Just your average day in Africa.

Well, that’s it. Friday was officially my last day of classes, I turned in the last (of way too many) term papers yesterday, and I am done! The ‘studying’ part of studying abroad is over. And if I do say so myself, that part was way overrated.

I have been thinking a lot about how fast the time has gone, how much has happened and how comfortable I have become with my life here. And since the next six weeks are going to look pretty different for me, I thought I would take this time to reflect on the last four months. You know, clue you all in as to what exactly I do here on a daily basis.

Let’s start with Monday.

I wake up around 8:30, make myself coffee and breakfast and head to school. The walk hike takes about 20 minutes, crosses two freeway off ramps, and includes roughly seven flights of stairs. I get to campus about 15 minutes before my first class so that I can sit on the Jammie steps and cool off. This is one of my favorite times of day. It is usually nice out, a brisk 18°C (as if I know what that means), and the people watching is fantastic. I have never seen a campus as busy as UCT- and I go to a school with over 20 thousand people. Its not that there are necessarily more students, there is just less space, and they all have to walk right by the Jammie steps no matter where they are going. Now might also be a good time to mention that the people here are confoundingly beautiful. I don’t know if it’s the old Dutch bone structure, or the style, or the sunshine, but like I said, it makes the people watching very entertaining.

The Jammie Steps, surprisingly uncrowded. 

Just another picture of our beautiful campus.

After cooling off enough that I can breath without panting, I go to class.  My classes, and this school in general have plenty of noteworthy oddities in themselves, but I’ll have to write some other time about that.

I have a break from 12-2 when I eat lunch, sit out on the lawn and catch up on some reading (not really). After my last class I get out at 3 and head home.

If it is a Tuesday or a Thursday, then I go to Shawco. Shawco stands for Student Health and Welfare Something Something, and it is the Non Profit group that I volunteer with. I go twice a week to small school that services a township in Hout Bay and tutor grade six kids in Math and English. I’ve been working with the same group of five or six girls since the beginning of August, and they have really grown on me. At first it was hard to tell if they were learning anything, or if they needed my help at all, but then one day one of them asked me what the word ‘beg’ meant, and I realized that probably over half of what I had said to them over the last couple lessons had gone well beyond their grasp of English. So I toned down my language, had them underline any words they didn’t know in their workbooks and worked slowly on correcting their grammar and spelling. Even math lessons became mostly English lessons. It was not glamorous volunteer work, but its always refreshing to be around kids, and these girls in particular always had a way of making me smile.

Sinawe, learning like a champ.

Tecious, Lindlewa, Phoziso, Sinawe, Beauty, and Ncinci. Try memorizing those names. 

I get home from Shawco at about 6:30 and go home to make dinner. Dinnertime is always fun at Charlton house- its loud, the kitchen is crowded with people in a good way and the good cooks among us always make something that smells delicious. You’ll all be happy to know that I can officially cook for myself. I never thought it would happen but I have mastered quite a few staple entrees to add to my cereal/quesadilla diet at home.

Yes, that is a brisket. No, I didn't make it. But I helped! We made a serious
feast for Rosh Hashanah a couple of weeks ago and I made a peach cobbler!
It wasn't quite as photogenic as the brisket... but you get the idea.  

After dinner is usually homework time, which usually translates to sitting around the big dining room table with a book in front of me, hearing about everyone’s day and maybe playing a round or two of banana grams. If it’s a Wednesday though, then I have choir practice. I joined the UCT choir for Africa, which is an acapella group of about 16 people, roughly 10 of which show up to practice on a weekly basis. It’s a great time regardless. We sing only African composed music, and they all already know the songs so we pretty much just stand in a circle and sing for two hours. They are all incredibly talented and passionate and so much fun to sing with, its always an uplifting way to spend a Wednesday night.

Speaking of Wednesday nights, those are also the nights we go to Stones, the not-so-local (chain) bar that we’ve frequented quite literally every Wednesday since we arrived. It’s really nothing special, more often than not it’s just us, other international students there, but it’s two-for-one from 10 till 11 on Wednesday nights so it’s become something of a guilty pleasure.

My friend Jen and I at Stones (clearly). 

We fill up our weekend days exploring the beaches and new parts of town, occasionally traveling, catching up on homework and hitting up the super cool Cape Town club scene at night.

So there you have it. Every week is different and every day something notable, but for the most part, that is a glimpse in to my average day in Africa.

Muizenberg, South Africa

Cheers,

Emily

My alter ego is a vigilante.

Rocking the Daisies is Cape Town’s largest music festival. It’s somewhere between Coachella, EDC and Floatopia, only ten times cooler because let’s face it- it’s in Africa.  We left on Friday afternoon, and would have arrived before nightfall had we not taken a twenty minute detour down a dirt road through a township, gotten stuck in a sand dune of a road, and had to push the car back to paved civilization. After re-google mapping the directions, we pulled up to Cloof Wine Estate, home to the festival, just as the sun was beginning to set over rolling hills of grape vines. We set up our tent on a literal bed of wild flowers and prepared for the evening.

Friday night was a blast; after exploring the various stages and dancing until 3 in the morning we called it a night. Sleep was hard to come by considering the drum and bass in the background and the fact that we packed four people, our luggage, and a weekend’s worth of food into to our three person tent. We got up with the sun the next morning and wandered around the festival, taking in scenes of giant neon flowers, big stages, and hippie vans selling crazy hats. We skipped the musical acts that I had never heard of before (which was all but one, Jeremy Loops, look him up, he’s fantastic) and spent the rest of the day at the lake (pond). Watching people sun bathing, floating on rafts, mattresses, tubes or anything they could find, let’s just say I’ve never wanted a kiddie pool more.

That afternoon we napped, ate, recouped, and got ready for night number two. Saturday was even more fun than Friday- I could have danced all night, and was well on my way to doing so, until Jess’ wallet was stolen. She brushed it off, not wanting to ruin the mood of the night, but when Molly’s camera was stolen right out of her purse, we all got a little uneasy. That’s when my crime fighting skills kicked in. Noticing one guy that had been near us during both incidents, I kept my eyes peeled for anything suspicious. He definitely didn’t fit in- wearing a button down shirt and rain jacket (at a music festival). What’s more, there was at least three more just like him, and to my paranoid mind they were clearly all working together. When I saw him pick pocket a girl right in front of me, we told security. They took me to the makeshift police station where I had to identify the one along with two other suspects only to find out that they were members of a Nigerian gang that had robbed hundreds of people that night. Cool- that would have been nice to know before pissing them off.

Luckily I had no pockets and not so much as a rand on me, and I managed to evade trouble for the rest of the night. We stayed up till morning and briefly watched the sunrise before passing out. All in all it was an incredible weekend, although I have no pictures to prove it and I’m probably on a hit list somewhere in Nigeria. Totally worth it. 

Namaste.

            I have officially taken up yoga. This might not seem like a big deal to some of you, but those of you who know me best know that I don’t exercise. And I mean that in the most drastic of ways, I literally do not exercise, in fact I actively avoid exercise at almost all costs. I was the kid who hid behind the bleachers during laps two and three of the mile in eighth grade P.E. class. Not that I don’t like being active, I love keeping a busy schedule, walking places, and being outdoors, but if you try to stick me in a gym and tell me to do 30 minutes on the cross trainer and I will gladly run in the opposite direction (well- it may be more of a light jog). That being said, I paid R100 (about $15) for 10 days of unlimited hot yoga and I absolutely love it. I have gone every single day since because as it turns out, I have a good deal more will power than I ever gave myself credit for.

            Yoga is just one of the little details I haven’t mentioned yet that make up my daily life here in Cape Town. Transportation is another one. In a big city with no car at my disposal, my transport options are very limited. The first and by far most utilized is walking. Starting with the 20-25 minute trek up the base of the mountain and the 5 or 6 flights of stairs that it takes to get to my first class, I find myself walking for a solid portion of the day. I wish I could adequately describe just how many stairs there really are, but lets just say pre-yoga phase, I definitely considered the walk to campus exercise in itself. I not only have to budget time in my mornings for the walk, but also for a 15 minute cool down period once I get there, and even still I will inevitably go to class looking like I just ran a marathon.

            There is of course the option of the Jammie shuttle. The Jammie, nicknamed for Jamison Hall, is a free shuttle for students and runs to and from campus in almost any direction. It would be incredibly handy if it were just a little bit more predictable. There are only maybe six routes the Jammies take, but waiting for the right one can take anywhere between 30 seconds and 30 minutes and I’m pretty convinced that some days one will simply decide not to run altogether. They are always crowded and smell at least slightly if not unbearably of body odor. While I would rather walk to school any day, the Jammie is my transportation of choice to go downtown, especially since the alternative is a minibus.

            The minibus is a staple in the personality of Cape Town. Hundreds of them run daily up and down main street, from the city center to the suburbs, honking, yelling, swerving and picking up passengers off the side of the road. A minibus has about 15 seats but seats about 22. There is always room for one more; standing, squatting or sitting on a strangers lap, they will squeeze in as many people as humanly possible. Aside from the driver there is a caller who hangs out of the window or the open door yelling repeatedly at passersby on the top of his lungs in a barely discernable accent, hoping to find one that wants a ride. This makes it easy to catch one if you do need a ride, seeing as there are dozens and dozens of these shouting, stuffed people movers speeding down the street at any given moment in either direction. It costs about R5 (75c), so I really only take it when I’m carrying groceries or in a part of town that isn’t walking distance, but its an essential element of the city, if for no other reason, than to provide the background noise.

            Getting from point A to point B has definitely been a constant challenge in my day-to-day life, but I think I’ve finally got the hang of it. And while a car would really be a miracle worker in this situation, I frankly wouldn’t give up the embarrassing rock-out-dance-music seshs on the Jammie, or the awkward cultural immersion of the minibus, or the alone time of the afternoon walk home for anything. And while it’s no spring break extravaganza, it’s the little things, the details, the habits and the frustrations that make my life here real, and its all part of the experience.

Namaste.

Emily