Two Oceans and a Mountain

"God spent a great deal more time creating South Africa. He gave Cape Town two oceans and a mountain – no city can compare.” - Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Cape Town is one of the most photogenic cities in the world. While my days Monday to Friday consist of a grueling literature review and starring at a screen, you just can't describe the beauty of looking out the window and seeing mountains. For my non-lit review adventures in this breathtaking place, pictures are always better than words.

The Mzoli's experience that inspired the last blog post

Beer, meat, craziness. That's about it.

Ginormous pile of  amazing meat and chicken. The white stuff is 'pup' which is basically mashed maize, I loved it. Reminded me of my days in Ghana.

No silverwear, just hands and meat.

 Waterfront Cape Town Fun

It's so beautiful, it almost looks photoshopped.

That lego like guy, "Elliot" is an 18 meter tall structure made entirely of Coke bottle trays, 42,000 to be exact, that were used during the World Cu in 2010. This was part of a reuse, recycle campaign.

That's Raji and I, sitting on Elliot. He's a big guy.

A Captonian Sunset

 

Bye Sun!

RUGBY!! 

 South Africa has made me an official rugby fan. I am no sport person, but that is one fun sport to watch, it's brute muscle force, no padding or even many rules, you get that ball to the endzone no matter what it takes! Unlike American football where play stops after every tackle, this just keeps going, it turns into a wrestling/boxing thing to get the ball out of the pile of people and onward. The game does not stop unless someone is being taken out in a stretcher (which happens often). It's very fast paced and entertaining. 

My new fascination with  rugby comes at an interesting times as South Africa is hosting the Junior Rugby World Championship (kind of like the sub-20 world cup of FIFA). For about $3 USD you can watch up to three games, and my university is one of the hosting stadiums.

 We've watched some interesting matches (Samoa v. Wales, Ireland v. England, Italy v. Fiji), it's interesting that this is considered such a strong national pride thing, but yet is a very White player sport. When we watched England v. South Africa, there were more people of color in the English team that there was in South African one (there is only one token guy in the South African professional team, and none in the junior team). However, fans do come in all colors, and the crowds have been fascinating and fun. Had no idea there were so many Irish people in South Africa!

 

This is my favorite part of the game, they throw players up in the air to catch the ball. It's kind of like cheerleading throws.

Wales v. Samoa. The Samoan team did an incredible opening chant/dance thing, that was just awesome. Unfortunately, they got creamed 74, 3. It was painful to watch.

The Scrum! This is the formation in which game is restarted if stopped, similar to football, except a lot more fun to watch.

Why do the ball boys need wear short shorts? I do not know. Actually the prevalence of short shorts and entirely too tight jerseys in this game is just ridiculous.

A day of surfing and fun in Muzenberg

One of those 'small world' and coincidence moments came together last week. My roommate Raji, spent a year in high school in a small town in Thailand, during which she made a Capetonian friend, Grant, who was teaching English at the time at the school in front of her high school.(One of only 10 foreigners in the area). Nine years later, Raji finds herself in Cape Town now that Grant, after years of traveling, has returned and settled down. So of course, these two had to connect during her time here.

I had never gone surfing, and was on my bucket list of things to do in South Africa. We had planned last Saturday to be our surfing day since it was forecasted to be one of the mildest days of winter. Of course, we had no idea how to get to some of the novice-friendly beaches. (Cape Town has no reliable form of public transportation, and things are unfortunately pretty spaced out, so getting around gets difficult. Look forward to our adventures this week when we will rent a car and attempt to drive on the other side of the road and the car...). 

Raji called Grant to see if they could meet up on Sunday, and it turns out coincidentally Saturday he was scheduled to do a work event in Muzenberg in the morning (one of the best surfing spots in Cape Town) and was planning on taking the afternoon to surf. And so a day of old friends, surfing and conservation work came together.

Grant works in the area of nature preservation work, we had a great tour of the are and learned tons about plant life in Cape Town. Cape Town is actually home of the most plant diversity per area than anywhere else in the world ( for more info read this blurb about Cape Floral Region), including the Amazon. So there is a lot of work to conserve and take care of this great richness. We joined a group of volunteers and the City of Cape Town to remove alien plants in the Muzenberg coastal region and replant native plants. Then some well deserved surfing fun.

 

Hard at work. Beautiful mountains, always.

Grant & Raji

Volunteers.

I swear getting into that wetsuit was a bigger workout than the actual surfing. Those things are crazy tight!

The water is FREEZING.

Look at that little boy go! He was like 8. In the back you can see me trying to maneuver that board past the choppy waves.

Riding a wave, even just kneeling is hands down, one of the greatest feelings in the world. Simply cannot describe it. Everyone should try it.

Sharks Sharks Sharks. All Cape Town coastal area in both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean sides are shark infested. There are 'shark watchers' whose sole job is to stand on the mountains and watch for sharks approaching the beach, if which an alarm will sound so people will get out of the water. Thankfully the alarm did not go off while we were surfing. But it sure added some fun to the surfing experience. On July 7th I will be doing cage diving with Great White Sharks. In cage underwater with sharks inches from my face? Yup, I'm gonna pee my wetsuit.

Shark Flag. The color is suppose to mean how the shark outlook and weather are looking. I believe dark is good.

Muzenberg beauty

 

Campus Views

Can't hate work too much when your already beautiful campus is surrounded by mountains.  

The view from the library, when it's cloudy those mountains just look so heavenly. Can't wait to hikeTable Mountain next week. Let's see if I make it to the top!

The bizarre, the poignant, and the beer

"To live in Africa you must learn three things: how to live with the rich, how to live with the poor, and how to live with the very poor"

These were the words of our driver-friend as we started our Sunday afternoon who had invited us to have braai (South African barbecue) lunch in a nearby township. Townships, are the shantytowns or slums of South Africa. During apartheid, non-whites (three designations: Blacks, Colored, and Indians) were pushed out of urban areas and forced to live in these settlements in the outskirts. As you can imagine,  townships are extremely poor communities where most families live in one room tin shacks and lack basic plumbing or electricity. The development, politics, and threats to township communities are vast and I could never give them full justice in a blogpost.


I was looking forward to finally seeing this part of South Africa after having been in such luxury for the first few days. As we turned away from Tygerberg towards the townships, I wasn't surprised, I've seen slums, I've lived in them, it was what I expected,  including the heaviness and guilt you carry as you drive past in a comfortable car. (I don't take pictures of communities I don't know someone in to ask permission, especially if I'm just driving past, but I found some other people's pictures of Gugulethu where I was to give an idea)

Source

There are shacks, happy people, and some nicer areas with buildings. There are businesses and obvious development, a general pride of the community, there were people wearing a selling Gugulethu t-shirts and hoodies. We entered Mzoli's, the place we were to eat, it is basically a butcher shop, you order your meats and take them back to the grills to be cooked. Once we had done that, we went in search of something to drink.


Our guide took us to a house that was selling beer, we explained that it was too early to drink (11am Sunday) and we didn't want any. He was disappointed and explained that the beer is customary with braai, therefore we agreed to purchase some to take part in the full braai experience. Since there was only 5 of us, we thought a 6-pack was fine, but he insisted we needed two. Despite our disagreement and awkwardness he returned to purchase a second. When we get back to Mzoli's for our meat, there was a group of Americans playing an ice breaker game, some White South Africans in the corner dressed strangely and smoking, we thought it was rather random, but that was only the beginning of the craziness.

The meat is, hands down, the most incredible meat I have ever had (and I have had a lot of meat). There is no utensils, just a pile of meat and your hands. We enjoyed our meat and beers as we continued to see more and more people arrive.

The crowd was so bizarre, there were extremely rich, tons of foreigners, Black & White South African Hipsters, Indians, and people came dressed in armani, some in thrift store fashion, all kinds of languages being spoken around. Huge speakers were pulled out and house/techno music started playing (???). We were so confused as to how this lunch was turning into this bizarre party-like atmosphere in the middle of such immense poverty. With our single beer each we watched as our friends and the people kept drinking and eating meat, smoking, a hooka came out in another group, more tourists, lots of tourists, from all over the world. There were Mercedes Bens parking in front of tin shacks, it's owner (a Black man) speaking Xhosa with his friends with similar luxurious cars, as nearby Afrikaans, Spanish, English, French, was all being spoken. People of all walks of life kept arriving, by the time we left a couple of hours later the crowd was at around 800-1,000 (no exaggeration), it was insane. Apparently it's common to come there after church.

 How? How can so many different kinds of people come together to celebrate in a country with so much segregation? In the middle of a slum? Not quite sure whether to shake the uncomfortableness, join the party as we supported the township economy, or just be totally bizarred out. I ended up in a weird half-way point. As I asked why it was that this place was so popular with so many different kinds of people? I was simply responded with "there is something about Mzoli's..." or "they're all here for the meat".


Both are true, Mzoli's has the best meat in South Africa, and the business has become so popular and big, it has become a major tourist attraction. Townships are dangerous places (Gugulethu were we were had 700 murders between 2005-2010) and this safe spot has become a must for the many "township tours" of tourist packages, it offers a safe 'township experience'. Of course one cannot shake the thought of whether such a tourist attraction is really authentic, but after discussing this with coworkers and other South Africans, it actually is.



"A South Africans gathering needs braai, beer and music". The townships have great braai, while there is no spot as famous as Mzoli's, I have since heard there are braai spots like that all over, playing different musics, all located in the middle of the shacks, one which apparently has live jazz, has a balcony. A balcony! Overlooking the township!


I struggled for so long trying to come up with words to explain the Mzoli's experience, but I realize I simply did not have them. It was simply one of the craziest weirdest things ever, I can't analyze it or explain it, I can only share what I lived and let it be. For now, I'm just a little concerned, if that if that was lunch, what the heck is dinner like??

Screw Hopkins!

Because the first few days here in Cape Town have been rainy and wet, (this is the winter season, so this will be common, hence the rainy backdrop of this blog), we didn't get a chance to explore campus or Tygerberg too in-depth on foot until today.

One thing that has blown me away about this University is how extremely beautiful and student-friendly it is. Walking around here (even though it's final exams time) is like walking into one of those glossy college brochures of natural light and happy students in study lounges. The campus is ginormous full of so many great place to sit and study, outlets everywhere, so many students congregating and sharing.

The library, which is hands down the coolest building I have ever seen (and I have seen a LOT of buildings) is a giant corkscrew. It has no stairs or elevators, just a ramp that walk up and down the 14 levels, each level dedicated to a separate subject and full of huge windows. I wish I could capture it all in a simple picture. I just walk around this campus and want to study.

I thought that my fascination with this campus came from the fact that UIC is a giant concrete jungle. I mean seriously, our library and most of our lecture halls have no windows. But as we walked around the last couple of days, Raji, a Johns Hopkins Nursing student said "Screw Hopkins! This place is amazing, can I just stay and finish my degree here?" That's quite the statement for someone that goes to the best university in the US and arguably the world, with quite a gorgeous campus.

This is really a great place to be, I look forward to starting work on Monday. My research is actually focused on this school's nursing program, so it's going to be pretty interesting how my views and insights into this campus will move on forth. The history of this school (and the university system in pre and post-apartheid South Africa is quite incredible, and I'll certainly grace you with that on a coming post, keep reading)

For now, let's see some fun pictures of campus. (We walked around on Saturday when not too many people were on campus, we didn't want to be those dorks taking pictures of busy students).

Welcome!

Why not?

The awesome corkscrew library

It's the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Laureate, he is a major human rights activist who rose to fame for his opposition of apartheid in the 80s. 

This was the view from the roof of the parking lot in the mall.

That's me. And my handy dandy access card.

The School of Public Health. I am seriously considering returning for my masters here.

I have designated this as my bench. I shall MCAT study here.

There are a lot of murals indoors and outdoors. This is in the Community Health Sciences building.

This is a traditional African university. The other three universities in Cape Town are traditionally White, Colored, and Indian, the difference in diversity today is humongous, it's attempt to desegregate them is quite interesting, it's effect is actually  part of my research.

The student center

Lots of cool fountains

So much natural light

100% Student-owned coffee shop. One of many many on campus. There is a very very large Indian and Malaysian population in Cape Town. (Cape Townians were really bad slaves, and the British and Dutch brought slaves from there for years) This makes for Samoosas to be sold everywhere (don't know why there is an extra o here, we find it hilarious and delicious).

Both of these departments I find fascinating. Their School of Natural Medicine is really incredible. If they had a masters program, I would looove to complete it. (They have doctorates and Bsc/MS combined degrees in several areas of complimentary medicine)

Rastafari Black Studies

Interesting.... I never thought of God having any color, and the fact that people were so fascinated with a White Jesus in Ghana just makes this even more interesting.

School of Government. Which is actually separate from the School of Law.

A very far off view of Table Mountain. I shall climb that before I leave, the view from the top is suppose to be breathtaking.

Raji, very excited about the nursing school and never wanting to leave.

That is actually not Table Mountain in the background, but just a beautiful landscape. The barbed wired area is a nature reserve in Campus.

This actually sits on top of my door. I find it incredible, a reminder of how young this country is, and how amazing it is all they have accomplished. Tomorrow we will actually go into town and make a trip to Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. Stay tuned, expect a very intense blog post next.