Calling All Aloe

So my back may be redder than China today, but I can say that my first trip to the beach was a raging success. And I’ll have you know, before all of you women chime in that I should have put on sunscreen that I indeed did lube up, but that as many people as I’ve met down here I’m not sure I’m at the “can you lotion me up?” stage with anyone quite yet and as well as my roommate Max and I have been getting along (he goes to Clark University in Worcester, ridiculous coincidence, right?!) I thought it presumptuous to ask. The beach was beautiful and the water not very cold. There are a million beaches in and around Cape Town, the ones on the Atlantic side of the coast have cold water and those on the Indian Ocean side have much warmer water, due to all sorts of things related to currents that I won’t pretend to really understand. Anyhow, the beach we went to yesterday, Muizenberg Beach, is on the Atlantic side, but closer to the Indian Ocean so I happily played around in the waves all afternoon. The beach is one of the hot surfing spots in the area too, and despite my reservations about surfing (I have a high center of gravity so balance isn’t exactly my thing) it looked like too much fun not to try at some point. A big group of us took the 30 minute train ride down to the beach, and despite the fact that the traveling in large packs is getting old and making me feel too much like a tourist or a freshman in college or a goose, it was nice to have a lot of people to negotiate getting on and off the train. The train station is a short walk from my dorm and there is a beach at almost every stop along the route so I anticipate many more train rides in the future. We’ve been told they’re safe during the day as long as you’re vigilant. But that tends to be the case with most things down here. If you walk like you know where you’re going and are paying attention it will take you a long way. It has struck me how much safety is a constant concern down here, but I think I will adjust to the unwritten rules of staying safe in the city rather quickly and I am being careful not to take too many unnecessarily risks characteristic of men of my age and size.

This week we have been doing orientation at the University of Cape Town, which has been pretty boring and not all that informative. Nothing runs as smoothly down here as I am used to back at school, which is taking some adjusting, and seldom can I get my questions answered by the first person I ask. I register for classes on Friday, but the process of registration is unnecessarily complicated (we actually register in person after waiting in long lines) and it turns out that many of the classes I had hoped to take down here aren’t offered this semester or offered at all for that matter. The organizational structure could use some work, and if getting stuff done at the University is this drawn out, I can only imagine trying to negotiate things in the rest of the city. Nonetheless, South Africans have a very relaxed approach and laidback mentality about things and I am quickly realizing it makes sense to adopt their attitude rather than fret over the inconveniences and absurdities down here. I’m sure registration will work out just fine.

I’m beginning to adjust to life in Cape Town. I’m a little more confident that I may make it through the semester without getting hit by a car (my reflexives are trained to look the wrong way when I cross the street and I’ve come close to a couple run ins with speeding cars). After finding out that the sort of things an American comes to expect in a supermarket are often missing from the aisles in Cape Town, I was able to find enough food at the Shoprite down the block to stock up the fridge a bit. When I asked at the deli counter for turkey she looked at me like I was speaking Zulu, so I went with what looked like Salami. I’m going to have to adjust my cooking and eating habits a bit, but the food in restaurants is cheap enough here that I can probably get away with eating out a fair amount of the time.

We’re still waiting on our African flatmates to move in (many other people have already met theirs) and I’m excited to see what they’re like. A number of people have said that their roomies seem shy or standoffish, but I’m hoping that isn’t the case with mine or that I can use a little of my charm to get them to open up. Well, I best be going because I have to go figure out what classes I’m going to take, but I hope this find everyone back home in Massachusetts, St. Louis, and everywhere else where peoples’ travels are taking them doing really well. I’m going to try and write individual emails when I can, but this blog may be the best way to keep in touch because internet is expensive down here (they charge by bandwidth use) and free time seems to disappear before I know it. I'm going to try and share some pictures too as soon as I make it to an internet cafe where it won't cost me my dinner to upload them. As they say down here, cheers!

First Night at Liesbeeck Saturday 1/23/10 11:30pm

So I’m finally moved in. After a pretty tedious and even sweatier process, I have myself a room for the semester. The Res (as they call them here) is no Wash U hotel, but I think I’ll be able to make it work. My room is big enough, there’s plenty of room for my clothes, and with the generous sheet, blanket, pillow, four hangers, tiny pot, and bent frying pan generously provided by CIEE, I think I just might be able to make this house a home. Or maybe I should say cellblock from the way the courtyard looks like it belongs in a scene from the Green Mile. But on a less sarcastic note, it may take a little time to adjust to the less than ideal conditions of the dorm, but I think learning to live with a little less and a little inconvenience might be really good for me. And it’s hard not to feel completely insensitive and spoiled to talk about my misfortune the day after spending some time in Kayalitcha, Cape Town’s biggest township.

On Friday afternoon we went on a tour of five of the eight volunteer sites that CIEE is offering transportation to this semester, all of which had been described briefly the previous day. Visiting the sites left me really thinking about how I best can contribute to the people and development of this country without feeling like I’m only doing the work so that I can get something out of it. I want to really contribute, not just feel good about myself when I come home and get to say, look at me, I volunteered with poor black people in South Africa and I have facebook pictures to show for it. This country is riddled with problems and the need stretches so widely that it overwhelms you, but I really want to contribute at least in a small way, in a way that will actually mean something to the people I’m volunteering with.

Two of the sites we visited really rubbed me the wrong way. One was a small organization founded by a young, fairly cute, blonde America girl who had first come to Cape Town while studying abroad. Her organization provides a place for children with HIV in Kayalitcha to have fun and be loved. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem at all with the notion of trying to offer a safe space for kids who have to deal with unfathomable burdens in their day to day existence, I got the feeling that this woman was only working in the township because she loved being hugged and kissed by little African children and that I could offer more than hugs and kisses. The video that we were shown about the organization looked a lot like a promotional video for this woman and very little like something produced by a non-profit. It actually including a Baywatch style montage of her running on the beach—drawing recollections to the siblings Rudnick afternoon routine of watching Baywatch after school for much of childhood (Johanna was too young to realize why we loved it so much and must have been captivated by the gripping plots). But seriously, I actually laughed out loud—and this woman doesn’t hold a candle to my Pamela.

The second site that left me feeling a bit uneasy was called the Ark City of Refuge. They seem to be doing good work at this place where they offer all sorts of services to the local poor, but the strong emphasis on Christianity felt too much like indoctrination. The complicated thing about the role of Christian missionaries in Africa is that while their intentions were dubious, they have provided far more services and education to Africans in the last century than any other group of white folks, so it’s hard to disregard them.

The final site that we visited that day was a school called “Leap” where students from two townships can come to learn science and math (as well as a number of other subjects). Getting into the school involves a rigorous application process, but the school seems to be providing opportunities to children who otherwise would have none. The founder and head of the school, who calls himself Bones, really blew me away with his vision and his approach. He believes that to change the country, poor Africans need to change their own mentalities and achieve academic success at the same time that they come to learn about self respect and responsibility to their communities. The students at the school are taught to believe in themselves and taught the importance of social responsibility. In tern, they go back and help raise up their own communities. He even makes every family contribute 250 rand a year (about $35) towards paying for their education so that the children will learn to take ownership of their education and not get used to getting things for free. I won’t write too much more about this site because I’m pretty certain that I will start volunteering there soon and will be able to speak more in depth about it, but needless to say, Bones seems like the kind of leader that South Africa needs, with a mentality worlds apart from the people who have and continue to hold power in this country. He speaks openly about poverty and race, and doesn’t hide from the reality.

Alright, well this update is already getting excessively long so I won’t elaborate on everything else, but I will say that last night the program took us all out to dinner at Marco’s African Place, a restaurant that serves traditional African cuisine and it was a blast. By the end, everyone was full on oxtail, chicken, rice, beans, pop (kinda tastes the cream of wheat), and wine, and dancing around the restaurant to the lively African jazz band. Afterwards we all went out to Long Street, the biggest bar/club scene in the city and let the good times continue to roll. I ended up at a bar rocking out to a south African reggae band for a couple of hours. Wicked Fing Awesome as they’d say back home.

Today we went to the opening of Greenpoint Stadium (where the world cup will take place come June) and watched a game between to local teams, Ajax and Santos. The quality of soccer was pretty bad, not that I’m a soccer expert, but the energy in the stadium was palpable and I couldn’t stop smiling as I sat in the 23^rd row, wearing a yellow hat (which obviously didn’t fit cause I have a Rudnick sized head) and blowing the red plastic horns that were also being given out for free. It was pretty neat to be at the first game ever played at the stadium and it made me want to try and get tickets for June even more.

Well, finally a chance to sleep in tomorrow, everyone is outrageously overtired, then everyone comes over to Liesbeeck for a Braai (South African barbeque) and hopefully an inaugural trip to the beach is in store for some friends and I.

Entry Two— Wednesday Morning 1/20 6:30am UCT dorm (Graca Machel) in Rondebosh

So I haven’t woken up this early naturally since high school—scratch that—probably since I was a little chubster waking up cause I was too excited for breakfast to sleep. I asked a guy Rob who I met yesterday afternoon to come by at like 7:45 or so when he got up to wake me because the only thing I own that keeps the time right now is my computer. Not sure if it’s cause it’s summer here and the sun rises at 5am or it’s the jetlag (which I’m still not sure isn’t just a bullshit excuse for people to be lazy the first few days after they travel abroad) but needless to say the wake up call wasn’t needed.

The ride from the airport was quite the wake up call of it’s own actually. It couldn’t have been more than a twenty-minute ride, but along the way we passed a pretty huge shantytown, which I think would be classified as a township but frankly I’m not sure. The houses were made out of tin and looked like they could be blow down with a mere huff and a puff. The bus got quiet as we passed and it was made evidently clear that this is not going to be your run of the mill vacation. Directly next to the shantytown was a highly manicured golf course—my first encounter with the huge disparity in wealth that I heard about before coming. This place is clearly riddled with enumerable social issues and as excited as I am for all the fun that is to follow I get the feeling that there is going to be a certain underlying uneasiness that I’m going to have to struggle with.

Last night was a really good time. I ended up meeting a little crew from Penn State and walked into town with them to explore in the late afternoon and after buying some converters landed up at a bar that had a two for one draft beer deal (got to try Castle—one of the local brews for the first time—pretty solid) and somehow we ended up getting three 500ml beers for about a dollar apiece. We all opened up a bit more as we were drinking and the crew seems like a good group of people. We were sitting outside and the clouds that had covered the top of table mountain had dispersed so there I was drinking a South African beer looking up at magnificent (it really is breathtaking) table mountain and it hit me---shit, I’m in South Africa. After a while at the bar we headed back to the grocery store and picked up 10 liters of boxed wine and some styrofoam cups and brought it back to campus to drink in a little courtyard of the dorm where we’re staying. Now sufficiently socially lubricated, I was having a great time chatting with the initial crew and the people that kept coming by and joining the little party. I can’t remember his name, but I met my RA who seems like a really cool guy, which I’m pretty stoked about. He’s 22, grew up in Cape Town and was already drinking with us the first night. Actually a bunch of the RAs ended up joining in. One of the higher ups walked by at one point and he had me hold his cup. I thought to myself, I like where this is going. Anyhow, at some point I walked back up to my room, totally unaware of the time but aware that we’d missed dinner and that passing out when I had the easy opportunity was probably a good idea—Rudnick’s are not accustomed to skipping meals. Which brought me to this morning. Alright, off to start my first full day on the edge of the planet.

Entry One— Flying over the Sahara desert in northern Africa, 1/ 19, 3am local time in Cape Town.

Thank god I don’t really believe in Buddhism. Don’t get me wrong. I love Buddha, he’s f****** adorable— he’s got to be the cutest religious icon in the world---sure beats Jesus on the cross for aesthetic appeal—but if I really believed in karma, this flight might be a sign of a rough road ahead. The flight from Boston to London went pretty smoothly. The plane was actually pretty empty so I had plenty of room to stretch out and thanks to my two pals am and bien, I was out the entire time. Can’t say I’ve had as much luck on this second flight though. As the stewardess came by juggling 10 mini bottles of wine in her arms, she dropped one, which lucky for me shook my tray table and knocked over my can of Heineken which proceeded to spill along the inner part of my right thigh (you know the part where you start to get uncomfortable when one of your friends jokingly runs his hand along your thigh). Mandela’s autobiography got a little wet too. Ok, so not that big a deal right? I was in pretty good spirits generally so I was truing to just let it go. Then after the hops settled and the stewardess brought me some “cloths” I realized that as I jolted when the beer spilt I had bent the adapter on my headphones making them more or less unusable until I can get a tool to try and bend the piece back into place. So there goes the headphones. Ok, again, not the end of the world. Then as I was finally settling down again, ready to write this entry and try to watch a movie with my crappy backup pair of head phones, my friend the stewardess comes by to clear everyone’s trays and haphazardly stacks an empty cup on top of one full of water, giving me a little shower to complement my beer bath. I looked up at her speechless. “Oo, sorry!” she offered in her cheery little British accent. I kept silent. “Would you like some more cloths?” “Yes, so more cloths please.” Needless to say now I’m trying to avoid her.

Leaving was pretty surreal. I’m not sure it’ll even fully hit me until I land. It’s not the thought of spending six months in south Africa that’s a little unnerving but rather the thought that it’s going to be a long time before I’m home again and a long time before I see a lot of people who I really care about, my co-actors in Shakespeare’s terms. On to a new stage with new actors for a while. I’m nervous, sure, but the more I think about it the more excited I am about how many opportunities lay ahead. Let the crazy times begin.

Ariana asked me last night what my goals were for my time abroad. I realized I hadn’t given this question quite as much thought as maybe I should. I’m sure once I get settled I’ll be in a better place to figure out a little more concretely what exactly I want to get out of this trip. But for now here it goes.

In no particular order:

1) Become good friends with at least one African student.

2) Take a shit ton of pictures, and don’t forget why I’m taking the pictures.

3) Dive with great white sharks.

4) Do some sort of volunteering.

5) Talk to lots of south Africans.

6) Try some crazy foods.

7) Go skydiving

8) Go on a safari

9) Try to form my own understanding of race, HIV, and poverty in south Africa without relying too much on one person’s understanding or perspective.

K, that’s good for now. I’m gonna go try and pass out again cause sleeping seems to be the only way to stay dry on Birtish Airways. Until next time.