a rescue team, I figured the quota had already been met that day.) I also rewarded myself with a cookie. But I feel like Wonder Woman. Two days later, I’m miraculously not even sore!

So as you can see, I’ve only been in Cape Town a week, but I’m having a great time and learning a lot. I feel like this semester away from Penn will offer me knowledge I would otherwise never get in Philly, despite the exorbitant tuition, and also let me learn more about myself. I can feel myself becoming a fuller person already. I will try to update this about once every week or so, so check in as you please. Other than that, I love and miss you all and hope you’re well! Please email, leave comments, whatever, to let me know how you are. Regardless of the big adventure outside my window, you have no idea the joy I get from hearing from you.

Wishing I knew how to say “love” in Xhosa (the “click” language),
Christina