the Kapstadt Confessions

On Cape Town as a Lego City

2012-01-09T07:10:00.001-08:00

Timmy Henny captures Cape Town as legoland

Capetonian filmmaker shows what Cape Town looks like from above in 'Mini Cape'

Watch 'Mini Cape', an excellent short film about Cape Town by Timmy Henny and read an interview with him below.

Timmy Henny, who are you?I'm a director of photography who started off in the photographic field, but in the last few years I‘ve moved more towards film. I've shot commercials, music videos, documentaries and corporate videos. I just finished shooting a T.V. series for DSTV called ‚'Braai for Heritage'. The show travelled all over the country building 'gees' and celebrating our heritage by visiting heritage spots and braaing with a wide range of diverse South Africans. I am currently working on the video content for 'A Year in the Wild', which was initiated by Scott Ramsay, he is travelling to over 30 national parks around South Africa to document them. I am producing a video of each park highlighting their immense beauty.

Tell me about your film 'Mini Cape'.'Mini Cape' was filmed in February 2011 as an extramural project to capture a day in the life of Cape Town - in miniature. I was shooting a lot of commercials and corporate videos and wanted to do something a little closer to my heart. Then I saw this video that a guy called Sam O'Hare shot of New York portraying it as a miniature city. I was blown away and thought 'well I can do an even better one of Cape Town!'. I spent about a month shooting in-between jobs and on my off days in the pristine Cape Town summer and I think that really adds to the colourful feel of the film. I have an immense love for Cape Town and even though I travel overseas every year I always get a little shiver down my spine when I catch a glimpse of the mountain through the aeroplane window. I wanted to create a video in honour of our Mother City.

Cape Town portrayed as a miniature city...what inspired you to do this?It is a style that I am seeing more and more often. There's even a little section in the latest BBC documentary 'Human Planet' that uses this style. When I saw that I said to myself 'I have to get my video out there before everyone else starts doing it'.

What difficulties did you have to deal with while shooting?The style requires shooting from high angles and the obvious challenge was: How do you get up onto all those buildings to get a load of different angles to make the film interesting? I sent out a mail to my contact list and everyone was very helpful in finding me access to rooftops and balconies all over the city. Then there were a few buildings that I really wanted to get onto and just lied to security and sneaked up onto the roof. I find the objects that work best are things like boats, helicopters and construction vehicles because they really give a sense of activity in a miniature world. There were still other buildings that I wanted to get access to that I just couldn't organise - for instance, the control tower at the airport. For some reason they think that a stranger with a camera might be a terrorist. Some miniature aeroplanes would have looked awesome, but there will always be more opportunities.

What was the highlight of your project?I really enjoyed shooting most of this project but the highlight was shooting in Clifton. I got access to some of the roofs of the beachfront apartments on one of the most beautiful days in summer. I got some really great shots there and that part of the film really showcases Cape Town‘s beauty with the still turquoise water and silky white sand. One of my favourite shots are the guys carrying the piano across the road, which happened by chance. I was on the roof of the Fugard Theatre and suddenly they started crossing the road. I had to really rush to frame my shot and get focus. But that's the beauty with a project like this - you shoot and shoot and wait and wait but then suddenly the most amazing things happen.

How long did the project take you?I shot it over the space of a month whenever I had spare time. It takes surprisingly long and a lot of patience to wait for the perfect moment like the dumpster tipping sand or waiting for the pirate ship to leave the Waterfront. I probably had about 300gigs of footage to sift through in the edit. As with all my projects, I also got to discover some new places in the city I've never been to. Editing took quite a while because I was really busy on other jobs. The editing process is quite laborious as you have to apply lots of filters to the clips and they take ages to render. So, Steve Jobs, if you feel like donating me a faster Mac please go right ahead.

Did you film it all yourself?I directed, produced, shot and edited everything. I filmed it on a Canon 5D, a little camera that's taking the industry by storm. I also have a motorized tripod head that I imported from Tokyo that basically allows the camera to pan really slowly so when the footage is sped up it looks smooth. It took a little time and experimentation to master the technique but I'll give you a short breakdown. I basically use a tilt shift lens effect to create a shallow depth of field, then boost the saturation a bit and speed up the footage. But it's not that simple. The real skill is getting the right angle on your subject and knowing how to frame it properly. I gave a sample track to Ross and Myles McDonald from Hey Papa Legend Studios and they produced an amazing soundtrack for me in exchange for a photoshoot. I think that's how all Cape Town creatives should work - through a skill exchange. Everyone would be producing much better content and not always complaining about how they don't have enough funds to do something.

What did you do the film for?I did it entirely for myself.

What's next?My goal is to make films like this in cities all over the world. Next month I'm traveling to Europe and UK and hope to create mini films of Berlin, London and Dublin.

The film has been selected as a finalist for the San Francisco International Festival of Short Films - what are your expectations?Yeah, how awesome is that! I actually had very few expectations when I entered it and then suddenly I got an email saying that I was a finalist out of over 1600 entries from all over the world. I'm not expecting too much though. I think that films that win festivals have evocative narratives that tell amazing and unique stories. I'm just happy to be one of the finalists and to have it screened in San Francisco. I've also entered it into short film competitions in UK and Germany so I'm holding thumbs.

Anything you would like to add?We are so lucky to live in such an amazingly beautiful city and it makes filming easier when your subject is just so hot!

By Antonia Heil

Find more creative Cape Town stories in our section arts & culture.
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Source: http://www.capetownmagazine.com/interviews/Timmy-Henny-captures-Cape-Town-as-legoland/146_22_18256

On Suburban Segregation (cross-posted)

2011-09-16T11:55:00.003-07:00

Not necessary reading material (because it's just an infograph), but something worth looking at to prove that I'm not entirely insane: Suburbanization of Poverty

Wet and cold (at least I was), we headed home from last Monday night's Bronco game via public transportation. Mike and I found ourselves at Colfax and Broadway at half past midnight, seated on a wet and cold park bench.

That bus stop is always busy, and half past midnight on an early Tuesday morning is no different. As we sat, people surrounded us, all talking about the game. But what caught my attention was the fact that they hadn't gone to the game as spectators, they had gone as employees. Kettle corn, beer, other food-service.
The commonality was football statistics; the man behind me knows more about football than I ever will; the crazy man pacing knows much less.

I felt guilty, shamed by my spectator-status as they discussed what had gone on behind the scenes and counted out their tips. One guy had a fistful of one-dollar bills. I was tempted to tell him to shove them back in his pocket, lest someone steal them. (Cape Town really got that in my brain. Last Saturday when I was out, I found that I had stashed $42 in my bra, just in case.)

The bus was not coming. I was grumpy.

I listened to the girl a few seats down start talking about where she was staying (Mississippi and Sable) and how long it was going to take her to get home (forever) - but then I got the impression that she was still in high school. And possibly homeless.
The guy next to her was also headed out to Aurora.

To my great relief, the bus finally came and we squished on. (For the record, people in Denver have no idea what a crowded bus is - they were balking at the prospect of having to move back and squeeze in, claiming that the bus was "full." Not full at all, but I wasn't in the mood to get stern.)

As the bus lumbered up Colfax, it stopped at nearly every stop to add more people. You'd think, perhaps, that as the bus left the city center, it would slowly empty rather than filling. No. It seemed that everyone was headed east. What's east? First of all, the Colorado Blvd connection (and the #40 bus), but second, and more importantly, Aurora.

Whenever I bemoan my situation (as I so love to do), I'm absolutely overlooking the fact that I have a support system. That I have transportation, that I have Simon.

I'm overlooking the fact that, like the girl seated a few seats away, there are varying degrees of homelessness in our city. Not everyone who's technically homeless has a cardboard sign and wants your money. They're sleeping on people's couches; they're crashing at a friend's place; they're staying awake all night; they're riding the bus around until they get somewhere. That's how people manage not to freeze during winters in Chicago - they ride the train until the end of the line and then turn around and do it all over again.

I'm overlooking the fact that I don't have an hour-long commute each way. I don't have to be dependent on the bus, something that can add hours to any commute, anywhere. I don't have to get on the bus with my arms loaded with groceries.

Unlike the woman with at least three, possibly four, kids and two strollers, I don't have to rely on the kindness of others to get my family safely off the bus. The kids reminded us of the township creches. They were cute, polite, but desperately needed clean clothes and baths. And a decent bedtime.

In Cape Town, the suburbs hold populations that fall into varying classifications of income levels, from the rich (Camps Bay) to the poor (Steenberg) to the poorer (Lavender Hill) to the townships (Vrygrond) to the informal settlements (Village Heights). As you go further down the income ladder, you find that the population density increases exponentially, as does the crime rate. But what falls at an equal rate is access to transportation.

Poorer neighborhoods are further from access to trains. Instead, they have to take a minibus from their neighborhood, probably to another minibus, then eventually to the train. This adds to their commute and can be a determining factor in their employment status.

Vrygrond was strategically placed away from train lines. The white Cape Townians didn't want the colored and black populations to have access to the transportation, but instead, wanted them to remain in their designated neighborhoods.

Minibuses, the other transportation alternative to trains, are dangerous. I've never been so harassed as I was on the trains and minibuses in Cape Town. It's the touching that really gets you. You're either about to be groped or robbed, and neither are pleasant. But people have to do that every day. Sitting on top of strangers, next to strangers, pushed up against them.

It's funny because just as the transportation effectively cuts off the poorest, it also secludes the richest. You can't take public transportation to Camps Bay, the wealthy, white side of Table Mountain. You have to take a cab.

In Cape Town, when I was finding jobs for the unemployed, many of the ads stipulated that people be from certain areas only. For a country that has come so far from Apartheid, it's disheartening to see such blatant discrimination.

Is that what we want here? A segregated workforce? But more importantly than that, is that what we're eventually going to have? Are we becoming a more diverse population or a more segregated one as time passes?

As someone who usually has access to transportation, it's a wake-up call to realize how much your life can be affected by the inability to commute. Mobility is a key to success. By continuing to eliminate entire populations of workers by simply making it difficult for them to access transportation, we're effectively ensuring that only a select portion of people will be able to apply for, and eventually obtain, those jobs.

On (Young) Love

2011-09-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

Mike and I have been talking about the theory of impermanence a lot lately. It's one of the three basic facts of existence in Buddhism.

This is what's read at funerals:

Impermanent are all component things,
They arise and cease, that is their nature:
They come into being and pass away,
Release from them is bliss supreme.

Mike and I were talking last night about how you can either take solace in the fact that things are constantly changing or you can be afraid. (You guys probably know what side I'm on - I hate change. It's something I struggle to adapt to constantly. I will conquer it, dammit!)

Anyway, as usual, my love life is in a strange place. I'm one of those people who sees love as the true path of life - that any beautiful life is best lived filled with love. If I were to die today, I would be entirely satisfied with the loves that I have had: great friendships, family, men.

But oh, men. They are my supreme weakness. I can hear Mike's voice in my head now, "What would the Dalai Lama say?" He also told me that I've never let a man truly love me. I argue with him. I believe that I've never truly found that simultaneous love. (Remind me to someday blog about his theory about "wives" and "woo-hoos" - it's good, true, and absolutely hilarious.)

Anyway, the point of this story is the beautiful love I experienced in Cape Town.

James and I didn't last the entirety of the trip - I'm much too skeptical for that to have happened.

We met at a pool hall. I was drunk (always), and danced with him, and told him to call me.

He later told me he never would have called me had I not been so insistent because he wasn't sure I was serious.

He thought I lived in the Steenberg Estates (the nice white part) rather than Steenberg (Mama P's house and my temporary and oh-so-beloved home), so he was late to pick me up for our first date. We went out to dinner, where he fed me delicious chocolate cake and we closed the restaurant.

He was a romantic in ways I've never been treated to. There were hot bubble baths drawn for me, candlelit dinners, tea brought to me every morning, lunch packed for me most days, adventures.

He also drove me nuts, but that was to be expected. Even though I do believe that every love affair should be entered into wholeheartedly, it should also be cautiously done - it's a weird thing I have. All of a sudden, I get uncomfortable, oppressed, claustrophobic. And that's when I bail.

He took me to one of my favorite places in Cape Town, the Bridge to Nowhere, as I call it. It's in Tokai, right down the road from where he lived. That hill is where he told me he loved me and where I didn't lie to him.

I do love that bridge though.

We've kept in contact since, and today, in response to a message from me, he sent me this:

"Hey love! It's not very long into a week when i find myself thinking of you. How we could chat endlessly about anything, from an incredible intellectual understanding...
You're a seriously rad girl, katie barry....
Hope life is broadening that beautiful mind of yours. Also hope that i see you again, sooner rather than later"

I teared up at work, no lie.

It was never meant to be permanent. It was meant to happen and then burst up into flames, full of heated conversations and sighs. It was exactly what it should have been.

Many of my most wonderful Cape Town memories surround that: nights of free pool at Lizard's (still a weird name for a bar), driving down the M5 at night - turning off the lights right before we crested that hill, watching reruns of Scrubs on the couch when I wasn't at work...

I love the gift of love.

Whatever godlike being lives in the sky or in our hearts or wherever was seriously onto something.

This impermanence thing, though, we'll have to work on. (Although that, too, can be a godsend.)

;-)

Quick memories. A "note to self" sort of post.

2011-06-03T08:08:00.000-07:00

South Africa haunts my dreams.
Cape Town calls to me softly in the night.
I see my neighborhood vividly, afraid to lose the precious memories of spring there.
The train station near my house, the bricks that made up the small waiting house, the steps, the shop, Military Rd.
The "Free Palestine" mirror coverings on the Toyota parked at that house that always seemed to be in the process of being renovated.

The sounds, the smells, the memories live somewhere in my mind and as though they've died, I'm afraid to lose them.

Table Mountain, the view from the end of 24 Powell Road.

I don't want to let them slip away.

Violence in South Africa

2011-06-02T12:27:00.000-07:00

New York Times article about the beating death of a man in the Gauteng Province.

I am currently reading a crime novel set in Jo'burg and it's shocking to me how much of the global perceptions about South Africa pertain to the violence there.

More on this to come. But if you've got the time, please read the article linked above.

The Wine Article - Cape Chameleon

2011-04-08T10:33:00.000-07:00

2011-01-06T12:08:00.001-08:00

Also, I've been published!
This month's issue of the Cape Chameleon includes my building article!
I'll be sure to scan it and post it once the magazine arrives in the mail!

2011-01-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

If you enjoyed reading the blog while I was in South Africa, consider reading my real life blog every day!

A Mile High and then Some

2010-12-10T10:05:00.001-08:00

It's funny that once you've been somewhere, you can always find someone else to talk to about it. Since I've returned, I've had no less than four conversations with as many people about South African experiences, both mine and theirs.

It's funny how small the world really is.

Burning (wo)Man

2010-12-06T09:45:00.000-08:00

Consider it a lesson learned.

I've been thinking back on my experience (as I'm so often prone to doing) and I'm realizing that one lesson I need to learn out of this is: stop burning bridges.

I wrote a five page (typed) debriefing when I left South Africa detailing my problems with the business project at Projects Abroad South Africa. I agree with everything I said. I re-read that document no fewer than five times (which is a first, considering I hate proofreading my own work). Every statement I made was meant to be effective yet emotionally removed from the situation at hand. It was supposed to reflect my views on South Africa as being positive but my views on the business end of things to have a more pessimistic outlook.

I don't regret it.

I wish I would have been able to explain it, though. Because I know that everyone who goes to that program (and many of the other programs under the Projects Abroad umbrella) have problems with it. And I know that not everyone is going to speak up about it. I'm happy that I voiced my concerns. I hope that the UK office chooses to take to heart some of the criticism they're getting (and have been receiving in recent months) and take some action.

I realize that it's a non-profit organization and there are limits to their spending abilities, but let's just say that 3rd party sources have confirmed that the administrative fees we pay support very luxe lifestyles. And it's a given, but it would be nice if some parts of those salaries could be be put toward the projects "we're" supposedly supporting - something besides free labor.

(This started out as an apology of sorts but then I realized I don't have anything to apologize for. I love South Africa. I liked the people who worked for Projects Abroad. I hated the way they implemented their programs. Enough said. I won't be asking them for references and I can assure you I won't be getting any. All that's left to do is complete an article and finish editing a small video for micro-financing and then all will be well in the world. They'll carry on and so will I.)

Food Update

2010-12-05T15:01:00.000-08:00

I brought a pack of Pick N Pay Ginger Biscuits on the plane with me, hoping that they'd last until we landed in Denver. I've never been particularly fond of ginger, but for some reason, I'm now completely in love with the sharp spicy sweetness of these biscuits. I opened the pack on the flight from DC to Denver, and between the two of us, they were gone before the stewardess could make a round with the drink cart.

I found South African wine at King Soopers. While I'm not entirely sure why King Soopers is selling wine, I'm not complaining (at least, not yet). I didn't find any of the labels that I was seeking, but I found one that was familiar and another that was $5. So of course, I bought them both.
It's going to be interesting to try and find the wines I want here. Hmm....however, there's a bottle from Spier that I brought back. I'm holding onto it until I feel like drinking it, but it's going to be delicious. Maybe it'll be my Christmas dinner contribution.

Fairview makes the best white rock cheese with apricots. They also make one with cranberries. I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to get packages of the cheese home alive, so I settled for trying to find some here. And I found an English white cheese with cranberries, so I bought it. However, it lacks the sweetness of the Fairview cheese and instead, tasted almost too bitter for me. I'm going to have to be creative in my cranberry cheese applications now, as I have a rather large triangle of it and no particular inclination to devour it.

Things I bought yesterday: turkey. Sliced turkey breast. I have not seen any lunch meat that's not processed in three months, so it was a pleasure to open the container and taste pure turkey with black pepper. Mozarella. I have a feeling I'll never get away from this new love of cheese. Fruit. Cabbage. V8. This is heaven, really.

The call for coffee consumes me.

...US soil

2010-12-02T05:50:00.000-08:00

It's 6:30 am.
I've been awake for two hours.
All I really want to do is go dancing. That's weird, I think.
I've watched Sister Act on Comcast and am contemplating re-reading the 7th Harry Potter book.

It's too dark to go for a run.
It's too late to go back to sleep.
I'm too mind-boggled to try and start finishing this blog beautifully.

The trip was long. But it went smoothly. Apparently as we landed in DC, the winds were almost too much for our 767. People were throwing up in their vomit bags. I am glad I enjoy turbulence.
We almost missed our third flight (to Denver) because of the line at customs, but we ran, so it was alright.
I am so glad that Mike is my little brother. He's the best.

Quick itinerary and the like

2010-11-29T07:04:00.000-08:00

Of course I haven't packed yet, are you mad?

Itinerary, for the interested:

Flight # 1:
Cape Town to Joburg
departs 1:50 in the afternoon.
Duration: 2 hours

arrive Joburg at 3:50pm.
Layover.

Flight #2:
Joburg to Washington Dulles
departs: 6:55 pm
Duration: 18:05 hours (ugh)

arrive DC at 6 am (Wednesday)

Flight #3:
Dulles to Denver
departs: 8:20 am
arrives 10:35 am
Duration 4:15.

With 24 hours of flying time ahead of me and nearly 36 hours of actual travel time, I'm already prepared to be exhausted.
Pick up for the airport is before 11 tomorrow.

Will give more information about Projects Abroad debriefing and my tormented emotional state tomorrow when I buy internet at the airport, or finally manage to get it to go from my phone to my computer again.

There were tears yesterday and I anticipate more tomorrow.

Cape Town, I have loved you.

(Dis)quiet

2010-11-24T01:30:00.000-08:00

I almost cried last night, overwhelmed and exhausted, laying in my bed staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.
I didn't, though.
I've only cried once in Cape Town, and it was right in the middle/end of September when the days seemingly stretched on endlessly and I thought I'd never find my way.
Those feelings are long gone.
I used to cry a lot. It's my way of cleansing. But during the past few years I've seemed to stop doing that. Part of me wishes I could just have a good cry sometimes, followed by a hot bath and heavy sleep.
But maybe that part of me is just wishing for a hot bath and heavy sleep.

I'm ready.
There are no words to describe the feeling I have now.
I've put off leaving - I always do. There is still a large mountain of things to do spread before me, around me, and I'm not sure if I'll get to all of them before I leave.
The most important is the District Six museum. I want to buy little things, of course, little flags and stuff, but I'm warning you ahead of time that I'm not going to be bringing much home with me. When I think of Cape Town, I don't think of the mass-produced wooden spoons with carved giraffes. I think of other stuff entirely.
So, it's been decided that you'll each get something else. We'll explain it later.

Last night, there was a discussion. It was like being six all over again. I sat in the corner and tried to mind my own business while the argument occurred. There was no escape. I read the news on my phone and tried to be as engrossed as I possibly could in the North Korea situation. In the end, I had to jump in as mediator, but it was futile, just like all mediation attempts. No understanding was reached, there were tears (not mine), and all wasn't well when we all retreated to our separate bedrooms for sleep that didn't come.

Again, I'm tired. I feel it pulling at the bottoms of my eyelids, pressing into the tops of my cheeks. I'm desperate for rest. I want to pile pillows all around me and jump into a nest of blankets. I want to pull all the shades closed and sleep for a week. And I plan on it.

Applications will be made, but there's a glitch in the process at the moment. I can't apply until I have a working phone number, which might be just as well. I can have a few days to breathe before the application process begins, although there's an opening at the Colorado Blvd store that I'm quite eager to fill. Nervous energy is coursing through me.

Petty Drama in the House of Females

2010-11-23T05:06:00.000-08:00

Tension is rising in the house at the moment.
Priscilla hates that my room is cluttered, is having dreams about mice, and will be certainly convinced that my room is the center of the flea epidemic that's hitting our house once she finds out about it.
However, I am not the epicenter of the flea problem. Margaret works in Vrygrond and there's a good chance that she's brought them home with her from work where they have begun to nest in her bed.
Or it might be bedbugs (it's a very common host family problem here). I still lack the bites that she has - this morning there were 18 new ones on her, and zero on me. I've got three left over from the weekend, and they're all in exposed places like my feet or arm, and none of those can be traced to fleas or bed bugs. I'm calling mosquitos on those.

Either way, my clutter and her bites aside, there are problems at home.
Margaret and Priscilla are the same age. Margaret is a successful, wealthy (ish) woman from the Netherlands who shows no signs of slowing down in her professional career. Priscilla is ready to retire, constantly complaining about menopause and possibly realizing her socio-economic situation more and more as Margaret has been here.

She accuses Margaret of being a snob, an accusation that I wholeheartedly disagree with. And Margaret is upset about unfairly being singled out all the time

There are food issues. I have them too. Priscilla won't buy the food that we'll eat and won't listen to our suggestions - instead, buying things she thinks we want. It's been an issue, but I long ago learned to not worry about eating breakfast at home and to just buy lunch out. It's costly, but necessary.

There are space issues. When Margaret came in, she didn't have a door to her room. We put up a blanket, just to block out the light. She wasn't overly concerned about privacy, because there's really not any anyway. So Priscilla called it the Vrygrond door in her derogatory way and we went about our business. This weekend, she had Jared, her daughter's boyfriend, put a door in. It's a nice door and Margaret said thank you. But Priscilla has been calling it "Margaret's door" and constantly referring to it. Margaret doesn't care. She's happy to have a door but at the same time, she doesn't want it to be all about her - meaning that it's Priscilla's house and if she wanted a door, then it's fine.

Then there was the bathroom painting incident. I live in a cramped, narrow, all-too-pink room and there's a small bathroom (toilet, sink, shower all within arm's reach) behind it. The bathroom is a bit moldy due to climate and lack of ventilation, and Priscilla had decided to paint it. So after asking several (seven) times, Margaret and I volunteered to paint it. I couldn't get out of work, though, so Margaret spent Friday afternoon painting the bathroom purple. Priscilla didn't say thank you, and then began criticizing the painting.

It's a hot mess, really.

So while I am going to miss both of them (equally), I'm not going miss being caught in the crossfire.

Also, as an added plus for the week, Priscilla has offered to drive me to the laundry today. I don't leave my clothes in the drawers because they (the drawers) are strangely dirty and smell of mothballs, but since when have I ever put my clothes in drawers? So they are strewn around, spilling out of suitcases, etc.
Obviously, this is a ploy to get me to pack, but it also saves me from having to haul 10 kilos of laundry a mile or so.

I'll take that.

Email correspondence - copy

2010-11-20T06:28:00.000-08:00

Hello Grandpa! (and others who I added as I realized I was going to want to tell you about this anyway...)

Unfortunately, I don't believe that much of the aid from any country is really helping in South Africa at the moment.

Much of the problems stem from the fact that South Africa is still a very segregated country. While the Western Cape (the province that Cape Town is in) is very, well, westernized, it's the white people that have the highest standards of living. The colored, black and Indian populations still remain unable to access certain resources and education.

Many of the problems are also health related, and stem from the living conditions. A high instance of HIV/AIDs coupled with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Tuberculosis hinder a lot of human advancement, especially since they lack access to even the most basic things: indoor plumbing, electricity, doctors, etc.

Probably because of the low education rates, the crime rate and gang membership is very high. Mike can speak more on that because most of his work is in areas that are directly in the paths of gang violence. (He wants me to assert here that he's safe here, and well taken care of. I'll let him address the situations that he's found himself in and his reactions to them.) Many of the children are neglected and abused, and it's sad to see that they won't ever have access to proper schooling or resources.

I keep finding that my minor in Gender Studies is so very applicable to the patterns of male behavior here - especially since they lack legitimate means to access respect and power, so they choose to act violently as a way to gain the "respect" that they think they "deserve." Also, the country is still very far behind as far as advancement for women goes. There is a lot of violence against and intolerance for homosexuals as well as others who choose not to maintain a traditional life-trajectory of courtship leading to heterosexual marriage.

(Today, my Auntie Debbie - Mama P's neighbor - was asking me if I'd be married in a year or so. I laughed.)

But that is also incongruent with the statistics of out of wedlock pregnancy. Most of the young women here experience pregnancy during teenage years or in their 20s. (Here, they use the verb "fell" as in "I fell pregnant." It's an interestingly passive verb used to describe the situation.) However, even though these pregnancies don't always result in marriage, it's shocking to me that so many fathers are actually involved. The importance of family in the South African culture seems to be holding the family structure together, even if it is not directly aligned with the traditional family structure that we're used to seeing. But really, are we used to a traditional family structure?

The illiteracy rate is shocking, as well. Mike can tell a story about a friend of his who was trying to give him the Rastafarian history but who couldn't spell - so instead he drew a pictographic map of the history. It was actually really cool, but sobering.

South Africa has made me ever so grateful for my education.

South Africa is still struggling as a democracy, and the political structure (including police, etc.) is very corrupt. Without a unified plan to attack the social problems, South Africa won't be able to succeed as a fully integrated society.

I was on the train last weekend with Mike and we were speaking to a white couple about our work in the townships - which are places that few white people will ever venture into - and one of the women said, "It's such a shame there are so many social problems in the townships, but that's not the real South Africa." I was so upset because she was trying to say that they weren't her social problems.

That's the entire South African problem in a nutshell - no one wants to take responsibility for any of the problems and they keep blaming other groups, specifically racial groups.

But this is a beautiful country with a lot of opportunity for economic advancement, particularly where tourism is concerned.

Since it's English speaking, it doesn't present so much of a language barrier for English-speaking tourists from the Americas or Europe.

The wine here is amazing and priced incredibly well. I wish Americans drank more wine, I really do. I think I'm going to start sending away for some and having it imported into the US. South Africa is where the pinotage variety of grape was originally blended. I've been writing a story about wine for the journalism project, so of course I've taken the liberty of doing a bit of field research.

The tourism as well is wonderful and relatively cheap. It's also safe - we just got back from a six day road trip and we encountered no problems along the way, and were able to do the trip for about $100 US dollars a day including going out for three meals, accomodation and car rental as well as tourist attractions.

We climbed through caves and rode ostriches and bungee jumped and hiked in the national forests along the way and swam in the ocean every chance we got.

This coming weekend, since it's going to be our last in Cape Town, we are planning to spend Friday night in Stellenbosch, near the wine farms, and then come back to Cape Town for Saturday night.

From there, the plan is still undecided. I hope to spend Sunday or Monday at the beach, saying goodbye to the ocean.

We leave Tuesday morning for the airport. We will then fly to Johannesburg, have a two hour layover there, before flying to Washington DC. Then we will fly to Denver.

I'm going to need time to process the experience, obviously. I can't believe that we're about to leave - I feel like we just got here. But I can already tell you what I've learned about food.

I have been eating different types of cheese, and I've learned that they're not all so bad. Tomatoes were my newest obsession prior to leaving the US, and that hasn't changed, but I've added grilled tomatoes to my eating patterns. It's so strange just to eat half a tomato that is soft and warm, but it's wildly delicious.

Mushrooms, sauteed, grilled, raw, whatever. I want them all the time now. I want them covered in cream sauce on top of pasta, I want them next to my eggs at breakfast.

Curry. Not too hot, not too bland.

Hot sauce - chili sauce, green chili sauce, red sauce. I ate that on top of cheese toast this morning.

Alright, so much love to everyone from both mike and I.

and Happy Thanksgiving.

make Mom eat some cranberry sauce for me!

and Grandma Mary, will you please make me a jar so I can have some?

Love again

Katie

The Friday shuffle.

2010-11-19T01:05:00.000-08:00

Twenty two and a half and tired.
I had to write my own blurb for the magazine this morning, and that's not what I wrote, obviously. But I thought about it.

Katherine Barry is twenty two and a half (as of yesterday - a fact that I didn't remember myself but that my mother did. Thanks for the email, Mom!) and absolutely exhausted.
The last few days have been the sort of days where productivity finds itself moving in a negative direction. Instead of getting anything done, I think I'm digging my heels in and moving backwards. Slowly.

I've been burying myself in the wine story, reading about GDPs and export statistics, salaries, fetal alcohol syndrome numbers, black economic empowerment initiatives, and quite frankly, I'm exhausted. Tying them all together into a cohesive story is going to be something that I don't want to do, and yet I must.

It's proof that I'm the shadow of my former self. Katie Barry can write anything, I thought. I can sit down and the words come. I can type a five page paper (citations and quotes included) in just over an hour. I'm that good.
But yesterday, I stared at the computer screen and there was nothing. The clicker blinked on the blank word document. I blinked too, not as rhythmic, obviously.
I could see what I wanted to describe in my mind. I could see the picturesque afternoon scenery. I could smell the wine. But my fingers remained linguistically stagnant, tapping idly on the table.
Today, things were a little better. I'm a paragraph in. But it's all stats. Easy stuff. Squish some stats in and then throw on the adjectives and you've got yourself a story.
But I want it to be compelling. I want it to be unique, approachable, memorable.

So that when I complain to Projects Abroad about the shit situation they've got going on in South Africa, I will actually have something to lean back on. Because currently, two months and one article is looking weak.
And it is.
But I've been doing a hell of a lot of blogging and blog reading, which is moderate journalism in its own right.

That's a lie but let's not worry about any of that for now.

Let's look forward.
Wednesday night I ate a bad falafel. Yesterday I did my laundry in a three foot square shower. Today I'm wearing running shorts and shoes, but a normal cardigan. I've obviously not learned the valuable lessons from my oft-repeated mistake of neglecting to wear socks while wearing running shoes. My hair is disheveled and my makeup never made it onto my face.
It's that point in the trip, when everything has gone to hell and all I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep.
I'm currently alternating between New York Times blogs and some slide show about dating with depression, neither of which I have problems with (the dating or the depression, but I guess I don't really have problems with NYT blogs either). This is my life. Hello, 11am on a Friday.
I am officially Bridget Jones. South African Bridget Jones.

There's no time for that, though.
There's no time for sleep when the days stand at eleven. The countdown has begun. It's official.

I'm ready.
I'm ready for the twenty four hours of airplane and transit hell that is the trip from Cape Town to Joburg to DC to Denver. I'm ready to be strip searched by TSA officials looking for contraband. Actually, that's a lie, too. Is anyone ever really ready to be strip searched?
I'm ready for bad airplane food, bad sleeping, turbulence while I'm in the restroom (every time, I swear). I'm ready to pack incorrectly, as always, and then not have what I need when I need it.
I'm ready for the inevitable breakdown when I realize that I've loved this experience so much.
I'm also ready the breakdown that will occur when I check the bank account.
I want to snuggle my fat cat and drive my car.
I want to eat things that don't involve the word curry or fried.

I dont want to leave, though. I'm finally getting some color into my skin. I'm finally settled into my routine. I love the beach and the ocean. I love the city and the trains. I love how loud it is here, I love how laid back the attitudes are.
I love everything.
I love the chaos. It fits me perfectly.

BUT-

The other night, Mike lost his wallet. Some time after, as I was leaving Green Point Stadium, the police stopped a man who was trying to get his hand into my bag. They slapped him as he protested, and told him to Shut up! And then they kept slapping him.
I was overwhelmed.

The amount of recent violence here has been incredible. Not in a good way. It's starting to wear on me. The racism, the poverty, the crime - it's too much.

So maybe a healthy dose of home might be a welcome change.

The Car Rental.

2010-11-16T05:01:00.000-08:00

Car rental is not an easy thing.
That is a universal truth.

However, it can be hilarious, as well. (Here, people pronounce as well as one word, making it sound like "asswell." That, too, is hilarious in its own way.)

After we realized that we needed a credit card to rent that cars, Philipp, Mike's roommate stepped forward and gallantly offered his. Without him, we'd never have left Cape Town.
The two of us were the only drivers throughout the 2200 kilometer adventure, meaning that we each spent at least 24 hours driving over a five day span.

Anyway, the whole trip went off without any major issues, but there were a couple of minor ones that presented a few problems.

I hit a curb.
The first day was a 9 hour adjustment period. It's really hard to remember that you have an entire vehicle on the left side of you and nothing on the right, so you naturally want to orient yourself to the left side of the road. But you're on the right side of the car.
So - we were driving, I was too close to the left, I hit the curb, I bent part of the hubcap and scratched the rim a little bit.

We checked it out and the car was fine, but we knew we'd be in some serious trouble with the car company. Apparently, the fine print (which we examined quite closely) tells you that even though you've paid for extra super executive cover, the "tyres, hubcaps, rims, and wheels" aren't covered.

And of course, one of my hubcaps got stolen or went missing along the way.
One day, Philipp was driving next to me when he noticed that I was missing a back hubcap.
(This is where I would like to insert the fact that I've never lost a hubcap before in my life.)

We knew we had only one option: replace the two hubcaps. If the rental car company saw the damaged one, they'd immediately do rim inspection and realize that I was the source of the problem and then proceed to charge us wild amounts of money for a problem that wasn't really a problem.

So - we started looking for Nissan Tiida hubcaps. And we didn't see any. Well, that's not entirely true. We did. We were stuck behind a South African police vehicle at a checkpoint for a good ten minutes and they had a Nissan Tiida with exactly the hubcaps I needed.
I told Philipp that I'd give him R10 if he stole them right then and there, but obviously, that wasn't an option.
Had I been smart, I would have offered them cash to buy them off of the police officers right then and there.

But I'm not.
Either that or I'm cautious, especially when it comes to shady dealings with the law.

We drove back to Cape Town.
We woke up early on Friday - we had to have the cars back in the city before 9:30 or we'd be charged for another day of rental.
So we drove toward the city looking for hubcaps on Nissans, whether they were parked or in a shop.
We didn't see any that could be conveniently stolen, so we went into a wheel shop and inquired. We were told that they only sell real Nissan hubcaps in Nissan dealerships.
So we went to Cape Town, but by the time we got there, we were out of time.

We pulled over into a parking lot. I pulled the damaged hubcap off of my car while Philipp pulled two hubcaps off of his car. He put them back on my car and then we threw the damaged one away.
Carol suggested that we take all four off since they were "stolen" but we decided it'd be better just to go with it as it was.

So we drove them back to the rental place. We made it with three minutes to spare. I drove conveniently into a dark corner so that the vehicle inspection wouldn't necessarily be so thorough. I signed off on the car after the man had inspected it and declared it perfect.
Whew.

Then we told them that the other car had had two hubcaps stolen. What's the procedure from here? I asked.
The woman's face grew grave. "You should have just stolen some," she said. We tried to look like that hadn't even been an option. "It's normally a R450 handling fee, plus the cost of hubcaps, plus a percentage of the cost of the hubcaps," she said. I felt my heart sink. "But," she said, "I'll take you. You can just buy new hubcaps."

Relief.
She drove us to a dealership that even my GPS couldn't find and we proceeded to cut a deal with the people there. Instead of R700 for each hubcap they charged us R550 (making the total R1100), and we slipped her a R100 bill for her trouble.
They took one hubcap off a new car and then gave us another, and the deal was done.

And when we left, I felt so much better. When it was all said and done, we paid less than R6500 in total for ten people to rent the car for six days and for replacement hubcaps and wheel-greasing - it's the South African way.

I felt so relieved, overjoyed, immensely pleased.

It was such a lovely trip.
I also really enjoy driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road.

More of the trip to come.
But first - Bafana Bafana, tomorrow night at 9:30 at Green Point Stadium in Cape Town.
I bought my shirt today off of a vendor on the street who was in no mood to negotiate - none of them were, so I settled on a jersey for less than R70 ($10) and a flag for R30.
Deal done.
Excitement is setting in. Mike and another American kid are cheering for the USA.

A Township Perspective, my contribution to the Projects Abroad South Africa blog

2010-11-15T04:16:00.000-08:00

I came to South Africa with a limited idea of what a township might be. People living in shacks, I thought. Of course that’s what a township is. But that’s the most basic definition of what a township could be. There is a sense of removal from those people you see in pictures, or read about – the people who live in somewhere far away in a shack.

My first memory of Cape Town is seeing a township along the left side of the highway as we drove away from the airport. I later learned that it was Khayelitsha, one of the biggest townships in South Africa. I’ll never forget the cars speeding past the homes, the corrugated iron, long rusted from wear, that made up the roofs and the sides; the blue fabric tarps; the trash littering the ground, intertwined with the metal of the fences.

This past week, I drove past Khayelitsha again, this time headed east. I drove and Khayelitsha followed me. Hills covered with shacks, uneven but sturdy in their construction. From the highway, it seems as if there’s no organization. They sit crookedly on the hills, not uniform in any way. I couldn’t believe immensity of it. It spread around me, almost endless.

I hadn’t imagined the townships to be so very human. This is something that perhaps everyone visiting a township or reading about them should keep it mind – the humanity. The people in townships are people. They’re not there by choice (unless they are), but they are making do with the materials that they have been given. They’re living their lives, just like you or me.

This past weekend a tourist couple was hijacked in Gugulethu and the wife was found dead in Khayelitsha. This incident of violence has shocked the world and will spread fear about the safety of townships. Perhaps this story can serve as a precaution to people wishing to venture into the townships to get a perspective on life there, but I also think it should serve as a reminder. The townships are not tourist attractions – they shouldn’t be treated as zoos. The people there are not there to be gawked at; they don’t stand around waiting for tourists to snap pictures of them. They don't exist to live forever in photo albums of the fortunate.

Townships aren’t far away. They’re closer than you’d ever think. They’re the reality that many South Africans face every day. But they’re also a forgotten segment of society. I was on a train last weekend riding next to a middle-aged white couple. We were speaking about our volunteer work with Projects Abroad, and the fact that we work in townships came up. My younger brother spoke of the violence that he sees everyday, about the children he loves so much, about the poverty there, and the woman replied that it’s a shame that there are so many social problem in the townships and reminded us that those impressions are not really South Africa.

I was offended. Social problems aren’t part of the REAL South Africa? The social problems shouldn’t be relegated to land not occupied by whites. The social problems affecting the townships are social problems that affect South Africa. South Africa, like any other country on this earth, has social problems. There are poverty, crime, corruption, education and health issues everywhere. This is a universal problem – the problem of problems. They exist. There is no perfect society – at this point in time, it seems impossible that one might ever exist. But the townships should not be left to cope without the unified assistance of their countrymen. They should not be abandoned just because there is no chance. There is always a chance.

I spent a month working in Vrygrond, a township in the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town. While I was there, I spent quite a bit of time walking through it. My terrible sense of direction would have found me lost and wandering, but my colleagues wouldn’t let me walk alone, and I was grateful for their guidance and their willingness to share their experiences with me. While I was there, I became friends with the people I worked with. We shared inside jokes, we laughed, we worked.

Even though there are problems including poverty, HIV/AIDS, under-education, and crime, a sense of hope lives in these communities. There is such a sense of triumph, of accomplishment and expectations; it’s contagious. Family trumps all and even though things are sometimes slow moving, there is an overwhelming sense of future for the people there.

The townships have a sense of community unlike any other I’ve experienced while in Cape Town. I have enjoyed the hospitality of a woman who let me come into her home to conduct interviews, who made me tea in her tiny kitchen, who let me carry her children around. This was no woman begging for handouts, this was a proud and dignified mother, an intelligent teacher, a strong community leader.

She spoke of her neighborhood nostalgically - speaking of its birth and growth and the momentous occasion a couple of years ago when they finally got electricity. She told me that even though some people are ashamed to come from such informal settlements, she has a sense of pride about her home. I agree; her home is lovely, clean and well kept, something that people assume might not be possible in a township – which is a lie that helps perpetuate the idea that people coming from townships are dirty and unclean. Her home is just that, a home. It's lived in and well-loved by the family who keep it.

She told me that her sister always tells people about the view from her house, which is a three-room shack on the edge of a township. I went to the edge of her property and looked. Behind me were small shacks and other crudely constructed houses, electricity connected from the tall wooden poles scattered almost randomly throughout, but in front of me spread the nature reserve, all white sand and green brush and blue sky. Above me hung plastic flags representing different countries, fluttering colors against the sky.

I felt like I too was at home.

http://www.mytripblog.org/pg/blog/kbarry/read/17450/a-township-perspective

Guy Fawkes Friday

2010-11-05T03:51:00.000-07:00

It's Guy Fawkes day.
I don't know much about it. I know it has something to do with an obviously thwarted plot to blow up British Parliament by a guy named Guy Fawkes on the fifth of November.
Apparently in South Africa, it is celebrated with eggs and fireworks and maybe knives and stones put into socks. But that's only apparently.

The ride to work was uncharacteristically smooth. Of course, I missed the 8:47 train. My phone has been acting up lately; it constantly believes that it is somewhere around 2:15 am and so I'm constantly having to manually reset it to ensure that I am indeed woken up at the right time. However, my guesswork isn't always the most accurate, and so when my phone said 8:47 this morning, I didn't believe it. Turns out, I should have.
I crossed the road right as the railway crossing was cleared for traffic to move through again, disappointment pouring out of me. Damn! I wanted to yell. Everyday I'm late. I'm supposed to be at work at 9 o'clock but I'm always on the 9:05 train, which presents a problem. I get to work around 9:30, my arrival usually precipitated by a text to my boss Rebecca sending my apologies.

*

My stress this morning was not undue: we had a writing workshop today. I enjoy these sort of things, even though they tend to be a bit repetitive. It's nice to brush up on things, remind myself why I'm not a journalist, and get some writing done.
Here's a snippet from a writing exercise:

· Silver, or gold, glinting in the sun. Except for the strips of silver tape hiding the cracks, the broken space with nothing behind it. 710-PTV, stamped on metal, sits in front of white-capped mountains and green plains. Zero, waiting for acceleration, the white light set against the bright blue of the background. Red lights flicker then disappear. Ignition. The soft purr is lost under the thrum of music, pouring steadily into the small space. Fingers touch a dial, but barely, and the sound fades then disappears entirely. The hum remains, louder now. Tan fabric, tan plastic interior. Gray spreads before me, leading into the glass-covered information panel. Bare feet press into the grooved pedal, easing, pushing movement. Glass, glinting in the sun, reflecting pools of sky and clouds back out to the world. Silver, or gold, glinting in the sun. Simon.

Ah, Simon. My beloved.

But I enjoy the presentations. They're a nice break from the monotony and they give my slagging motivation a lift.

Ah, I'll have two working weeks left once I return. That is when the most of everything will happen. There will be no time for sleep, no time to dream. Only to time to work, and write, and live. Oh, and packing must happen at some point. Here, there will be no time for going back, no time for things left unpacked, things left unfolded, no cupboard left unopened and cleared.

During this time, I need to finish editing a short video, writing a newsletter cover story about townships, writing a piece about wine, a piece about domestic workers, and a piece about American influence in South Africa.

And yet I hesitate here, knowing I've got so much. I want to relish this working environment by relishing my lack of productivity.

So I take my computer with me on the adventure and will hopefully get some work done while I'm away. That might be entirely a lie. Perhaps I'll get nothing done. Perhaps I shouldn't even take my computer with me.

Perhaps this is some morbid foreshadowing.

Ah. Decisions.

We leave tomorrow morning. I must be on the train at 7:21. From there, we'll pick up the rental cars in Cape Town and then drive 8 and a half hours to Jeffrey's Bay.

Three nights there.

Then two and a half hours to Knysna for two nights and then the return.

You'll be able to reach me by cell phone or email the entire time. Just a reminder, my number is +27 766658767 just in case.

And then two weeks until Denver.

Wow. Time is flying, speeding, and I'm just along for the ride.

oh, p.s., Oktoberfest!

2010-11-04T01:56:00.003-07:00

Bacon, and then some

2010-11-04T01:42:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's because I've been reading "Eat Pray Love" and maybe it's because I realize that my time here is quickly coming to a close, but I want to entirely capture Cape Town in words. I want you to feel what I feel when I think of this city.

I realize that this isn't possible, but I also realize that I'll have some time during my (f)unemployment (not math-speak for function -- straight up unemployment with possibility of some fun) to recap my time here. So this blog should continue for a bit after - don't stop reading after December 1st.

It's like I was just saying to one of my work friends, "I miss bacon."
How do you blog about bacon?
You can't devote an entire blog to food (that's a blatant lie) - but I want to tell you all the things I think, all the comparisons I've drawn, all the strange and lovely things. One thing I can't give you is scent, but you'd not understand anyway, so that I won't concern myself with.

But, back to bacon.
The bacon here is not real bacon. I lust for slices of thick-cut, maple-cured bacon.
I mean, it's pork product, maybe just cut differently, but it lacks the sexy taste and texture that "real" bacon has.

Today, we are going to the Spur (it's the American-Indian themed restaurant here - sort of Chili's meets Denny's meets the Southwest) for breakfast. We always get there too late - breakfast ends at 11:30 - and are forced instead to order quesadillas or do the two-for-one burger deal. But today we are going for breakfast. There's a sense of excitement in the air (or maybe it's just me). We have the Spur Family Card, the frequent eater card. And we will be using it.
I'll report back.
It's probably going to be exactly what I'm expecting and I'm going to call myself notorious for having low food expectations. But it's breakfast! Breakfast for lunch! Nothing is better than that.

On the same breakfast-for-lunch thought path, there aren't any bagels here. Seriously, none. I would give anything to see a magical oasis of a Dunkin' Donuts and order an everything bagel slapped with a huge amount of cream cheese. The crinkle of the wrapping, the seeds falling off, the excess cream cheese coming through the hole in the middle - that is heaven.

The weight report!

I thought I’d lose weight here. That was a sorely misguided assumption. Instead, the pounds have slowly gathered around my thighs and in my stomach, thickening my arms, and probably my face, softening my usually angular appearance. While I don’t quite yet resemble the typical African mama, I’m still not entirely happy with the way things have gone.

Mama P tells me that I can starve myself when I get home, and while I have no intentions of starving, I also have no intentions of living off of meat, meat, meat, custard, and other sugars. Did I mention meat? I sorely crave a chicken breast served with brown rice and vegetables – fresh vegetables, not flash frozen, over-boiled mixes. Margreet and I tried to convince her that potatoes and white rice are never served together, but she remains adamant that this is South African food.

It may not be entirely South African, but it is definitely cuisine enjoyed by the colored and black cultures. At the birthday party last weekend, I saw something stewing at the dessert table, and poked at it with the serving spoon. “It’s sweet potato stew,” said Mama P’s mother, a severe looking woman with blue eyes. She had changed from her heels into soft brown slippers, somehow making her appear shorter and more squat than she already is. “You must try it,” she said, spooning a heaping helping onto her own plate and then pouring the ever-present custard over it.

I did the same, minus the heaping helping part. “No,” she corrected me. “You must stir it around and dig deep into the pot.” So I did. I took it back to the table, sat down, and stared at it. Sweet potato stew? At least “stewing” was the right verb to describe the pot, I thought. I poked at it again, this time with my fork. I tasted it. It was delicious. Thinking Vitamin A and not fatty milk product, I proceeded to devour the entire dish.

It’s the devouring that’s the problem, but it simply can’t be helped. You have to eat it, you’re guilt-tripped if you don’t, and the prospect of facing the same dish for three days is hard to stomach. Margreet and I have taken to calling ourselves “The Big Two” after the Big Five: lions, cheetahs, hippos….and two others (us).

It’s not entirely safe to run around the neighborhood – I did it a bit in the beginning, but since the transfer north to Wynberg, I’m finding that I just don’t have the energy or the daylight to go and run around once I get home from work – and I’ve been unable to make the time to get anything done here, but with unemployment looming, I see the opportunity to try and make things work as far as exercise once I return home.

I can join a yoga studio, I can walk, and oh, I cannot wait to get back on a bicycle. Perhaps I’ll even let Mike drag me to 24 Hour Fitness so the fit, muscular, tan people can laugh me at. This winter I want to learn to ski, so hopefully that will be something I can get into. And spring and summer will bring long biking sessions – hopefully both in the mountains and in the city.

I’ll be back to normal in no time.

But I will not give up bacon. Never!

Today's train report : rainbows.

It rained last night. I'm so grateful that we don't have a tin roof like some of the families here. The rain just clatters and stomps across them in the night. But this morning dawned wet, water dripping from the roofs and the trees, puddles everywhere. The sky above the mountains was gray and gloomy, huge black clouds looming. I love that time though. When everything is either gray or green. It's the post-rain glory, everything looks brighter and more distinct. I was late for the train (always) and as I was walking, I looked down the road and saw a rainbow, hovering low. It was the lowest rainbow I'd ever seen and it appeared to be less than 200 meters away. So close!

I may be holding your hand, but I'm holding it loose

2010-11-03T06:08:00.000-07:00

I love my brother more and more every day. I'm so grateful to have him as my brother.
The other night, we were out and in a rare moment, he leaned over and poked me in the side. "You know, you're not such a bad travel partner," he said.
In Mike-speak, that means he loves me.

Mike, in his infinite wisdom, told me the other day that I'm going to have to marry a man who I love more than he loves me.
Why? I asked, offended.
Because if not, you'll never settle down, he said.
What about equal love? I wanted to know.
He rolled his eyes.

The inevitable has happened again.
The lead up was not slow, but the tipping point was sudden, irrevocable, immense.

I sat on the patio of a downtown jazz bar, sipping a glass of red wine. I sat across from the group. The man next to me leans over and asks me where I'm from.
We begin talking.
His wife is from Canada. We talk snowboarding. We talk snow. We talk travel.
And then the guy that I've been seeing for nearly a month leans over and interrupts. "My name is James." He shakes the man's hand.
"Clint," the man replies.
Clint and I hadn't hadn't even introduced ourselves yet. We were just talking. There was no imminent threat.

It happens every time, in every relationship. It's always the point at which I realize I'm through.
It's the point at which the guy I'm dating tries to assert his dominance over me, always in a public setting. It's the point at which I realize I'm no longer my own person in his eyes, that he feels as though he mustn't let me have a moment to myself.
It's the point at which I know it's time to go.

The trajectory of my relationships is thus: meet, hang out, fall into a comfortable pattern, boy falls in love, I go along with it, sometimes in love myself, eventually this fizzles into my growing discomfort. Soon I can't stand anything. I sit, foggy minded, cataloging his faults in my mind: I hate his posture, I hate the way he washes his hair, I hate his facial hair, I hate the way he dances, I hate the pants he's wearing, I hate the way he agrees with me, I hate the way he doesn't know anything.
It's usually the not knowing anything that begins to irk me, the point where my mind and eyes begin to wander.
After my cataloging, I think maybe I just need some time to get used to it. And then the control sets in. The desperate fear that if I'm left alone I'll act on my independence and flee. (Their fears are entirely valid. After the cataloging, there's really not much left to do for them but beg.) Then comes the public hugging, the too-close-hand-holding, the oppression, the maddening oppression.
Then I start to nag, start to answer questions sharply, start to get uneasy.

Ah.
I can't stand it.

I want someone who makes me want to know more, I want someone who can talk about issues without sounding like an idiot, I want someone who can back up their statements with fact. I want someone who can use big words effortlessly but not pretentiously. I want someone educated, someone driven, someone who's not making excuses for their own lack of accomplishment. I want someone to push me, to make me feel beautiful and worth it, but who also knows their own value.

I have friends who just moved to Portland together who are intellectually compatible on all levels, whose discussions and interests are, well, interesting to each of them and not so intertwined that they've lost their senses of self. They are two distinct personalities, yet they are so well matched, it's insane. I often wonder if I would find that with someone. Find that intensity that can be calm and laid back but also enough to set a life course in motion.

I want someone to respect my mind, but more importantly, I want to respect their mind in return.

Ugh. And so this chapter ends, I think.

*

But I'm glad.
I like that I've been able to pinpoint the problem with men and will hopefully be able to move into the next period of my dating life with grace, maturity, and a sharper eye for intelligence.

I've also been starting to get anxious about what I want to do when I get back home. I think this anxiety is very healthy, hopefully, and I'm going to attempt to control this energy and channel it into wild productivity upon return.
I think that South Africa was the perfect sojourn from "the real world," which I've not yet publicly admitted yet but was exactly my purpose in coming here. I was putting off real life until I had accepted that real life was coming whether I liked it or not.

I love it here but there's that lingering sense of stagnancy about the whole thing. I want to resume the life course that will eventually lead to nothing more than mortgages, death and taxes, hopefully with some lovely vacations in between.
Oh but I miss my car. I can't explain to you how much I love driving, and especially how much I love driving Simon. Mom knows this - she offered to let me drive home (not Simon, sadly) from DIA on December 1st. I've been begging since October 2006 when I first came home from Loyola.

But I'm ready. I'm not ready to leave this place, of course, but I'm ready to attack real life like a rabid animal (that was a horrible simile, forgive me). I'm ready to begin.

*

Language is a funny thing. I speak English. I am ashamed that I only speak one language. I have six years of Spanish under my belt. I still can't converse properly, although if it was life or death, I'd do alright. I read it and write it better than I speak it, and my comprehension is moderate.

Here in Cape Town, the primary languages are English and Afrikaans. Afrikaans is derived from Dutch, mostly, but has Germanic elements as well. Margreet, my Dutch roommate, speaks with Mama P in Afrikaans. I usually can use context clues and tonal cues as well as hand movements to figure out what they're talking about.
Margreet also speaks French.

I have decided that whenever anyone is speaking a non-native language, they think in their first secondary language. For example, whenever I'm learning anything in Afrikaans, I use Spanish to say "and." Because somehow my brian is trying to put Afrikaans into the Spanish folder in my head.
This is proven (however non-scientifically) by Magreet's lapses into French when trying to speak in English or German.

Last night, she was saying something in some language and I looked at her and answered in English. She looked at me, surprised, and I shrugged. "Latin," I told her. I love Mr. Hilbert for making us do etymologies for weeks - as a result, I have a nice idea of where words originate, especially if they are Latin or Greek in origin. "And Spanish," I added.
Words are so similar in different languages, really. What Margreet said last night in French translated to "easy" in Spanish, hence my basic comprehension. Here, I've found that I can usually figure out what people are talking about based on words that I can hear in their sentences. All you have to know is the root, or some synonyms, and you've got it. Comprehension isn't complete but it's present.

*

The weekend trip is nearly managed - we're headed off to Jeffry's bay early Saturday morning. We'll spend three nights there and then go back to either Plettenberg Bay or Knysna for two more nights before returning home.

It should be nice to get away.

The Racism Rundown (incomplete)

2010-11-01T06:38:00.000-07:00

Every time I spend all day writing a blog, I go to publish it and then it magically deletes it all and makes me sign in again. I realize that this is partially my fault, and partially the fault of the all-knowing internet, but I will retype this blog.

I just wanted to have something to publish today.

I spend a lot of time writing about how much fun I'm having.
I am having fun, actually.
But this place is not all party, I promise.

I've been actively avoiding trying to encapsulate this place entirely, avoiding telling you the things that irk me or the things that are starting to grate at me.

But it's time.

I've opened my eyes to the true nature of life in and around Cape Town and found that all that glitters is not gold. The sandhill in Vrygrond, the largest single standing free space in the township, covered in glass that glints under the South African sun, is testament to the waste of beautiful natural resources and careless disregard for the environment. The trash that litters the roads, blowing in the wind, corroborates that testimony.
There are so many silent reminders here about lack of education, lack of resources, lack of exposure.
Because so much of it is exposure.

I'm starting to get sick of the racism that floods around the people, weaving their daily lives into a sort of battle pitting them against what they construe to be "other." Other is any color but their own.
To be with blacks is shameful, to be with the colored, the same.
I have said that I walk the lines between the three, and from all sides, I hear the same. "They don't want us here," the chorus echoes, black voices blending with white. And the colored people are pitted with the blacks by the whites, but are steadfast in their disapproval of black culture.

It starts at home. Priscilla hates black people. Her paranoia is contagious. At every sound, she runs to the front window, checking nervously for signs of intruders. The gates are padlocked, the alarms set. Anyone who walks down the street, anyone black, does not belong. She speaks ill of them, calling them "illiterate," a designation I find to be mildly amusing based on the fact that her hatred betrays her own lack of education. She spits the word, feeling its venom tingling against her tongue, I can tell.

Her fear keeps her from traveling anywhere. She refuses to go into town, she refuses to go anywhere but her church, her work, the shops.

Everyone accuses everyone else of everything - but isn't that the same as it always is?
I worry that change won't come during my lifetime. I worry that if it does come, it will come in the form of a civil war.

Everywhere here there is a sense of stagnancy, of change that hasn't come, of fear, of lowered expectations, but of hope.
But there are no actions.

Part of my first article, incomplete of course

2010-10-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

Hello,

Just to prove that I'm actually moderately accomplished, I've posted the very incomplete text of my first article!
So read it. Enjoy it.
Know that it's not done yet but still, it's on its way.

(insert clever yet serious title)
(insert clever subheading about rising from the ashes of a fire...phoenix....something)

A pile of charred wood is all that’s left of the shacks. The sand where they sat is littered with burned belongings: a blackened Bible, an office chair, clothes no longer usable. The metal sheets that had once been walls have been salvaged, taken for use in new shacks, the obviously burnt edges blending in amongst the rust.

The first fire broke out three weeks before in the same shack that would be the ignition point of the second fire, which would tear through the informal settlement of Village Heights in Cape Town, depriving fifteen families of their homes.

Fires in informal settlements like Village Heights represent one of the biggest dangers of living in such a community. Even with attempts to build with space on all sides, fires such as the one that destroyed fifteen shacks can spread quickly since the materials used to construct the homes are highly flammable and unregulated.

“It was better under apartheid,” says Bernie, the community leader who has created and maintained the Village Heights library, and who is the recipient of the first Projects Abroad sandbag house in South Africa. “At least then we all had our own homes and jobs. Now we have nothing.”

According to residents, after the first fire the government offered four wooden posts, five pieces of metal and some grounding plastic as a replacement. However, the metal went to the construction of a roof and the residents were left to use plastic to create walls. During the second fire, a woman was badly burned when the plastic melted onto her skin.

Proper housing is something that many people living in South Africa lack, for a multitude of reasons. “I’ve been on a waiting list for twenty one years,” says one woman who lost her home in the fire. “My daughter’s twenty now.”

While debates rage about governmental involvement and personal contribution for houses, the issue remains that people lack proper living quarters. Residents of the informal settlements around Cape Town and throughout South Africa are forced to create homes using materials that they can find, salvage, or buy, resulting in homes that often lack even basic features such as a floor. Security measures are an afterthought, allowing for criminal activity to flourish in the neighborhoods.

Sand is nearly ubiquitous in Cape Town and the surrounding areas, and it might present a feasible solution to the problem of the shack homes in the ever-expanding informal settlements. Filling bags with sand and then stacking them within a frame can create a solid structure that is built both efficiently and quickly.

Beginning with materials, construction with sandbags can be a cheap alternative to traditional building methods. Since all that is needed to build a sandbag structure are bags, sand, cement and a wood and metal frame, the cost drops significantly due to the lack of construction equipment needed. No cranes, no stacks of bricks and no heavy vehicles entering or leaving the construction site.

This cost effective creation is also eco-friendly. Since most of the building can be done with materials found on-site, the need for waste is nearly eliminated. This waste elimination plays a large factor in the eco-friendly nature of the sandbag buildings.

Builders who choose to use sandbag building as an alternative to conventional construction methods also stand to gain carbon credits for their choices. Carbon credits programs offer financial incentives for companies to build in keeping with the “green” trends and for waste elimination and recycling of materials.

This waste elimination and recycling presents an opportunity for those who are economically disadvantaged. By being able to build effectively and also save money, they can increase community bonds and safety.

Besides being fireproof, the sand structures also present an element of soundproofing not found in the corrugated iron structures, which currently make up most of the homes in the townships and informal settlements in the Cape Town area.

They are also not easy to deconstruct or demolish, in essence creating a lasting home that won’t be victim to natural disasters such as flooding or tornadoes.

The solidity of the sand as it is packed and stacked neatly to create walls allows for an element of indoor climate control that supersedes that provided by the corrugated structures as well. The sand essentially insulates the home, keeping it warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.

The surmountable caveat to sand building is that it is not well known. The newly homeless fire victims had never heard of sandbag building when asked about it yet were curious as to how it might work. They eagerly agreed that the community would want to be involved in such building, given the right materials.

Based on the readily available materials and the community mentality that many of the neighbourhoods have, it seems that if sandbag structures could catch on, they might make a wonderful improvement for communities who are underfunded and under protected.

Projects Abroad began constructing their sandbag house at the site of the Village Heights Library in August of 2010. While normally the construction of such a building (one room) would take less than a month, due to staggered volunteer arrivals, the project has continued for more than three months. However, the house is beginning to take shape.

The project supervisor, Deen Singh remains optimistic that the sandbag building will be used for the betterment of the community. He explained that everything must be done to help the children.

....

it will go on.

Scattered Tuesday Musings

2010-10-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

Funny, here you never hear the classic bar songs that you'd normally hear in the US.
I've gone two months without hearing Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" and I'm not entirely upset about it.
The music here changes wildly depending on where you are, obviously, but I've found that music here is everywhere. People don't have iPods. They have music on their phones or on small mp3 players. Often, instead of using headphones, they just play the music out loud. I hear a lot of the same music here, easy repetition that is slowly shaping my experience.
Mama P has horrible taste in music, and always listens to strange songs I can only describe as depressingly country. That or "Lady in Red." I will always think of her when I hear that song.

I love how loud this country is. I love that music goes with everything. I love that so many of my blissful memories are so tied to the music that I was listening to at those points. And maybe that's why music is such an enduring cultural element - there's nothing more communal but also individual than the experience that is music. Everyone individualizes the music they love and makes it their own.

***

Last night, I was playing pool with the boys in Claremont. I am a terrible pool player, although every now and then I get a lucky shot. It's not that I don't know how to play (okay, maybe I could use some lessons in technique) but it's also that I just lack the patience to focus on the shot. It's all about angles and even though I know where I'd like to put the ball, it doesn't always seem to work out that way.

I'm coming to realize that a lot about myself. I can hear bits of accents and things but can't recreate them. I can see the difference between certain things yet can't replicate the movements.

Alas. The boys were good sports about it and luckily, I was able to hold my own. (A little.)

On deck tonight is family dinner. I'm cooking for the first time since I got here. I think I'm going to make the one thing I do well, which is mustard chicken. It sounds horrifying but it's actually delicious. Anyway, we shall see.
Also, I'm almost done with my first article!!
I'm going to post most of it immediately following this, so if you're reading this, maybe you've already read it.

2010-10-25T06:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/oct2010/ca20101022_785986.htm

A Bit of Philanthropy with Your Résumé?

"Career advancement" and "philanthropy" may not seem to belong in the same sentence, but Projects Abroad is melding them to everyone's benefit

Worth a read, especially since it pertains to me.

The Shack

2010-10-23T05:23:00.001-07:00

It’s a dark bar guarded by a dark man. We enter, climbing the concrete steps into a dimly lit space. What I don’t know is that this bar goes on forever, winding up sets of stairs, through rooms with bars, pool tables, couches, a kitchen. But I’ll find that out soon enough.
I stare around, squinting my eyes in surprise at the crowd gathered here. I recognize the music. Here, I can rarely name artists and song titles, but here, I know them. A man with square black glasses and a mustache slips past me and I smile, repulsed by his fashion sense but intrigued by his presence. Hipsters? In Cape Town?
Really.

We get cheap drinks. I stated earlier in the night that I think Black Label is the PBR of Cape Town and I believe I’ve been proven right. Everyone is tattooed cute and I’m trying not to stare. Thank god I wore my black skinny jeans and not some dress, I think, and then shake the notion out of my head with a toss of my hair and a flip of my fringe. (Yes, I fit right in here. Not on purpose, and not really, but the façade will keep them at bay for now.)

A man sits next to us. He wants to talk to my tall blond friend. She stands up and sits on my other side. She pulls out her phone, and then walks across the room. The other two are cuddling. I stare for a while. There’s a nearly melted candle on the table in front of me. I stare at that when I get bored of staring at jean shorts.

I turn to the man. “Tell me something,” I say, uttering my most used but worst pick up line. It’s all right; I have no intention of actually picking him up. “I’m bored.” For once, this is not a lie. Sometimes it’s easier to tell strangers the truth.
“Anything?” he says, turning to me, exhaling blue smoke and then tapping the ash off of his cigarette.
“Anything.”
“What color was your room when you were ten?” he asks. He has dark hair and a straight nose.
“Care Bears,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “It wasn’t painted until I was twelve.”
“It was painted Care Bears when you were twelve? That’s not what I asked.” He replies.
I spent a minute explaining. Care Bears up to twelve, blue and green post twelve.
“You seem very sure of this,” he says.
“I wasn’t ten too long ago,” I respond.
We chat about Los Angeles and La Jolla for a while. And then London.
My friend sits back down.
“Her eyes are almost as beautiful as mine,” he says to her. I roll my beautiful eyes.
He asks her where she’s from. She tells him Cape Town. She’s the one who’s lying now. I tell him she’s my host sister. We’re together in the lie.
Finally they tell me we’re leaving.
I stand and smile at him. “It was lovely not to meet you,” I say and then turn and walk down the concrete stairs into the darkness of Cape Town night.

Friday thoughts

2010-10-22T05:46:00.001-07:00

You know, you're rather profound for being sick on antibiotics. It sounds like you came to South Africa for your brain, but it's your soul that is growing and being nourished. It's like a likable version of Eat, Pray, Love.

Feel better soon.

(The above comment is something that my friend Beau Smith posted on my wall. It was unexpected and it made my day!)

And that's really all I have to say for Friday because I think that pretty much sums it up.

He's right.

love to all.

You know you're sick when you start making obvious grammatical errors

2010-10-20T01:54:00.000-07:00

Wednesday is normally drunken shenanigan night.
Tonight, however, there will be no drunken adventures for me. I'm exhausted and on antibiotics for the first time since I got here. I actually might be running a fever.
Ugh, woke up yesterday and it was a flashback to Loyola graduation. I had the intention of going in to work, but then I curled up and slept for eight hours.
Prudently, I stayed home last night.
And, for my trouble, I woke with a head cold.

I'm three doses of 500mg cipro in, and signs of improvement can be seen but I'm erring on the side of caution and remaining stagnant for the next few days.
Maybe tomorrow I'll sleep again and work from home.
I left my charger at a friend's house so I need to them or I will have no power, so that won't be good.

I have completely lost my train of thought.

Ah.
Yes.

We've been talking about things a lot lately.
Things I've been hesitant to post to my blog lest you think this trip was in vain.
And today I feel like telling you.

I came here to do a business internship. I paid with the expectation that I would be doing an internship.
The website says:

We organize work experience internships in a number of business sectors. These currently include chartered accounting, business consulting, marketing and branding, media/PR, and international development projects.

Interns working on an accounting internship will join a firm of accountants and work on a variety of tasks. Your responsibilities will normally include book keeping, forensic and management accounting, advisory roles including corporate recovery and restructuring, audits, tax assessments, and trustee services.

Interns working in marketing, media, or PR work on marketing strategies, marketing campaigns, branding, various sponsorship deals, events, networking, public speaking, and writing for the press.

We also offer several specific business internships in International Development and Business Enterprise.

As an intern working on one of our Business internships, the actual work you do will depend on the internship and will vary. You could find yourself gaining exposure to board meetings to observe business development plans, attending client meetings, working on set briefs, putting together portfolios, helping with events, and much more. As with all internships, you should be prepared to undertake some tasks such as proofreading, filing, and answering the phone, but provided you show enthusiasm and willingness, your English speaking colleagues will be happy to give you insight into their area of expertise. You'll go home with a new set of skills and a good understanding of how the business world works.

During the internship, interns are expected to be punctual, professional and hard working. You will be required to work an average of 35 hours per week, usually Monday-Friday. When you arrive at work on your first day, you will be assigned a supervisor who will be able to advise and support you during your internship, and of course our Projects Abroad staff are always available to help.

Developing internships in other business areas is always possible - just ask!

But what I was doing here was nothing like what I expected.
They reneged on my original internship days before I arrived.
And when I got here, they had no idea what I was going to be doing.
That reeks of mismanagement and lack of preparation.

The pre-trip is so beautifully arranged and communicated, and pick up is lovely. But project-wise, people are often left to fend for themselves. They are dropped at projects that don't know that they're even coming to work.

When I leave, I'm going to tell them that there's no way I would send anyone here to do any sort of internship. Because I came here to learn and I was put into a place that was neither professional nor very structured and because of it, I wasn't able to learn anything (except how to use a copy machine).

And I'm not learning.

Even now, in journalism, I'm not working alongside real journalists. I'm in an office with other volunteers and I'm setting my own pace. I'm blogging right now when I should be writing something useful.
But selfishly, I feel better for being in journalism, because at least I'm using internet and space that my payment might have paid for instead of being thrown into a strange project that didn't even know I was coming and being used to fulfill a gap that couldn't have been filled.

And if it wasn't for my host mother and my host house, which I love beyond belief, and the friends that I've made here (both Projects Abroad and otherwise), I'd feel as though I had no purpose being here.
Yes, I came here to explore and to live, but I also came here to learn about business. And the only thing I've learned about business thus far is that it takes a lot more than promises to get anything done.
So while both the business internship and the journalism internship are going to go on my resume, I feel as though I'm lacking the true experience that Projects Abroad promised - project-wise.

Projects Abroad says that it's what you put into your internship that matters, but there are matters of materials, etc, that can never quite be sorted out. One girl can't print things for her project because she has to pay for them out of her own pocket.
The projects are mis-managed and lack structure and focus. Instead, there is a sense of stagnancy about the whole thing. Productivity is by the wayside.

And thus I've learned about what not to do, and perhaps that's productivity in itself.

But please don't think that this doesn't mean that I'm not loving it here. I wish to stay here forever, if I could.
I love this place.
I love being here.
I love what I'm doing.
I love the cultural atmosphere, I love the languages, I love everything.
I am learning about myself, and about what I can do and what I'm capable of, and I believe that it's all knowledge in itself.
But I so badly wish I was coming back with actual business experience because I could have taken the money I spent to come here and gone around the world with it.

But for now, the frustrations are minimal. I wake up every day looking forward to spending time with the family I have here. And when we all get home, we sit and cook dinner and talk about our days.
The woman I live with is in HR and is a writer, so I feel as though maybe I have a lot to learn from her.

In other sad news, Dad and Jeanie have ended their relationship after three or so years.
I got the phone call the other day at work.
I didn't think it would upset me, but I spent that entire night sort of in a dark mood.
I know that I'm too old to be upset, but I was. I really was.
I guess I knew it was coming and I should have been prepared for it, but it sort of hit me strangely.

Weekend Wrap Up

2010-10-18T04:26:00.000-07:00

It's a small bar at the top of a backpacker's hostel on Long Street. You go in an unmarked door and you take the elevator to the sixth floor, and then you walk through some double doors, past the front desk and on through the winding halls (through a kitchen, too) that smell faintly of cat urine and finally up some stairs. The top of the hostel is open to the air, a rooftop oasis from the wild night. It's comfortable, couches everywhere, blankets for when you get cold.

The bartenders let me go back behind the small bar, covered sort of by flags of all nations (not the US or Ireland, though). They let me open Black Labels and pour shots. I take the money, hand it over and continue with my work.

One of the bartenders knows I like the Deftones, so every night he plays me a song I love. It's nice.

That was Friday. There was an international phone call that came in while I was up there, not necessarily paying attention to a game of pool. And then there may have been street food and dancing and a late night spaghetti adventure that involved me clamoring around the kitchen at five in the morning.

But then there was sleep. Saturday was a beautiful day for sleep.

And a nap.

And some delicious little pasta delight.

And then some more sleep.

Sunday was by far the most wonderful day I've had in Cape Town yet. I cannot believe how much I love water. We went to Muizenberg Beach. I took Margaret (my new Dutch roommate) to Muizenberg Market where we bought sunglasses. I am now the proud owner of a pair of knock-off Ray Bans. The vendor tried to take our money and then not give us two pairs because he was convinced that Margartet had stolen a pair. It took a good few minutes of tense conversation to get it all worked out, and in the end, he found the pair he thought she'd stolen and we went on our merry way.

We walked down the beach, found a nice spot, and set up camp. I laid out my stolen South African Airways blanket (hey, I paid for the flight ticket and I didn't drink any of the complimentary wine) and stretched out in the sun. We were joined by Mike and Philpp and their new roommate Utah as well as Ellie and Ryanne.

I got to swim in the ocean! It was so cold, but the day was hot and after awhile, all I felt was the sea around me. I swam and jumped in the waves. I let them lift me up and surround me and cover my head.

Afterward, I went and laid on my blanket and drank wine and soaked up sun and wind.

I was overjoyed.

Overjoyed, yet sunburned.

And so today, I have a red back that bears hand prints and other odd markings from where I attempted to put on sunscreen. Oh, but I'm so happy. I can't wait to get back in. I want the weather to be warm enough that I can go and lay out or go and swim without a wetsuit.

The train home was horrible. We missed the first train and had to wait nearly an hour for the second one, so we went to a local pub and had a beer. It was nearly empty, seated at the bar were people who looked as though they'd lived their entire life at the beach - leathery skin and graying hair, yet still slender.

We drank quickly, ignoring the drunken man who kept trying to engage us all in conversation - he thanked Mike profusely for bringing lovely women into the bar - and then went back to catch the train.

However, it seems that everyone within a ten mile radius wanted to catch the train at that particular time. It was a literal stampede of people rushing for the doors of the already quite full train. And so we jammed ourselves on. Well, some of us jammed ourselves on. Mike and Margaret were left standing on the platform and by the time I saw them and figured out their situation, I was sandwiched in between a stroller with some really sharp wheels, a woman and a baby, Philipp and a man.

As the train started moving, I felt the man put his head against my back. (He was probably a good five inches shorter than me.) His friends laughed. I shifted. He put his head back again. I turned entirely. My backpack was hanging off one shoulder, held against my stomach with my hand. As soon as I shifted he began a gross humping motion. At this, I turned and looked him square in the eye. "Don't even try it," I snapped.

"But you have such beautiful eyes."

I rolled them.

"NO." I said. "Get away from me."

I said it loud enough that the people around me could hear and then I gave the death glares I'm known for. He stopped, thankfully. And when we arrived at our station, I was grateful to be moved along in the crush of people exiting for safety.

Here's hoping that I don't find myself on a packed train anytime in the near future, as I'm apt to just wait for the next one.

I arrived home sunburned, exhausted and so happy to have spent the day in the sun.

And this week brings adventure as well. Robben Island on Wednesday with the Journalism people, hopefully the completion of my first story (I've been ADD-ing out on this one, in case you were wondering why it's taken me so long. I am going to do a work-from-home sort of thing tonight and try to get it all sorted.) Some more interviews and the beginning of two different stories.

And then what?

Next weekend, Biscuit Mill on Saturday and then hopefully a wine-biking tour sort of thing on Sunday.

I love this place.

I really do.

It's strange and it's wonderful and it's everything I never expected but could ever want.

Except I miss fiber bars and healthy food and real spinach.

Fireproof

2010-10-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last two days in a state of absolute bliss.

I'm invigorated. I'm excited. I am young.

Tuesday morning I went with Desiree, my pre-journalism minibus driver, to the site of the building project. It's in an informal settlement called Village Heights near Lavender Hill (that's where Mike works). By informal settlement, I mean community built entirely of shacks. No sewage systems, no toilets, just bits of tin and scraps of wood on sand.

This wonderful woman named Bernie has five children, two of whom aren't old enough yet to be in school. They hang around and watch the building project, clinging to their mother, too shy to say hi yet. She laughs and tells me that they're still getting used to white people.

The building project is in her backyard - it's going to be made into a creche for the neighborhood kids. It's a sandbag structure that's cemented on the outside. It's soundproof, and most importantly, fireproof.

They took me to a site a few paths down where three days ago twelve or fifteen shacks burnt to the ground after a fire was started in a shack.

I stood looking at the blackened pile in the sand. Burned wooden posts, once-colorful clothes now black, the remnants of a charred Bible. I stood there, gazing past the people who were pouring out their story for me at a man picking through the rubble with a stick, pulling out things he might find useful. His slow progress marked the time for me, as the stories came.

One man with four children no longer has identification or birth certificates for his children or himself.

Everyone has lost everything.

What are we supposed to do? was the refrain.

Every story came back to that.
We have nothing now.

And it broke my heart. I shifted the baby on my hip. (Bernie's youngest had finally warmed up to me enough to let me carry him around. I would pretend to drop him and a baby smile would break across his serious baby face.)

I listened as the government came up, adding to the melody. What have they done? What will they do? Nothing, nothing.

And we stood and they spoke and I felt their excitement.

Bernie told them all I was a journalist and I told her not to give me so much credit, but I felt it flow through them. The smiles told me everything.

You'll tell our story, someone will hear us.

And I tried to tell them that their story won't be told to mayors or governors but that it would be published in a small magazine.

Abroad!

Well, some copies will go abroad.

People will hear.

That's all that matters.

And then we walked back, I shifted the child again on my hips. I watched them speak and I felt that perhaps even the speaking was a start.

I came home happy and so full of everything.

Priscilla and I got a new roommate, her name is Magreet and she's 48 and from Holland. More on this to come. She has her own room, though she will come and use my bathroom. So I'll have to keep the Bat Cave clean, or at least clear.

Today, I brought my friend James with me to see Village Heights.

He came in to meet Mama P last night and I've yet to hear her reaction but I think it will be favorable. He's heard me speak of her all the time and he told me that he's sure that she loves me. "You can see it, she loves you much," he said. (and I glowed on the inside, I so very much respect that woman.)

He has lived in and around Cape Town his entire life but has never gone into the Cape Flats or the townships or anything. Up until last week he'd never come to my side of the tracks (literally) and so I've decided that I'm going to show him my Cape Town. We got in the minibus this morning with Desiree and I watched his eyes widen. We went through Vrygrond and then through Lavender Hill and then finally into Village Heights. The people took to him instantly, although they were a bit shocked that he was a South African and not a volunteer.

I took him to the burn site and left him to fend for himself while a crowd of well-meaning women descended on him to talk to him. He stood there and listened and observed and I was so proud of him. Not because he was making some big leap that he had been previously afraid to make, but because he actually asked me if he could go. The other day, he was driving me home and he told me that I should take him around sometime because he's never spent time where I live. I appreciated that.

Today, he jumped right in and helped mix cement and lift sandbags for the building project. I am secretly feeling as though I'm helping to bridge the gap that still exists between the whites and the colored and black here. It's not because anyone means for it to be there (that's not entirely true, but....), it's just that it's the way things are and no one sees fit to change them.

By the way, the building project manager thinks I'm adorable. I appreciate this support. He told me I was bubbly and adventurous, although he reprimanded the boys for letting me work so hard (since I am apparently a "lady lady" and not some sort of hulking man-girl).

Bernie also reprimanded James for not carrying my backpack as we walked through Lavender Hill. I was carrying her son Ethan and my backpack and when he offered to carry the backpack, she said, "Should have offered a long time ago."

It was cute.

Race is still very important here. It matters. And as an outsider, hanging out with a white crew, living with a colored woman but working with black and colored, I feel as though I'm able to walk between the invisible lines. I feel like I'm getting the full spectrum of life here and that's what I'm here to do. I can go to places where people live on meager government hand outs and I can go to places where people live comfortably and I can go drink a swanky cocktail and look adorable (ha, just kidding. I was really excited about my outfit last night.)

Ah, last night, fast cars and glittering city lights and sweet uninterrupted sleep.

And tonight, fast cars (maybe not) and dancing.

monday stuff

2010-10-11T06:01:00.000-07:00

The weekend brought many things, including rain.

I'm staring out at the gray day, thinking of everything.

My time here is drawing to a close, so short, it seems.

I have just seven weeks and one day left before I leave.

Wow.

Nearly halfway there.

And I feel like I just got here yesterday.

If time could suspend itself, just for a little bit, I'd be eternally grateful. I wish to float right here and right now for quite some time, watching and being and living.

Priscilla asked me if I had any regrets about coming here. I laughed. None whatsoever.

I wish I could explain it. It's not different and yet it's nowhere I've ever been before.

On Friday, as I was headed home on the train by myself around 6pm, I stood up to stand by the door for my stop. A man came up to me and said, "You stay in Muizenberg?"

"No," I said.

"You used to stay in Muizenberg?"

"No," I said. "I stay here."

"You know this is a black area, right?"

"Yes," I said. "I live here."

I find it interesting. I've been hanging out with a set of white kids from Cape Town and I've been listening to the things they have to say and seeing the places that they live and go, and I've been cataloguing it all next to my perceptions of the coloured experience and the black experience. It's drastically different.

We were out Friday night, late, and we were going to get a ride to meet up with my friends. The kids driving us were colored, friends of a girl I stay near. One man, a white bartender, told us we were making a huge mistake. I told him she'd gone with him before and that it shouldn't be an issue, and that at any rate, I wasn't about to let her go alone.

Again, we arrived quite safely in a nice car, and my friend's friends saw me. They immediately wanted to know who the "thugs" I was with were. I told them they were friends of a friend and they got apprehensive.

It's this ingrained tension and unease that's holding everyone back here, I think.

But alas, I'm happy here. I'm doing sociological research and I've come up with some lovely story ideas. Tomorrow I should be finishing up the building story since I'm going to do the interview for it and then on Wednesday I might be filming again.

Laundry, though, looms ahead of me, as always.

I'm getting a roommate on Friday, so I must do some legitimate cleaning (ah, the bane of my existence) before she arrives. I really don't want to have to share my room. Really.

Weekend Wrap Up

2010-10-08T05:59:00.000-07:00

Monday night was lovely.

Tuesday night was sweetened sleep.

Wednesday night stole my voice.

Thursday brought the sniffles.

And today, I'm still waiting to see what is in store for me.

I'm not giving the weekend my sickness.

I'm not going to let the fact that I have no voice get in the way of adventuring.

Tonight I will get dressed up and go out.

Tomorrow I will go to the old Biscuit Mill.

Maybe Sunday I will sleep, and clean, and get more sleep.

But maybe not.

Monday I have a production meeting (it's apparently what we'll be doing every Monday). Tuesday I'm interviewing the building project for my story. Wednesday I'm filming. My piece should be done by Thursday and then I should be able to start getting into the swing of things. I'd like to have another entire piece done by the end of next week, but I'm not seeing that as an actual possibility.

I seem to not be moving very quickly - especially today, with my brain off in the clouds of grog. (grog being the gross cold I seem to be coming down with)

I hope that you have a wonderful weekend, world.

Please expect a piece about the township tour I got yesterday.

I loved this week. I really love this place now. I think it's the commuting. I really dig public trains.

The most awkward attempt to summarize Priscilla

2010-10-06T05:01:00.000-07:00

I wanted to wait awhile before trying to write a post encompassing my host mother, Priscilla. I apologize if any of this description is repetition.

But I worry that I will wait too long and then it will never come to fruition and then I'll have left out of this blog one of the most important parts of Cape Town.

I live in Steenberg. She has declared that it's Retreat, actually, and if it is, then it's the Steenberg side of Retreat. (I've come to learn that these neighborhood distinctions are actually incredibly important to the people who live here, but more on that later.) I live on a small side street opposite the train tracks that divide the white side of Steenberg from the colored side. I stay on the colored side.
The house is small, two-stories and full of character. There is a small carport outside, where her little green car lives.
One set of iron gates swings in to let the car in and then closes (manually, of course) upon entrance. From there, you walk across the bricks of the carport to the front door. The front door is barred by a gate. Think a screen door but made of iron (like Mom's house - those white gates). Both gates have the potential to be padlocked, although one is padlocked all the time and one is only padlocked at night or during the day when no one is home.
After the padlock is opened, the gate must be lifted to be opened and then swung out.
And then there's the front door.
I remain legendary for my inability to open this system of padlocks and chains and gates when slightly inebriated, but I am slow at it even stone sober.
The front door has a charming, antiquated key that I thought was a keychain the first time I saw it. My keys have an adorable little zebra keychain that I bought at a market on them. (You'll notice that for the first time in my life, I don't have one of those long lanyards trailing after my keys - this is so they can fit nicely into my bra when I go out so I don't have to worry about losing them. One of the other volunteers almost got beaten up by his host family for trying to climb the gate at four in the morning after losing his keys. You see the problem it might present.)

Alas, the inside of the house. A charming, modern art deco style lounge (living room) and a kitchen and then my room and then the winding staircase that leads upstairs to Priscilla's bedroom and bathroom and the spare room.
It's by all US standards a relatively tiny house.
But it's lovely. I feel so at home.

Priscilla is nearly fifty and going through menopause. Between the two of us, we're always looking for a set of keys, or something that we've misplaced. She loves to talk about her life and I've discovered that she and I are the quite the set of kindred spirits. We sit on the chairs in the lounge and talk and talk about everything.
And I do mean everything. We talk a lot about South Africa, a lot about racism, a lot about class structure, life struggles, and stuff. Boy stuff, you know.
She takes good care of me and reminds me that I'm a strong woman and an adult and worth everything. She's quite determined to see me wined and dined and taken care of. She reminds me that everything was "lekker" when she was young and has informed that I'll never regret any adventure.
We tease each other quite a bit - her about me never wearing socks, and that she's going to get out the wooden spoon and hit me, and me about her and well, everything.

She likes nice things, and works hard to keep her house lovely on the inside.
She's terrified of things like spiders and snakes, and every time we have the door open, we sit in the chairs and we have to watch in the mirrored bar separating the kitchen from the lounge to make sure that nothing comes in.
Every year, she buys something nice for herself. This year, it was a computer. Some other years, it was a wood floor, two nice chairs for the bar, that wrought iron spiral staircase.
She's simple - she keeps to herself and likes to reminisce about the past - but she's nowhere near simple minded. She's sharp as a tack, witty, and sometimes rude. (She mutters things in Afrikaans and then laughs with me - I'm starting to always be able to at least understand the gist of what she's saying. Last night, she was telling Mike she was going to hit him but it was a word that sounded like murder. I knew what she meant, and as the two of us laughed, he told her she'd have to catch him first.)

We laugh, and we drink tea, and we talk about our days while she serves me dinner at night. And then we sit and have tea and wait for the weather to come on the news.

I have to pause in the middle of this to explain that there is no eloquence necessary for this post. I can't contain it in words. It's love. She's my South African mother. Don't expect grammatical grandeur here, you won't find it.
Expect respect and admiration and companionship.

When I told her that I was switching projects, she was terrified that they were going to move me from her. And I realized that even if they offered, I wouldn't accept. I love where I live. I can sit down and have a glass of wine and relax, while in other host families, those things aren't allowed.

I have a lot to learn from her - this woman who apologizes for nothing, who owns her experiences, who lives for her children, who is stern and funny and generous, who teases Mike for me.
I listen, I'm practicing listening, and I know that she's listening too.
One day, I wasn't feeling well. Surprise, surprise, it was a Sunday morning following a late Saturday and she came in with tea and hugged me.
And it was the first time we'd really hugged. And she said, "I know you're not feeling well, but don't you miss your mom right now?" and I told her she was right and that the hug helped a little bit.

Last night, she invited Mike over for dinner. None of the other volunteers from his house were invited, which I thought was cute. We ate chicken curry and rooti (this is bad spelling, I know), a Muslim sort of tortilla and finished off with sago pudding and cream. She put the pudding in the oven to brown on top and when we took it out, the top was a little bit overdone (read: blackened) and the two of us just starting laughing.
Mike's face was bewildered because he had no idea what we were laughing about.
But we took it out and pulled off the crust and ate it anyway and it was delicious.
She likes the way that Mike looks after me, the way that he's protective of me, the way that he is in general. The two of them tease each other all the time, which I like. Dinner last night was wonderful. It was so nice to have a chance to chat with Mike - he told Priscilla all about the township where he works and the school.
She teased him and then sent him home with leftovers.

She's short and sarcastic and wonderful.
I couldn't be in better hands.

The climb, the painting and the new assignment

2010-10-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

I've gone in and spoken with the Projects Abroad people and I am now officially a member of the Journalism Project here. They publish a small magazine called the "Cape Chameleon."
I started this afternoon. I've been assigned a story about building with sandbags and will be starting that while I also get the video filmed and edited (Thursday). Tomorrow will be all prep work for those and the beginning of the contact process.
I'm already turning through subjects in my mind - perhaps this will be something workable and I will find myself to be useful and productive.
I'm thrilled beyond belief - it's as though a huge weight has been removed from my shoulders.
I've got to take the train every morning now instead of being picked up be Desiree in the mini bus, so I'm obviously sad to leave that little group. I got money from Projects Abroad to take the train and so I'm hoping I don't lose my monthly pass.
I won't be getting free lunch everyday, so that might make me a bit sad, but other than that, I'm enthusiastic and energized. The office is located in Wynberg, about halfway to the city from my house, so I'll be more in the middle of things and more able to access to possible interview subjects, etc.

Ah, relief.
Delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant and then warm, delicious, chocolate cake yesterday evening. Cape Town is a wonderful place to be today - the weather is bright, my mood is wildly optimistic and I've got potential adventure in the making.

Pictures below from the painting of the creche and then Table Mountain:

(before - inside the creche)

(before - outside the creche)

(me, priming)

(Mike, painting inside)

(the outside)

(the inside)

(volunteers who worked on the inside and helped with the flag painting)

(the beautiful outside painted in South African colors)

(street view in Vrygrond, Capricorn)

(my red handprint in above the yellow hand)

(all of the Dirty Weekend volunteers)

(the first set of ladders on the Skeleton Gorge route up Table Mountain)

(desperately needed food break)

(up we go!)

(and up)

(some plants, of course)

(no path, just rocks)

(hiking across the top of Table Mountain)

(hiking down Platteklip Gorge in a cloud)

(ryanne, lucy and paul)

(table mountain in a cloud)

(the view of the Cape Town city bowl)

(clouds over the mountain)

Resignation, Regrettably

2010-10-04T05:55:00.000-07:00

Since I last posted (oh, about an hour ago), I've started thinking.
I am very comfortable where I work. I love the people around me - from the facilitator of the Fit for Life program to the cleaning ladies to the caterers - I think they're all wonderful.
The only person that I have not been able to get comfortable around is my boss.
And today, I confirmed that this might be the best move.
I was trying to explain something and I was cut off multiple times while I was speaking. Like, mid-sentence cut off.
When she came in this morning and announced that she was getting two new volunteers from her previous position (at another NGO, I'm assuming) and that they would be in charge of everything (because they're German and assertive, she said), I realized this might be the perfect time for me to step out.
This is not the first time she's wished that I act more German. She's said it before, that her German volunteers are more assertive, all said while looking pointedly at me.

But when I try to stand my ground, I'm run over, just as I was in our conversation today. There was no attempt to understand my side (I was trying to explain that what we're doing is little more than theft and she was trying to tell me just to change the material to make it alright) and there was no attempt made to ease my doubts about this project (a facilitator's manual).

When I offered to guest lecture on gender and sexuality, she told me she'd need a copy of my lecture so that she could have others do it after I was gone. I was mildly offended. Even though I'm not the kind of person whose gender lectures are going to be wildly valuable and sought after, they are still mine and not for use by anyone who wanders in.
That's the problem that I have with this whole manual thing. It's theft. It's intellectual property of someone else, and some of it is copyrighted. And they're stealing it to use in these programs. She tells me they're going to be accredited by the SETAs but I'm not entirely convinced that accredidation is possible with odds and ends and scraps of material.

I didn't come here to Google. I didn't come here to sit on the South African version of Craigslist and troll for low-level positions. I came here to do something. And business volunteer or not, I'm not busy enough and I'm not satisfied with my position. Perhaps it's true, I am not assertive enough. But I'm not entirely sure that there's anything to assert.
I've been declared Job Placement officer and that is what I have been unable to do.
I have raised the issue with Cheryl, my boss, who recently had a treadmill put into her office. I have not been satisfied with the response.

I will go to her today and tell her that I'm not going to be in tomorrow because I'm going to the office to have a discussion about my placement and then I will leave.
And I'm not sure that I'll be back.

I have the film project laying before me, something that I'm actually quite confident in. I can edit video (even if it's only iMovie that I have with me) and I can create a nice, short video that is aesthetically alluring and packs a narrative punch.
This will take me two weeks or so.
Hopefully in this time, things will start to come together again.

I'm upset. I feel as though I failed, but then I realize that perhaps this wasn't something that had success as an end point from the beginning.
I'm sad.
I adore the people here.
But I realize that I did not come here to do these things - I came here to learn and to put some of those skills to work. I did not come here to sit and work with a system that is unworkable. I'm comforted by the fact that no other volunteer has lasted as long as I have here besides one Australian girl.
The others always leave.

Selfish, probably. But entirely necessary, absolutely.

I've been unhappy for a couple of weeks and I've exhausted my options.
And so there will be a meeting with Projects Abroad tomorrow and we will explore the options. I'm going to be firm with them and stand my ground. I came here for a business internship, I didn't come here to do anything else.
But at this point, I'm even willing to join the building project, I'm that desperate for an escape.

Another moody Monday post?

2010-10-04T03:43:00.000-07:00

It is apparent that Mondays really aren't my day.

But before we get to that, I'm going to tell you all about my wonderful weekend!
Friday night we went out to a bar, did some dancing and then came home. A few of the volunteers got their phones stolen and one girl lost her camera, but other than that, it was a nice night.
Saturday morning, we all got up early to go help with a "Dirty Weekend." It's something that volunteers apply for. After they apply, they are awarded money for a project of their choosing. This time, it was painting a creche. (Creche is the world for kindergarten here. It's also interesting because all of the centers are called "educares".)
And so we painted the inside of the creche and then the walls outside the colors of the South African flag. I was covered in paint by the end of it, but it was a satisfying experience. Since I arrived here, I haven't felt like I was "doing something" and this experience was something that really felt hands-on and satisfying in that visceral way. I could see the change happening before my eyes and was energized by it.
We had about seven people working on it. Some were painting the inside white. Others were applying color to the walls outside. I was in charge of priming the fence and the concrete pillars and then painting them over black.
The color scheme was black for the main parts, with yellow, red, blue and green for every little wooden part of the fence. We painted large footprints on one column and then the logo and contact information. It was a fun experience.
At the end of the day, we all dipped our hands in paint and put them on one of the concrete pillars.
After that, we had a quiet dinner at the seaside restaurant in Kalk Bay. It's quickly becoming my favorite restaurant here. It's called the Brass Bell and it's not anything wildly special, but it's comfortable and the view of the ocean by night is something I can't quite get enough of. You should all know by now how I feel about chocolate mousse. And they make a delicious one.

Sunday morning we woke up early again to take the train down to Newlands (where the Projects Abroad office is) to get a picnic and then take a cab to the Kirstenbosch Gardens (you'll remember the botanic gardens from a few weeks ago). From there, we hiked up Table Mountain via the Skeleton Gorge Route. Oh my god, you have no idea how out of shape you are until you try to climb a mountain. I've never been so grateful for hiking boots in my life.It was a beautiful day - so hot that I was glad I'd brought a tank top.
As we began, I had one of those, "I'm in Africa" moments. Surrounded by rocks and green and the path ahead, I forgot about everything else.
Parts of the trail were just ladders that you had to climb and then my favorite part was just rocks. You had to sort of boulder your way up along a river. It was lovely. The rest of the climb was like steps - rocky steps. My legs are miserable today.
As we got up, the cloud descended down on us and we walked through the mist. It got a bit colder, so we put on jackets as we went up. By the time we got to the top, we still had another hour or so of hiking but we were surrounded. We couldn't see any views or even more than twenty meters ahead of us.
It was like a rocky swamp at the top - all pools of water and rocky surfaces. It was surreal, knowing that you are at the top of the bottom of the world but not being able to see anything.
As we got to the cable car station at the top, the horns were sounding for high winds, so we ate our picnic quickly and began our descent down Platteklip Gorge. As we were sitting at the top, every now and then, the layer of clouds would part and we could see through the layers of mist to the sea below. Sea and the cloud wall, but only for seconds each time.
In the clouds, water was starting to form droplets in our hair and the wind was cold and wet. But still we climbed down, slowly descending back to the city. After about an hour and a half we broke out of the cloud and were back underneath it. It got warmer.
After seven and a half hours in total, we got off the mountain and headed for the train station back home.

A placement change has officially been set into motion.
I have a meeting with the Projects Abroad man tomorrow and hopefully will be in a new placement by the end of this week. Today my boss informed me that she's getting two new volunteers who have worked with her previously and that I will now answer to them.
And I realized that this situation is the out that I'm waiting for. So I jumped, emailed the Projects people and will be meeting with them tomorrow.
Wish me luck.

Graffiti and other odds and ends

2010-10-01T03:12:00.000-07:00

The week ends on an up note.
Yesterday, I took the train down to Newlands to the Projects Abroad office and had a Skype meeting with a Canadian guy who wants to organize a micro-financing project. And thus, I am going to be filming and editing a short video in the coming weeks about the Vrygrond community and some small business owners.

I love trains. I so very much loved riding the train alone in Chicago, the city all around me, speeding south. And here, I speed toward the city, passing stations in varying stages of repair, signs, people in and out. It's the jostle of the city, contained in a single train car. Tired faces line the cars, children on their way home from school, people trying to make a living playing music as they walk up and down the cars, holding out tin cups - the coins clank and clatter as they land. People are so giving, so willing to listen and give.

You can tell a lot about a city by the graffiti. Here, the graffiti is everywhere, an underlying reminder of artistic culture. It clouds the trains, it covers walls. I love it. It's representative of the feelings here - so much of it speaks to hope and about South Africa. It betrays the pride here felt by the people who live here. I sat on a train car covered in graffiti once - every single surface. It had obviously been done by someone who was desperate to find a voice - some it was as simple as "love" and "tea" but some of it was quite rude. I loved it though. Once, I got up from a seat only to find that I'd been sitting on my initials the entire time. KB was scrawled behind me in thick, black marker.

As I got off the train to head back home, I heard someone calling me. I looked around to see a man I'd met the week before. It turns out he sells fruit at my train station to pay for his electrician schooling. We had a cup of tea while we chatted by the side of the road and then I turned and went home, feeling quite at home.

So hopefully this weekend will bring a happy sort of contentment to settle back around me. We're doing work in one of the small schools around here tomorrow - painting and such. It's something Projects Abroad does called a dirty weekend. Someone has to apply for money to help fix a place up or do something and then it will be granted and then put into action with the help of the volunteers. Someone here at my place got a chicken coop put in.

African Time

2010-09-29T02:58:00.000-07:00

There's a difference between "now" and "now now."

"Now" means eventually. When you call a taxi and they tell you that they're coming "now," you know that you have time for at least another beer or to take a quick shower or to eat dinner.

"Now now" means right now. "Now now" means hustle. "Now now" means get your stuff together or you'll be left behind.

Whenever the girls call Priscilla from upstairs, she yells back at them: "Ma's coming now!" and then she turns to me and continues the conversation that we're having.

Whenever Mike comes to pick me up, he tells me he's coming "now now" and then he appears out of the field before I even have time to end the call.

African time is a funny thing. Sometimes trains are early, sometimes they are late, sometimes they don't come at all.
African time is a relaxed time. Now can be tomorrow, the promise of something done hangs in the air until it's completed. It's going to be eventually.

Priscilla and I always say we're going to clean tomorrow, and then the next day, we repeat the declarations. The vacuuming has been put off for nearly a week, and we're quite alright with that. And of course, tonight, I've got plans elsewhere (the Wednesday social - dinner and drinks down in Town), so there will be no vacuuming, unless by some miracle I get it done this afternoon.

But it's no stress; it's not important.
It will happen now, sooner or later.

The Worry

2010-09-29T02:37:00.000-07:00

As I got home yesterday, I began to worry.
That worrying continued late into the night, until I could hardly keep my eyes open for want of sleep.
And yet the worrying failed to cease when the broken sleep fell on me and it was crouching upon me as I woke, waiting to strike at the moment my eyes were unshielded from the welcome darkness.
And it continues.
I'm heavy shouldered, snappy enough that my co-workers have noticed and questioned me and generally irritable. And I can't explain it.

A man from Projects Abroad came to do a second evaluation form. I wasn't as generous as I had been previously. I also wasn't as critical as I wished to be.
They asked me what I was doing, and I replied, "Job placement." They asked me what I'd like to be doing and I replied, "Marketing." I asked that I be able to add to my placement - perhaps I'll go do human rights and law for the next little bit so that I'm not quite so pent up here. I'm going to see if there's the possibility that I can split my weeks, or my days, or something.

Today I added a new line of attack as far as job placements go. I have added a form that requires that people who come in to use the services available here to sign a sheet detailing their job application. This way, when I write the report to the funders, I'll be able to at least have an idea of how many applications we are sending in a month.
I've decided that Fridays are going to be my manual days in which I spend the entire day attempting to reconstruct their Fit for Life/Fit for Work manual.
I'm branching out to do organization of the income generation project - inventory control, etc. This begins tomorrow, or whenever I get around to it.

I worry that I'm constantly complaining, and I don't mean for that to be the case. I'm quickly losing hope and am running out of bright ideas. Today, I am working with the same woman who was rude to me the other day, and who was just as rude this morning. She demanded the newspapers, even though they're outdated and won't be of much help.
And then she told me to email for her. I responded that since I emailed for her last time, she would have to do it herself today, but that I'd supervise.
I sat next to her and we spent the next twenty minutes formulating an email.
And so, for today, I have one job application on the way.

I've been having terrible dreams. I'm not sure what they're about, entirely, but they're full of fire and dark clouds and strange events. I wake up tired, confused, unaware that I've left my dream world. Soon enough, they've dissipated and I've begun my day, but I'm hoping that a night of relaxation activities tonight will cure me of the dark cloud that seems to have decided to follow me around this week. But I'm not entirely convinced that it will.

I hope tonight there will be no more dreams like that. Three nights is enough, I've decided. Tonight I will dream of something else, something abstract and colorful, something that isn't oddly off-putting. I think it might be the spark of a bout of creativity, one of those Virginia Woolf moments where for no reason I'm seized by an incurable pessimistic mood and from which I able to draw the bases of the art form I love best. And so I remain hopeful that this unexplainable moodiness is a call for withdrawal and creation, rather than a symptom of some greater dissatisfaction or uncurable fear.

I had to send a message to my former roommate today, and I think that's what part of the worry was about. I wanted to do it in public, so she coudn't accuse me of not having sent anything at all, as both she and her family have done in the past, ignoring my emails, etc.
This time, it must be dealt with.
Deep breaths, I thought, as I typed it. She'll respond kindly and fairly. She'll be pleasant about the whole thing. We'll split it down the middle and maybe she'll give me what she's been promising for nearly a year.

The worry hasn't eased up. It's breathing down my neck.

HairCut

2010-09-28T06:35:00.000-07:00

Well my earlier post was certainly moody and unsettled, and in typing it, I entirely neglected to inform you that I have a full set of bangs!
I haven't quite adjusted to them yet, so bear with me, but I'll post pictures soon.
Priscilla's daughter Angela cut them for me and I'm debating having her cut them a little bit shorter.

Either way, they're cute. I hope.

Tuesday: A Laundry List of Annoyance

2010-09-28T05:53:00.000-07:00

I'm in quite the mood today, for reasons not entirely unknown.

Yesterday, a woman came in to the office (I was all alone yesterday - no tea, no lunch, just work) and told me that she wanted help finding a job. She was in Group 5 of the program and had gone through it in June and July.
She looked at my job board, took down a bunch of my postings and then asked me to send them off for her. Email address? I asked her.
No.
So we made one.
And then I sat, crunched considerably further into my corner than I would have liked, while she invaded my personal space from the left side and I attempted to type without full range of motion. I emailed her CV to no less than seven places.
I wrote seven slightly differing cover letter that started to lose momentum as I was going.
I admit that I was starting to lose patience.
The last cover letter was two sentences. It had no formal greeting. It said, "Hello, I wish to submit my CV for consideration for the available position. Please see the attached file for my contact information."
I apologize. In all fairness, she did get a call back from a place nearly immediately, so I'm not entirely overly concerned for her wellfare.
The reason the last cover letter was that way? (If you can call it a cover letter - it was the body of a recklessly addressed email.)
She had the nerve to tell me I had no responsibilities.
I bit my tongue.
It began with her telling me she'd left her R900 per month job because it wasn't paying enough. The conversation went like this:
Me: "I know it wasn't a lot, but it was something."
Her: "They weren't paying me enough! Transport nearly took it all."
Me: "How much was transit?"
Her: "R250! What does that leave me with?"
I pause, certain this is a trick question.
Me: "R650?"
Her: "That's nothing."
Me: "That's R650 more than nothing."
Her: "They weren't paying me enough. I've got a husband and a child. He didn't want me working at a horrible job like that. I'm desperate for work."
Me: (Obviously not desperate enough, I think. Leaving a perfectly good job without having gotten another one first.) "Sometimes you have to do jobs that you don't want or that don't pay enough for awhile."
Her: "You wouldn't know, you don't have any responsibilities."
Me: (Sharp biting of tongue. Two sentence cover letter. Mental damnation.)

Here's the thing. I may not have a lot of responsibilities, but that's because I'm responsible enough to have done certain things to avoid having those responsibilities, if you follow the insinuation.

I may not have kids and a husband, I've got quite a bit on my plate. Enough that I was willing to suck it up and work at Subway (this is where I might insert a "no offense" sort of thing but I'm not even going to bother because I mean it, with spite) all summer for $8 an hour. Trust me, there's nothing more fun (ah, depends on your definition of fun) than being patronized, but that patronization ensures that I will never have the spirited nature that might allow me to be snarky with someone attempting to help me find a job, or with the person who's typing my application when my CV declares me "computer literate."

Maybe she's partly right. Maybe I'm not wildly buried under responsibility. But then again, that depends on your definition of repsonsibility.

Debt? Check.
Unemployed? Check
Homeless? Check
Cat with AIDS? (Maybe that should read, Expensive Cat with AIDS who manages to get very expensive illnesses) Check
Car that needs regular upkeep and whose bumper is held together with duct tape? Check

These seem so trivial, I know. But trust me, I've got a lot of expectation hanging over my head. When I get back, I can't sit at home and wait for handouts, or ask my husband to provide for me. And I, too, will have to enter the job market and find myself employment.
Maybe my responsibilities are different, but trust me, they exist.

I'm frustrated. Today was not a good day as far as job hunting goes.
I've yet to find anyone a job.
I'm doing things that these learners should be able to do themselves - Googling. My resources are limited and I'm unfamiliar with the job market.

And yet, I need to stop complaining and get it together.

And so today, I posted another six pages of job openings available for consideration. Today, I got a Twitter for the programme and I got an email address as well. This way I don't have to keep emailing from my own personal account.
I bought yesterday's paper with the job listings after my boss neglected to do so last night.
I also attempted to get to the bottom of a possible nursing scam. I emailed a SETA and an NGO, and heard back from the NGO.
I am attempting to start an email list so that I can send out job postings and CV hints and such to the learners on a weekly basis.
I've got my job boards.
I'm trying to help them register their CVs with recruitment agencies.
And yet, I'm missing something.

Here's to brainstorming and some sort of miracle. Sheer determination is not enough, because sadly, I simply lack the drive. There's nothing fueling this endeavor. There is not enough need on this side - the contentment of unemployment is strong, the desire for work doesn't last.
And yet for some, it does. But they are self-starters. They don't want me to email for them because they're doing it themselves. And I wonder if I can just offer support, offer something that those who are movivated might need, something that might give them the edge.

Tomorrow I may be attending a dance show with the current group of learners in Cape Town. This could certainly be an adventure.

Gender Bender

2010-09-23T03:53:00.000-07:00

We’ve begun implementing the idea of the centre as just that, a centre, for the job search process. I have a board with positions stapled to it, dated, just waiting for people to come and select them based off of their own personal perceived ability and desire for that particular job. That’s where I come in, offering a certain amount of assistance in emailing the CVs and faxing and cover letters, etc. Tuesday was the first day of the process, and I think it may have gone well. I sent out a variety of CVs and there were people in and out of the room the entire day. This is the positivity that I hope to spread through the office, and hopefully these steps will keep the learners engaged in the job-seeking process.

I just finished proctoring a baseline assessment of the current group of learners. (I’m not sure that you can actually proctor a survey, but I feel pretty official saying it, so I’m going to stick with it.) It’s a coded ordeal that involves passing out secret identity numbers to the learners – they’re not actually secret, but the whole idea is that they sort of get to stay anonymous- and then sitting and watching for tentatively raised hands until the forty-five minutes they’re allotted have elapsed.

I wasn’t prepared for the hand in the back row that went up. I walked over and leaned over. The girl pointed to her page, and made a circular motion around the word “anal” and asked me what it meant. Since the word directly after it was sex, I paused for a moment and then, lacking any better-formulated answer, said, “butt.” “What?” she asked. “Butt sex,” I whispered. She didn’t hear me. “Butt sex,” I whispered again. “Ohhh.” I tried to hide my smile as I walked back to the front. It’s not that I was laughing at the question (that’s a half truth) but I was also laughing at my inability to answer.

The questionnaire needs to be re-written, there’s hardly any doubt about that. It’s full of outdated questions about sexual practices with a small space left at the end for life skills questions. They circle numbers one through five, depending on how they feel about a given statement. Some of the statements don’t even make sense to me, such as: “Safe sex means having sex with someone you love.” How do agree or disagree with a statement like that? I’m confused. What do they mean by safe sex? Do they mean that the love will protect you from STIs? Or is love inherently monogamous and that will keep you STI-free?

Some questions are entirely valid. “If a woman is participating in ‘foreplay’ with a man, she still has the right to say ‘no’ to sexual intercourse with him.”

The implications here are a little disheartening though. The questions come from a very traditional heterosexual standpoint, with the man taking the dominant role and the woman taking the submissive role. While this isn’t a problem sexually speaking, it maintains the power structure for relationships and reaffirms the subordination of the woman while simultaneously reaffirming the male’s right to oppression. There is no subtlety to this hegemonic dynamic, the reinforcement is quite clear.

I’ve asked to be the guest speaker for the unit on Human Sexuality and permission has been granted. I’m excited. I’m not sure what I’m going to talk about. Obviously the role of gender in sexuality; gender roles themselves; the socialization process that keeps people in those roles; STIs – not a “wear a condom” lecture, but a deeper discussion about stigma and the importance of maintaining an active role in one’s own personal healthcare; new health issues – particularly those for women; homosexuality – I’ve read that Cape Town has a large gay population, I’ll be interested to engage the group in discussion about perceptions of homosexuality in their community; the role of religion within sexual practices – this will be done from a Christian standpoint, so as to avoid stepping on any toes. Hmm....more on this as I figure out what I’ll be saying. I have to submit a lecture plan to Brenda, the facilitator, as soon as I can pull it together, but I have some time yet.

I’m thrilled, though. I love the exploration of sexuality (from an academic standpoint, of course) and I can’t wait to lead a discussion about gender – thus putting my education to work. I’m not going to get into feminist theory, simply because I don’t think it would be well-received and also because I’m not sure that it would find its place here, but I’m going to frame my lecture and the subsequent discussion from the feminist standpoint just to see if I have any takers.

Long weekend ahead. I'm headed out of work early today, not for any particular reason other than that the weather is nasty and I absolutely have to do laundry or I won't have anything remotely presentable to wear this weekend.
Tomorrow is Heritage Day. I'll update as soon as I know exactly what it is.

Technology and Communication

2010-09-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

Today's lesson in gratitude follows yesterday's attempt at returning my cell phone.
They wouldn't let me. So now I'm in Cape Town with a smart phone.
Great.
When I go out to bars, I'm going to take a pencil and pad of paper, a traveling "little black book" if you will.

I take my communication abilities for granted.
I find it relaxing to sit in front of computer and type for an hour.
I love that I can send you emails whenever I like it.

I never knew (or never quite realized) how difficult that is for some people.
We're not just talking no internet connection, no access, we're talking inability to type. To operate a computer. To move a mouse.

Today, the language barrier as well as the technology barrier barred me from assisting someone. He wasn't from the Fit for Life program, but he came in and asked in broken English to send a message.
And so I set him up with a Gmail account (because I am all about Gmail, all the time) and then I set him up with a blank message.
Talk of Mecca and of a Sheik and of stars and moonlight and other things I couldn't catch.
He was trying to send a message to Mecca.
I was trying to explain email.
There was a barrier there that could not be breached.

One of the ex-learners who had come to check his email leaned over to me and said, "He's not playing with all his cards."

Still, I was determined to ascertain his message, his purpose. But alas, it did not happen.
I still believe that he was trying to send a Sheik that had changed his life in Mecca a message.
But he was trying to get the computer to act like a phone and I could not explain that it was an impossible task. And then I realized that explaining Google Voice and Skype weren't going to help and somehow the US got thrown in the mix and it was a mess.
A mess.

And so today, I am experiencing overwhelming gratitude for my ability to type, my ability to email and overall, my ability to communiate (even if it's only in English - which I just mistyped no less than four times - and broken Spanish).

Cape Point Tour

2010-09-21T07:52:00.000-07:00

I was petting a black and white cat and one of our friends said to me, "don't touch the penguins." It was cute. Made me want to take a penguin home to keep Carlos company.

Sound and (Color) Fury

2010-09-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

I wish I could describe how colorful this place is. I will always remember the colors here.

Even I feel more colorful here. Even though my customary black is still around, it's being supplemented by my bright red shoes and my brighter green jacket.

The clothing here is colorful - maybe it's because not everything matches, maybe it's something else. I feel a brightness. The women here wear clothes, long skirts, wraps, jackets, shawls. Multi-colored.

The food is colorful, too. Even this seems to light up the world around me.

Priscilla's favorite color is red. Her house is painted a soft pink (mauve, perhaps?) but the inside is all pale wooden floors or plain tile floor, with red accents. Red rug, red chairs, red candles, red lamps. Red pillows sit on the khaki colored chairs.
Yellow kitchen tiles with stainless steel appliances (or the spray-painted refrigerator pretending it's stainless steel).
My room is bright pink, painted in the similar spongy style that adorned the bedroom of my adolescence.
The shower curtains are pink and purple and the curtains are bright pink Hello Kitty. I'm so glad that I brought my own blanket, something to break up the pink party that I'm living in.
The trains are blue and yellow, covered in black and white graffiti.
The mountains are rocky, green fading into grays and oranges. The sky is blue, cloud-filled, or gray, also cloud-filled. The clouds here are whispy, misty, almost fog creeping slowly over the mountains to nestle in around the sleeping houses.
The rain comes in the night. I hear it tapping on the plastic roof next door. I had nightmares the other night, terrified that Priscilla would think I'd left the shower dripping, paralyzed in my own mind about the punishment. I woke to her laughing as she sipped tea in the kitchen, and the realization that the fear was all in my dreams washed over me like a tidal wave. Relief gave way to annoyance as I lay there listening to the constant "drip, drip, drip, drip" of the water sliding off the roof.
Sand along the dark black roads, pale concrete, bricks. Maybe the color lies in the multitude of materials used to construct these houses. Metal bits, fencing, concrete, bricks, anything on hand. The houses are painted colors, the tuck shops quite aptly tucked in between the houses bear brightly painted signs, Coca Cola, cigarettes, all things sold here. Flour and eggs, sugar, milk. The sweets and bags of chips glitter from inside the darkened storefronts. They call to passerby.

The other night I was so desperate to take a picture of the sunset. I looked outside, past Priscilla's blue roof with white trim, set so odd against the pale pinkish house, above the street to look at the mountains. Above the mountains, the sky was the faintest blue mixed with whites and pinks and purples, all the softest of pastels. The clouds weren't solid, they looked like someone had taken cotton candy and roped it through the sky. It was beautiful and soft and it was home.

Where am I going?

2010-09-20T06:14:00.000-07:00

Today is going to be blog-heavy, hopefully, provided I can get to an internet cafe with my computer to do a picture post. (It's going to blow your mind - we did the Cape Point tour this weekend that included the Cape of Good Hope and Simonstown - Boulders Beach with the penguins!)

This is the sort of obligatory "Where is my life going?" post.
I've been here for nearly three weeks now and everything has pretty much become routine.
I wake up between 7:30 and 7:45 every day. I'm out of bed by 7:50. In the car before 8:25. At work before 9:00.
Free between 16:00 and 18:00. Dinner. Shower. Bed by 21:00. Sometimes there's reading, sometimes there's just sweet sleep.
And then it begins again.

We have sort of created a giant pack of volunteers. We go out together, we have dinner together on the weekends, we plan trips together. It's nice. I am actually coming to enjoy the routine, the segmentation of it all. It gives me structure that perhaps I've been missing. It allows me to feel that Fridays are actually Fridays. I feel that Mondays are Mondays. (Trust me, since it's Monday I feel like the whole week is weighing down on me.)

But what happens when I go home?

I dashed off a frantic email to my mom this morning outlining my life plan, just so someone would see it, would read it, would reassure me that I'm on track to meet my goals, that home ownership before thirty can still be a bright spot on an otherwise (currently) dull horizon, that I've still got a future.
And it's funny, because the enormity of this future thing isn't a part of what I'm thinking about here. I'm left wondering where it came from, how it might have overhelmed my subconscious enough to have leaked out into a barely grammatically correct email that was little more than a collection of thoughts and a list or three?

Perhaps its the surroundings that are pushing me to fret.

I think it might be the realization that my education is such a precious thing to have; the realization that I have a support network unlike any other - my family, my friends; the gratitude I'm feeling for everything I have, everything I'm lucky enough to own; the desire to provide for myself and someday, my family.
I think maybe it's all settling in.

I need to stop being so afraid of what I might not be able to do and just do things. I'm great. I'm a hard-worker, a fun co-worker, determined and a quick learner. I can do anything I want to do. I'm feeling better about all of that now.

Priscilla talks endlessly during our long conversations about how hard she's worked for what she has, how proud she is to have a space to call her own. She calls her house her "haven" and it's true. It's cozy and comfortable and shows the signs of constant attention that any house should.

I work around determined people; I watch them try to handle tough tasks on a daily basis. But just as much as I see the struggle, I see the giving up that's all around me.

"They're unemployable," I said to Mom one day, exhausted and frustrated with the task at hand.
It's not that I don't want to see everyone around me succeed, but I can feel that the necessary sense of purpose doesn't seem to be alive here. No one wants to finish the equivalent of a high school education. Even of those who do - some are content to stand around day after day. It's not just in the townships. It's all over. If there is a means of support then there are those who will take advantage of it and run with that support until it's exhausted.

But for those who want to do anything to get somewhere, there remain hopefully a few options. Hopefully there can be a way out for those who need it and want it the most. Hopefully the people who want to learn and think and work will find the jobs that need to be filled, will succeed, will move up, will move out.

And hopefully I can be good enough at what I need to be doing to help them.

There's a sense of struggle that hangs over the communities and the people.

Priscilla touches on it during our conversations. I can hear the bitterness in her voice when she tells me that she could just sit around waiting for handouts, but that instead she goes out every day to work even though there are days that she doesn't want to. I wonder how much of that is the leftover sentiments from the apartheid, or how much of it is the true feelings from one class to another, how much of it might have to do with all of the theft in our neighborhood, how the people come from the townships to take and take.

It's the culture here, I want to tell her.
It's not people from the townships only. People everywhere steal. Here, they take and they take and they don't give anything back, they don't work toward anything better for themselves.

But is it merely expectations? Or is it a cultural epidemic? Does it have to do with race?
I hope to know the source of this by the end. I know it's not just joblessness, hopelessness, fear and struggle. It's also greed and history and ties to family and to the past.
But above all, it's the lack of education, the lack of resources.

Today, a new set of Fit for Life/Fit for Work people started. No one had pens. We didn't have any to offer them. It's that sort of thing that hinders intellectual progress.

Yesterday at Cape Point, we watched a car snatch a purse that was laying by the side of the road. It sped off. As we were leaving the park, we saw police gathered around the car by the gate, with the tourists milling about behind it, filing the report. Priscilla wanted to know who had committed the theft.
My cell phone now lives with someone else, stolen Friday night during the crowded five minute walk from the bars to the waiting taxi. I hadn't brought a purse exactly for that reason. Priscilla told me I had to keep everything in my bra from now on (I had all of my cash and my ID in there) but I reminded her that I've not got a lot of room with which to create storage space. She laughs, but gives me that look that says, "make some space, you silly sausage."
So I have a new number. I don't know it yet, of course, but I think it's: +27-0766658768. So you know, text it, see if I answer. I also think I can video chat from the new phone! (More to come on this development later...) But the new phone is no longer coming out with me when I go out. It can stay at home and languish in a cupboard, or a dark drawer. I'll hand out my number on sheets of paper. I'll write Mike's number on my arm so I can call it from someone else's phone.

To conclude this poorly organized thought jumble, I will say I feel better about things that I can do. It's reassurance. It's positive thought, it's that glimmer of hope that I needed.
I finished the manual for the program. I typed it and had to undo nearly everything and make it a more succinct package, but I did it. And then I printed it and bound it and now it's laying on the desks, ready to be taken home by the learners. It's clean, well-organized, cut perfectly, absolutely everything that was required of me.
And when my boss told me I was doing a good job, I nearly inhaled the praise. I'd needed that small bit of reassurance and it strenghtened my resolve. Brenda told me that without my work there would be no manual, and I glowed on the inside.
Tomorrow we institute the Katie Barry and Company attempts at re-organizing the job placement sector and hopefully all will be well. I finally feel like we can accomplish something and that my time here will be spent well.
Also, I know how to use a copy machine (entirely - loading paper, faxing, scanning, toner business, etc.) and route calls from one side of the building to the other. Those are the two most basic skills I could have developed and I can check them off.

Progress, however small, is still progress.

State of Politics in South Africa: September

2010-09-16T06:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.economist.com/node/16953564?story_id=16953564

For lack of time today, an article about the political backlash of the workers' strike in South Africa. It details the relationship between the president and the other major players involved. Even if you aren't interested in the article itself, it is worthwhile to read the comments below.
It's an older article, but it shows the complexity of the situation surrounding the strikes and provides more information about the government than I'm capable of providing (I've yet to get a handle on it although I will say that no one seems to find the government effective. Our big black trash can is labelled with "CAPE TOWN, This city works for you" yet I see the neglect and sense a nagging feeling of abandonment, perhaps especially because of the locations where I'm living and working - the comparisons to Chicago grow in my mind daily yet I'm unable to produce an accurate picture of the state of affairs here and so I'll wait).
You'll remember President Zuma as the man who stated (wildly incorrectly) that avoiding HIV is as easy as showering after sex. You'll also need to know that right now, there is a huge problem of the government attempting to limit freedom of speech when it pertains to criticism of corruption and government. I believe that the vote is happening tomorrow (the 17th of September).

Also, I've posted in "A mile high...and then some" three articles in the past few days about the state of gender affairs both here and in the US. One article links to a New York Times article and the other two are localized to South Africa. I found the two I posted this morning to be especially affecting.

I've included the text to the Economist article below:

With friends like these

"President Jacob Zuma is badly bruised by weeks of crippling strikes"
Sep 2nd 2010

THE public-sector strikes that have paralysed hospitals, schools and other essential services across the country since August 18th have damaged South Africa’s image abroad. They have also undermined relations between the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), part of the ruling tripartite alliance, together with the communists. On September 1st Cosatu rejected the latest pay offer from the government, so as The Economist went to press the strikes seemed destined to continue, and even intensify. President Jacob Zuma, who ordered both sides back to the negotiating table on August 30th in a last-ditch attempt to end the strike, has emerged weakened from the fray.
Cosatu, with a membership of 2m, has been feeling increasingly aggrieved since Mr Zuma took over as president 16 months ago. Having helped elevate him to power, the country’s biggest union federation thought that he was their man. Cosatu had expected to play an important role in the new administration. Instead, it has repeatedly found its policies ignored. In June relations reached near breaking-point when the ANC threatened to bring disciplinary proceedings against Cosatu’s leader, Zwelinzima Vavi, for having accused the government of failing to take action against corrupt ministers.

Carrying on the fight against corruption in public life is one of Mr Vavi’s passions. Having already discerned a “tendency” within the ANC that is “hellbent on their agenda of self-enrichment and crass materialism”, he returned to the charge last week, claiming that the whole country was rapidly turning into “a full-blown predator state, in which a powerful, corrupt and demagogic elite of political hyenas increasingly controls the state as a vehicle for accumulation.”

Rows between the ANC, Cosatu and the communists are nothing new. But the rhetoric has become nastier and more personal of late. A meeting of alliance leaders, to try to sort things out, was due to have been convened immediately after the football World Cup in early July, but still has not taken place.

Mr Vavi says that the alliance is now paralysed. Some analysts believe it may break up. But its demise has often been predicted in the past without ever coming to pass. Much of Cosatu’s power is based on its close relations with the ANC. Its honeymoon with Mr Zuma may be over, but it has no credible alternative left-wing candidate to promote in his place as president.
Another of Mr Zuma’s kingmakers, the powerful ANC Youth League, also appears to have fallen out of love with its former idol. It has been incensed by Mr Zuma’s decision to call its leader, Julius Malema, to book, following a series of particularly outrageous statements by the young firebrand. At an ANC disciplinary hearing in May, Mr Malema was fined 10,000 rand ($1,300) and ordered to attend an anger-management course, for “sowing disunity” within the ANC. The League has demanded the whole proceedings be annulled, while hinting that it may not support the 68-year-old Mr Zuma for a second term.

It is time for a new generation to take over, Mr Malema suggested in an interview last week. “The older people don’t know what the current issues are or how to deal with them. Once older people decide to continue with the old way of doing things, they’re going to become irrelevant.” Mr Malema, meanwhile, advocates what he would doubtless regard as more relevant policies, such as the nationalisation of the country’s mines and the expropriation of white-owned farms at a price to be determined by the government. Land reform has been progressing too slowly, Mr Malema says. It is time to abolish the “willing buyer, willing seller” principle.
It is not only the alliance that is in turmoil. Both the ANC and its Youth League are struggling with their own internal divisions and in-fighting. How much of all this huffing and puffing is part of the normal jostling for position ahead of the ANC’s National General Council later this month, in its turn a preparation for the party’s five-yearly national conference, when a new leadership will be elected, is difficult to tell. But it is not making the government or the party look good in the run up to next year’s local-government elections.

(End of article.)

Comments:

Mekuria wrote: .Zuma is receiving the pay for what he did to Mbeki. COSATU was an ally in toppling Mbeki, but governing is way different than dancing and mobilizing the mob. He promised things he cannot implement in a free market economy, and now his promise is haunting him. It is very disturbing to have a leader who believes taking a shower could provide protection against HIV/Aids at a time when South Africa is suffering an epidemic of this disease. I remember Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu saying that he was disappointed that Zuma would come to power with "a question mark over his head". That is exactly what we are witnessing now. He better leave politics to those who can do it better and take care of his five + wives and fifty something kids. "As you sow, so shall you reap."

Aly-Khan Satchu wrote: The Noise Level that swirls during 'Strike Season' is of a Pitch and Magnitude that puts South Africa in the Outlier Category and it is easy to see a Disjunctive Break where There is just Noise.

Far from harming President Zuma, I think by standing up to COSATU and Julius Malema Esquire, he is asserting the Fact that He is No One's Poodle, which is Political Win for the President.

Plen wrote: Aly-Khan Satchu is right, Zuma is not the poodle of Cosatu or Malema. But watching this whole turn of political events is a disturbing argument between dumb and dumber.

1. On the one side you have a president who’s highest education level is primary school whose actions are disturbing at best. A polygamist who still finds the need to cheat on his 5 wives (has an extra marital child). Besides the stupidity of the HIV shower story, he now believes that the best way to solve corruption is to silence the media. He is a model of incompetence.
2. On the other side you have COSATU who seem admirable in wanting corruption curbed and take to the streets in protest of improved living wages. However, SA’s contribution to civil servants is among the highest in the world and too high for a country with very limited revenue generation. In essence, as difficult as it may be for civil servants to make ends meet, any more increases in salary (above inflation) is outright fiscally irresponsible.
3. Then you throw in Julius Malema (head of the ANC youth League) who openly supports COSATU and angrily shouts down the President. Yet this guy’s statements go beyond outrageous stupidity to down right dangerous. His is the man who openly chants “Kill the White man”, in a country with over 18,000 murders a year and dealing with mending a race divide his chants are very counter productive. But what is the most striking about this idiot is his own level of corruption. He is personally involved in the most scandalous acts of corruption, he wears a cap worth over $1,000 and drives the top of the line Land Rover (he doesn’t have a license) but ironically he joins the COSATU call to decrease corruption and end the government largesse.
All the players in this game cannot for a moment think beyond themselves and fathom the hypocrisyof their actions.
This is shamefully African politics at its worst. When will we see responsible governance take place? Is Botswana (Africa’s oldest democracy) the only bastion of hope?

Lloron wrote: .Vavi has lost control over COSATU. I believe that it has been taken over by hooligan opportunists and anarchists.

One cannot help believing that this is so when one reads about nurses being attacked for attending to their patients. One is in a critical condition in hospital after being beaten by the mob.

Remember Mr Vavi, you have sown the wind and we may be about to reap the whirlwind

mises ghost wrote: .10 years of high tax incomes and the energy system is decrepid. the problem of the anc seems to be not only the endemic corruption, but also the populism: rather than invest in the futuret he leaders seem to buy off voters by populistic measures.

On the other side i do feel optimistic every time I notice the pluralistic view in dominant parties. The ANC might not split up and all the currents might be disgusting, but even so any kind of contest for the power might prove valuble (even if I personally consider the country doomed because of its racial policy)

American movies and other odds and ends

2010-09-15T06:28:00.000-07:00

Projects Abroad's Social Media Manager Emma loved my blog! I'm posting it here in case I lose the link to it later, but I'm hoping you've already had time to read it:

Africa is everything I expected and it's also nothing like I thought it would be. I hear the phrase "you'll get used to it" quite often, but I feel as though the adaptation has gone mostly smoothly.
Coming from the United States, I'm used to seeing flags everywhere. They fill our store windows, our cars, our sporting events and our homes. The flag is used to represent every endeavor that Americans undertake and to misuse or misrepresent the flag would surely be unforgivable, though I feel that the American flag has lost a bit of its meaning somewhere along the way.
Here in South Africa, I have been amazed by the flag. It seems to represent a vibrancy that is nearly indescribable. I see it everywhere: on the backs of jackets, on hats, T-shirts, shops, painted on walls, flying high above the townships and most importantly, on the cars. Many of the cars here have miniature South African flags wrapped around their side-view mirrors. I can already tell you that I'm going to be spending the next three months searching for a set of them to take home with me so that I might have a bit of South Africa with me.
The other night, Projects Abroad organized a boat cruise right at sunset, and as with all boats, the flag was flying high. Looking to the back of the boat and seeing the South African flag set against the sunset, I was reminded of the pure joy of this place and of the sense of potential I feel when I see the bright colors that represent this rainbow country.
The flag isn't just ubiquitous without purpose; here I feel South Africa in the flag and in the way that people fly it. The flag knows the struggle against racism, poverty, HIV/AIDS; it is a symbol of life and a reminder of a painful past and a look toward a hopeful future. The flag is now and it is so very much alive. The flag seems to emanate such a radiance and even seeing it now, I feel as though I too am a part of its hopeful message.
To be here is to know how colorful life can be.Africa is everything I expected and it's also nothing like I thought it would be. I hear the phrase "you'll get used to it" quite often, but I feel as though the adaptation has gone mostly smoothly.
Coming from the United States, I'm used to seeing flags everywhere. They fill our store windows, our cars, our sporting events and our homes. The flag is used to represent every endeavor that Americans undertake and to misuse or misrepresent the flag would surely be unforgivable, though I feel that the American flag has lost a bit of its meaning somewhere along the way.
Here in South Africa, I have been amazed by the flag. It seems to represent a vibrancy that is nearly indescribable. I see it everywhere: on the backs of jackets, on hats, T-shirts, shops, painted on walls, flying high above the townships and most importantly, on the cars. Many of the cars here have miniature South African flags wrapped around their side-view mirrors. I can already tell you that I'm going to be spending the next three months searching for a set of them to take home with me so that I might have a bit of South Africa with me.
The other night, Projects Abroad organized a boat cruise right at sunset, and as with all boats, the flag was flying high. Looking to the back of the boat and seeing the South African flag set against the sunset, I was reminded of the pure joy of this place and of the sense of potential I feel when I see the bright colors that represent this rainbow country.
The flag isn't just ubiquitous without purpose; here I feel South Africa in the flag and in the way that people fly it. The flag knows the struggle against racism, poverty, HIV/AIDS; it is a symbol of life and a reminder of a painful past and a look toward a hopeful future. The flag is now and it is so very much alive. The flag seems to emanate such a radiance and even seeing it now, I feel as though I too am a part of its hopeful message.
To be here is to know how colorful life can be.

****

It was rainy and cold today, not something I was looking forward to. Svenja is preparing to leave on Friday morning but has suffered from an unexplainable ankle injury that has kept her unable to do much of anything for the last couple of days. Yesterday, we had to haul a chair into the tiny shower so that she could wash without having to put weight on her ankle.
This ankle injury has brought together three very different ideas about dealing with injuries. Priscilla has one point of view, I have another and Svenja has still another! I've learned that drinking hot water (plain) can help calm your stomach and that hot water bottles will never go out of style.
Before I leave, I'm going to buy this wonderful sort of small appliance that boils water. We use them at work, we use them at home, I have entirely fallen in love. I

I've been watching classic American movies while I've been here; it's an odd place to rediscover your own pop culture, but I'm always being teased for having never seen certain films. Thus far, I've watched "Dirty Dancing" and "There's Something About Mary" and am currently halfway through "Breakfast at Tiffany's."
I don't find Patrick Schwayze attractive, although I can see his appeal. I loved Dirty Dancing, it was so much perfect America in its most raw and unattractive form but it was also an absolutely adorable love story. It was classic and momentous but not heavy, although the abortion plotline was one I wasn't prepared for at all. I laughed out loud several times at "Mary," something I don't normally do alone.
I do so love Holly Golightly so far, in all of her oddness and her ideas. I'm not usually one who enjoys olde rmovies, but I'm thinking I may have changed my mind about those things.
You're never quite as far from home as you think you might be.

***
Here's a link to a song I can't get enough of; it's all over the clubs and the radio here. The video is weird, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgFE5OQbt_g

***
Tonight, in place of the weekly social, we're either going to a place called The Melting Pot in Muizenberg or Chrome, down on Long Street in Cape Town.

***
I've a plan for work! There is hope and a possible solution! We've created a plan and we are going to use next week to put it into action.
Today saw the end of the typing project I've been working on; I'm re-writing the chapter on HIV/AIDS due to my dissatisfaction with the information that was being provided.
We shall see how it goes, hopefully it will all be well-received.
However, the manual at present is nearly free of grammatical errors and this I am pleased with.

***
I'm drinking 2000 mL of tea a day. Hydration at its finest. Sort of. The ladies tease me because of all of the tea in the Nalgene and also because of all the bathroom breaks.
Stay tuned for word on the exercise situation; there was running the other day (not so much running as attempts at running, but it was almost a mile and it was alright) and there will be an explanation of the joke that has become the yoga. Perhaps there will be a jog today. I'm determined.

In which things happen

2010-09-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

In which I fail the South African driver’s test without even taking it.

I really doubt my abilities. I feel as though this is not the feeling one should feel when they set about accomplishing a task, yet it is the most pervasive between the hours of nine in the morning and four in the afternoon. I usually give up around three and just settle in to some monotonous task to fill the gap between then and the time when the sound of the minibus horn honks to let me know it’s waiting patiently for me downstairs.

Let me rephrase that, lest you think I’m lazy. I don’t give up. I try to go with the flow. I try to stay busy, or look busy, or seem busy. Maybe that’s stretching the truth. Maybe it is giving up. Maybe it’s throwing in the towel, begging for relief, praying for the four o’clock light at the end of the time tunnel.

But either way last Thursday began with “bobbelas” (Afrikaans for hung over) and ended with me miserable, disheartened and terrified to drive on hills.

We needed to go to the police department in Muizenberg to get some application forms for posts seen in some newspaper. Too far to walk. Neither Rochelle nor Brenda has their driver’s license. I do. (In hindsight, mentioning that I’ve only ever driven a manual car in Wisconsin may have been the best decision I could have made. However, I remained silent.) And thus, we get in the Cheryl’s car (kindly remember that she is the boss of all things internship related) and sputter off with Brenda at the wheel. About to turn onto Prince George Road (the big one. Road, not the king), she pulls over and I’m to drive. Oh dear god.

I drive. I did well. I shifted nicely, considering I was shifting left-handed and driving on the left side of the road. Things were going alright. Until we had to stop on a hill. Brenda throws the handbrake up. I chill, foot on the brake pedal. And then the light turns green.

Panic sets in. I go to drive and the car is not going and I try to accelerate, but I’m not doing it enough and we roll back. I slam on the brake. I am afraid to stall it. So I do exactly that. Twice. I turn it back on and then I floor it. Problem – the handbrake is on. Smoke emits from the tires. I can now say, shamefully, that I have “burnt rubber.” Brenda lets the handbrake go and we drive. I’m not even breathing. I turn the corner and we pull over and we park.

Laughter. Peals of laughter. (They easily could have been tears.)

They’re making fun of the way I yelled, “Brenda, you drive! I don’t want this anymore!” and I’m just glad we’re alive.

And we get out. Rochelle proclaims that she needs a smoke. I am going over the whole scenario in my head.

We go to the police station. They are rude. I’ve got a full-on headache now; I could care less about the damn forms. They refuse to give them to us. We leave dejected, but alive.

And thus, I would not have passed a South African driving test (rolling back almost into the grill of a large truck – rolling back at all – is an automatic fail). When I get home, I am determined to learn how to smoothly accelerate up a hill without rolling back so that I never have to feel that fear again. When we rent a car to do the Garden Route, I am renting an automatic for sure.

In which we try to climb Table Mountain and fail

Awake at seven thirty on a Saturday, out of bed by eight and on the train at exactly 8:33 or 8:37 (so not quite exactly after all), we stumbled into downtown Cape Town around half past nine in order to climb the peak that looms above us daily. There was a cab ride to the base and then there was some confusion.
And so we began walking. We found a trailhead and began the hike.

We hiked. It was lovely. Saturday was the first really warm day we've had here (spring started September first). We didn't quite make it to the top due to some trail confusion, but we got a good hike in and were able to see amazing views from the city. I only had 100ml or so of water with me, and Mike had a little less than that, and to get to the top was going to take at least another 2.5 hours, so we decided to attempt to summit (ha) again next Saturday.

After that, we walked back to the train station (at least 10 km downhill - the quads are burning today). On the way we stopped and had some lunch at a cafe. I normally don't like ordering omelets out, because you never can tell if you're going to get a good omelet, but this one was delicious. We walked through Green Market Square and stopped to see all of the stuff being sold. It's the same souvenirs everywhere you go, really, and there are only so many times that wooden spoons with animals carved into them are going to be interesting.

However ---- I found the mirror covers!!!! I found them! The guy was trying to charge me R50 for them so I bailed, but I got them today for R10! They're a little dirty, so I'm assuming they came right off of someone's car, but hey, I'll take them and wash them. So my only goal has been achieved.

More to come later, sorry for the abbreviated post.

More pictures of the boat trip and then some AIDS

2010-09-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.mytripblog.org/pg/blog/kbarry/read/11131/living-color
(I promised I'd blog for them too so that is my first post...I had it all typed out and then I lost it, of course. So that is the abridged version.)

Ah, the beach at Muizenberg. again.

Leaving the waterfront on the boat tour

Off to the front of the bow of the ship to play Titanic

I seriously got to steer this boat. The captain went to the front and made hand signals at me. I was terrified.

Mike and I thought Mom would like this picture. Too bad my camera was foggy and everything came out hazy.

This is my bed, with my brand new"Fight TB" vuvuzela laying on it. I got it at an event at work where they were doing road testing for HIV and TB. Since I'm vaccinated for the TB and since I'm HIV-free as of the last time I got tested for it, I let them test my blood sugar and blood pressure and then accepted the free stuff.

My side of the room, complete with peace flags. Svenja's bed is just behind mine. I stood on her bed to take the picture.

This is the view from the front of our house. To the right is the living room, you see the kitchen there on the right and then the stairs and then straight back is our room.

The HIV and TB testing that resulted in me getting a free cup and vuvuzela was interesting. I was leaving at noon or I would have gotten tested, but it was interesting how the excuses flew. I, too, didn't have enough time to do it. I should have found the time, made the time, carved it out and penciled it in. But I didn't. I feel that part of the problem here is the getting tested part. No one wants to do it, and no one who thinks they might have been exposed wants to do it because they're afraid of the answer. Earlier that day, one of the women I work with was late because she had to go to the clinic. No one said anything about it, other than to rag on her because she was late, but I was glad that she went.
Later on, Svenja and I were talking about the kids that she works with. What do you do when one of them gets cut? Since no one tells you which of the kids are HIV positive, you have to treat every kid like they are and be extra careful around cuts and open wounds. And of course you don't want to know because you don't want to take the chance that you might treat one of them differently. But at the same time, it's a slight risk to you and to the other kids.
It's scary here. It's easy to forget that one out of every four or five people are infected. There are condoms everywhere, for the taking. There's no excuse not to have safe sex, but it's obviously not happening. The townships where we work are filled with kids. The streets are absolutely filled with children. Yesterday, a woman left her baby in the courtyard while she went off. Just left her baby in the courtyard. Another woman had to grab it and pick it up because he was crying, but otherwise, he would have been left there until she came back to retrieve him.
Today, I saw a little boy and his baby sister playing in the road. The little boy was trying to pick up the sister, who was nearly half his size. I watched him try to settle her on his hip, and then, once he realized he wasn't going to be able to, he helped her walk (barefoot, of course) across the road. As they were walking across, another little girl came out of a house nearby to meet them. It was so sad to realize that this township is so filled with such a young population.
Every time I get tested for anything else, I get tested for HIV. It's not hard. They take your blood and call you in a week. Everyone should do this at least once a year. Maybe more. Save your own life or someone else's.
However, I do have normal blood sugar and blood pressure, so that was a nice reassurance.

The adjustment has begun : end of week one

2010-09-08T05:49:00.000-07:00

Today we all left work early and are going to the Waterfront to do a sunset champagne cruise (included in the R180.00 price is a single glass of champagne). I'm excited. It should go by Table Mountain and will be a nice photo opportunity.
Every Wednesday, Projects Abroad puts together a social activity for all of the volunteers so that we're able to come together and form friendships.
Coincidentally, there is a place called Chrome on Long Street where they have R1 shots every Wednesday night. (To figure out what one Rand is, divide a dollar by seven. You can see why everyone goes mad for the place.)
However, I do have a job to do and have been trying to get at least ten hours of sleep a night. It's been interesting; I think I actually might be getting too much sleep. I'm usually out by nine and then awake once or twice during the night and then actually coherent by six thirty or so, even though my alarm does not go off until 7:45. By that time, I've managed to fall asleep again and thus the alarm is not my favorite thing to hear.
The minibus for work comes around 8:25, after picking a Japanese kid up from Steenberg train station. From there, we go up to Rockhill Rd to get Mike, Phillip, Gry and Nick and then off to the other places to pick up other volunteers. I'm at work just before nine.
I honestly am not sure how I feel about my work placement, but more on that to come. I'm technically the job placement officer for the "Fit for Life, Fit for Work" program, although I'm feeling a little bit helpless. I realize that much of this adventure is going to be finding solutions, but I'm hesitant because I feel that the problem might be insurmountable based on the parameters that I've been given. I can't search further than walking distance, really, can't find jobs that work shifts, must find jobs for unskilled workers with no experience, and so on. I am going to have to really get creative. I am planning on going around to the business park, if you could even call it that, near the Vrygrond Community Center and pitching the program, pitching my applicants, and trying to build them a base from which they might draw employees.
Anyway, we'll see how the next week goes and then there might be some discussion about how I might be better suited to help the NGO in another capacity, or perhaps I might add on to my duties. I find that there's a lot of time that could be better spent.
Today I didn't do much at work since they were doing a computer skills class on the laptops in what is normally my space. Obviously, others use it too, but there are four of us generally based in one room and the classes are normally held in another. So today, I was in the classroom and they were in our room. I read through old newspapers trying to find job postings and talked to some people about possibly applying for them, but then I wandered down to the kitchen. While I was there, one of the cooks stuck her hand into the dishwater and pulled it out, her finger bloodied from a knife. While they were dealing with that, I stirred the caramelizing onions in a giant metal pot and then offered to do the dishes. As soon as I was done with dishes, Aaron, the business project coordinator from Projects Abroad came to see me and to see Cheryl, my boss. I told him that I was upset with the man who came yesterday to do my intake questionnaire and we had a discussion about that. I felt pressured to answer the questions in a certain way, and even when I did not answer them, or voiced a concern, the man would shove it off as though it wasn't going to be an issue. It wasn't a big deal, but at the same time, it bothered me that he would be so flippant about things as serious as housing and placement. So next week, I must go down to the Newlands office to re-do the questionnaire (although my answers will be exactly the same; it was the principle of the matter).
So that was how my morning was spent.
However, one thing I am quite enjoying about South Africa is tea time. They take tea at Etafeni every day at 10:30. Everyone gently teases me because I drink my tea without milk or sugar, they way it's customarily taken here. I'm so very happy that I brought a Nalgene with me, I fill it up every day with hot tea and then take it to work. I try to have the 1000mL (32oz) bottle drunk by 10:30 and then I fill it up again and try to have that finished by the end of the day. In this way, I have been able to stay hydrated. They drink black tea here, although it's not called black tea. Everyone looks a little bit offended when I tell them I'm drinking black tea. Apparently, it's forest tea. Either way, it's not green tea, which I'm finding that I miss a little bit.
Priscilla's granddaughter Emily Rose has been delighting me lately. She's almost three, but right now, she's "two like a bunny" and full of energy. She's a little shy at first, hesitant to see you, but after a little bit she warms right up. Her laugh fills me with joy. It's funny how hearing laughter can improve your day. She has this toothy laugh, during which she throws her head back, smiling. I love it. We've been playing sort of peek-a-boo and it seems to entertain her.
I put up my peace flags in my room! It brought a wonderful splash of color and made me so happy. Now, every time I look up I get to see all of them. I am so happy that I brought them as the personalization of a room is so very necessary to contented living.
Off to take the 3:08 train to head to town and then to cruise!!

The first week: PictureBlog

2010-09-05T08:43:00.000-07:00

First beer in Johannesburg

the beach at Muizenberg

Huts and Muizenberg

first stop on the wine tour

the group for the wine tour

goats live in this castle

another stop

beautiful sculpture, enlarged for loveliness

another stop on wine tour

MIke and in Long Street at Zula Bar

fountain at stop with wine and chocolate

face painting for lunch

drive home, seaside. This one is bigger purposefully, because I love it.

Mike and German roommate Philip

I have few words today. That's a lie, of course. This week has seen the collision of the third and first worlds and the collision of my life with so many others and I've not yet had time to process it all.

I'm sad today, not homesick, really, but melancholy. Which is of course to be expected. I wish I could divulge the cause or cure, but I can do neither and thus time will sort things out and make them right again, it always does. Perhaps someday I shall be able to pull of the beautiful solitude, that quiet, enduring strength that drives the most mysterious minds yet also keeps them contented.

When will I learn not to rely so much on other people? I guess it's quite right what they say: in the end, all you have is yourself.

(This all stems from exhaustion. I find that I have been tired since I got here. Hopefully this coming week will bring more sleep and some of that quiet contentment.)

Today I met three Americans, friends of a British girl staying with Mike. They were all obscenely wealthy and I found myself both jealous and annoyed. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have everything? But also, isn't it the most horrible thing that could ever happen?

One girl had graduated from SMU in 2009 and was here with Projects Abroad for a few months and had decided in the end to stay here. She had no job, but had signed a lease on an apartment after her placement had ended and is now in the process of looking for a job. And by looking for a job I don't mean that at all. She spoke of all of the jobs she could have taken, waitressing or whatnot, and how they were beneath her.

The same for the young couple who came here. They have been here seven months and are both unemployed, yet they drive a BMW and have never been into the neighborhood I live in. They talked about how they couldn't really be expected to have found work already because they have been traveling, and then it took them three months to find a house and then there was the World Cup and blah blah blah.

And I was immediately put off.

There is much to be said for walking the lines between wealth and extravagance. I wish for moderation and to always be grateful for what I have.

Friday night I was asleep before ten. Svenja and I put in "Dirty Dancing," which I'd never seen, and promptly fell asleep. Saturday was the wine tour, which was lovely but wildly underwhelming. I paid too much for a buffet that I don't regret simply because of mashed potatoes, a cold bell pepper salad, and chocolate mousse. But it covered lunch and dinner, so it was not all bad in the end. Yesterday night we went out to Long Street with a couple of volunteers. I was not really impressed nor that excited as instead, I just wanted to sleep. But we were out quite late and arrived safely home.

There is a lot of German speech flying back and forth. Svenja hates it because she came here to work on her English. However, it makes me sort of want to be in Spain or the Americas to work on my Spanish, so hopefully that's something I can begin doing as soon as I get home.

For now, I'm learning swear words in Afrikaans but am hoping to also learn to have basic conversations by the time I leave. However, I can say quite a few offensive things and I've only been here five days, so I think we're off to a pretty good start.

Today, we went to the beach at Muizenberg. I can already tell that it's going to be one of my favorite places here. We sat and watched the waves crash into the beach for the longest time before getting some lunch and then walking up to the Muizenberg Market, held weekly. I didn't buy anything since I didn't have any small bills or coins with me, but I did get to practice my haggling a little bit. Bargaining is such a learned skill and by the time I leave here, I'd love to have it quite together. I talked one man down to R12 from R20, but didn't want the keychain after I saw that it would have rusted eventually. But I could have done better. There's so much play acting that goes into the haggling process; you see something, you inspect the quality, you ask how much, you decided how much you're willing to pay, you counter-offer, you pretend you don't want it, you set it down, maybe you turn. The vender names a lower price. You pretend to think about it. You mull it over, maybe turn the piece over in your hand. Then you say no, the price drops...and so on. It's a timeless dance, really, a beautiful craft.

Tomorrow brings more work, something I'm not quite prepared for but am launching into anyway. So perhaps things will go smoothly this week. I am preparing to be the best damn networker/job placer that the Vrygrond/Capricorn has ever seen.

Wish me luck.

love to all.

Also, for those wishing to write me love letters (I do love a nice romantic surprise), or send me packages (write a list of what's enclosed so the government doesn't freak out), or whatever:

Katherine Barry

c/o Mr. Dana Myers

Projects Abroad

4th Floor

Letterstedt House

Newlands on Main

Corner of Campground

Cape Town, South Africa 7700

The first three days and a bit of the travel: 31 August - 3 September

2010-09-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

Africa is everything I thought it would be and nothing, at the same time. Flying into Johannesburg and seeing the continent for the first time was exactly like flying over the eastern plains of Colorado, green crop circles set amongst brown land, although perhaps a bit more topographically complex.

Walking off of the plane down the stairs to the tarmac, it began to hit me. Visa advertisements left over from the World Cup were still splayed over the outside of the airport and inside, a wash of ads for Vodacom and other foreign companies assaulted my senses. It's funny that the advertisements that are the least familiar to you will stick out to you because you are so desensitized to the ones at home. We purchased cellular phones (cheap Nokia ones with pre-paid Vodacom service. My number is +27-82-269-6816. Call, text, whatever. I think it's alright. Also, I think that is my number. I have it saved in my phone and I have to keep looking it up.)

The ride to Cape Town was bumpy and uncomfortable. We sat in the back row of the aircraft and the seats did not recline (I don't normally bother with that, but this time, our knees were touching the seats in front of us) and neither of us could get to sleep comfortably. While drifting in and out, I heard Mike talking to the woman on my right, who told him she'd lived all over the world and married an American, but that she loved Cape Town the best.
We immediately found all of our luggage and headed toward Denver Flowers, the driver for Projects Abroad. He was a very nice man, talkative enough to put our frayed nerves at rest. We drove through the city, directly to each of our host families.

I live with a woman called Priscilla. She is quite a character, but very lovely. She is nearing fifty, entering menopause (between the palpitations - her word - and the hot flashes, she's quite busy) and a grandmother. When I arrived, the oldest, Ayden Leigh was sick upstairs in bed. She is the one who spends the most time with Priscilla, whom they call Ma. The youngest, Emily Rose, is two and the other one, Ayden's sister, spends most of her time with their mother.

I live in a narrow room painted pink with Hello Kitty curtains covering the barred window. Through the room is a small bathroom with a polka-dotted shower curtain and cold, green tile. To have a hot shower, you must turn on the geyser (pronounced geezer) at least an hour beforehand to give it time to warm up. Every time you use any bit of electricity, you must switch off the plug at the wall in order to conserve energy.

While attempting not to complain, I must inform you all of the gravity of my sock-less situation. I hate socks, most of you know this. I refuse to wear them if I don't have to. I only brought two pairs: my CTA socks (obviously) and then wool socks to go in my hiking boots. I am cold. It is winter here, with temperatures dropping into the humid 40s at night. I am sock-less and thus unable to get warm. However, my bed does have no less than four blankets on it and so I am warm during the night as soon as I am able to heat up my nest. (I am also grateful for bringing my green paisley comforter, it has been, well, comforting. If only I had remembered the damn squishy pillow.)

Mike lives not far from me, with Priscilla's sister Philly. She is married to Derek and they have a daughter Tammy. He lives with an odd English kid named Nick and a new German boy and Gry from Denmark. She's the lone girl in the house as soon as the other female roommate leaves.
My roommate Svenja leaves on the 17th and after she is gone, I will be alone in my house on Powell Rd until the middle of November. While this might be nice, it also might prove to be a bit lonely. Perhaps I shall be able to get some reading done. It's been nice to have her around, she's quite talkative and opinionated about everything.

Yesterday after our orientation with the Projects Abroad people (which consisted of lunch, a quick tour of the area around the office, an introduction to the mall, etc.), Mike, a new girl from the Netherlands named Marlis and I bunked off of an escort home to meet up with Gry, whom Mike calls "roomie" because our American English prohibits us from being able to correctly pronounce the "uu" sound in her name, and the four of us took the train to the beach at Muizenberg.

The beach took my breath away. I so very much love water, it has this strange pull over me I'll never understand. The ocean is obviously something I've grown to love immensely. Standing there, with icy waves crashing against my ankles, looking out into the southern half of the world, surrounded by mountains and people and sand, I felt so minuscule yet so alive. That sublime feeling is the one I've come to love the most; it's the feeling I get standing on a crowded street corner at rush hour in the middle of the city or the feeling I get when I'm jumping into the icy water of a quiet lake or the feeling I get laying in dark grass looking at the stars.
It is the purest form of love.

(this is not my photo, I don't have my camera memory stick with me at the Internet cafe that I am at, it's borrowed from the internet, but it's a picture of Muizenberg beach and the changing houses)

The train to meet Gry was interesting. Instead of getting on the first class cars (connoted by the "plus" written after Metro), we ended up on a third class car (there is no second class, a bit ironic) where a man was preaching the word of God. It was very reminiscent of my time in Chicago, and I feel as though much of my comparison of this city to things familiar will fall into my years spent in Chicago. Graffiti, crime, race issues, poverty: all things seem most applicable to the larger urban setting rather than the experience that is Denver, which as of yet, I have not been able to categorize. It is neither sprawling and urban nor rural, it is neither rich nor poor, it seems to be a middle place of all things, but a community divided nonetheless.

But back to Cape Town: The man stood in the middle of the packed car, seats filled with people lining both sides, and spoke so intently that sweat began to pour down the sides of his face. He spoke of repentance and material gain for those who followed the way of God and of salvation, and in that moment, it struck me that the human condition is marked by the quest for the other side, for salvation, for truth in another life rather than truth or salvation in this one. Is it because there is no hope of changing certain conditions within this existence?
Even today, my boss Cheryl at Etafeni spoke about the inability to change anything as one person. It seems a recurring theme here, perhaps a recurring theme everywhere.

At the conclusion of his fervent speech, which took the better part of twenty minutes, he asked the passengers for money. In Chicago, no one gives and the speaker just moves on to another car. But people gave. They slowly, silently dug into their pockets and the bags that they were clutching to grab a handful of coins to give. And he took them and marked off their contributions on a piece of paper bearing the name of his church. It struck me that these people who live teetering on the sharpest edge between poverty and pure destitution would be so willing to give.

Today, I started work. A minibus, arranged by Projects Abroad because it is unsafe to take the public ones into the Vrygrond - Free ground, essentially, picked both my roommate and me up around half past eight this morning. (You'll notice I'm attempting to sound more like the people around here. I'm only half-hearted in my efforts, but I hope it pays off. I've been taken for an American at every turn and I wish that it might stop. Thank god that the Midwestern accent has nearly faded or I'd really be in for it.) We picked up Mike and Gry and then some others and were driven in.

It's shocking, really. You take it in and you realize that you're the only white people for miles around. It is this way even where we are staying. The starkness of the contrast is surprisingly visceral. Today, I had to wait in the shelter of the Vrygrond Community Center until the car came to get me because of the danger posed to me standing out alone. We drove through the neighborhood, if you could call it that, and out to the main road. Shacks, houses made of odd materials, piles of trash, naked children, people in the backs of trucks, all along the rutted dirt road. We drove through and they all stared at us even as I was staring at them. It was my first time in the Vrgrond and I will be spending the daylight hours there for the next three months and I am already a humbled person.

Newly added to my list of things I'd like to change about myself is the way in which I consume. I would very much like to learn to eat leftovers (I'll keep you posted on the food situation at home, but seriously, please send fiber bars and fruit bars, I'm going to need them). Priscilla hates to waste food and looking into her refrigerator makes me think of Emily and I moving out of Chicago and all of the wasted food (even the jar of pickles).

I'd like to learn to use things differently. Today, in the Vrygrond I saw a house that had plastic bottles filled with colored water set upside down into the cement to form a pathway reminiscent of the lights used to line sidewalks and driveways. While I'm not sure I'll ever subscribe to this form of decorating, I'd like to be able to consolidate my patterns of consumption, whether they are in my eating habits or in my wearing of clothes or my use of gas to drive around. (For the record, I still have not seen a car as cluttered as Simon, no matter the age of the vehicle.)

I have to be home every night at 6 for dinner, which yesterday was spaghetti and meat, followed by a strange serving of liquid custard from a container. I've been carrying my Nalgene around everywhere with me, trying to stay hydrated. It is an uphill battle though, and I don't think I'm quite there yet. On the bright side of the food department is the tea. There is tea everywhere. I think I'm in love with this country's love of tea.

Tonight we are possibly headed to Long Street to begin culturing ourselves. And by culturing, I mean discovering what it means to be intoxicated in the Western Cape. And we will take a Projects Abroad-approved taxi home and you shouldn't worry yourselves at all. (I will worry enough for all of you.)

And it shall be an adventure and life shall continue. We are going on a wine tour tomorrow organized by another of the volunteers, a girl named Carlotta who is from Italy and is a human rights or journalism volunteer. (I get the impression they're the ones who do all the partying. I met some of them on Wednesday night at the weekly social, and they seemed so young to me. Like eighteen year olds who want nothing more than to drink and smoke pot. I felt old, then, for wanting sleep and wishing that they had their priorities straight. I don't know...we'll get more on this later, I'm sure. I love to drink, and I most certainly love to be merry, but I feel as though that can't be the only focus in life, especially not when we are such a place as this. It is safe and it is fun and it will be everything we've ever dreamed, but it's also not safe and one wrong move could get us killed. It is a gentle reminder that there is more important work to be done.)

My feet have been cold all day and Harriet, a woman who oversees the Income Generation project at my work, is convinced that I'm coming down with the flu. She gave me a pamphlet about TB and told me to read it and she was firm in reminding me that I should keep my windows open at all times, except at night so muggers don't come in. I thought at first that she was saying "maggots" and I got stressed out. But here's hoping that no one has managed to get me sick yet, even my roommate, who struggles with a surfing-induced cold. Gry is finally getting sick and she told me it's been two weeks coming, so I am hoping that it shouldn't be too horrible when it does come. However, it was nice to know that I can find a mother even in someone I've hardly met. I appreciated her concern for my well being.

I've posted the Denver Broncos schedule for the year on the refrigerator at Priscilla's house. She teases me constantly about not wearing socks but has yielded to my American football needs. She seems very genuine and very direct, two things I think I'm going to enjoy very much about my stay with her.

Work. Oh my, well, I've been typing for awhile now and I'm not sure how much more time I'm going to have before we must leave for dinner, but I will tell you that I've got quite the challenge ahead of me. I am going to be focused on job placement for people who have completed high school and then also gone through a six-week course at Etafeni called "Fit for Life/Fit for Work." Today I spent time researching the job market around the Vrygrond and am realizing that this is going to be a difficult task for me.

Monday, I will get to the task of trying to connect with businesses that might potentially need employees, but part of me worries that I might be over my head. Or at least, in the dark at the moment. I have no idea what I'm doing, but at the same time, I don't get the impression that they do either. They're a model based off of a running organization in Nyanga, which was based off an NGO in India. And thus, they have two years to be entirely self-sufficient. My task is to keep the placement numbers above 80%. They are currently sitting at around 60%, maybe a bit worse. I've yet to actually see their figures.

They also need help with marketing. A man named Abraham Lincoln Taylor, who's just called Abe Taylor, is the head of that department there and he oversees all of that. They've told me that while my primary focus will be job placement, they will try to use me wherever they can in order to make the most of my placement with them. I think that this might be rewarding but also challenging, which is exactly what I wanted and so with this I am happy. Overwhelmed at the moment, but quite pleased. Abe Taylor gave me a chapter from a book he is reading about building social business, and so for the weekend, I shall content myself to delve into his area of expertise.

Since Elton John was there for the opening of the first wing of the building, they expect the second opening to be just as grand (it is a sorely needed community center in an area literally blighted by poverty and actually insurmountable odds). They hope to do this while I am an intern and the prospects for fundraising are wild but also looking bright, hopefully.

More on this job situation as the job situation itself develops and I find time to breathe.

For now, love and more love. And will someone please email me Broncos updates? I'll be on my Gmail quite a bit at work and I'd love to hear from you all. (katherine.barry3@gmail.com)

JFK: New York

2010-08-31T05:29:00.001-07:00

The first leg of travel is complete!

We arrived at JFK around 6 this morning and have been wandering around ever since.
I'm exhausted; attempts to sleep on the plane were only moderately successful.
We now have neck pillows, which aren't actual pillows, but perhaps they'll do the trick.
We do not, however, have the Excedrin PM, which may affect my ability to sleep on the flight. I'm going to be doing the patented Katie-Barry-sleeps-on-planes technique, which involves me putting my face on the tray and praying for sleep to come. It will. I will wake up with Tim Burton eyelashes, bending every which way, and while I will regret not sleeping upright, I will also be thankful that I've not drooled everywhere or be caught in some awkward open-mouthed position for the better part of ten hours.

Mike does not want pre-flight blog photos.

I can't say I'm excited yet. Right now all I have on my mind are flights, baggage and entertainment for the next twenty five or so hours.
I can't say I'm nervous or afraid. I have no expectations. I mean, obviously there are a few, but I honestly feel as though I won't suffer from the oppression that pre-conceived notions can provide. Hopefully my trip can be shaped solely by experiences and sensations, rather than ideas of accomplishment.

As for myself? I expect to remain intact (both in body and mind) and I hope to strengthen the areas of my life that most sorely need discovery: my spirituality needs to be shaped from the odd collection of superstitions and attempts at belief systems into something at least halfway legitimate (although I happen to enjoy my collection of superstitions and things borrowed); my physical shape - I wish to be stronger and more capable (I brought Jillian Michaels yoga with me, don't judge, and I'm hoping to acquire a bike while I'm there to ride around on. I also have my hiking boots, which will hopefully serve me well); peace and quiet for my own mind through organization, relaxation, work, meditation. I hope that Mike and I enjoy our time together. I hope to pick up at bit of another language - that way I can be proficient in English and a reader and writer but not speaker of Spanish and then have conversational something else to add to my limited ability to globally communicate.
That is all I wish. That and wonderful memories of beautiful places and interesting people.

nothing says "excited travelers" like the self-photograph

I packed too much. That's not surprising, if you know me. But it's frustrating. I've done so much traveling in the past four years and I really wanted to prove to myself that I could pack lightly and intelligently without having to worry about not lacking anything that I might need. Instead, I started packing at about 8pm last night and was doing very well. I had my rolling duffel bag packed (complete with shoes!) and thought I was pretty well finished.
But of course there were all those little extra things, and I did insist that I bring one of my comforters (I find I sleep much better when I'm surrounded by my own blankets...more on this later), which, coupled with an extra, empty backpack nearly filled the second suitcase.
And thus I'm carrying the mountain backpack with me, and my purse, and a smaller purse (over the shoulder with passport and wallet and necessary documents) and I'm overwhelmed already. But I think I may have done better than I had expected, so hopefully that's all going to go smoothly.
And of course Mike only has one suitcase and a nearly empty backpack.

Another thing I look forward to in South Africa is sleep. Summer has never been a good time for sleep for me; I'm always doing something. Even this summer, I hardly slept but I have no idea what I did with all of my time. So hopefully this flight will bring sleep and so will this trip. Perhaps with my curfew (10pm on weekdays, midnight on the weekends, ugh) I'll be able to do a good bit of sleeping.

Once we arrive in Cape Town (13:50 local time on September 1st), we will find our Projects Abroad driver, who will take us directly to our host families. Then we will stay there until the next day, when we will be found by Projects Abroad staff and shown how to use public transportation and oriented. Hopefully this orientation will include the procurement of a cell phone for inter-country communication. I guess I should be nervous about my internship, but since they can't seem to get that settled, I can't be bothered to stress. I'm taking this as a good sign, but twenty hours on a flight may leave me with a lot of time to conjure up worries and hazardous work situations that I might find myself in.

Keep the Cat in your prayers, or thoughts, or good wishes, whatever. He went in to the vet yesterday for a check up and because I found a lump and thought he had cancer again. Well, good news: turns out it's not cancer. Bad news: hernia. So he'll be in surgery any moment now and will be recovering for the rest of the week. I'm brokenhearted that I can't be there to snuggle him during recovery, but I hope he understands that he has the worst timing ever and that, like mother, like cat, we are Murphy's Law incarnate.

This is a weird idea, but it's my romantic self coming through: I've always wanted to fly with a boyfriend. I see the cutest couples who seem to enjoy traveling with each other every time I fly and I want someday to be that. If you can travel together, maybe you'll be able to stay together, right? (That's obviously a lie, I've traveled with boyfriends before and sometimes it ends horribly.)

Mike wishes to express that he is a "fantastic fireball of fascinating fun," and also that he only did that for the alliteration.

Love from both of us to all of you.

Countdown, Stress

2010-08-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

The days have dwindled from over one hundred down to just four. Not even four real days left, either.
And we stand in the middle of tying up all of the loose ends only to find that there are so many more left that will lie that way, undone and entangled, waiting or not for us to return.
And that's the way every great move is. The belongings left in dark rooms, the emptiness of it all, the attempts to squeeze just one more item into an already overcrowded suitcase.

Shirtspantsunderwearsocksshampoojacketscoatstightsbookscomputerendlessamountsofcordsmedicinemakeupmoneycreditcardspaperspens....
quite frankly, it's overwhelming.

There are all the small things that suddenly seem larger than anything manageable and there are the softest of whispers of things forgotten already lingering in my mind.

At the last minute, my internship was changed due to "unforeseen circumstances." While this means I won't be getting to do corporate work, it was an email that allowed me to take an unexpected deep breath filled with relief. Non-profit. It's nearly social work; the job description mirrors almost exactly (as things that mirror tend to do) a job that I was hoping to volunteer for in Chicago during my last semester of college. I will be helping high school graduates attempt to find jobs through a program called "Fit for Life/Fit for Work." More details to come as they find themselves to my inbox.

As I attempt to fit my last nights of freedom before curfew-infused adventure, I find myself burning the candle at both ends, mixing late nights with earlier mornings and finding myself coming up short. Can it all be done?

Of course it can.

Great Expectations

2010-08-18T22:56:00.000-07:00

I'm sure that everyone will ask, if they haven't already, what I expect from Cape Town.

Mike today reminded me to have no expectations.

I really am not sure that I have any.

I have this odd mental image of me in a suit, but that may be projections of my fears that I won't look like I belong.

But other than that, I have the image of a porch, perhaps screened in and a small dark room with wooden shutters in which I will live. Neither of these things will turn out to be correct, I'm sure. Perhaps I'm grateful that those things will not be.

I've neglected to expect anything because I've been too busy with trying to survive my daily routine. It seems as though every summer I become entangled in a myriad of projects, duties, and adventures. By the time September comes, I've lost all track of time and I've accomplished nothing.

This summer has been about treading water, maintaining whatever it is I've got to call my own. It's been a long few months, but they've flown by, if that's possible. Of course it's possible; time is a funny, fickle creature. But that funny, fickle creature controls our every intake of breath and guards our exhalation with its very life.

By the time I remember to breathe, I've lost three months. Living in Chicago until the beginning of July seems as though it was years ago. Moving to Denver seems as though it's been forever. Six weeks, that's all. Six weeks of fast-paced, fast food servitude and a feet-first love affair.

I've got so little time, and so many things to accomplish, to complete, loose ends to tie up.
Will it happen?
I have a sneaking suspicion that sometime during the night before the plane heads away, I will be running around, frantic, probably tearing up, most likely already incapacitated by grief and fear and then eventually, the sense of loss that pulls at me when I feel the sky surround me and the wheels of planes pull up. Every time.
Up, up, and away.

Cape Town Truth #1: I haven't started packing.

Truth #2: I have no intention of starting until I feel like I'm leaving.

Truth #3: It hasn't yet registered that I have less than two weeks in the United States before I'm off for three months. Ninety days. Twelve weeks. A long time.

I'm pretending this isn't real. I mean, it's very real, but it seems distant and intangible. I need to realize that some things are about to change. I do believe that for now it's better that I have yet to establish expectations.

Accommodation and Placement Details Divulged

2010-08-16T22:27:00.000-07:00

The placement has been announced: I'll be doing my marketing internship with a company called "Simply Asia."
This presents a multitude of problems, but equally as much excitement. First up: I keep wanting to call the company Asia SF, which is the name of a restaurant in San Francisco, California that serves asian cuisine while also featuring transgendered performers lip-synching. Secondly: I was rather hoping that my life would wind me away from food, particularly the moderately-paced-although-technically-termed-fast-food-industry.
However, marketing and food might find a way into my life and a place in my heart. I am excited. The shopping for suitable business attire begins tomorrow afternoon.

The sleeping arrangements have also been announced, and those I am slightly trepidatious about. I'm going to be living by myself or with another female volunteer, not Mike. I'm going to be living with a single mother who has two children and three grandchildren. Her name is Priscilla and she's a smoker.
This bothers me. If she smokes in the house (I've sent an email to Projects Abroad to find out if that's the case), then I won't be able to live there. While I am open to different cultures and practices, I find the smell of stale cigarette smoke to be unprofessional and nauseating. Also, I do not want to be in an environment where I am around cigarettes. Simply put, I will be tempted to pick up smoking again and it's just not something I wish to do.

We have two weeks left in the United States. Prescriptions for malaria pills and antibiotics (should we need them) have been written and need to be filled.
Shopping and packing, obviously.
I'm feeling overwhelmed and underprepared, a situation which will hopefully be remedied as the days draw a little nearer.

I'm hoping to pick up a little bit of Afrikaans while I'm down in Cape Town, but am also hoping I don't develop any sort of strange accent. The Chicago-awkward Midwest thing has taken its toll on my ability to communicate effectively (that's a lie, but I do sound like a goon sometimes) so hopefully the speech patterns in Cape Town will help get rid of that and will return me to my wonderful Colorado English.

Wikipedia Information

2010-08-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

Because where would we be without Wikipedia?

For those of you who need a little bit of refreshment about Cape Town itself, click here.
There are better articles, obviously, but this is everything compacted down into something quite readable.

Why?

2010-08-03T19:36:00.000-07:00

It's the first question everyone asks; it's the one I feel the most unable to answer: Why?

Why are you going to Cape Town?

I don't know, really.

I mean, I do, of course, or I wouldn't be going. But do I really know what I expect to find there? No. Of course not, that's why I'm going. Exploration, adventure, life practice. (Not that everyday living isn't life practice, but this is the kind of life practice you'll look back on in the future with that nostalgic heart, remembering the days of youth that somehow slipped away from you.)
I'm a recent college graduate with little to no business experience and a lust for travel that will soon be merely an unfulfilled wish because eventually I'll be mired in work (provided I find reasonable employment at some point in the future) and my family (again, provided I eventually find someone suitable for marriage) and I'll never have time to go anywhere.
This is the time, they'll tell you. Go. Live your dreams.
I'm not sure that my dreams were ever to end up spending three months in Cape Town, but they certainly are now.
Mike and I leave the United States on August 31st at 12:45AM (yes, AM) and will arrive in Cape Town around noon the next day. From there, we begin our separate assignments. I'll be doing a marketing internship and he'll be doing school sports. Neither of us have any idea what to expect and I rather like it that way.
Both of us expect to find out certain things about ourselves along the way, not only strengthening our sibling relationship but also figuring out what the future might hold for each of us, who are both teetering on the edge of adulthood and independence but who both seem to need a nudge in the right direction.
At the end of this, I'll be more aware of myself and the potential that marketing might hold for a graduate degree and he'll have a sense of accomplishment and self-satisfaction.

Why?

Honestly, I need something crazy on my resume. And by something crazy, I mean anything.
We wanted to get away; we've been talking about going to Africa for years. With nothing but time ahead of us, we decided that now would be the time to take that leap into the unknown and the wonderful.

Why not?