gettin our groove on.
One aspect of Cape Town that Katy and I were speaking about being completely fed up with, is the creepy guy scene, yet creepy guys were not going to keep us from getting our funky groove on at the clubs, no sir-ee. So we decided to go dance the night away in Green Point, the “queer friendly” area of Cape Town. This way, no creepy guys would be interested in us, and we could be around a diverse, open minded and sexually free group of people.
Ask and you shall receive. Beuhlah Bar was just that. A trendy, gay bar with fabulous music and marvellous people of all ages, shapes, colours, sizes, sexualities and genders. I loved it. We danced to Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, etc. like crazies, and since so many types of people existed at the bar, it did not matter how crazy we looked, we just added to the fabulous ambiance and mix.
The end of the night, though, was a lesson to be learned. We stopped into the Bronx bar, next door, which is another gay bar, mostly made for the boys, topless males at the bar. Loved it, again, naturally. Anyways, the symbol at the bar was the anchor. I really like anchors, some of you readers might just know why. There happened to be a shop open next to the Bronx, selling men’s tank tops that said “Bronx” and had large anchors on them. Having had a little bit of something to drink, I felt obligated to purchase one, as if my life depended on it. However, I accidentally picked up the wrong shirt, and when I got home I realised that the shirt I picked up did not have an anchor on it, it just said the name of the bar on it. My roommates made fun of me when I tried to show them a shirt with an anchor on it that did not have an anchor on it when I came home. I was rightfully embarrassed.
Moral of the story: never shop drunk, but do always go out dancing.
rocks, sand, cement, blisters…a house.
At seven thirty on a Saturday morning, I jump out of bed, ready to build a house. We arrived to one of the townships of Cape Town at the Habitat for Humanity build site, after almost hitting many people and other cars in our mini bus. The minute we got there, we were instructed to pick up shovels, and shovel things in 36 piles in wheelbarrows, no other real instructions. After thirty six piles of sand, our masculine, scary leader told us that we put the piles in the wrong place so we started over again, and moved them all. 12 wheelbarrows full of cement and 36 wheelbarrows full of rocks, and some water, and cement was made. By the afternoon, the beginning of a house was finished.
The team we were working with was from all over the world, with a volunteer service group that travels and volunteers. Our team also consisted of the man who is going to live in the house next week when it is finished, an 8 month-old pregnant woman, Emily (who shovelled lots of heavy sand…not the best idea?), and her daughter, as well as many many children who lived in the township and tried so hard to lift the shovels, with their tiny arms, they were quite determined. The rest of the township also helped make the house, by driving by our worksite saying “I love you, you guys are great,” making us tea and lunch, and teaching us Xhosa and Afrikaans.
It is wild to think that with a group of ten people with some muscle power, some sand, some stones, cement and water; a house can be born. It is not something that one might think can happen on a daily basis, but it does, and it was such a pleasure to be a part of.
jacey lee.
Today was my last day with the person whom I have grown most fond of in Cape Town.
“Jacey Lee is going home on Friday,” one of the older girls says to me as I change a very dirty diaper. What a bully that girl is, she had to be lying, telling me the love of my life is leaving me.
Jacey Lee is the 9-month-old girl with whom I have been working with, playing with, changing her diapers, teaching how to crawl and stand up since the beginning of my time in volunteering at Brooklyn Chest Tuberculosis hospital. She is finally healthy, so going home should be the best thing that ever happened to her. But when I asked the nurse to confirm the bully’s comment to me, she said her mom should have come and picked her up today, but she hasn’t come yet, but she will eventually go home with her mother. She would not go to a foster home, which is good news, because many of the kids there are abandoned at the TB hospital. It did scare me though, that her mom was not there the second Jacey was discharged after being at the hospital for six months. I hope that her mom was at work, and that is why she wasn’t there yet. I wish the nurses knew and could assure me that she was going home to a loving home.
Today was one of my favourite days I have had with Jacey, and the first day that I noticed how sick she was when I came here, and how much better she is now. When I first came, she coughed, cried, peed, was inactive, barely crawled, and barely chatted. Today, she could walk with holding my hands, she figured out how to stand up by herself, and she would not stop blabbing in baby chatter. We had so much fun practicing how to walk and repeat “lalalalalala.” I have never seen her smile so much in one afternoon. The hardest part was walking away from her crying face when the van was waiting to take me home. I could not even handle it.
I am looking forward to going back to Brooklyn Chest on Monday, as I always am, but I anticipate a void, seeing another sick baby in her crib. Who would have ever thought that someone could be so close with someone who isn’t their own, who cannot even talk?
my own jammie drama.
Katy and I began our journey that involved many many different Jammie shuttles after a nice afternoon of piercing and margaritas, like every afternoon should be. We hop on the shuttle at the campus down town to return to upper campus then onto the Liesbeeck Gardens shuttle from there. As we were on the first shuttle, a noise started from underneath the bus. Could have sounded like a flat tire, but it more sounded like something was stuck to the bottom of the bus…perhaps a dead body or something, but don’t worry, it was not a dead body…
On the downtown campus, studies the drama students. On this first Jammie shuttle, was Katy, me, and the drama troupe, clad in all black, many of them with elaborate green eye make up. Quite stereotypical. Well, when the Jammie started making said noise, the drama kids became quite dramatic, naturally. I felt that we were on a comedy show all of the sudden, the token leader of the drama troupe came out of his seat, and vividly walked off the shuttle, shouting at everyone that it was going to blow up, more students followed in saying the news trucks are coming. If this had been the Liesbeeck shuttle, nobody would have said a word, and everyone would have had very angry faces. I would not want to be stuck on a broken Jammie with anybody else besides the drama kids.
We all got off the shuttle to see what was happening, and two of the drama kids started recording a news cast on one of the girls phones, “Here we are, thirty-five UCT students, trapped on the side of the road, nowhere to go…” After discussing the situation, another Jammie shuttle came to save the day and we continued on our Jammie journey.
on seeing hairspray in south africa.
This weekend, I went to see the new movie Hairspray on the Waterfront. I have been obsessed with the musical for years now, and was quite excited to see it, but during the movie, I could not help but think if the South Africans in the audience thought about the movie in the context of the country in which they live.
The movie takes place in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1960s. Tracy, the main character, is an overweight, white girl who desperately wants to dance on the “Corny Collins” show. To make a long story short, Tracy makes her way on the show, which is only white, and she protests and fights to integrate the Corny Collins show.
The movie completely makes fun of the preposterous segregation and exclusion of blacks in the U.S. in the 1960s. Now, South Africa had legalised segregation up until 1994, when the apartheid ended. Life in South Africa is still completely segregated. While I would not go as far to say that whites exclude blacks from television in South Africa, but the outlandish actions and thoughts of the people in Hairspray, exist in South Africa. I wonder if the South African audience put this movie into the perspective of their life as South Africans, or it is just a silly, American movie to take mind away from the every-day troubles of living in South Africa.
jaws: south africa style.
My alarm obnoxiously sang to me at five am on the dot. I thought I was dreaming, and then I remembered that I am a crazy and wake up before sunrise so I can risk my life in front of great white sharks. Our van pulls up outside of Liesbeeck filled with strangers with the same thrill-seeking sentiment as ours.
After a two-hour drive, a hardy breakfast and a Discovery video about sharks, we were off to the boat in overcast skies and wind pushing us around. The boat drives us to “shark alley,” where, with some bait and some patience, we would see many enormous Great White Sharks circling our boat, seeking food.
Suited up in the wet suit (after some struggle of course) I hopped into the cage attached to the boat. Our instructions were to sit with our head outside the water and then when they tell us, we take a deep breath and submerge our bodies under the water to become face to face with the shark, and do not put our limbs outside of the cage. No other directions, emergency procedures or anything, of course, this is Africa.
After a bit of waiting and listening to an obnoxiously nervous English woman talk my ear off and taking pictures of her on her over-priced underwater camera to show her nephew, I became face to face with some sharks. They were enormous and hungry, but as Laura and I agreed, it was too surreal to be frightening. When coming face to face with a highly deadly animal, there is nothing at that point that anyone could probably do to keep it from taking a limb, so what is the point to being afraid?
At one point, the shark came in contact with the cage, almost smacking its tail into me, and with that, my thrill-seeking quota was immediately satisfied.
news….zim and health minister…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7010372.stm-zim refugees
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7008506.stm-
If there is an entire community of people who try to eat a giraffe for its meat- do not take the giraffe away to save the giraffe, rather maybe someone should look at the reason why they need to eat the giraffe and do something about it….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6983675.stm
“The “Dr Beetroot” nickname appeared after Dr Tshabalala-Msimang began recommending olive oil, lemon, beetroot and the African potato as elements of a healthy diet that could treat the symptoms associated with Aids. “
plummet.
I did not tell my mother that I went skydiving until after the fact so she would know that I lived through it. We arrived at the airfield of Skydive Kwazulu Natal to meet Marc, who explained exactly what we had to do, every instruction he gave me was erased immediately by fear, which was probably not the best situation. After instructions and strapping on my harness, I sat in my tandem partner’s lap on the tiny plane. We made our way up past the clouds into the sky, looking for the best place to jump. We were warned that we might not even be able to jump because there were too many clouds in the sky, and that it might be dangerous. I trusted the stranger whose lap I was sitting in when he said the spot we picked was safe to jump out of thousands upon thousands of feet in the air. Marc opened the door, and Laura and Marc flew out of the plane and my partner was securely strapped on and practically just pushed me out the door.
The forty second free fall felt like a half a second. He gave me a thumbs up during it to put my arms out and fly. My eyes were open, I could not be afraid, because honestly, if I were to die up there, there was nothing I could do about it then so I just enjoyed the elation of falling from the sky.
The parachute unexpectedly came out and I was all of the sudden floating above a layer of clouds. Until we passed it, all I could see was the sky and a blanket of clouds. I have always wanted to jump out of planes to see what it would be like to touch a cloud, and what it would feel like to fly above them and I finally had my chance. It was the most surreal experience to be one amongst the clouds. We floated through the layer of clouds, and I put my hands out to touch them. No, they do not feel like marshmallows like the rumour goes. After we passed the layer of clouds, my tandem partner said “hmm, where is the airfield,” which was a little bit disconcerting but I trusted this stranger to get me down safely, and we did with the parachute behind us. I landed on the ground without an injury or even with my legs shaking. I could still barely believe that I just jumped out of a plane. The image floating above the clouds is forever imprinted in my mind.
“And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy I had always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move one, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiances shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven.” On the Road- Jack Kerouac
mountains and stars.
We assumed that the drive to the Drakensberg Mountain range would be a two and a half to three hour drive on a paved road. The paved road ended about after an hour and we were on dirt from then on. I have never seen South Africa until our drive that day. We drove through a large Zulu village at about two o’clock, just in time for the children to be released from school. We passed many round, thatched roofed houses with brightly coloured doors. Children started lining the roads stopping as we drove by to wave frantically and sometimes chase after the car. They seemed ecstatic to see us, the foreign crazies in the tiny blue car listening to Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye blasting from our car speakers.
The village ended after a few miles, and we became one with the dirt road and many, many cows. At one point, we were sure that we were lost, because we could not see any more thatched roofs or buildings for what seemed like miles and miles, so we created our own rest stop among cows and mountains. It turns out that we were headed in the right direction and we continued to roll our hardy VW in the dirt and finally arrived at our quaint cabin at the bottom of the most stunning mountain range that has ever hit my eyes.
After celebratory peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that we made it to Drakensberg, we hiked up a mountain. The hike went through grass, rocks, creeks, forest and at the top, it felt like Nicole, Paolo and I were the only people in the world. From the top of the mountain, we could not a single person, a single building, a single sign of any other human besides each other. It was so odd to believe that we were in the wild city centre of Durban the same day, or that the wild city centre of Durban even existed at all. For those minutes on top of that mountain, we were the only people in the world.
We were about to loose the sun, so it was time to hike back down to where people existed. It became dark as we were close to the bottom, our eyes could barely take us to our Cabin by the end of our hike. The electricity in our cabin and all cabins around us turned off promptly at ten o’clock, and all we had was candle light. There were no lights at all for miles upon miles. We lied in the dry grass outside our cabin, staring without blinking at the sky. I have never seen, and doubt that I will ever see more stars in my life time. The obstruction of human kind did not interfere with anything, it was once again just us and the stars, nothing else existed.
durban.
Durban differs from Cape Town in ways in which I did not expect before my our journey. I did not know exactly what to expect, I just knew that Durban is one of the cities to which everyone from South Africa told me to visit. I knew a city with a beach culture would greet me after the long drive, but Cape Town is also a beach and a city, how different could they be?
The beaches in Durban are much more racially mixed than in Cape Town. My psychology professor’s students conducted a study on post-apartheid Cape Townian beaches, looking at the racial demographics of beaches after they were no longer segregated by law. The beaches in Cape Town are still very separated even after apartheid. While blacks and coloureds are allowed in the previously “only white” beaches, they keep in separate areas from the whites, and the whites are not happy that blacks and coloureds are allowed on “their” beaches. In Durban, the beaches seemed much more racially mixed, and nobody seemed to care about who was on their beaches. While I did not explicitly ask anyone on the beach how they felt about the mixing of racial groups, it seemed that everyone was comfortable with the racial demographic on the beach.
I also never truly realised how “chilled out” Cape Town is until I left it for the week. The city centre of Durban bussling and lively. People walk across the middle of the street with power over the cars; curvy women hold large packages balanced on their heads and two bags in each of their hands with ease. Everyone seems to be involved in some sort of task or on their way to one, unlike Cape Town, where people leisurely walk the streets, and will complete tasks at hand just now, which in translation, means eventually, maybe. At first, one might see Durban as ugly and stressful, but after finding myself lost, looking out the windows in the city centre, Durban became one of the most colourful city and has a distinct, quick-paced and bright, quirky character that I grew to enjoy.
p.s. Durban also has excellent, excellent Indian food, complete with bright pink drinks with umbrellas
