THE PATRIOT

This is a true story about the triumph of the American spirit (and by “spirit,” I mean “stereotype”):

This morning we woke up early to get started on our vineyard tours at 10am. Now, Stellenbosch is much more…colonial than Cape Town and some of the attitudes are a little more colonial too. As in some people have huge sticks up their colon. Our wine guide was one such person. From the get go, it was very clear that he was not a huge fan of Americans, which is fine; I get it. But by the time we left Simonsig, he and I were no longer on speaking terms. He made some unfunny, Anti-American comment that wasn’t witty enough to dignify a response. So I didn’t give him one. He interpreted my disinterest as not catching onto his brilliance, and said, “That’s the second time today I said something that went right over your head,” I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer and replied, “Sir, I could run circles around your head.” (America: 1, Douche Bag: 0) Have I mentioned this is the first winery we visited? I should have known then that it was going to be a long war.

At the third vineyard (which sported a cheese buffet), the wine guide found a chameleon outside and after fondling it himself, gave us all specific instructions not to touch it. This was also fine, because I would probably be a little protective of a chameleon if it were my only friend too; I get it. After this, Danny was lingering outside to take a picture of the chameleon and the wine guide asked Brett where he was since we were waiting on him. Brett jokingly said, “He’s petting the chameleon.” Big, Mistake. Danny (who heard nothing of their conversation) walked back into the room where we are already seated. He sat at the end of the table opposite the wine d-bag and the fighting words began to fly:

Wine Guy: How’s the chameleon??

(Tense silence.)

Danny: He’s great.

(But he says “great” the way you would say, “I’m going to f-ing kill you in your sleep.”)

Wine Guy: Did you bomb him??

(Implying that as Amuricans we bomb everything in sight—I know I personally bombed 7 chameleons today, and it was a slow morning... this was the kind of witless remark that prompted me to end our budding friendship at Simonsig. Anyways, more tense silence…)

Danny: Ya, I bombed him. Then I made a cheeseburger out of him. But I’ve been in South Africa for so long that I decided to take a page out of your book and make him live in a township for a coupe of years first.

(BURN.)

(America: 2, Douche Bag: 0)

There was just no recovering from this verbal bombshell. At this point, I broke my oath of silence to stare into the depths of my wine glass and mumble something about “the legs on this beaut” and “liking my chameleons…like I like my wine” and Ellen threw back her wine like Napoleon Dynamite downing Gatorade. The rest of the evening was a little quieter and by the time he dropped us back off at SumbleInn, 3 out of 7 of us refused to talk to him entirely. We have to do what we can as ambassadors of American goodwill.

After that, we got a minibus back to Cape Town and immediately got ready to go over to Stiffy, Wado, and Jordi’s house. Now before you pat me on the back for having friends with names that come straight out of American Pie, I really can’t take all the credit. This is group of people that we met at Vortex trance festival when a representative from their group came over to tell us that they thought we were awesome. (America: 5,390,842, Douche Bag: 0) It was Jordi’s birthday so we went over to their place before going out. After hanging out there and meeting all of their friends, they called a van to pick us all up and take us out to a club called Bang Bang. Once about 12 people piled in, I thought that another cab was going to come because there was just no way we were all fitting. But they just kept hopping in (the driver conveniently had a whole playlist of house music pumping), until Connor and I counted 24 people crammed into this one van—all dancing and singing the entire way to the club. After this experience I am convinced South African’s are not only far cooler than Americans, but far better at geometry.

STELLENSLOSHED

We left this afternoon for wine country, a place not too far from Cape Town called Stellenbosch. We took the train there, which was a little longer and a little more hectic than we anticipated, but we made it there just in time for dinner. After we checked into our hostel, the StumbleInn, we went straight out to an amazing Lebanese dinner at Manoushes. I love rocket just as much as any other member of the arugula family, but the “Hezbollah Rocket Salad” did make me question this dining establishment for a second. But all the food was incredible, from warm flatbread sandwiches to the massive pineapple and mango display courtesy of Chef Jean. Stellenbosch is a college town so the waiter had several bar and club recommendations for afterwards. We were excited for a Thursday night out on the town after deducing that no college student actually believes Friday is part of the workweek, but the entire place seemed dead. We stopped in a bar called Terrace that is usually really crowded and the bartender told us that people are busy writing exams at this time of year. We decided we should take matters into our own hands and each one of us should buy the group a round, which probably would have been a good strategy if there were 4 of us… but there were 7. Two hours later when we had hijacked the sound system and plugged in Danny’s iPod to blast house music, played drinking games that all involved pounding on tables and yelling, created a new signature drink for the bar and christened it “The Stellenslosh,” I wondered to myself why on earth Americans ever get the bad rep of being obnoxious??

JOBURG

Yesterday after my South African politics test, Danny, Brett and I got on our flights to Johannesburg. Kelly and Kase traveled with us, and in the process of negotiating a cab we somehow ended up taking a black Mercedes to our hostel. This was oddly fitting, since it is an ex-Mafia mansion—probably what the house of Carmela Soprano’s dreams would look like if she got her act together and built it. Met up with Connor, Louie and Kevin here at the hostel, Brown Sugar Backpackers. Then we got in touch with Brett N. from USC, who is also here in Joburg for Spring Break! He bailed on Cabo to come home to Joburg (spring break capital of the world) and then Sydney. He recommended an amazing restaurant called Grand Central. Danny, Kase, Brett and I went to dinner and from there, Brett and his friend Dunny picked us up to have a “jol”—South African slang for a party. Despite having been in South Africa for the past 2 months, and supposedly learning this lesson our very first night in Tiger Tiger, Danny failed to bring proper shoe wear. Nikes might be “fly,” in the states, but they don’t fly in South African clubs. Finally, we got him in, and had a great first night in Joburg!

OKAY!!... NO, IT'S NOT.

Ellen, Brett and I took a beach day to explore some of the parts of the peninsula we haven’t seen yet. First we went to Llundudno, a secluded beach near Camps Bay with crazy waves and huge rock structures to climb on. The scale of everything there is so massive that it dwarfs you entirely—I felt like I was in Avatar, but Brett and Ellen refused to paint themselves blue (killjoys). After Llundudno, we drove to Haut Bay and had dinner at a seafood restaurant there. All the waiters wore pirate outfits, and we quickly made the jump from Avatar to Fast Times At Ridgemont High.

We drove around with Amon, a cab driver from Zimbabwe who we’ve befriended over these past few months. Amon is a man of few words—well really, just one word: “Okay!” Everything we say garners the exact same reaction. This is fine when you say something like, “Amon, we need to go to Camps Bay.” And he responds with “Okay!” This is not so fine when you say, “Amon, a herd of angry gnomes is headed straight towards us, we’re all going to die!!” And still he responds with… “Okay!” Recently, it has come to our attention that we are Amon’s only customers. I have called him upwards of 30 times and there have only been two times when he was busy—once he was with Danny and the other time he was with Brett. This lack of customers became apparent at around 5pm when we looked out into the parking lot of the restaurant, saw Amon’s car, and realized he had just been following us around the peninsula the other day. Granted, it was probably a smart (although doubtfull strategic) business move on his part, since the three of us are effectively ¾ of his customers. And the other ¼ (read as: Danny) was in the library.

Got back to Cape Town and went out on Long Street: Waiting Room, Marvel, Fiction, and finally Dubliners. At the end of the night, Danny spent 75 rand (a small fortune) buying food from street vendors—the South African equivalent of ghetto dogs, shwarma, and falafel. I argued with Danny that the shwarma was better than the falafel but Danny pointed out to me that he asked the vendor to put falafel IN the shwarma… Moments like this make me so happy that Ellen and I are going back to SC with a new best friend. With great taste in street food.

BACK TO YOUNGSFIELD

After much confusion, we went back to Youngsfield today and I got to see Ouwa again! It looks like the High Court order will not be enough to evict the refugees at Youngsfield, and the mandate only pertains to another camp called Blue Waters. They were trying to include Youngsfield under this umbrella, but hopefully court proceedings will take at least a year and this will buy the families at Youngsfield some time to get on their feet. A girl named Sulega’s tutor could not make it today, but it worked out well because Ouwa and Sulega are best friends, so I got to take them both today. Watching them work together made me love them even more. Ouwa really excels when she can help someone. She was never pushy, but you could see her excitement—she wanted Sulega to get what they were working on too.

KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS

Today was our second week of volunteering with SHAWCO and it went so much better. Seeing the kids again was amazing, and it was much easier to build off the continuity of last week. Today’s lesson was about antonyms so we did a couple exercises together where the kids had to pair up a word with the correct antonym. When I asked one of the precocious fourth graders, Nakishka, what the antonym of “friend” was, she thought for a second before replying… “Rude.” Nailed in, Nakishka. All of the kids are incredibly bright. Their answers to my questions were all complex and thoughtful. I asked another boy, Enrique (alas, no relation to Iglesias—yeah, I already asked), to make a sentence with the word “future” in it that showed the meaning. Enrique said, “The man and woman got married, so now they have a future together.”

As we were leaving, some of the older girls gave Ellen and I an impromptu Afrikaans lesson. It turns out, we are not as quick of learners. We can now introduce ourselves, ask how someone’s day is, and make complete fools of ourselves in Afrikaans. My saving grace was when they taught us how to say “goodbye” (it is “totsiens”) so that I can excuse myself from a conversation before doing irreparable damage… So, Totsiens!

CHURCH (HOLY SHIT) AND GOLDFISH

This morning we woke up early and got the kids ready for church. The dress I was planning on wearing looked a little worse for the wear after being shoved in a duffel bag for 2 days (weird). I wasn’t going to say anything, in hopes that people wouldn’t notice that my dress had more wrinkles than an LA mom without Botox, but Moira caught me trying to smooth out the wrinkles and offered to iron my dress—proof that mothers always know. We all piled into their van and headed to church. Which is held in a classroom of the Oceanview Elementary School. Up until this morning, Dan had struck me as a deeply spiritual, and soft-spoken man. But when he got in front of his congregation, he transformed. He delivered a sermon about letting go of the past. During it he said, “The fight with the devil for your heart is fought in the battlefield of the past. Not the future.” It was really interesting in light of our conversation the day before when we were talking about the history of apartheid in Oceanview. He told me that a lot of members of his congregation still have trouble letting go of the wrongs they’ve suffered through and it affects them on a day-to-day basis. But he feels this resentment tethers them to the past and keeps them from moving forward. The congregation was a much more lively bunch than the ones I’m used to—mothers were screaming out, crying, dancing, and falling over in their trances during the ceremony. It was an incredible experience.

After church, we went back to their home and had a big, traditional Sunday meal that Moira’s sister prepared for us. Almost immediately after we finished eating, it was time to go back to the buses. Saying goodbye to the Jegel family was really hard, especially with Sarah-Claire because I don’t’ think she understood I was going to be leaving so soon. But this family was absolutely incredible—everything that I want mine to be one day. I know we’ll be in contact for a long time.

Ellen and I got on the bus back to Cape Town together, threw our stuff down at home, and went straight to Kirstenbosch Gardens for the last summer concert—Goldfish! We made it just in time and the concert was amazing. It was set against the beautiful backdrop of the gardens and there was really diverse audience, with people from ages 4-60. Got crafty thinking of ways to try and talk our way backstage and met ½ of Goldfish! The best part of the day was getting home to an email from Eric telling me he will be visiting South Africa after graduation in May! The subject line was "We need to talk," which was arguably the worst use of that phase in the history of South Africa and needing to talk. All in all, amazing weekend.

HOME STAY IN OCEANVIEW

Had an incredible day with the Jegel family today. Some of the highlights:

1. Woke up this morning because 3 birds had flown in through the roof. The boys and I threw Moira’s pots over our head and chased them out with battle cries. Beats a hotel wake up call.

2. Went for a walk through Ocean View. Dan told me a lot about the community and the problems it faces with drug use, drinking, and teen pregnancy, but also showed me an amazing side through the people we met as we walked around.

3. Went to get Fish and Chips in Fish Hoek (shocking, I know). Ate on the beach with the whole fam.

4. Saw fishermen catch a school of yellowtail. I have never seen anything like this. Lookouts have a vantage point on a big hill near the beach and then signal to others on the beach when they see a school. Everyone sprung into action and dragged a boat out into the water. When they threw the net, everyone on the beach jumped in to help them bring it back in. They caught about 40 huge yellow tails.

5. Drove along Chapman’s Peak near the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost tip of Africa—absolutely gorgeous view.

6. Went swimming at Sun Valley Primary School. Moira works there and the kids all go to school there instead of the local public school. Luke is going to be in the final rounds of a speech competition there on Wednesday so he practiced for us. Quite the little orator.

7. Moira cooked us dinner and we all cleaned up and played together.

8. Sarah-Claire slept in my bunk tonight, read the kids all stories until they fell asleep. Cannot believe I have to leave tomorrow afternoon… really going to miss them.

SON OF A PREACHER MAN

Tonight we are staying in Oceanview, a township near Fish Hoek and we’re each paired up with a home stay family here. We went to the local high school where they had set up a huge dinner for us to meet our families for the weekend. I was kind of nervous to meet my host family, but the second I saw Moira and Dan I knew it was going to be a great weekend. The moment they saw my nametag, Moira grabbed my hand and gave me a huge hug. Another girl in our program, Dominique is paired up with their family too. Throughout dinner we talked and I learned more and more about them and their family. I talked to Dan and started to hear some of his story—he was in the South African Navy until one day when he said he felt the call of God and felt that he was meant to do something else. He told me about how gave up his steady job with benefits to become a pastor (insert me asking if his offspring were named Billy Ray and the material for “Son of a Preacher Man”—judging from his blank stare, I don’t think the song quite made it to South Africa). After dinner and a couple of awesome performances from people in the Oceanview community, we headed back home to meet the rest of the family and settle in.

The kids were falling asleep by the time we got home, but Moira, Dan and I had a long talk at the kitchen table and I got to know them even better. Fell asleep in the bottom bunk, while all three of their little boys—Dan, Luke, and John—huddled on the top, and Sarah-Claire (their youngest little girl) slept with Mom and Dad downstairs. All the kids are adorable, really well-mannered and very loved by their parents. Excited to spend more time with them tomorrow!

IS HE WEARING A FLAG?...NO, I THINK IT'S A GYPSY COSTUME

Yesterday High Court passed a new judgment that refugee camps must be closed, so there is some unrest at Youngsfield, The camp where I go teach Ouwa. As a result, we were told that we can’t go this week, and volunteering has been suspended indefinitely. I’m really worried that Ouwa and her family have been forced to evacuate and I don’t know what the situation is. I am just praying for the best and hoping that this all passes.

Ellen and I also had our first day of volunteering with SHAWCO today. After being duped into buying SHAWCO raffle tickets to support this cause (literally, we were hustled by our own RA and both woke up with raffle tickets and sans cash) we decided that we should look into the organization a little more. SHAWCO stands for the Students’ Health And Welfare Organisation (I’m even spelling it with an “s” instead of a “z”—how’s that for assimilation?) and it is the biggest student-run NGO at UCT. It encompasses a bunch of different programs aimed at helping the community and the Ellen and I found one that fits our schedules and our interests called KenSTEP. Every Tuesday we will be going to the Kensington Community to tutor English to students at schools without programming or funding. Today was our first day and we walked into it with no training and no idea of what we would be doing. Perfect. Someone from SHAWCO half-heartedly attempted to explain on the bus over to Kensington, but ended by saying something to the effect of “you’re on your own!” I walked into the cafeteria and was immediately overwhelmed by how many kids were sitting there. At each table there were kids from grade 3 to grade 7 shouting over to each other. We immediately got the sense that there wasn’t much structure to the day. In a flurry of activity, Elle and I got assigned to two different tables of 3^rd and 4^th graders whose tutors apparently weren’t there that day. After getting their workbooks (sounds simple, but this was no easy task) I started the lesson for the day about Greek mythology. It was fun and I think the kids enjoyed it but it was hard for them to focus in an environment with so many things going on around them. At one point, I saw a Cirque De Soilel-esque performance when one boy balanced perfectly atop his friend’s shoulders to grab a paper that had been launched as an airplane into oblivion. This performance was complete with gaudy costuming, since hey were both draped in cloth that looked like it had been a flag in another life. These kinds of distractions would sidetrack an Adderall junkie, so I really couldn’t blame it on these kids attentions spans. It seemed like the afternoon was over before it started, but I am excited to see how next week goes.

I WANT TO GO TO THERE...

Tonight we hiked Lion’s Head, one of the peaks overlooking Camps Bay and Cape Town. Before tonight, I had no idea how was this was supposed to resemble the head of a lion. Kevin tried to explain it in terms of “Lion’s Head” vs. “Lion’s Rump” and I actually bought into it for a little while. Until someone pointed out it is actually supposed to look like a lion-sphinx (my favorite animal?). We started the trek up around sunset and had the most gorgeous views of the water as we made out way. Once we got to the top, we could turn and see the sun setting to our left and moon rising to our right at the same time. It was a full moon and it looked massive as it rose over the city lights. Everyone brought picnics and wine—because climbing dangerous peaks under the influence is always advisable. Here are a few pictures that don’t do it justice…

I LIKE MY CHEETAHS LIKE I LIKE MY WINE…

After celebrating our housemate Annabelle’s birthday last night, we struggled out of bed to go to Stellenbosch for the Spier Wine Harvest Festival. To quote my (completely unpretentious) copy of “South Africa’s Winelands: A Visitor’s Guide”—courtesy of a Monday night dinner delivery from Taylor Corr—“Spier’s historic Cape Dutch buildings and beautiful riverside gardens set the stage of a permanent celebration of the finer things in life: delicious food, superb wine, fine art, and music.” Couldn’t have put it better myself. Which is why I didn’t. Really though, this place had everything you could ask for from a wine festival: awesome live music, people mashing wine grapes with their feet in big vats circa “I Love Lucy,” delicious food, generous wine tastings, and a ton of really cute South African babies running around. Quick aside—I half-jokingly (not to mention loudly) said something about “wanting to steal one the babies” because she was so adorable. Literally seconds later, a man gets on the mic to make an announcement asking everyone to look around because a family can’t find their little girl and is really worried. FML. Thankfully they found her within a few minutes—keeping her face off a milk carton and mine off South Africa’s Most Wanted list.

Kidnapping allegations aside, this wine festival felt like a hippie-chic vineyard in Napa. Just as I was starting to forget, I was reminded of why Africa is far cooler than the states will ever be. And here it is… There is one key difference between the wineries in Stellenbosch, South Africa and those in Napa, California: CHEETAHS. Unfortunately, I don’t mean the run-away success that is the Disney pop group, “Cheetah Girls.” I mean real live cheetahs. Speir is home to the Cheetah Preservation Project that works to…preserve cheetahs in the form of a project. Basically, local farmers were frustrated with cheetahs killing their livestock and had busted out their Remington Bull Action Rifles (which God created on the third day to fight the dinosaurs… and the homosexuals) to take matters into their own hands by shooting a lot of cheetahs—which is slightly problematic, because they are endangered. But the farmers didn’t know what to do because the cheetahs were killing off their livestock and effectively their livelihood. But to play cheetah’s advocate for a second (not that I advocate cheating, EVA—love you) their natural habitat was being infringed upon by the spread of farming in the region. So some people established a cheetah conservation fund to raise money for breeding and raising these huge Anatolian guard dogs that scare away the cheetahs just by barking. Which, as we all know, prompted the South African Cheetah Population/ Baja Men joint collaboration in the catchy tune, “Who Let the Anatolian Guard Dogs Out?!” The program is working really well—since it was introduced, livestock losses have been reduced 95%-100% and the cheetahs are alive and well.

To make an already long-winded story just a little bit longer, while still keeping it kinda brief—Elle and I got to pet a cheetah!!! There is an outreach program at Spier Vineyards, and the proceeds go towards the Cheetah Preservation Project. At petting zoos in the states, absolute best-case scenario is petting goats or feeding some rabbits. But we actually got to pet Jack, a beautiful and surprisingly soft cheetah. The guidebook was right, Spier really does celebrate the finer things in life: cheetah and wine. A great pairing.

THE SQUEAKY CHAIR INCIDENT OF 2010

Disclaimer: This is pretty unrelated to South Africa. It probably relates more to the perils of global warming and mayonnaise on Asian consumer markets… But as the song goes, “This is my blog and I’ll ramble if I want to.”

Today it was brought to my attention that I have the mental maturity of a 7^th grader. I noticed that whenever I do something that makes a noise that could be mistaken for passing gas, I feel the need to let everyone around me know that it was not actually my digestive system... I choose to communicate this by blurting out the name of whatever inanimate object actually made the noise. Case in point: In the shower when the shampoo coming out of the bottle makes a funny noise, I instinctively shout “SHAMPOO BOTTLE!!” Regardless of the fact that nobody else is actually in the shower to judge me for the noises that could have been misinterpreted as the aftermath of a baked bean eating competition. Anyways, this habit is fine when I’m alone…but not so much in public places. Which brings me to today… Today, I went to the UCT library for the first time. As someone who is on a first name basis with the graveyard shift cleaning crew at Leavey, I can say from experience that UCT has a great library: comfortable workstations, plenty of outlets, good lighting, collegiate ambiance etc. At first glance, everything is great, except for one fatal flaw that turned out to be my undoing. I walked in, did a lap to scope the territory, and saw an empty desk near an outlet in the middle of the main room. Jackpot. I beelined for this desk (all’s fair in love and library), threw my bag onto the table, and plopped down into the chair. From this chair, sounded the strangest noise I had ever heard. It was bad. And Momma didn’t raise no fool—I knew exactly what was running through the minds of the library patrons when they heard that ungodly sound… So what did I do?? I chose to clear the air (pun intended) by shouting “SQUEAKY CHAIR!!” at the top of my lungs…in a library.

On the bright side, I think it speaks volumes about the kindness of the people of Cape Town that nobody immediately escorted the poor, gassy, girl with Tourrets (read as: me) outside of the library. But to be honest, they probably would have if I hadn’t run out of the library at mach 4.

ALL PART OF THE (GAME) PLAN

We hit up Old Biscuit Mill Market this morning and had a lovely brunch featuring lox latkas, a perfectly rare roast beef sandwich and chicken on the most delicious bread ever (we shared?). Then we immersed ourselves in South African culture by having a “braai” at our house. A braai is the South African equivalent of the American BBQ. But it means different things to different people. For most South Africans, I think it means a few friends and a grill. For us it meant inadvertently purchasing 4 kegs, a funnel, and 7 meters of plastic tubing (collegians should be able to do a frattastic addition problem in their head to figure out what the last 2 equal), and then inviting 100 of our closest friends over. A stunning example of cultural relativism. This was meant to be a pregame for the Cape Town Stormers rugby match that our program got us tickets to. Great in theory, but not so much in practice. After 4 straight hours of “braaing,” the pregame turned into the game, and the postgame turned into a nap. Whoops.