Greetings from Cape Town!
We have been blessed with a bit of a slower pace as we near the end of our journey, and I am grateful for the opportunity to really explore one place a little, particularly after our whirlwhind trips through KwaZulu Natal and the Eastern Cape. We arrived here Sunday afternoon, to a beautiful hotel that has FREE INTERNET! Thus, I am writing the first of what will likely be two updates from Cape Town.
The big news is that our neighbors in this hotel are Springboks, the South African National Rugby Team. It was quite entertaining to watch as they checked in shortly after our arrival here--since most of us had no idea who they were, we went about our business and ignored the whole thing while the rest of the lobby was a flutter with excitement. We do have one former Brit among us, Joan, and she was thrilled to see them.
Our visit here began with a trip to the Centre for Early Childhood Development, where we learned about the concerns of children under 7 here in South Africa. I was struck once again at how our nations have such similar concerns, yet on completely different levels. The director of the center spoke about the challenges of coercing government action without a strong lobby. We also learned that there is only one university in South Africa that offers a degree program in Early Childhood Development; most pre-school educators do not have formal training. Finally, we were very excited to learn about the extensive HIV/AIDS care and prevention programs that the center is working on nationwide, mostly in a "train the trainer" situation. They even have a character on Takalani Sesame (South African Sesame Street) who is HIV+ to help kids understand the disease and its effects.
The next stop was the very powerful District Six Museum. Following the Group Areas Act of 1950, the apartheid government went about forcibly removing people from their homes and relocating them to less desireable areas away from city centers. One of the most well known of these areas in Cape Town is District Six. The residents here put up such a fight that after the government removed them and literally bulldozed the community to the ground, they were afraid to rebuild on the land. The museum, which was once a church, is filled with all sorts of artifacts from this community--from a sculpture made of the street signs to a floor map that people from the community have come to the museum to mark with the locations of their homes, and homes of their neighbors. It was an amazing insight into the impact of the forced removals. I was particularly excited to see a photo of Vice President Gore's visit to this museum in 1995!
We have been to some lectures here and there and also visited many, many schools. The last of our 22 school visits in South Africa will be tomorrow morning. We have had some significant and much-needed downtime here, with many of the highlights of our time here food related! The entire group had dinner at a restaurant called The Africa Cafe--it was amazing. A beautiful old house that has been decorated with traditional African art, the menu is family style, and each course has foods from all across the continent. We had a great time trying new foods and singing and dancing with the wait staff! I also went to high tea with a couple of ladies from the group at the Mount Nelson Hotel, "world famous" for their afternoon tea service once enjoyed by Winston Churchill!
Cape Town is beautiful, but similar to other South African cities in that the divide between rich and poor is still very evident when you leave the city center. Today we saw the largest informal settlement we have seen so far, it stretched for miles upon miles, as far as the eye could see. We were in a vehicle and so I won't have photos of this one...but it is not a sight I will soon forget.
As you probably know by reading my ridiculously long emails, I am having a wonderful time here and every experience has its own rewards. Personally, I cannot wait for the two highlights of this stop--tomorrow we head to the Cape of Good Hope, where two oceans meet! Saturday morning we have our tour of Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners of the apartheid government were held. On Sunday we have the day off but will be celebrating together as we send off our beloved tour leader, Alina, who will not be joining us for the Botswana portion of our trip.
I am sure that I will have lots to report from our adventures this weekend and so I'll be in touch before we leave for Botswana Monday morning. Having a wonderful time, but looking forward to coming home.
Love,
Patricia :)
And from the end:
And from the end:
Greetings from Cape Town!
It is our last night in South Africa until Thursday, and we have just returned from celebrating with our travel leader and friend Alina, who will not be joining us in Botswana. We are all going to her home in Joburg for lunch on Friday, however, so we'll save the tears for then. I'm writing again for two reasons--the first being that a lot has happened since Thursday's update and secondly we're not too sure about the internet situation in Botswana, so I have to take advantage of our free internet one last time.
Thursday night we were welcomed by the US Consul-General, Moosa Valli and his wife at their home in the Bishop's Court section of Cape Town. We had a fantastic time at the reception, where many educators and people from various exchange programs were gathered in an "official" reception here. I had fun talking with some local education officials that had just returned from six weeks in the US, working at UPenn and also spending a week in DC. I was thinking about the typical things that happen to me when I travel--I run into people I know and people ask me for directions. Neither of these things have happened, despite the fact that two of my colleagues are somewhere in South Africa, too!
Friday morning we left for the last of our school visits here. To be honest, we are all a little burned out on school visits at this point. We keep discussing how we long for the opportunity to make real connections with people, and instead we just spend an hour in a "flyby" type visit. Our first visit was to a school that is currently housed in a former warehouse, students are so crowded in these classrooms that it was a challenge for us to even be in the room. Next, we were splitting up according to grade level to go to the last two schools. I arrived with some of my fellow Fulbrighters at Rocklands High School, where we were greeted by the principal. He was chatting with us as he was figuring out which classrooms to send us to for our 30 minute visit, and I was distracted by his photos of a trip to DC on the wall. Then he said, "I've been to the US, when I was there I went to Montgomery Blair High School." I was shocked! "That's my school! That's where I teach!" I was so excited, he had photos of Blair Boulevard up on his bulletin board and was telling me all about how much fun he had with Mr. Gainous. Then he said, "One of my teachers went to Montgomery Blair this year," and I said, "I met all of those South African educators, I must have met him!" So, we went to his classroom and knocked on his door, and he was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him! It felt great to see a truly familiar face, and it was a full circle moment for me, to see where and how this man worked after having met him back in the spring and learned so much from him.
We left Rocklands and joined the group at Pelican Park Primary School, where we were warmly welcomed by new friends we had made at the reception. They had a fantastic all-school program in celebration of Women's Day here in South Africa. It is held every 9 August to remember the women who burned their pass books in protest of apartheid. The little ones were so cute! We loved every minute of it.
After lunch, our all-star coach driver, Isaac, took us on a bonus tour of Cape Point. The first stop was in Simon's Town, home to many many penguins! We continued on to Cape Point, one of the most amazing places I have ever been. We rode the funicular (incline for those of you in Pittsburgh) to the lighthouse, where there was one of those signs that point the direction to various global desinations. New York City: 16,000km. South Pole: 6,000km. It was awesome. We walked down, and went over to the Cape of Good Hope, which is in the same park and not far. It was amazing, a beautiful site so full of history, and truly fantastic to see two oceans coming together. We took the Atlantic Ocean route back up the Cape, and then we had a night tour overlooking Cape Town. Simply amazing.
I know this email is already long, but there's more! Saturday morning we headed out to Greenmarket Square, an open air market where we did some serious wheeling and dealing. I have finally gotten over my shyness with negotiating prices, and using some tips that Joe (aka "my friend Joe the lawyer) taught me, I helped one of my friends get a good price on a painting she wanted. It was great fun :) From there, we joined the group back at the hotel and headed over to the dock to get on the ferry to Robben Island.
After a 30 minute ride on a very fast and sometimes wet catamaran, we arrived at Robben Island, the notorious location where many political prisoners were imprisoned during apartheid. Nelson Mandela spent 16 of his 27 years in prison here. It is quite large, I would say about twice the size of Alcatraz. First we had a bus tour of the whole island, and then we had a guided walking tour of the cell blocks for political prisoners, who were kept separate from the criminal prisoners so as not to influence them! Our tour guide was a former political prisoner who had spent 9 years on Robben Island. The tour group was much too large, and as I was waiting for my turn to see Nelson Mandela's cell, a woman stopped me and said, "Excuse me, she thinks she knows you." And then her daughter said, "Are you from California?" And I said, "No, but I do work in Berkeley every summer." To which she replied, "At NYLF!??!??!" Sure enough, while waiting to see Nelson Mandela's cell on Robben Island in South Africa, I ran into a NYLF student from 2004. It was wild!
One of our new friends from Thursday's gathering insisted on returning the wonderful hospitality she enjoyed in DC and so she took New York Janet, Jessica and I to Kirstenbosh Botanical Gardens...beautiful and vast, right in the foothills of Table Mountain. It was a little overcast, but we had a great time. When we returned to the hotel, there was a minstrel band and a crowd gathered on the steps, waiting for the Springboks to return from their major victory over the Kiwis (the New Zealand All Blacks...not the fruit). It was a lot of fun to dance out there as both teams returned to the hotel.
To complete our stay here in Cape Town, our coach driver, Isaac, rented a minivan and took 7 of us out to Stellenbosch this morning. It's been rainy and grey today, but we had a fantastic time exploring the second oldest South African city. Dating back to 1679, Stellenbosh is known for its Dutch Colonial architecture and vineyards galore. We walked around and went to a wine tasting. There are stories from today, too, but this email is already WAY TOO LONG!!!
I am sad to be leaving Cape Town tomorrow morning, it's been great fun here. However, I am looking forward to the new adventures awaiting us in Botswana and also to being home one week from today.
I hope you are well and look forward to showing you all of my photos...I've taken 20 rolls so far...
Love,
Patricia :)
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