Sarah's Semester at Sea: South Africa: Nothing Like Table Mountain to Remind You How Out of Shape You Are

Day 1
They cleared us to go off the ship later than they were supposed to. But, they did bring people on to exchange American money which was convenient. By the time that was done, some of us had kind of an awkward amount of time until I had a trip scheduled so some of us went to get something to eat at the waterfront mall. The waterfront mall was less than a minute walk from where we docked so that was nice. On the way there we noticed that there is always something going on in the streets in Capetown. People are playing music or putting on shows and then when you turn a corner someone is playing a different kind of music or doing something different. Some of us ate subway and some of us ate pizza. It was kind of nice to have some American food. I came back to the ship and went on a Semester at Sea trip to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner. We took a ferry to the island which took about 20 minutes and then we toured the island in a bus. It was interesting because I expected it to just be a prison but they also showed us a gravesite from when Robben Island used to be a leper colony and they showed us quarries where the prisoners used to work. After that we had a tour of the jail led by a former prisoner. The whole thing was really interesting but definitely not something I would need to do more than once. We went down to this boardwalk thing and saw 100s of penguins (the weird kind not the tuxedo kind). When I got back to the ship some of my friends had made reservations at a placed called Mama Africa, but we couldn’t get in until 10:00. Mama Africa is a pretty touristy restaurant and serves all the “african” food that people want to have when they come here but that African people don’t regularly eat. 8 of us went out to get a snack first because we were starving. Then we took a taxi to Long Street, had 2 drinks at a popular Irish pub while we waited and then went to Mama Africa. The people were way off with our reservation so we didn’t sit until about 10:45 so we had a couple of drinks at Mama Africa too. It had a really fun atmosphere even though it was wayyy too crowded and hot. There was a random African band there that I guess was trying to cater to all of the Americans and was playing weird stuff like the African version of music from Titanic. We all joked around that we live on a ship and that’s not really what we want to hear. At dinner I split a platter with my friend Sarah that had crocodile, ostrich, kudu, springbok, and a kudu/springbok sausage mixture. The kudu and the sausage were my favorite. The other 3 were kind of hard to chew and I was indifferent toward them. By the end of the meal I was ready to leave since I knew I had to get up early to go on a shark diving/ bungee jumping trip I had signed up for.

Day 2
Apparently we didn’t leave the restaurant early enough, because instead of waking up at 4:30 when my alarm was supposed to go off, I woke up at 6:10. I went and banged on Nicky’s door and found out he had also overslept. Neither of our roommates heard our alarms either. I tried to call the woman in charge of the trip to see if there was some kind of train we could take to meet them but the call wouldn’t go through. I don’t understand these foreign phone numbers that have a “+” in them. Nicky and I went back to sleep for a few hours and decided to leave around 10 to try to figure something else out to do. It kind of sucked because everyone already had plans and stuff so we couldn’t even hang out with any of our other friends, we were kind of stuck just wandering around Capetown by ourselves. We ate lunch at a restaurant in the mall and both of our meals were amazing. We went to the waterfront where there are all kinds of touristy companies trying to get you to do things and signed up for a shark tour for the next day because we both still really wanted to do that. Then we took a 15 minute helicopter tour which had really beautiful views of the city. After that it was still only about 2:00 so we decided to try to find a double decker bus tour we had heard about where for about $12 it takes you around the city and you can get off wherever you want and another bus will come by every 20 minutes and you can get back on. On the way to the bus office, we found this indoor craft market where a ton of people have handmade things that they are selling. We saw some really cool stuff and talked to really interesting people. There was one man that did art by burning pictures onto buffalo hide with some kind of hot tool. He mostly did big things and I asked him how long it took him to do the big ones and he said a week. I said that a week wasn’t as bad as I thought and he said “yeah, but 10 hours a day!” He had little keychains with small pictures on them and if you told him your name or something to write on them he would burn that on there right in front of you. I wanted him to write something but I didn’t want my name and when I couldn’t think of anything else to write I told him to just put spring 2009. He asked me to write it down for him so he could copy it, so I did…he still spelled it wrong. I now have a keychain that says “sipring 2009” with a cool picture on it. They were less than $5 and if I really wanted another one I would have just gotten it but I decided that this way is more authentic and it makes me laugh so I just kept it. By the time we got to the double decker bus tour it was almost 4:00 and we had to be back at the waterfront around 6:00 to find out our pickup time from the shark people since neither of us have working cell phones. We decided to still do it to see the city and just not really get off anywhere. It was actually really interesting and I’m glad I did it because I saw parts of the city I never would have seen otherwise. They gave you headphones to put in your ears and a recording would tell you about all the places you were passing and stuff like that. I ended up being glad we missed our trip because I got to actually spend time in Capetown. I talked to some people that did the trip I was supposed to do and also did the Table Mountain thing I did a few days later and they said that they spent barely any time in Capetown and didn’t really know anything about it, so I’m glad it worked out the way it did. After the bus tour 7 of us went to Camps Bay for dinner and the restaurant where we ate was really good – I liked my stuff and everyone else’s stuff that I tried.

Day 3
We ACTUALLY managed to get up early this time and went on a shark diving trip. Nicky and I were the 2nd people to be picked up; the first woman was from the USA but worked as an international flight attendant and she had a layover in Capetown. It took about 45 mins to pick up everyone else and then on top of that it was almost a 2 hour ride, so it took a little longer than I expected. When we got there, the “office” was actually a small beach house, which was cool because they fed us breakfast and stuff. The guy we were going with is pretty famous and has been on National Geographic and stuff like that. There were pictures of him taking famous people out diving. Some of the famous people were Jude Law, Maroon 5, the actor from Passion of the Christ, and some other random people. We got on the boat and drove about 20 minutes to a spot. The guy said the waters seemed too rough so we moved. We were going during the worst time of the year for sharks so he really wanted to get us to see one. The day before us, he had gotten his group to see 4 sharks but the day before that was only the second time in 2 years that they had seen NO sharks. I was just hoping we would see one. We waited around for about 45 minutes but then a shark finally came and it stuck around for awhile. We only saw the one shark but it was really big so it was still cool. The water was FREEZING! We had full wetsuits on and even with them, the first time I went fully underwater and came back up and tried to breathe it was a little difficult. I didn’t realize how much work is put into running a shark diving business; I guess I just assumed that you just threw some shit in the water and hoped for the best, but on the way back the guy showed us how long his chum line went and stuff like that. We were the first boat of the day to find a shark in a good area of the water but as we were leaving another boat stole our shark. Our guy said that he talked to another boat that had seen 5 sharks but they were in such a bad area of the water that people in the cage couldn’t really see any of them. We could see ours clearly so I was happy with it. We got back to the ship later than we expected and Nicky and I were both exhausted and starving. We didn’t really know what anyone else was up to and we just wanted to eat asap so we could go to sleep early so we ate at a restaurant on the waterfront. Both of our meals and desserts were amazing. A lot of the food I ate in South Africa was pretty similar to American food but a little different. I ate things I probably wouldn’t find in America but they reminded me of America. While we were eating, one of the people playing music outside played none other than…Titanic. Apparently Capetown is obsessed with “My Heart Will Go On.” I was in bed around 11:00 which never happens so I was clearly exhausted.

Day 4
I got up early (again) and went to climb & abseil Table Mountain. The climb was a lot harder than I expected; I assumed that since so many people do it, it must be pretty easy but that wasn’t really the case. It was like climbing huge stairs most of the way. At first, I was really frustrated because my body does this weird thing where if I don’t eat at all or don’t eat enough a couple hours before exercising, I get really shaky and my vision starts to go black. I asked to be tested for anemia once but they said I didn’t have it so whatever. It hasn’t happened in awhile because I’ve learned how to avoid it but all I ate that morning was 2 muffins because I thought it would be enough. Since the climb was so much harder, I could feel that stuff start to happen and I knew if I didn’t eat soon I would have big problems. I told TWO of the 3 guides AND one of my close friends that I needed to eat ASAP and no one really paid attention to me or offered to stop with me to eat. We had 21 people in the group and I didn’t really want to make 21 people stop so I kept going thinking it would get easier and it didn’t. Finally some guy that I don’t even know who organized the trip offered to wait with me while I ate so that was nice of him. Once my food digested it got WAY easier for me but at that point I was frustrated because I regretted climbing with such a big group. If I had been by myself or with 1 or 2 people I would have eaten within 10 minutes and been fine the whole rest of the time. Most of the climb, I climbed by myself anyway. Because I had waited to eat and had fallen behind during that time, I was too far behind to be going with the majority of the group but I was too fast to be with the few people that were slower than me. I liked it better by myself and I wished that I had just done it alone. But, the abseiling part of the trip made the big-group thing worth it, because if I didn’t go with this group I wouldn’t have gotten to abseil. When we got to the top, we were basically in a cloud because clouds are usually at the top of Table Mountain. In the pictures, you can kind of see the city and the view but not really. Once we were at the top, I didn’t understand why you would take a cable car up instead of climbing, because the views were cool but it would have pretty much meant nothing if you had just ridden up. We got snacks at a restaurant that’s on top of the mountain and then got ourselves in groups of 3 to abseil. It took each group awhile to prepare to go, even though the actual abseil took less than 10 minutes, so we waited awhile to go. The waiting was kind of annoying but kind of good because by the time my group went the clouds had cleared up and you could see everything around you. It is supposedly the highest commercial abseil in the world and was about 360 feet high (not the whole height of the mountain). I really liked the abseiling but it was different than I expected. It worked your arms way more and your legs way less than I expected. The guides kept telling us there would be a “surprise” halfway down. People were starting the weirdest rumors, like the surprise was them dumping water on us, which would have sucked because it was kind of at the top. Halfway down you learned that the “surprise” was actually the rock totally ending and you kind of just sat in your harness and let yourself the rest of the way down. At first it was really weird because you don’t want to hang in nothingness and trust just your harness to hold you but once you got used to it, it was really nice because you got to look around you and enjoy the view. When you were using your legs, you were more concentrated on not fucking up than on the scenery. When you got to the bottom of the rope, there was another 20-30 minute climb back up a different route. It was called the “dangerous” path but I liked it better because it was more like hiking and less like climbing. I continued the girls’ thing I wrote about in the last post about asking someone in every country what they think of when they think of Americans. I asked 2 of the guides and one of them said “luckier than here” and the other said “hard work.” One of the girls I was with misunderstood and thought he said “hardworking” and made a comment agreeing with him and mentioning she was applying to law school. But, what he really meant was hard to deal with so that made me laugh but I didn’t want to correct her and embarrass her so I just laughed to myself. When we got back to the ship we found some of our friends and everyone ate on the waterfront. Dinner was good but not the best we had had. 2 people left after dinner to use an internet café and 2 people left to go to a bar but my roommate and I were the only fattys that stayed for dessert. On the way back to the ship we ran into 2 people we know so we talked to them for awhile but eventually went back to the ship and fell asleep by 12.

Day 5
On the last day, I went on a Semester at Sea trip to the township Khayelitsha. Over half a million people live in this township. When you looked at it, it seemed like it went on FOREVER. Townships started during apartheid when everyone except white people were kicked out of Capetown and other cities and they congregated in these areas. Even though apartheid is over, the government hasn’t really made moves to rebuild the areas of the city where these people used to live so the townships still exist. When we got there, we stopped at Vicky’s Bed & Breakfast. This woman started her business right in the township and once she got it running she has encouraged 12 other women in the area to start similar businesses. She also started a food program to try to feed children before school. But, she said that it isn’t completely off the ground yet and right now she can only feed them on Tuesday and Thursday. She said she doesn’t want to have to start turning people away and if she offered it every day, there wouldn’t be enough. Even with it being only 2 days a week, all she is able to give the kids is 2 pieces of bread, soup, and a piece of fruit. She also started a Christmas program and she collects small things all year, like pens pencils stickers and other things and the past couple of years they have a Christmas party. She said before this program, Christmas was just like any other day to the kids. Vicky told us that people in Khayelitsha are poor but proud and she also said that even though people live in “these houses” they aren’t upset about it and they have positive attitudes and try to live like normal people. After Vicky’s B&B, we went to a craft market and across the street there was a church they told us we could see. Even though I don’t really go to church I like seeing churches so a couple of us went in, not expecting an actual church service to be going on. A girl coming out warned us that we would feel “SO intrusive” but we went in anyway and I don’t really know what she was talking about because I felt the complete opposite of intrusive. Everyone was so welcoming and I did not feel like I was intruding at all. The service was held in another language but the priest/minister/whatever (I couldn’t tell what branch of Christianity the church was) directed things at us in English. He said for “their friends visiting,” he would explain what he was talking about and would switch back and forth from English to the language they were using (I’m assuming Afrikaans, but I don’t know.) I’d love to see a church in the USA where someone would explain things to “visiting friends.” When everyone in the church sang hymns, it was genuinely good singing and didn’t sound anything like churches in the USA. At one point, a woman in front of us knew a hymn by memory and handed us her book and pointed to the one they were singing so we could sing with them, which I thought was SO nice. We looked down at it to start singing it and laughed to ourselves because it was written in the other language so there was no way we could have followed but it was a really nice gesture. After that we went to another B&B where a woman had snacks for us. This woman studied at the University of Pittsburgh for 2 years under a fellowship program that selects 2 people per year from developing countries to study entrepreneurship. The year she was picked, it was her and a man from Brazil. She also has encouraged other women in the area to start similar businesses and she also said her B&B has created jobs for other people because once she got going she began delegating things like baking or tours to other people. Khayelitsha has an 80% unemployment rate so she said she wishes more people would do what she has done because it would create jobs for themselves and others. I was really impressed by the fact that both women we had talked to had encouraged other women in their town to start the exact same kind of business, B&B’s, as they did. That would NEVER happen in America, where competition is the name of the game everywhere. These people weren’t concerned with becoming rich, they just wanted a job and they wanted to better their community. It was a mentality that I am completely unfamiliar with. The people we met there were some of the most inspiring people I have ever met. After the 2nd B&B, the owner had people walk us around the perimeters of a political rally going on. Zuma, the leader of the ANC, was speaking later that day so people were having a rally. Apparently South Africa’s elections are happening in April. It reminded me of Philadelphia when Obama won the election and it was just a rally. I can’t imagine what will happen when a winner is chosen. Wherever we walked, everyone waved and smiled and said hello if they knew English. I don’t really know anything about the political situation in South Africa but later my roommate, who had met up with a 26 year old friend of a friend on the first day and had dinner with her, told me some things about this Zuma guy that the woman had told her. Apparently he isn’t a very good guy and it kind of made me a little less excited to have witnessed part of his rally. When we got back to the ship, 3 of us ate at the same place where Nicky and I ate lunch on the 2nd day and by then I was out of money so I went back to the ship.I can’t believe we’re done with Africa. I would definitely go back to Namibia and South Africa on my own time. I would only go back to Morocco if someone paid for me, haha. Today one of my teachers made some comments about South Africa that I thought were interesting. She asked how many of us had been to a township and a lot of us had and she said she was very disturbed by the situation because it reminded her of the USA. She said that she has been to India 15 times and she said everyone talks about how shocked they are at India’s poverty but she said that what we saw in South Africa isn’t much different, it just isn’t in your face like India. She said in India the rich and poor live side by side and you can’t help but see it. She said in South Africa you could easily have stayed inside the “non-reality cyst” of Capetown and the waterfront and seen beautiful things and had an amazing time but not REALLY seen what it is like for most people to live there. She said this reminds her of the USA because there is poverty all over our own country too that most people choose not to think about because it isn’t immediately in our faces. I thought that was really interesting and also really true. It is also interesting because the poor people I met in South Africa had 100 times more positive of an attitude than anyone else I know. I’m glad we spent 5 days in South Africa so I had time to do the fun things and see these things, because I think both things are important. We stop in Mauritius for a day for fuel which I’m not even that excited about because it’s mostly just beach and then we go to India.

I don’t have many actual pictures from South Africa because most are of scenery and that kind of stuff but here are a few: (once again, I have NO idea why they post in a funny order and not the order I put them in)

me, Nicky, and Sylvie getting ready to abseil: