Hiking the Helderberg: a Saturday in Stellenbosch

On Saturday March 23^rd, Allie and I woke up early to join our host-mom and her friend on a hike up the Helderberg Mountain, one of the smaller mountains in the mountain range in the Western Cape. The morning was cool and misty, which made for perfect hiking weather! The trail was a pretty steady uphill and rocky at some points which required climbing, but not too bad for two fairly inexperienced hikers like Allie and myself. The path wasn't very well marked so we lost our bearing at one point right before we reached the top. Mom suggested we stop for a tea break (yes, you read that correctly, a tea break) to hydrate and get our bearings, so we sat down on some rocks and enjoyed hot tea, biscuits (cookies), and grapes. After we finished, Mom went ahead a little ways to find the trail which actually wasn't too far from our resting spot. She let Allie and I lead the way so she could stay back with her friend who was afraid of heights. Once we came up out of the forest, we were surrounded by yellow wild flowers and a beautiful view of False Bay, Somerset West, and the surrounding valleys. It was hard to capture the view with my camera due to the fog, but trust me when I say it was breath-taking in person.

tea time

Allie and I almost at the top!

view from the top

After our hike up the Helderberg which took about three hours round-trip  Mom, Allie, and I spent the afternoon resting. I didn't get to rest much as I had three papers to finished that were due Tuesday, but I did get a chance to call home and talk to my parents which was great! Afterwards I joined Mom, Sanene, and Allie in the sitting room for tea, coffee, and homemade lemon meringue pie, yum!

Post-tea time Allie and I began our preparations for dinner. The previous evening our host-mom had asked us what food we missed most from home and Allie and I had responded at the same time: “macaroni and cheese”! Our host-mom isn't the biggest fan of our favorite dish, but she invited us to cook it for her and Sanene and change her mind. So Allie and I got a recipe from her mom and made a plan for dinner: macaroni and cheese, fresh salad (all our salad was fresh – our host-mom grew salad greens in her garden!), and garlic bread. And of course wine because we were in Stellenbosch after all. While cooking, we had to make some adjustments based on the ingredients our host-mom had on hand, but overall I think the meal turned out really good! I’m not sure we changed our mom’s mind but she did say that she enjoyed our meal.

Allie working on making the salad

Dinner is served!

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

Game Drive in the Eastern Cape

On Friday March 15^th we had the opportunity to go on a game drive at a local animal reserve! We had been vocalizing our desire to go on safari since day one in Joburg, so we were all really excited that Stewart and Tabesa were able to make our collective dream a reality. Around 8:45 am our group of twenty-seven plus Stewart was picked up in three safari trucks and driven to the park down the road from the backpackers’ lodge where we were staying. After signing some paperwork, Lara and I were off with Rodger, our driver/guide, and the other six members of our group to tour the reserve and look for some animals! The park was very hilly and the dirt paths we drove on were rocky and often times nonexistent. I would describe the experience to off-roading or a rollercoaster with animals. You would have enjoyed it, Dad! We drove around for about three hours and saw ostriches, giraffes, impala, zebras (the correct pronunciation is zeb-rah… like Debra but with a Z), rhinos, and a pride of lions! Stumbling upon the pride of lions was definitely the highlight of the day for me. The group we stumbled upon while riding around the lion enclosure included the alpha male (who happens to be a white lion) and female, three tawny cubs and a white cub, and a couple of young females. Roger offered me 10R to touch one of the lions on the nose. If he offered me a little more cash I might have accepted his offer; I wasn't really willing to risk the feat for $1 USD and change.

A young male lion hiding in the bush

The Alpha Male - a white lion! There are only 400 in the world and 11 live in this game reserve 

The Alpha Female and some of her cubs

A safari truck

The rhinos have their horns removed to protect them from poachers.

After our ride around the park we headed off to a separate area to meet a young male elephant! The elephant was much smaller than I expected, though as a teenager he still had some growing left to do. His handlers talked to us about elephants and explained the difference between African and Asian or India elephants. One thing I remember is that African elephants have ears shaped like Africa and Asian elephants have ears shaped like India, so you can tell apart based on their ears. We also got the opportunity to feed the elephant which was quite fun. He was very greedy and would stick his trunk out in your direction and steal the pellets right out of your hand! Apparently elephants can eat up to 40% of their body weight, but because they only have one stomach they need to eat constantly throughout the day. Even though all twenty-eight of us plus his two handlers gave him ample amounts of food, the young elephant was still very hungry when we left him to go back to his enclosure in the park!

Going on a game reserve in South Africa was such an amazing experience, and one I'll treasure for the rest of my life. If anyone has the opportunity to go on one, I definitely recommend it! 

My Tshabo Family

Emishle, me, a friend, Lisa

oosisi: Emishle, me, Anita, and Lisa

oosisi: Becky and I

Lisa and Anita

My precious little Anita!

me, Mama, and Becky

Anita and Lisa goofing around at the homestay party

Emishle with sisi wam Becky's purse

Anita and Lisa

Tshabo: Rural Village Homestay

From March 7^th- March 14^th my friend Becky and I lived with a family in Tshabo, a rural village twenty minutes outside King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape. In order to get to the Eastern Cape from Cape Town in the Western Cape we took a grueling 17-hour bus ride on an Intercape bus. The running joke of the voyage was that it would have been faster to fly non-stop from Cape Town to New York City then it took us to drive across the bottom coast of South Africa! Luckily most of our journey took place at night and there were stops along the way for bathroom and snack breaks, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. The only small hiccup of the trip was that the aircon was blasting all night and when Jenna approached the driver to ask if it could be turned down, she was told that there was a “chemical leakage” and the aircon was on full blast so we wouldn't smell it… ummm what?! That couldn't be good! Around 5 am we were allowed to get off the bus while the crew cleaned up the spill. Based on the amount of blue liquid being cleared away, we determined that it was probably the detergent that was used in the bus’s toilet that had leaked or spilled, not carbon monoxide like Lara feared.

The rest of the voyage was thankfully uneventful, as was our stay in Tshabo. Living in the rural village was much harder for me than I had anticipated. After living in Cape Town for the past four weeks I was unprepared for the slow-paced lifestyle of the village, along with the lack of reliable electricity and running water. I also had technology withdrawals as I didn't have internet access and didn't feel comfortable pulling out my laptop and ipod in front of my parents and siblings to do work or listen to music. The stay in the village was also emotionally hard for me. Even though I had my cell phone, I had to conserve my airtime as there wasn't anywhere to buy airtime in the village, and as a result I felt very disconnected. I also didn't have room in my bag for my letters from home so I couldn't pull them out of my bag and read them when I was missing my family and friends. The biggest difficulty however, was the language barrier. My family spoke very limited English and Becky and I combined spoke even less Xhosa, so the week was full of broken English and Xhosa and lots and lots of hand gestures. While stressful at first, I was able to adjust over time as we all found a way to communicate with one another.

Even though the week in Tshabo was tough for me, I still did my best to stay positive! Here’s my list of high points from the week:

-Being greeted by our mamas at the high school. When our taxis pulled up all the mamas were lined up along the drive singing and dancing, welcoming us into their homes. As soon as we jumped out of our transports they were there to greet us with handshakes and hugs!

-Food. So much food all the time. Two breakfasts every day. And bread. So much homemade bread.

-Taking in the beautiful view of the village and surrounding area from my backyard

-Free time! We didn't have classes and only had a few planned activities, including an excursion to the Steve Biko Center, so we got to explore the village, socialize, and just plain relax after a few stressful weeks

-Getting to talk on the phone with someone special from back home

-The village dogs! I actually got to pet them unlike the dogs in Langa

-Learning how to bead and teaching mama how to make friendship bracelets in return

-Playing with my siblings, (mama’s grandkids) Lisa, Emishle, Lakanye, and Anita, and the rest of the neighborhood children

-Becoming friends with Anita! Anita is five and up until our last full day didn't want to have anything to do with Becky and I because she was so terrified of us. Everything changed at the homestay party however, when she decided to try to tickle Becky and I. By the end of the day the three of us were the best of friends!

-Mama’s excitement when Becky and I gave her our thank you gifts for the family: a new broom, dish towels from Vermont, and maple syrup from Massachusetts. I’ve never seen her so happy! She started jumping up and down when she opened the packages and had the biggest smile on her face

-Our siblings’ excitement when we gave them their gifts: noise makers and kaleidoscoops. It was a good thing we saved the noise makers for the last night because boy they were loud!

-Getting to spend time with Becky. We were good friends before Tshabo, but living (and bathing!) together has definitely brought us closer.

-My Tshabo Family. Though we couldn't always communicate, there was still a lot of kindness and love. While I might not miss living in the village, I will miss my family and look back fondly on the time we spent together over the course of the week.

our house

our chickens + the outhouse

Simon's Town and Cape Point

Here our some pictures from our excursions in Simon's Town and Cape Point, the southernmost point of the African continent!
Simon's Town: March 4th-6th

Allie and Lara in front of the Boulders Beach sign

swimming with penguins

Cape Point: March 6th

view up the continent from the lighthouse

path leading to the Cape of Good Hope

Cape of Good Hope sign (in Afrikaans) 

A Day in the Life/Last weekend in Langa

Here’s what a typical day has looked like for me over the past three weeks:

6:00 – wake up and get ready for the day ahead

7:15/20 – picked up for school by Martin

7:45/50 – dropped off in Rondebosch

7:45/50-9:30 – exercise and shower at Zone Fitness, walk to classroom

9:30-11 – Xhosa lessons with Sandile

11-11:30 – first break

11:30-13 – lecture or excursion

13-14 – lunch break

14-15:30– lecture

15:30-17 – MWF Xhosa tutorials, TuTh lecture or excursion

17-17:30 – clean classroom, pack-up for the day, run errands

17:30 – transport back to Langa

This weekend was my last weekend at my homestay in Langa. I spent Saturday morning in Woodstock at the Old Biscuit Mill with friends and then headed into town to go to Mr. Price - the South African version of Forever 21! I got a floral pemplum t-shirt and a floral maxi skirt for my rural homestay. I'm so glad South Africa is able to feed my pemplum and floral addiction! On Sunday I woke up early to write a 5-page paper due Monday (worth 50% of my grade in one of my classes - yikes!) and then went to the homestay party at the Langa Sports Center with my makhulu, Yoli. It was so fun! Us students sang (mangled) two songs in Xhosa and "Build Me Up Buttercup", Kelsey Rae and Katie recited a poem, and Juan gave a speech in Xhosa thanking our families for welcoming us into their homes. Then the mamas and sisis stood up and sang songs in Xhosa for us. They were MUCH better performers then us! Afterwards the students served our families food and we all sat down and ate together. After the party I spent the rest of the evening watching TV with Yoli, my sisi Naso, and the baby. Naso and the baby left after a couple of hours of TV, but Yoli and I stayed up until 10:30 pm chatting. I've grown to love my family and home in Langa Township over the past three weeks so it was hard to say goodbye to Yoli, Mama, and the baby this morning, especially since my baby sisi held my finger and smiled at me for the first time today! Usually she just cries whenever I'm around and try to hold her. I left my family my address in the States so we can keep in touch and Mama said she'd find me on Facebook (LOL).

Mama Yoli and I at the homestay party

Today we're off to Simon's Town for two days to hang out with PENGUINS at the beach! Then Wednesday night we're boarding a bus for a 16-hour drive to Tshabo, a rural village in the Eastern Cape where we'll be staying with families for a week. Starting Wednesday we won't have internet for 10 days, so no new blog posts for a week and a half! Don't worry - I'll fill y'all in on my adventures when I get internet back!