Stellenbosch

Hello faithful readers! Sorry for the delay in posts… I've had four big assignments due in the last two weeks including my research proposal for my independent study project! Ah! I have two more papers due next week but after spending all Easter weekend on my proposal, I think I can allow myself a night or two off to catch you all up on my latest adventures!

We arrived back in Cape Town from the Eastern Cape around 6 am on Sunday, March 17^th aka St. Patrick’s Day (and Sarah’s 21^st birthday)! My friends and I spent the day catching up on emails, blogs, etc. at our classroom in Rondebosch in the morning before returning to the backpackers’ lodge where we were staying to shower and explore the city. That night for dinner the two Irish pubs were overflowing with people, so our whole group of 27 ended up eating out at two different Ethiopian restaurants instead. Talk about starting a new St. Patty’s Day tradition! As much as I would have loved to go out on the town afterwards to celebrate my Irish heritage, I went back to the lodge instead to rest my tired legs and get a good night’s sleep in a real bed!

The next morning we moved out of the backpacker’s and went to our classroom to re-pack our bags for our next homestay in Stellenbosch, a small university town about 45 minutes to an hour outside of Cape Town. For this homestay we were going to be living with white Afrikaans-speaking families – quite a change from our black Xhosa-speaking families in Langa and Tshabo! After packing, we were given a one hour Afrikaans instruction to learn how to say greetings and basic titles and then shipped off in the vans to Stellenbosch to meet our parents.

Stewart had mentioned that we would be having a briefing with the Stellenbosch homestay coordinator before we went to our respective houses. What he forgot to mention, or didn’t know himself, was that our briefing was being held at the botanical gardens at a classy restaurant with finger foods and local wine! Actually, there was no briefing, just munching and drinking while we waited for our parents to pick us up. Not going to lie, I went back for seconds… and thirds. Living in Tshabo with our four-five full meals a day had really expanded my stomach! Plus the food was delicious and who in their right mind would pass up on gourmet finger food?

After we had finished munching, Lara’s parents packed Lara, Allie, and I in to their car to bring us to Somerset West, the neighboring town where the three of us and four other girls from our program were living. All three of our initial responses were, “Wow it’s been so long since we’ve been in a car!”, soon followed by a whispered conference debating whether or not to buckle our seat belts (In Langa most our families had cars but no one buckled their seatbelts, typically because there were usually six or seven people squished into a four-five person car). We decided to observe Lara’s parents and follow their lead (our research method of choice here being participant observation – wow, you can tell I’ve been writing a lot of research methods and ethics papers!). Both simultaneously reached for their belts and buckled, so we followed their lead. The drive from Stellenbosch to Somerset West was pretty short, about 20 minutes. The three of us were living in the same suburb of large gated homes built on hill overlooking Somerset West and False Bay. When Lara’s parents pulled up to our house, we were immediately greeted by a large yellow lab named Sally and a long-haired dachshund named Java. Sanene, our host mom’s friend and tenant, met us on the porch in her wheelchair and after chatting with Lara’s parents for a few minutes, brought us into the house and showed us to our room - a large bedroom with a connecting full bath, queen size bed, and closet space! After living out of suitcases for ten days and not having a bathroom for 7 of those days, you can only imagine how elated we were. We dropped off our bags in our new room and then took a tour of the house and neighborhood with Sanene and the pups. Afterwards we came home and helped Sanene prepare dinner: oven-roasted vegetables and salad with greens freshly picked from the garden by Allie and I! As much as I’ve enjoyed trying new food, I was happy to have a healthy dinner that resembled something my mom would make for dinner at home. Just as finished, my host mom, Annie, walked in the door fresh from her late meeting. We introduced ourselves, thank her for welcoming us into her home, and exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes before sitting down at the table to eat and get to know each other. Annie is a widower with two grown sons who lived on her own with her two dogs and two cats, sisters named Biltong and Biscuit, until two years ago when Sanene joined her. She is also the head of a small NGO dedicated to helping families with disabled children and she told us a little about her business over food. My past two houses had been female-dominated so it was cool to be able to continue the trend with two sweet, hard-working women. When we finished dinner, Allie and I helped clear the table and then headed off to our room to unpack and hit the sack early – moving into a new home and meeting a new family is tiring business!

Sally!

Java!

During our week in Stellenbosch we met on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday for lectures at Stellenbosch University, an Afrikaans university and one of four higher education institutions in the Western Cape (there are only 23 universities in all of SA!). We met in the cinema each day for two lectures, one from 9:00-10:30 and the second from 11:00-12:30, and our lectures focused on university life and Afrikaans culture and identity. After a ten day “spring break”, I was eager to get back to classes and learn about another group that makes up this multicultural society. I was also excited to be on a college campus again! Don’t get me wrong, I love our small classroom in Rondebosch and consider it to be my home-base here in SA, but I miss being around people my own age and campus life in general. Plus we were allowed to use the university’s library which was a nice change from doing my homework on whatever bed I was staying that week (though if truth be told, I only went the library one afternoon and did all three of my assignments on my bed…).

Although I was happy to be back “on campus” again, I had to constantly remind myself that I wasn't back on my campus again. Stellenbosch constantly played tricks on my mind. For the first time since leaving the United States I was living with a middle class family in a predominantly white area and attending a predominantly white university; on the surface it seemed like a carbon copy of my life in the United States. Once I dove beneath the surface however, I realized that I was still very far away from home. Although the students and my host family resembled my friends and family at home, there were subtle differences. First, most people’s primary language was Afrikaans so their English was accented. Second, the Afrikaans culture was dominant in their lives. As a minority, this group of people is very focused on preserving their culture and language in the face of a changing South Africa. For example, many nights for dinner my mom prepared traditional food as a way to teach us about her culture. While sharing cultural foods is not unique to my homestay experience thus far, there was a lot more conversation about why these foods were unique to Afrikaans culture and stories about my host mom and Sanene’s childhood homes. We had many stimulating conversations about my mom and Sanene’s childhood homes, their lives during Apartheid, and life in South Africa. These conversations were different than conversations with friends and family at home because there were often racist undertones to some of things my mom would say. I tried to engage her in conversation about some of the things she would say, but those chats were often difficult for me to navigate. I know from talking to my peers that I was not alone in hearing ignorant comments and struggling with how to respond.

Another issue I struggled with in Stellenbosch was privilege and social inequalities. I had just spent a week in a four room house with no running water and limited electricity and now here I was in a four bedroom house with three full baths, an in-ground pool, and wireless internet. It seemed unfair to me that my family in Tshabo had so little while my Stellenbosch family had so much! Then I realized that one of the reasons I was so upset and uncomfortable was because this house and my family’s lifestyle reminded me a lot of my life in the United States. I immediately felt guilty and unsure of how to navigate my feelings. In an attempt to reconcile these feelings, I talked to my host mom about her privilege. She explained that while she feels guilty for having a large home and nice things, her wealth and role as the head of an NGO put her in a position to create jobs and give back to the community. The talk made me feel a little bit better knowing that my host mom was conscious of her privilege in South African society, but I still felt conflicted about my own privilege. It’s something I've been grappling with since my Social Inequalities class fall semester 2011 and something I think I’ll still be struggling with for a long time.

Although I had my struggles and some homesickness, I still enjoyed my time in Stellenbosch! I love being in a home with dogs and on a college campus again, plus going on a wine tasting was a really fun experience. Though I did find out when I got home the night after our wine tasting that you're not supposed to drink every glass of wine, just taste it then spit it out... oops. No regrets though!

Lara and I at our group wine tasting at Solms Delta Winery 

view from our front porch of False Bay