This morning started up bright and early as it usually does here in Cape Town with DukeEngage. The past couple days have been obvious exceptions, and I don’t expect to have another morning where all I stare at is the back of my eyelids for a while now. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
The only thing that truly motivated me to be happy this morning was that our favorite tour guide, Calvin, came back into our lives today to take us to a couple townships around Cape Town. We all love Calvin dearly. He was the first person we spent an extensive amount of time with in South Africa as he was our tour guide all through Johannesburg. He is basically a huge teddy bear of a man, but he definitely has some bad ass history. He spent some time in jail while he was actively fighting apartheid, and his stories are all unmatched. Calvin is also very good at making history interesting to me, which is something that very few people are capable of doing.
Our tour of the townships ended up being a fairly trying day. We started in the Cape Malay area of Cape Town where the majority of the population is Muslim. It was neat for me to see Arabic on some of the walls in this part of town, not to mention that the town houses were all painted different colors of bright blue, green, orange, pink, purple, yellow, etc. We didn’t spend too much time here but basically listened to a little historical spiel
from Calvin before hopping back into the mini-van to go onto another township. Because I am me and I don’t pay attention to details, the only township name is Langa and so I won’t specify experiences according to where they were. Sorryyyy. The day involved seeing a lot of things that are kept well hidden in the touristy part of Cape Town. Aka slums, extensive poverty, unsanitary and over-crowded living conditions, etc. The first stop we made was to a community center where members there make different crafts to sell to support the organization. We went into a little pottery making area where we saw how the pieces were made before being scurried off to go buy items outside. Mommy, I bought I pretty little plate that was probably way over-priced but at least supports a cause.
We moved on from the community center to see different aspects of the townships. We went into a couple local taverns and restaurants just to get a feel for what the local people live like. At least I guess that’s what it was for. Honestly, a lot of the day was very touristy despite the fact that it was supposed to be showing us the authenticity of the townships. The tour was a paradox in itself. Let our TOUR group show you through the “REAL Cape Town.” Nice. Anyway, we saw a couple things that were intriguing. One was a very open (and dirty) meat market where one of the things being sold/grilled were whole lamb heads. Mmmm yummy. Slash horribly disgusting to even think about eating. Calvin also took us into one of the slummy areas
to show us a routine beer brewing and sharing process that the local people partake in for just about every celebratory event and then plus some. We also all drank from the nasty bucket, and while I’m trying to be culturally sensitive, it was not the tastiest nor most culturally satisfying experience. One thing that really threw me off today though was the fact that alcohol is EVERYWHERE in these areas. It is actually quite ridiculous and obnoxious in my opinion. It seems in a lot of ways that while these people can’t afford to eat properly, they somehow manage to buy large bottles of Smirnoff and every other alcoholic product in large quantities. Maybe that is a harsh criticism on my part, but the fact that the man explaining the beer ceremony to us confidently stated that the drink eases hypertension, high blood
pressure, and diabetes makes me very skeptical about lifestyle choices here. On top that, the touristy witch doctor man that we went to go see and listen too also had rows of alcohol, along with his dead animals hanging from the ceiling and all around the wall. Rose and I did NOT enjoy that place, especially after I got smacked in the face with a squirrel skin and then looked up only to see a dead baboon hand right above my head. Nice. Again, while the tour was interesting and I appreciate getting to see another side of Cape Town, I do feel like the process was still especially touristy and exploitative.
The whole tour lasted until only about 1:30. When we got back to the B&B, most of us laid down to take a nap. Lauren and I passed out for almost two hours before I got up for a quick run to the gym before heading off to listen to a speaker on the Save Darfur organization at the District Six Museum. The speaker raised some interesting points on how Save Darfur markets the crisis in Sudan in a way that leaves out historical context and etc. Good news is that I stayed awake the whole time. Bad news is that I was starving so about halfway through the speech I started to think about how good dinner was going to be. Karlyn, Victoria, Naomi, Anthony, and I left the discussion portion early to go get some foodage where Julian joined us. The rest of the evening was fairly chill with the group having random discussions, including giving everyone an animal identity. Apparently I ooze giraffe. Go figure.
Ukuthula,
Lynn
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