Billy Says:When we arrived in Cape Town, our friend Dirk (from couchsurfing) picked us up from the airport, and immediately took us to see some of the most beautiful places in the cape town area. He drove us up to lion's head (and rump) to get a great view of the city down below:
then took us around signal hill, down along the atlantic coast to the beach, camps bay and down to hout bay. we drove from there across the peninsula and south towards Muizenburg, and Simon's Town. Libby and I had to put our feet in the water, to feel the atlantic ocean thousands of miles away from the good ole' Jersey shore, and facing west. It never quite gets warm enough to swim in near Cape Town.
we drove from there across the peninsula and south towards muizenburg, and simon's town. Just south of Simon's Town, we saw African (affectionately named "Jackass") penguins.
Along the way we talked all about South Africa, and differences and similarities between the states and S.A. Dirk, as an Afrikaaner born around the same time as me, has roughly lived two lives. He told us about how he had decided, by the time he was ten years old, to join the Apartheid military and defend Apartheid. Then Mandela was realeased and everything began to change. Now his Black peers tell him about their struggle as youths against that same military he thought to join, and they discuss honetly the different paths that led them to knowing one another. He has adapted much better than his parents' generation, and better than many might, to the new social and political arrangement. Dirk is proudly South African, proudly African, and committed to living an anti-racist life in his country.
For dinner, Dirk, his wife, and friend treated us to a traditional Afrikaaner style braai (BBQ; we supplied the tofu) which was delicious.
District Six Museum:
The district six museum is a fascinating look into some of the beautiful possibilities of life in South Africa, as well as the grim history of Apartheid. It commemorates a mixed-race neighborhood that was declared for "whites" by the National Party government in the 60s, the residents kicked out, and the buildings bulldozed. Whether for good or bad, the neighborhood has yet to be rebuilt, though plans are underway. As the focus of the museum is on ex-residents of the neighborhood to remember their home and tell their stories, things like these street signs make up much of the exhibit:
Couchsurfing friends:
Our couchsurfring friends really made our time in Cape Town possible. It felt like home, and we were generously given gifts of food, housing, laughter, stories, and trips to various fun places.
Here's Maya, a wonderful young woman who is now studying politics and economics at UCT, and who bent over backwards to take good care of us:
J.P. is a friend of Maya's, and also Londi, who hosted us most of all (and whom you'll meet in "Cape Town#2"). Here we sit on Londi's "air couch" that Libby and I slept on for over a week:
Going Back to School:
Libby accompanied me a number of times out to the University of the Western Cape, and patiently helped me think through what it would be like to spend two years in the History MA program there. We navigated the different transit routes from the city (and suburbs) out to the university, tried the different food choices, checked out the library, wandered various buildings, toured graduate dormitories, sat in on classes and talked with professors.
Transit questions sat close to central in my mind when imagining going to UWC, as the school is 13 miles from the city center. The metrorail takes you directly to campus in a little over 30 minutes, hourly. From the southern suburbs (observatory and rosebank being the two we were hosted in) the trip is longer because a transfer is required. The train has a notorious reputation as being rather dangerous, as security is sporadic, and poverty is high and reliable. Tens of thousands of Africans pour into the trains every day, but we only saw a smattering of other whites on all our trips (and most whites we spoke to had never even considered using it). We found the train basically enjoyable, though near dark we did spend the extra 1 rand ($.13) to go first class and get security in the car with us (of course, with 3rd class you get things like people performing or singing together, which doesn't happen in 1st class. Take a look at a funky metrorail train, with a group of rarely seen white passengers).
More people ride in minibuses, and there's a route that connects mowbray (a southern suburb) with the university directly, and this also takes only a half hour if you're lucky enough to arrive near when the minibus gets full, but costs slightly more (~$.25). There's more frequent and varied connections between nearby belleville (2km from campus) and cape town, but belleville didn't seem to be that hip of a town when we visited.
The campus itself is small, but nice, with a good bit of greenery. Designed by the apartheid government in the 60s to be an underfunded forced alternative to UCT for the coloured community, (the university of cape town is prestigious, english speaking, and never was fully a white university, which angered apartheid planners, so the coloureds needed to drawn out of there) the campus isn't startlingly beautiful or overflowing with granite and ivy. It's a simple place with mostly brick buildings. But the layout is comfortable, there's plenty of grassy areas, and on the margins of campus is a nature reserve.
As for the buildings, the library is my favorite. It has 13 semi-floors, laid out along the outside of the spiral walkway going up through the center of the building. The graduate computer lab is right up top, with a great view of the campus and surrounding country side.
The student center is lively, full of people at all times. Lots of noise from people slamming their dominoes onto the table, and billiards, and a number of snack and food places, mostly with exactly nil vegetarian (or at least tasty vegetarian) food. The coffeeshop is nice though.
The undergraduate lecture halls are all painted with crazy bright colors:
and murals:
The housing situation is also a huge one to figure out. On-campus accomodation is cheap (~$1300 per year) and includes high speed internet. But it felt lonely when we visited the building, and one professor said that living on campus would be, quite simply, "grim." I was also troubled by this 500m of apocolypse looking landscape between the train station and the graduate housing. It really looks so crazy desolate, and one man we talked to said that it's not a safe walk to take at night, despite how short the distance. The university provides an hourly shuttle, but still, such lack of safety is a definite drawback.
Ok, but I've so far told only logistical details. Obviously that's not why I would up and move to South Africa for a couple years. The History program looked quite encouraging. I would be required to take one required course and one (but hopefully i'd take two) elective courses each semester, for two semesters, then write a big thesis.
The core course is called "public and visual history." It sounded boring to me, but when we sat in on it, I really liked it. The class focuses on how people in South Africa are choosing now to publicly hold the memory of apartheid and the struggle against it. I found the class atnosphere relaxed, thoughtful, radical, interactive, and relatively egalitarian as far as the relationship between professor and students.
The elective courses I'm interested in (i would try and take them all) are:
- Race and Class in the Liberation Struggle: 1960-1994
- Forced Removals and Land Reform
- The History of the Dutch East Indies Company
- The Political Economy of Postcolonial Africa
There's also a weekly seminar, where a guest presents a paper before a large audience and a discussion follows for a couple of hours. The seminar we visited was interesting as far as the subject matter, but socially depressing, as mostly professors and white audience members spoke, drowning out the Black student majority.
The ball is still in my court as to whether I'll begin school at UWC in february '08 or not, but - logistical concerns aside - and mostly enjoyed my time there, and definitely feel that the study would do me a lot of good.
***
for a good map of cape town and the areas discussed, try here (or, to see just the UWC campus map, click here).
for a description of the different neighborhoods, click.
