Cape Town

A lot of people have been asking me about what's been going on in South Africa, so to skip the repetitiveness of telling everything multiple times I just made this. It should also give me a good place to post my thoughts in the future and to upload some pictures for everyone to see!

So to start-- I've been here for almost exactly three weeks and A LOT has happened. I guess I should have been writing as all this was going on, but whatever. Here's a quick / maybe-not-so-quick / not-totally-thorough recap:

I got here three weeks ago on a Thursday after the longest series of flights ever. San Francisco to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to (finally) Cape Town. Managed to fall asleep on the plane. Thank you Advil PM and free wine.

The first few days I spent just kind of settling in and exploring the surrounding neighborhood. The Stanford house is insanely nice-- there's a hot tub and washing machines and a whole bunch of other stuff I definitely didn't expect from Africa. There are 24 students here in total, most of them Juniors like me, most of them cool (at least so far), and they've been a joy to get to know over the last few weeks. The house is in a neighborhood of Cape Town called Observatory-- it's a pretty lively area of town and there's a ton of restaurants and bars and stuff within a few blocks of the house.

I took the train to this beach called Muizenberg with one of the other students the first day I got here and it was absolutely gorgeous. I'll upload a picture but it doesn't do it justice. There are a whole bunch of colorful little huts along the beach which we were told date to the late 1800's. Apparently, women then would use them to get dressed in their bathing suits (or bathing costumes, as they say here).

We went through a few very long official orientations to get us used to the neighborhood and University of Cape Town (UCT). UCT has an amazing campus, I'm actually pretty jealous. It's so pretty. Very east-coast collegiate... kind of. It also has an amazing view of most of the city. What I like about it is that it has the hustle and bustle that Stanford lacks. There are constantly students walking around and it's exactly like what you might imagine a stereotypical college campus to be like. Unfortunately, none of the classes we're taking are actually at UCT, they're all at the Stanford Centre which is about a ten minute walk from the house.

We had a ridiculously exorbitant (is that a word?) welcome dinner at a restaurant called Africa Cafe in the city center. Apparently it was like $50 a person. Yay private schools. Anyway, the food was delicious and came from all over Africa. We had dishes from everywhere. Curries, flatbread, fish, calamari, fried yams... People also came around and painted our faces which was pretty cool.

We were also lead around the city center (where all the big buildings are) one day and briefed on how to use Cape Town transportation. I'll probably elaborate on this more in future posts, but there's basically the options of taking a train, a taxi, or a minibus everywhere. Observatory (I'm calling it Obs from now on because that's what the locals do), is maybe 15 minutes away from the city center (also called the 'city bowl'- if you see a picture you'll know why). We walked through the Company Gardens which are really lush and beautiful and have an interesting history. I'll talk more about this later but Cape Town was originally a Dutch colony used as a refueling station of sorts for the ships going around the Cape of Good Hope to the far east to get spices. Whichever company had a monopoly on the spices, I think the Dutch East India Company, built the gardens to grow fruit so that the sailors could restock on citrus and not get scurvy. Apparently, the gardens are much smaller than they were when originally built, but they're still great to walk through. Cape Town is the legislative capital of South Africa, so parliament also sits in this gorgeous house within the Company Gardens.

We walked through the Malay quarter of Cape Town where most of the Muslims live. The houses in this part of the city are famous for their vibrant colors. I'll upload some pictures. Our guide, Colleen, talked a lot about the history of the Islamic and Indian populations in Cape Town and the important roles they played during Apartheid, but I'll talk more about that later.

We toured through District 6, which is basically kind of a wasteland at the moment (there are a few houses), but used to be an incredibly vibrant and important area of town for black South Africans under Apartheid. That was until the ruling party decided that the land was much too valuable and forced the residents to relocate to other parts of the city. The story of District 6 was used as inspiration for the movie District 9. Again, I'll talk more about this later because I don't want this post to be too long.

We also went on a township tour (which I feel kind of weird about because on one hand it does introduce us to and is a good way of seeing the rampant poverty that affects the majority of South Africans, but on the other hand... it did feel kind of like a zoo). We drove through Gugulethu and Kayelitsha which are two townships that together hold about 2 million people-- most of whom live in shacks and barely have access to running water and electricity. You can stand on one end of Kayelitsha and look over the sea of aluminum buildings and dirty alleyways and NOT see where it ends. It just goes on forever. So many people. We stopped by this small memorial in Gugulethu in the exact spot where a Fulbright Scholar from Stanford was killed in 1993 during the violence leading up to the first democratic elections. The student, Amy Biehl, was helping register and educate black voters and was a few days shy of ending her year-long stint in Cape Town. She was driving some friends back to their homes in Gugulethu when her car was stopped by militant anti-white youths belonging to an organization called the PAC. They attacked her car and she was beaten to death. What followed is a pretty amazing story (I'm pretty sure there's a documentary). Her parents created The Amy Biehl Foundation after learning of her death, and the three people convicted of her murder were later pardoned by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC) in 1998 (I'm not entirely sure of the history, but I know the TRC was created in order to ease racial tensions and to pardon some of those that had been convicted of racially motivated crimes prior to 1994). Amy's parents met with the three who had been convicted of killing her and allowed them to be pardoned. I'm not entirely sure what happened next, but I do know that at least one of the three is very very involved with The Amy Biehl Foundation today and has worked extensively with her parents to curb future racial violence. I could go on and on about how Apartheid has affected everyone in South Africa and continues to affect them today. There are so many stories, some horrifying, some inspiring, and I'll definitely sprinkle them in as I ramble on.

On the other extreme, we also went to Camp's Bay and Clifton. I'll post pictures so you can see. These are the beaches on the Atlantic side of Cape Town and contain the wealthy population of the area. Million dollar homes sit on the beach and the cliffs leading down to the beach. The view is amazing and dramatic. Seriously, I'm looking at pictures I took there right now and they don't do it justice.

I've also gone on a few really long amazing hikes up Table Mountain. One thing I haven't mentioned yet is how mountainous and hilly everything is here. The city bowl sits in between four mountains. In increasing order of size: Signal Hill (which you can just drive up), Lion's Head, Devil's Peak, and Table Mountain. If you're looking at pictures, Table Mountain is the one that... looks like a Table.

Both hikes I've been on started at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens (amazing-- there are summer concerts there which are also really cool), and went up this trail called Skeleton Gorge. They probably named it that because of it's steepness. So steep. It was more of an extended, natural version of a stairmaster than an actual hike. We got to the top of Table Mountain and the view was incredible, we could see all the way across the Cape Flats. Millions of years ago (maybe thousands, I don't really pay attention), when the sea was higher, Table Mountain was underwater so there's actually sand on top of it in a lot of places (also apparently sea caves and fossils). We walked across Table Mountain and rode the cable car down into the city bowl.

Okay, I'm going to stop this entry now because I'm getting tired of writing. There's a lot more that's happened though and I regret not starting to write this earlier. I'll kind of fill in things though as I remember them. I still need to talk a lot more about the townships and the history of South Africa. Not to mention my day-to-day life and classes and this ridiculous rafting trip we went on down the Breede River a week or so ago.

For now though, here are some pictures of the places I mentioned in this post:

This is the city bowl from the harbor. You can see the taller buildings of the city towards the left and Table Mountain in the background. There's usually fog rolling over the mountain which makes it really pretty. I totally forgot to talk about the harbor, it's called Victoria and Albert Waterfront (V&A) and is another one of the more prosperous parts of the city.

This is Camp's Bay. The houses here sell for millions. The mountain peaks at the top of the picture are called the Twelve Apostles (there are twelve of them...) Oh, and the water has a ton of Great White Sharks.

Part of the Muslim quarter. Colorful houses.

Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

Muizenberg colorful houses.