Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful.

Little things still turn me around. It’s May and the winter rains are on their way, but I never anticipated anything resembling an autumn. Still, we were out on a drive the other day and there it was: an entire line of shady yellow trees and a carpet of leaves along the road. It would pale in comparison to a New England fall, but it was still there: legitimate autumn.

It’s so odd to be standing at the other side of this semester. Some things are still the same as they were from the beginning. We still have walks along the beach and there are still braais; I still eat way more Cadbury bars than is healthy or even sane. There’s been many rounds of Phase 10 and long afternoons in Cornerstone’s Sugarbowl, laughing and talking and being. Lindo still gives me a goodnight hug every evening at nine and Ode still teases me about every male that walks through the door. Those constants have been so precious and comforting.

But the weather’s changed; it’s finally getting chilly enough for Joelle to light the fire in the lounge at night and I’m using my raincoat for the first time since our Jo-burg weekend. And the world looks entirely different than it did in January. Cape Town is suddenly uglier and more strikingly beautiful after long runs in leafy green suburbs and a week’s stay in the townships. There are subtleties built into nuances that I couldn’t even recognize when I first arrived here. Now I can’t help but see them everywhere. What does it mean, that we get so many stares when taking the taxis as white girls? What opinion do I, as a post-apartheid American, have a right to give about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? What did it mean to be Jewish in South Africa, to have emigrated away from the Halocaust and fallen into the lap of apartheid instead? How can there be so much continental solidarity in Africa (especially with the approaching World Cup)—and yet so much discrimination against Congolese and Zimbabwean refugees? Why is there such a disconnect between academia and the grit of people’s actual lives? And—this one I really want the answer to—is racism the unforgivable sin? How can you look past the ugly glare of it and still see a human being’s worth underneath?

I didn’t have any of these thoughts or questions in January. I’ve been picking them up and warming them in my hands and pocketing them to pull out later, when I’m alone and have time to sit and stare at them. Funny, that I expected to walk away from this semester a wiser human being. Instead I feel entirely stripped of any understanding I thought I had before. It’s not even just the way that I look at the world around me that’s changed; it’s my conception of myself as well. I am a child of God, but I have no idea what I look like anymore; my limitations are shifting and I think I’m being pulled through new dimensions both mentally and emotionally (if there is even a distinction between the two). There’s something like vertigo in realizing just how small you are, and how little you know—and of what little consequence your knowing or not knowing really is, at the end of the day. But it’s brought a kind of release, too, that feels entirely safe and warm and free. I wonder if I am actually a fuller person for the un-knowing that’s happened to me these last few months.

I have now lived almost one-fifth of my life in Africa: three and a half years of infancy and four months of this strange un-knowing. I suppose the one thing that I think I understand is this: that I could live the rest of my life wandering the continent, and I would be no closer to looking it in the face and knowing it fully. Coming here, I kept waiting for moments of This is Africa, when suddenly it would all dawn on me, and it all would fall succinctly into place with everything I’ve anticipated and dreamed of and expected. But it’s all Africa, and none of it is Africa, not entirely. What a joy, to walk the same mile to school every morning and never grasp it. And how incredible, that I can live alongside another human being for four months and still be surprised by her in the last week. I think I could fall in love with letting go, if it meant the joy of daily rediscovery.

I fly home today. In two hours I have to say goodbye to the majority of all the incredible, wonderful people who have stretched me and challenged me and welcomed me, and then tomorrow at noon I have to say goodbye to the eleven people who have walked beside me through it all. Funny then, that I feel like I’ve only begun everything. I am only just starting to really explore this country, these people, this history. It’s going to be a difficult re-entry, I think, but I have to remember that this next chapter of the story is just as much a part of this experience as the first weeks of bright-eyed wonder in January.

There’s nothing much left to say, except that these four months have been little less than transformative. How can I be anything short of grateful and humbled and moved?

Sala kakuhle, South Africa. Stay well.

And Then I Woke Up at 4 and Ran 13 Miles.

A little background that most of you already know: I am not an athlete. At all. Cross country in middle school hardly counts, since it was six years ago. In the entire year 2009, I’m pretty sure I ran 10 miles total, and that’s being generous. So when someone mentioned running Cape Town’s half-marathon in January, I was hardly keen. Then I found out it was called the Two Oceans, which actually interested me: what other opportunity am I ever going to have to run from one ocean to another (even if you do have to climb up and over a mountain to do it?) It turned out, though, that it was something of a misnomer; only the ultra marathon (39 miles) actually runs next to both oceans. Disappointment.

But then I got to thinking that all of you back home would probably be somewhat surprised if I ran a half marathon while I was here. And what if I didn’t tell you until I actually ran it? You don’t get a chance to keep a ten-week secret from everyone you know on a regular basis. How on earth could I pass up an opportunity like that? I thought about how nobody would believe me, and how gloriously satisfying it would be to try to convince you all that it was true, and I was sold. I would train and run a half marathon.

So that’s how my laziness got trumped by my… orneriness? Contrary nature? Snark? I don’t know. You pick.

And it really turned out to be a great experience. First off, when Meghan and I were training we saw so much of Cape Town. We did runs on the Indian coast, the Atlantic coast, on the slopes of Table Mountain, and all around the Flats. It occurred to me on my second or third run just why, exactly, my mom always loves to go running when we’re on vacation: you seriously get to know and appreciate the area so much better. And we accumulated so many experiences too: we met a whole cast of interesting people on the trains and in the taxis and learned how to cross roads like assertive South Africans instead of timid American tourists. Once, when we ran to Rhodes Memorial, we came upon a church having a worship service in front of the monument, and they let us join in. We memorized entire neighborhoods and found new cafes and boutiques, and learned quite a bit about how the weather can change drastically from the flats to the hills. We watched surfers and kayakers, and we got equally acquainted with the giant estates of shady Constantia and the homeless taking shelter under bridges and along railway lines. Actually, come to think of it, much of what I’ve learned about South African society and class structure I’ve picked up from just getting out and running in different neighborhoods.

So that was training: 157 miles in 10 weeks, according to the tally I’ve been keeping on my shoe. Race Day was a different story.

A rough recreation of a race thought-process

0km: it’s raining lightly. Seriously? This many people want to run 21k?? Do they know what time it is? A spritely 50+ woman named Rosemary notes our orange international tags and wants to know if we’ve flown in just for the half-marathon. (I mean, we are American, so of course we have that kind of money.) She’s run five half-marathons and one ultra in twenty years; she says running has changed her life. Meghan and I make mental notes to become Rosemarys someday. The gun goes off at 6:00; they’re playing “I’ve Got a Feeling.” Figures. It’s South Africa’s quasi-national anthem, after all.

2km: Sooooooooooo many people. We keep walking, then jogging, then walking. I’m surprised nobody is getting trampled, honestly. Sometimes they open the sidewalk so we can run around the mob, but it’s not doing a whole lot. I accidentally think of that line in Mulan, “in our thundering herd we feel a lot like cattle,” and then A Girl Worth Fighting For is stuck in my head for the next 8k’s. Dang.

“BRENNA!” It’s really weird to hear your name when you’re in that big a crowd. I look over to the sidewalk and there are Lindo and Joelle and Lee Ann! They woke up to see me run at 6:00 in the morning! And they FOUND me! Oh happiness. I love my host family. I can totally run this half marathon.

3km: the first water stop. The Powerade and water are in little plastic bags. Don’t bother tearing them open with your fingers; just bite them open and suck the liquid out. People are dropping full ones on the road and when you step on them they’re like mini water balloons exploding. They’re also handing out Coke? Gross.

5km: the first hill. Wow. You don’t actually see it; you just see throngs and hordes of people moving up the road. (I wonder what the exodus out of Egypt looked like.) That’s nice, in a way: when you can’t see the hill, you can’t feel the hill. Simple as that.

9km: Still feeling great, which is a good thing. The sun is finally up and and we’re doing a dog-leg, so I can actually see individual people for the first time. There’s a couple of women in tutus and a Superman. A lot of people are in the 50 or 60 age bracket. Good for them. There’s one gray-haired patriarch and an entire clan running around him with signs that say “Happy 81^st birthday, Grandpa.” (I’m guessing. It’s Afrikaans.) And instead of foam fingers, people have foam Usain Bolt arms. Not a bad idea: they give you two feet of space on either side, which would be nice in this horde.

11km: We’re half-way done! And we’re coming up on the biggest, most threatening hill of the race: Southern Cross Drive. We pass two guys sitting on their couch outside their house, watching us. How unfair. We walk through the waterstop at the bottom of the hill. Where’s Meghan??? I’ve lost her… argh all these people. It’s ridiculous. Okay. There she is at the top of the stop. We can do this. We’ve trained this hill before. And as awful as it is having all these people to trip over (the walk/runners are particularly frustrating), they really do make the hills psychologically easier.

14km: TOP OF SOUTHERN CROSS! Hurrah! A church group has a banner across the top: “Come to me, all you who are weary, and I will give you rest.” Ha. Way to be, my Christian friends: get ‘em when they’re down. We pass two fainted runners in the space of two blocks. That’s really sobering. My knee is starting to ache; it’s the downhill. Suddenly I hate downhills more than uphills. We pass a New Castle stand with a sign: ‘Less than 8k to beer!!’ Oh dear.

16km: I am feeling fan-freaking-tastic, to borrow a Liz Cheesman phrase. I should run a half marathon every year for the rest of my days. We’re no longer going downhill or uphill (joy), we’ve got this beautiful view of the mountain as we run past Kirstenbosch, they’re blaring music, there’s people cheering and vuvuzelas blasting… this is bliss.

19km. Kill me now. My knee is threatening to implode. We’ve left the shade and we’re out in the sun and suddenly there’s so much noise, and there’s still so many people. Aaargh. My knee stopped us short on last Saturday’s run but it’s been mostly fine this whole run—why now? Thankfully for me Meghan’s in a bad way too so we stop for a minute. Okay. Pull through to the end.

21.1km. When we hit the grass my knee feels instantly better. Okay. We’re at the end. I can see the green bridge ahead and we put on a full sprint. (Why do I have enough energy left to sprint? I must not have been running fast enough before.) I can see the carpet-covered pad that will read the chip in my shoe… success! We’ve finished!! …so why is everyone else still running?

Ah. Because, just like on my eight-mile La Vida run, I haven’t actually sprinted to the finish line. I’ve sprinted to the 100-meters-until-you’re-actually-finally-done line. (Why do they even have those?? I can’t tell you how incredibly frustrating that is.) But now I can see the legitimate end (It says ‘FINISH’ so let’s hope it’s the right one) and there’s a clock. It’s approaching 2:25… and we run in at 2:25:04.

And it ends just like it started: we’re standing stock-still in a herd of people funneling out of the gate while they blast “I’ve Got a Feeling.” How about that?

So anyway, that’s that. There’s pictures on Facebook if you want to see them (as well as pictures from camping and regular life that I just uploaded). I absolutely loved the whole thing—and Meghan and I have completely bonded, to say the least. I’m seriously considering training for a full marathon in October. I just need to see if I have time.

Comings and Goings

On Monday we leave for ten days in the Eastern Cape, which kind of marks the third phase of our semester, if you count our three-week interim and then a term at Cornerstone as our first and second. It’s strange to be this far already, and as much as I’m glad to finally be done with papers and exams, I wish we’d have had more time to spend with Cornerstone friends in and around Cape Town. From here on out we aren’t going to have much of a regular schedule anymore and we’ll be doing a good amount of traveling. So here are a few highlights from life and leisure in and around the Cape Flats.

Taxi-riding. This isn’t a single outing like the rest of them, but it’s definitely one of the most interesting things I’ve done here. First off, to differentiate between the two: cabs are for tourists and the generally well-to-do, where you ride privately and pay per kilometer. Taxis are white vans with three or four rows of backseats, cost 80 American cents a ride, are usually packed full of people, and are always more entertaining, to say the least. I took my sixteenth taxi ride this afternoon. Some of our most memorable experiences include:
--that time we met a previous Cornerstone lecturer who recognized us not only as Americans, but as Bethel students
--sitting next to two Xhosa women who were absolutely fascinated with our accents, our clothes, and the fact that we as Americans would choose to ride in a taxi
--sitting next to a coloured man who was equal parts delighted and surprised to find himself sitting next to Americans and graciously helped us make our way through the labyrinthine Wynberg depot from one taxi to the next
--trying to cram twelve bags of groceries (along with three people) into a taxi that was already full
--the time the door fell off as we got out

Winetasting. The drinking age here is 18, and the hills and mountains just east of Cape Town are renowned wine country, so Joelle took Mourette and me wine tasting with some friends of hers in the beginning of February. I really don’t know much about wine at all, but it was still a really neat experience. The vineyard was absolutely beautiful and we tasted six types of wine along with at least a dozen cheeses for under $2. I’m almost ashamed to say that I was a little woozy after the tasting, but it was worth it. We finished off with coffee and scones in a beautiful grassy arbor afterwards, which was the perfect ending to the experience.

Valentine’s Day Dance. This is an annual event at Cornerstone, and I’m guessing that probably one of its strongest annual traditions is for the American students to arrive overdressed. We organized a shopping trip to the mall in advance and did a hurried version of the whole high school formal dress-hair-and-makeup-together prep routine only to arrive and find that not only were we just a tad dressier than we needed to be, but that the dance’s red-and-black theme was intended for apparel as well as venue decoration. It was really fun though; at that point we didn’t know many of the Cornerstone kids that well and it was a good chance to bond. Afterwards some of us went back to a host family’s house, ordered midnight pizza from St. Elmo’s (much better than Scooter’s or Debonair’s, if you were wondering), and watched South Africa Broadcasting’s version of the Winter Olympics’ opening ceremonies: one hour of only the highlights. As it should be.

Lion’s Head. This is one of my favorite experiences so far. Lion’s Head is a mountain (only about 2/3 the height of Table Mountain) that stands above the City Bowl, and I climbed it with a handful of other Americans and Cornerstone friends the Monday after we got back from Jo’Burg. Seeing as the climb started practically 75% of the way up the mountain, the hike to the top was pretty easy—just a few places where you use chains to get up the rock face when it’s too steep for a trail. We timed our climb for sunset at the full moon, and it was absolutely breathtaking (another random first: I’ve never actually see the sun set over the ocean before). I’ve seen pictures of the nigh lights of Cape Town, but it’s another thing entirely to see it in person. To add to the perfection: my aunt and uncle sent me off to South Africa with a giant bag of M&M’s, and through unprecedented levels of self-control, I managed to save them for two months. They were the perfect accompaniment to a South African moonrise.
I have to say, though, that one of the most memorable parts of the experience was the hike down, which wouldn’t have been bad if it hadn’t been night, a sudden gale hadn’t come up out of nowhere, and if my flashlight wasn’t dying. A visual memory I will probably take to the grave: trying to climb down a rickety metal ladder in the dark, with a massive wind promising to pluck me off and toss me over the barbed wire and down the mountain face. I’m sure it wasn’t really that dramatic, but at the time it definitely seemed a big deal.

Rugby. We’ve heard from the beginning that American football is for wimps, so we decided to see just how intense rugby really is by going to a game in Newlands. Our Stormers completely pummeled New Zealand’s Highlanders, in terms of the score but also physically. (At one point, I think the player-medic ratio on the field was 3:1.) I liked it despite myself, with that little guilty part of me that probably would have secretly enjoyed bear baitings in Elizabethan England. And it’s true: I’m forever ruined for watching American football. It’s not nearly as engaging.

Kirstenbosch. March 21 is Human Rights Day, so last Monday we had a public holiday and our friend Ben took us to Kirstenbosch: this beautiful sprawling botanical garden on the bottom slopes of Table Mountain. It was absolutely breathtaking, and I can only imagine how it must look in earlier summer, when all the flowers are in bloom. I could probably spend a week exploring Kirstenbosch and still feel I hadn’t seen my fill. There’s just so much of it, and it’s all worth looking at, from the sculpture garden to the forests to the fynbos and the trails leading up into the mountain. Ben was full of personal anecdotes, too, of childhood adventures in the garden. It makes me wish I had grown up there.

Braais. So far, I’ve been to seven or eight braais here, as they’re generally the standard hang-out or social gathering. It’s basically a barbecue with at least three different kinds of meat, plus pap (a maize meal with the texture/consistency of mashed potatoes) and then whatever salads or chips you might want to add. I’m not wild about eating all that meat, but I think braaing is one of the things I’ll miss most about South Africa.

Camping. To celebrate finally being on holiday, seven of us Americans and six Cornerstone friends went camping in Betty’s Bay this week (south and east of Cape Town, down below False Bay). It was so much fun. We went cliff jumping at these beautiful freshwater pools up in the mountains, had a morning on the beach by the campsite, and spent a rainy day curled up in a café overlooking the ocean. But really what we did was sit around the campfire for three full days, just talking and eating and playing Mafia. It was a much-needed break from the school routine, and it was so wonderful to basically sit and do nothing for days on end. The people that I’m with here are really just incredible. It’s crazy to think that I didn’t know any of them until January, and it’s painful to think I’ll have to say goodbye to all of them in May. But I really am grateful for the time I’ve had—especially this camping trip.

Heavy Reflections on the TRC

The longer that I’m in South Africa and the more that I process my experiences here, the less I know how to talk about it, or what to say. I’m guessing part of that is just a fact of everyday adjustment. The little things that used to be exotic now seem commonplace and comfortable; events that might have been newsworthy or blog-worthy in January are a fact of life now. I guess that’s just a part of slipping into another routine.

But I know that it’s bigger than that too. As much as life on the Cape Flats feels normal to me (and as much as I’m realizing going back to the States is going to be a colossal readjustment), there are moments when I’m shocked into the recognition that I know much less about this place than I think I do, and that even if I lived here fifteen years, I still wouldn’t know or understand it all.

And that’s the part that I think isn’t just a product of studying abroad; it’s because of what South Africa is, and what being a human being in South Africa means. If you weren’t here during apartheid, if you didn’t witness the transition to democracy, if you just want to step in twenty years later and make glowing remarks about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, then how could you understand, really? Winnie Mandela came out a few weeks ago and (may or may not have) roundly criticized her ex-husband for betraying the cause, for rolling over and making concessions to the white government, and for doing practically nothing to actually make South Africa more livable for its black citizens. In January, I probably would have shook my head and had an ‘oh, that Winnie’ type attitude. But I’m coming to terms with the fact that I most definitely have no business throwing stones, and that while I as a white American can firmly disagree with her, for a lot of South Africans, she’s probably just about right.

So I guess all this is to say I’ve shed a lot of my naïveté about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Probably the most transformative assignment we’ve had here was going out into Landsdowne and asking around about the TRC—how much people know about it, what their opinions on it are, and how they think race relations stand now in 2010. Needless to say, your typical American scholar and your typical coloured family are going to have very, very different perspectives on whether or not it was successful, and since it’s the Landsdowne couple who are actually affected by it, I would give their opinion more weight.

It’s a heavy thing. You know from the beginning that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission could not accomplish everything it set out to do. (And you know that as a white American, you can’t hope to understand just how great the implications of that are.) It couldn’t do anything about the sneaky criminality of apartheid, for one; it could only address blatant human rights crimes. And it didn’t have the resources to even adequately deal with those. And even if you can get past its limited nature, you’ve still got to deal with the fact that it was imperfect—that you have to factor in political motivation, that no matter how many times Desmond Tutu reiterates the difference between retributive and restorative justice, something is going to fall through the cracks, and that you can’t equate a just war philosophy with disinterested reconciliation and political forgiveness. And then you go beyond that and realize that even if you could, even if every little detail was somehow perfected and everything went off exactly as you intended… you still can’t change people’s attitudes. If they’re set in their ways, no amount of truth telling or cathartic public action is going to sway them. At the end of the day, the TRC is limited, and it’s broken.

Funny, that it seems kind of like human nature in that way. Finiteness and fallenness: those are the things that have troubled me about the church these past two years, and the things that have troubled me about myself. And here they are again in the TRC. If you stare them in the face for too long then hopelessness happens. But the thing I’m beginning to understand, about the TRC at least, is that even though a thing can be inherently broken, it can still be the right thing to do. I’ve been markedly sobered by the inadequacies of the TRC to solve South Africa’s problems, but I would still say that it should be replicated and adapted and consulted in other situations—not out of any conviction that trial and error will eventually perfect it, or any sort of fatalistic dread of the alternatives. I couldn’t really tell you why, truthfully.

I remember reading something Paul Farmer said near the end of Mountains Beyond Mountains, about fighting a losing battle, but in a way that transcends defeatism or fatalism or even heroism. It’s not a perfect explanation, but it’s the closest way I can think to describe it. I’m guessing that grace has a lot to do with it, and faith in a God who can see a much, much larger picture than what our limited perspective will allow.

Anyways, those are my reflections for the day. I promise something a little lighter soon, because yes, I really am enjoying my stay here, and no, I don’t spend quite all my time caught up in such heavy thoughts.

"Can We All Go Around Saying 'Beer'?" - A Few Labored Lessons in Xhosa

So I know that for a lot of people, language is the most transformative part of their study abroad experience- and understandably so, for those who go abroad with the specific intent of studying one, or spend their time in a place where their host family and friends don’t actually speak English. South Africa, with its eleven official languages, hasn’t been like that. Almost everyone we’ve met has been AT LEAST bilingual, and can speak English. But for the past three Tuesday afternoons, one of the Xhosa students at Cornerstone has been gracious enough to try to pass her difficult, beautiful language on to us Americans.

So I know that with some languages you have to have to master an entire new alphabet, which seems an incredibly daunting task and which thankfully we don’t have to worry about. But Biggest Language Curveball Number Two has definitely got to be mastering new sounds- namely, clicks. And there’s at least four in Xhosa, before you throw in occasional H’s, which alter them subtly. I mean, you can’t even say ‘Xhosa’ without doing one of them (although the cop-out, which most non-native speakers due out of equal parts deference and embarrassment, is to pronounce it Kosa).

It’s also really difficult for a native speaker (who’s been making these sounds her entire life without thinking) to explain them to Americans (who can’t learn them without figuring just where, exactly, your jaw is supposed to be and what, exactly, your tongue is supposed to be doing). But after two lessons of extreme frustration, I am proud to say that, even if we can’t actually coherently make the rights sounds, we can at least recognize them and know what they’re theoretically supposed to sound like.

C, or the Irritated Mother Sound: this is kind of –tsk sound with your tongue at the back of your front teeth. It’s not too hard on its own, but try it in the middle of a word like ‘ndiyacela’ (please).

X, or the Horseback Command: it’s like the click you make to get a horse to go, which doesn’t sound too bad. But make sure you’ve got the ‘k’ sound going simultaneously, and that it doesn’t sound too round, like the Q, or too thin, like the C. It’s the one that’s been giving us the most trouble, by far.

Q, or the Tick-Tock Clock: this one is usually the easiest for westerners, since it’s the one we’ve been using from childhood for basically any and all sounds in make-believe (knocking on doors, hooves, etc.), and it’s also the one most people think of when they think of Xhosa clicks in general—which means it’s what they put with the letter ‘X,’ which probably drives native speakers crazy.

HL, or the Hissing Cat with a Cold: this is the one in my sister Lindo’s full name (Silindokuhle) so it’s the one I’ve been trying hardest to get right. It’s kind of like a hiss, but guttural and breathy at the same time (does that make any sense?), with a really, really, REALLY soft ‘s’ sound. And it’s everywhere, or so it seems.

So all this is to say: Xhosa is hard. But I am proud to say that my limited vocabulary now includes the Lord’s Prayer, a click-tongue-twister (Ndiqhel’uceb’ixheg’inqay, which translates—in all seriousness—‘I’m used to cutting an uncle bald’), umqombothi (African traditional beer), ‘andiyazi’ (I don’t know—very, very helpful), ‘ndiyakthanda’ (I love you), ‘umhle’ (you’re beautiful), ‘uxolo’ (sorry), and ‘ndicela undibonise ivenkile’ (Can you please show me the shop?), among other things. The only vital thing I’m really missing is ‘bathroom.’ I need to remember to learn that one.

Jo-Burg

Last week, I spent an hour on the Internet looking up quotes about Johannesburg in preparation for our trip there. The winner:

“No second Johannesburg is needed on the earth. One is enough.” –Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country

Needless to say, it set up certain expectations for our trip. I got on the plane expecting to land up in some metropolitan hole of despair, or at least be dogged by evidence of great hardship at every turn. And I can’t say that I was entirely wrong. Johannesburg is ringed by yellow hills that have been turned over and drained of gold, and now just stand there barren; and you’d also have to determinedly and purposefully set your mind against seeing the stark contrast between the rich, leafy green suburbs and the streets of Soweto. Johannesburg is a far cry from an ideal city. But while I was anticipating an opportunity to lament the fallen state of the world, what I actually got was a lesson in remembering and rebuilding.

So: we start out at the Voortrekker Monument, a stone colossus commemorating the Dutch Boers’ journey across the country away from the oppressive British settlers. At face value it’s just another memorial, but when you stop to look at the engravings on the wall, there are depictions of valiant colonists gunning down Zulu warriors while wielding Bibles. It also houses a tomb marking their struggle to win over the land they believed rightfully belonged to them. When the Nationalist Party came to power in 1948 and established apartheid, the Voortrekker Monument was where the Afrikaners celebrated their victory. In light of apartheid, the entire thing is repulsive and offensive, and there was actually a movement in the late 1990’s to tear it down. But they’ve kept it standing. Why?

But then we went to the Constitutional Court. And South Africa’s highest court, its ultimate seat of justice, is built right on top of the old prison complex that housed political prisoners like Winnie Mandela and Mohandas Gandhi. The Awaiting Trial Block (self-explanatory) has been torn down and its bricks have been used to make the walls of the courtroom (two of its stairwells form the corners). There’s one long walkway that separates the old prison cells of Number Four from the institution that upholds the most progressive constitution in the world.

And the more we saw of Johannesburg—the Regina Mundi church in Soweto, riddled with bullet holes from police attacks during the student uprising in 1976; the Hector Pieterson Museum, commemorating the children killed that summer; the executive seat, built by white supremacists and handed over to Nelson Mandela in 1994; the Apartheid Museum, a powerful place of memory which deserves an entire blog entry to itself—the more that this sort of pattern came up. Johannesburg has an awful history, but they’re not erasing the way it’s been told in the past or pretending it didn’t happen. They’re letting its witness stand and building up their future not despite it, but through it. It’s beyond bittersweet; it’s heartbreaking and heartening at the same time.

So Alan Paton is probably right: no second Johannesburg is needed on the earth. But the one that exists isn’t beyond repair. And maybe the way that it’s coming to terms with its history deserves to be emulated elsewhere.

The Daily [South African] Grind

So I haven’t updated my blog in a bit because it seems like not much has happened recently—homework is picking up, I’m getting into a daily rhythm of life, and it’s only now and then that my breath catches and I realize I’m living in an entirely different country. We go to Jo-burg next weekend, but until then it’s just going to be school, homework, & routine.

Which looks something like this.

I wake up at 7:25 every morning (earlier than I have woken up since high school), eat breakfast (also a break from the American routine) and walk to school at about 8:00.

Ways We Entertain Ourselves While Walking

-naming the dogs (watch out for Brutus)

-guessing whether the people we see are going to greet us

-trying to make it the whole walk without noticing anything new (so far: fail)

-memorizing the order of landmarks (the house with the blue front yard comes before the foot-deep hole in the sidewalk, but only when going north)

-taking inventory of the trash in the alley by the railway line- you’d be surprised how fast different items come and go

We then have class from 8:30 to 11:30 Monday through Thursday. So far my favorite has been our study of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. For the first two weeks we were taught by one of the seventeen original commissioners, but we have a regular lecturer now because Glenda has left for the Sudan to do peace work there. The class is, understandably, extremely thought-provoking and the material is sometimes pretty difficult to get through, emotionally. I’m also taking African Traditional Religions & Worldview, Pauline Writings, and Perspectives on Transformation. And I have quite a bit of homework for all of them, which I should be doing now instead of writing this.

After class we usually eat lunch in the Sugarbowl, which is Cornerstone’s student lounge. On most days I pack a sandwich to save money, but there’s a restaurant attached to the school where they sell really good chicken pitas for only R13 (just under $2). I’m making friends with the woman behind the counter, who pretty much knows what I want to order every time I come in. On some days we walk down to Azraa’s for samosas and curry, or to the bakery in the other direction where you can get doughnuts dirt cheap. On Thursday Lindsey got them for everybody in our Perspectives class and only spent R18. Needless to say I might gain a little bit of weight by the time I get home.

After lunch I spend the afternoon in the library checking email and doing homework- unless we’re feeling irresponsible and choose to go to the beach at Muizenburg instead (have you ever thought about how hard it would be to go to school in the summer? Especially when the water is such a pretty tropical color and there are amateur surfers to amuse you?) Then it’s the walk back home and a few more hours of homework/lazing around until dinner, usually made by Ode and always delicious (last night was tacos, although the winner of the week was Fat Tuesday’s pancakes).

If I’ve already finished up all my work for the day or am just flat-out feeling irresponsible, my end-of-the-day reward is a slab of Cadbury’s chocolate while curled up with my Spanish Harry Potter book. I’m beginning to wonder how I’ll ever eat chocolate in the States again—Cadbury’s is absolutely divine. I have a few friends at school that make sure I only buy one bar a week, because otherwise I would probably get a bar a day and then be embarrassed every time I’d have to explain why, exactly, I ran out of money so fast while on my semester abroad. But since I’ve got so much homework to do this weekend, I think I might just deserve two this week. We’ll see.

Cross-Cross-Cultural Experiences

It was my host sister Ode's birthday this weekend, so on Sunday night we went out with friends to celebrate. The restaurant she chose was Cubaña, authentic Cuban food in the heart of South Africa.

Right.

You know how you always hear that Chinese food in the States really bears absolutely no resemblance at all to Chinese food in China? I wonder if that same principle applies to all foreign food places around the globe. What does Indian food taste like in Argentina? Thai in Sweden? American in Australia? (McDonald's here, sadly, is pretty much the same, although I haven't tried the KFC, which is a significantly bigger deal.) Anyways, I can now tell you from experience that Cuban food in Cape Town is just bizarre.

When the waiter came around I steeled up all five years of Spanish classes to perfectly pronounce 'quesadilla.' (I know. I must be fluent or something.) He gave me a really strange look before his face cleared up in understanding and he nodded patiently at me. "Oh, you mean a kwe-se-day-a."

...No, I mean a kay-se-dee-a. He was on to the next person before I had a chance to decide whether the integrity of the Spanish language was worthy of me looking like a know-it-all American in front of all Ode's friends. Not worth it. Maybe I just heard him wrong.

Apparently not. When he came back with the food he decided to use it as another teachable moment for me. Setting the plate in front of me, he looked straight at it, straight at me, and said pointedly, "Your kwe-se-day-a, ma'am."

Okay, so let's be fair: I've never actually had Cuban cuisine before. I'm basing all my judgment off of Nicaraguan and Mexican-American food, which is probably not a good idea. But between that and common sense, I think I could safely tell you that feta cheese, spinach, and a Halaal bacon-substitute are not exactly typical Caribbean fare. Relatively tasty, but probably not authentic.

But hey. Maybe kay-se-dee-as and kwe-se-day-as are two entirely different food, and I have once again proven my American ignorance. You never know for sure.

A Monthly Review

So I completely stole the idea for this blog from my dear friend Chrissy who’s in Lithuania for the semester. But seeing as today marks one full month in Cape Town, I figured that this list would be appropriate.

THINGS I’VE LEARNED
-Bitterness is one of the most destructive forces in the world
-God can work political miracles
-South Africans are not as thrilled about the World Cup as the tourists are
-Structural sin definitely exists
-There is no chocolate in the world as good as Cadbury’s
-God still thinks the world is good (isn’t that wonderful?!?)
-Bad American television is everywhere
-ubuntu is beautiful, but it’s not a cure-all
-It’s generally unwise to have doughnuts on a daily basis, even if you can get three for a US quarter
-“Ameriqua” is not part of the authentic South African accent; it’s just something Jill says to mess with your mind
-Being white is tricky
-Being American is tricky
-Minnesotans are used to swimming in cold water, too
-Afrikaans and Dutch are way different languages (read: don’t ask someone who’s coloured to translate a sign written in Dutch for you)
-If you hang shirts to dry upside down, they won’t get clothespin wrinkles on the shoulders
-Forgiving the church is hard.
-“Tarhu bawo, yiba nofefe kuthli” means “Mercy Father; have grace on us”
-Baboons are dangerous and attracted by food
-White people pretty much just can’t speak Xhosa (the clicks are harder than you think)
-It’s pretty unpleasant to have the flu when you’re 17,000 miles from home
-American academia is much more cynical about poverty than people who actually interact with it on a regular basis
-Bethel food > Gordon food
-The church is capable of enormous sin
-The church is capable of enormous good
-It would be incredibly difficult to be a vegetarian in South Africa.
-Taking a taxi isn’t as big a deal as everyone says it is
-Desmond Tutu is the man.
-Beyers Naudé was the man before Desmond Tutu
-It’s best to avoid the beach on windy days
-God works in creative ways
-People really can be capable of grace, forgiveness and healing
-If you live with Minnesotans long enough—even if you’re halfway around the world—you WILL pick up their accent


THINGS I HAVEN’T FIGURED OUT BUT SPEND ALL MY TIME CONTEMPLATING ANYWAY
-how to deal with white guilt without developing a white savior complex
-how to balance remembrance and forgiveness
-how the church and the state should interact
-if it’s worse to endorse something as awful as apartheid, or to be complicit to it
-how to say my host sister’s full name (the kh sound is even harder than the clicks)
-how the US would react if their president fathered a love child
-how you address something as urgent and overwhelming as land reform
-how I’m going to fit everything into a 44-lb suitcase in May

On Wildlife

On Saturday I went with a group of friends down to Simon’s Town, which is on the coast on the Indian Ocean side of things. The thing about swimming here is that you have to be careful about great white sharks—during our first week in Cape Town a man was actually killed by one at a beach we had been to only two days before. Apparently there’s a flag system that will tell you if there’s been shark sightings or if the water is too murky to tell, but since we couldn’t find any flags at Long Beach on Saturday, we decided to test our luck and wade in anyway. One of the girls we went with was absolutely convinced she had seen a fin in the water, but we told ourselves it was a duck and got in, got out with zero shark attacks.

It was when we were packing up to leave a few hours later that rest of the people on the beach got visibly riled up and were chattering and pointing at the water. Right where we had been there were two fins dipping in and out of the waves—not sharks, but dolphins! They must have been only four feet into the surf, right in front of where we had been camped out. It was incredible.

So, in honor of my first wild dolphin citing, this post is dedicated to all those animals that we’ve encountered up close and personal. Come April, when we head to the Eastern Cape, this list will probably be a bit more exciting. But humor me anyway.

-Squirrels. You laugh, but squirrels are a big deal here. We were walking through a park in downtown Cape Town and all of our South African friends were extremely proud to showcase the imported gray squirrels they have there. And I suppose that if I had to be a squirrel anywhere in the world, it would be Cape Town, where they’re extremely well-fed, fawned over, and greatly admired by the local populace. But I still don’t quite see the appeal.

-Seals. We came across three or four of these guys when we were in Kalk Bay the first weekend, hanging around the fish sellers and hoping for whatever scrumptious gutty bits might get thrown their way. These are actually the reason that there are great white sharks lurking off the Cape. And I mean no personal disrespect, but they’re also probably the nastiest-smelling creatures on God’s green earth.

-Baboons. When we went to Cape Point for the day a few weeks ago, our lecturer gave us the run-down of human-baboon interaction. Unlike city pigeons, baboons get more aggressive whenever they’re fed by tourists, to the point where they’ve started posting signs advising people to drive with their windows rolled up and their doors locked to keep baboons out of cars. Apparently if a baboon comes at you while you’re eating, you’re supposed to chuck your lunch at it and run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

Incidentally, we met a couple (read: nine or ten) while we were finishing up lunch. They circled up around us pretty fast and edged us off our picnic site so they could go around picking up bits of cheese and lettuce that we had dropped. We were all scrambling to take pictures and to hide the rest of our food and stay out of the way, and it was all pretty much fun and games until the alpha male arrived (have you ever seen a full-grown baboon? They’re not small. By any means.) That was the point at which our director, cognizant of the twelve naïve American lives she had in her hands, shepherded us back onto the bus and out of there.

-Penguins. There’s a colony of them below Simon’s Town and the sheer number of them there, just sunning in the sand and nesting in the grasses, is absolutely insane. We probably spent a good forty-five minutes just watching them waddle back and forth across the rocks. The best penguin moment of the trip thus far, though, was when we were at Robben Island. We were crowded onto a huge tour bus with about fifty other tourists, and the tour guide was in the middle of a pretty serious explanation about the island’s first political prisoners when he suddenly stopped. All seventy-five of us watched a penguin wander out of the brush on one side of the road, hobble across the blacktop in front of us, and meander slowly into the grasses on the other side. Then we all snapped out of it and the tour guide picked up right where he left off.

-Dassies. I really have no idea what this thing is. Our director told us it’s closely related to the elephant but my host sister Ode keeps on poking fun at my extreme gullibility so I’m trying my hardest not to believe it. All I really know about them is that they look like cat-sized hamsters, they make a lot of noise, and I nearly squashed one at Cape of Good Hope when it chased its buddy right in front of my feet.

-Lizards. We saw a handful of these guys at Cape Point and then scads more on top of Table Mountain the next week. There’s also an inch-long, less scaly household variety that’s been popping up recently. I spent about five minutes trying to coax one out of the window above my bed last night when it made a nose-dive straight into my bedcovers. I haven’t seen it since, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

-Ferocious Man-Eating Poodles. Piwi sleeps on the foot of my bed sometimes.

Honorable Mentions and Far-Off Sightings

-Ostrich

-Springbok

-Dolphin

-Egyptian Ibis