Traveling Around Cape Town

One of my biggest worries before coming to Cape Town was, “How am I going to get around the city?” Prior to leaving for South Africa, so many people had warned me about the dangers in using public transportation and the fact that I would most definitely need a car. I am happy to report though that this has not been the case thus far. The cab drivers I’ve used (with one exception) have all been very nice and reasonable. I do find it a bit odd at times that they don’t know the city well, so it’s always best to know exactly where you are going. For example, last night my roommate and I went to an informational meeting about our upcoming trip to Mozambique in September. The meeting was literally 7 minutes walking distance from our house, but because it was after dark we had to take a cab. Before getting in the cab I looked up the address and location of the meeting and had a general sense of where we were going. Of course, the taxi cab driver got lost and I had to tell him that the building was most definitely on a different road than where he was taking us. Most of the time the taxi drivers in Cape Town are foreign, so they don’t know the area very well, but then of course you have others who know you are foreign and probably don’t know your way, so they’ll take you the “long way” to raise the price.

My one exception for taxis happened this past Saturday. My roommates and I were downtown for dinner at an African restaurant. As we were leaving downtown my roommate negotiated a price for a cab to take us back to our house in the suburbs (a little over $10). We all got in and were on our way and then suddenly the cab driver took a different route; one that none of us recognized. I told him that we needed to get back on Main Road, but for some reason he tried to convince us that there are two Main Roads—not true. We would tell him to turn right and he would turn left. I’m not sure if this cab driver was trying to raise the price or if he really just did not know what he was doing. In any case I learned a good lesson: before you get in a cab, tell the driver where you are going and ask if he/she knows where the place is; have them describe to you where the place is; and ask how they’re getting there.

The other popular mode of city transportation is the mini bus, or black taxi. The mini buses are actually really old 14 passenger vans that are literally falling apart. They run the main streets from Wynberg to downtown Cape Town. If you’re walking along Main Road you will most definitely hear them coming— the person driving the mini bus is always honking the horn and the other person is hanging out the window whistling and shouting for passengers. It’s not uncommon for one of these vans to squeeze 20 people in at a time. My roommate and I took one of these from the Main Road outside of our house to downtown Cape Town this past Sunday. It cost us 7 Rand each (a little less than $1) on a trip that would normally cost 100 Rand in a taxicab. Things to look for when riding a mini bus: 1. Make sure there are people in it 2. Make sure there are women and/or children in it 3. Trust your instincts to let you know if something is sketchy. Our experience was great, but it’s definitely only something I would do during the day time.

Lastly, the other mode of transportation I use is the Jammie shuttle (see picture). These are the University buses that have several stops throughout the city that take people to UCT campus. They are bright blue and are fairly similar to ones you would find in America. Every morning I wait for the shuttle at a stop that’s about a 4-5 minute walk from my house. It takes me about 5 minutes from there to get to campus. This is such a big difference from commuting in Charleston where it would take me 25-30 minutes to drive downtown to school, at least 10 minutes to find a parking space, and 10 minutes to walk to class. The Jammie shuttle is definitely my friend :).

South Africa’s National Women’s Day

Yesterday, August 9th, was South Africa’s National Women’s Day. National Women's Day is an annual holiday that commemorates the national march of women on this day in 1956 to petition against legislation that required African persons to carry the "pass”, special identification documents which limited an African's freedom of movement during the apartheid era. So in order to join in the celebration, my roommate Gabi and I went out for a full day to explore the downtown area of Cape Town.

Our day started at 6am as we had to be at a downtown theatre by 8am, in line to get tickets for a play entitled Waiting for Godot. The play starred Ian McKellan who played Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Since both us are big fans of his, this play was certainly high on our priority list. We arrived at the theatre 10 minutes early, but the taxi driver obviously had other things to do and let us out in the rain to wait. To pass the time before the theatre opened, we decided to find a place for coffee. Obviously we passed a little too much time because when we got back to the theatre it was 9am, but luckily we got the last two tickets (by a matter of 2 seconds). We found out that the play started at 7:30pm which of course meant we had the whole day downtown.

Gabi and I walked to the Alfred and Victoria waterfront area which is located in a very tourist friendly area of Cape Town. Some of the local attractions included: a Ferris wheel (titled “The Wheel of Excellence”), lots of shopping (the mall was comparable to, if not better than, South Park Mall in Charlotte, NC), movie cinema, live entertainment, restaurants, breweries, World Cup stadium, and much more. We ended up spending the day here—eating, shopping, drinking coffee, watching men parade around in dresses (in honor of Women’s Day), seeing Shrek 4 in 3-D, enjoying the many rainbows in the Cape Town sky (weather changes rapidly and there were many short rainstorms—thus lots of rainbows), and listening to live entertainment.
We made it back to the Fugard Theatre by 6:30pm where we thoroughly enjoyed the play Waiting for Godot. During the play I got a thought in my head that I couldn’t shake out—I had to meet Ian McKellan, somehow, someway. During intermission I told Gabi that we HAVE to meet him no matter what after the play. After seeing how determined I was, Gabi agreed and we waited 45 minutes after the play in the lobby. I had to see “Gandalf” and indeed I did (see picture). After the show we returned home at 11:30pm. Gabi and I had the best Women’s Day ever!

SHAWCO-- volunteering

I recently signed up for a student volunteer group at UCT called SHAWCO (Student Health and Welfare Centres Organisation) because the humanitarian side of the Rotary scholarship is just as important if not more than the academic side for me. People that volunteer with SHAWCO use their talents to go into impoverished areas to teach or tutor. I decided to teach art (which includes painting, drawing, music, dance, drama, and literature) because it’s one of my passions, but mostly because I remember the way art made me feel growing up. Art was always my favorite subject because you could express yourself using a variety of methods.

Today was my first day of teaching—if you could call it that. I feel like today was more about classroom management (i.e. trying to control the kids) and learning names. The class is full with a total of 30, 3rd- 5th grade students from Manenburg. Manenburg is a small town where people of color were forced to move to during Apartheid (i.e. “Kicked out of Cape Town”). Next time I go and teach I will most definitely take pictures because my words will not accurately describe what I saw. As our bus pulled into the town I saw rows upon rows of shacks (no bigger than a room you could put a twin size mattress in), children running barefoot in the filthy streets, farm animals on the street, dirt roads, and barbed wire everywhere. Children would literally cling to our van as we pulled into the school. The school was a one story building made of cinderblocks and the classroom doors faced the outside (like a motel). There were large classrooms, chalkboards, and desks, but the thing that struck me as odd is that I didn’t see any evidence of kids owning any part of the school. By that I mean I didn’t see any artwork, stories, books, any supplies of any kind—it was just an empty building. This school is a far cry from where I just did my student teaching—Ashley River Creative Arts in Charleston, SC—where every space was covered with a child’s work and the environment was friendly.

Overall though the kids were friendly and wanted to know my name, play with my hair and show me different dances and sing me their songs. I thought my day was going to be easy and that we would accomplish a lot, but sadly I was mistaken. After I started the lesson a grown male and older female walked into the room (the school officials). They had a presence about them that even I found terrifying. I continued the lesson and then some of the kids started to cut up. The older female took out her cane and hit several of the children very forcefully. The male started to scream and say what I presume to be nasty things to them in a different language. From that moment things just began to get more chaotic. My role quickly went from teacher to crowd controller. How can one expect students to learn and behave when the emotion of fear is present?

At the end of the day as I was leaving, many of the children gave me hugs and I assured them that I would be back next week. I started to wonder how many people they see come and make promises only to never return…

I will go back and I will try again.

For more information about SHAWCO, please visit www.shawco.org