Well it’s Wednesday and I haven’t checked in since Sunday,
but the past couple days have been pretty chill. Just being a student for the most part, going to class and cooking to feed myself.
Monday I had two lectures
which added up to five hours of very interesting material. Amanda Gouws is my
Politics prof and she is also the Gender Commissioner of South Africa, also the
country with the biggest rape problem in the world, so she is a really cool
lady and has lot of interesting perspectives. On Monday, we talked about the
politics of race, which was really interesting in this self-proclaimed “rainbow
nation” or “multiracial nation.” Also, it was a great complement to my
conversation with Emma on Friday. We also talked a bit about affirmative action
and how that is perceived and constitutionally legislated in this country
versus in the US. Here it is legal to discriminate if you can prove it is being
done in a positive way. I feel
like that leaves a lot of gray area for interpretation. Hmmm. I don’t really
know.
My Development class also had a lecture on Monday afternoon,
and we talked a lot about theories of development and had to brainstorm project
ideas for our 12-page single spaced research papers based on our NGO
service-learning. I am not sure what I’m going to be doing yet, because it has to
be something for which a report will actually be of use to the NGO, so I have
to talk to my site supervisor tomorrow about what she wants of me. One thing
I’m thinking about is maybe a follow-up/progress checking research to see if I
can interview people living in the communities who attended some of Prochorus’
programs as kids. Since it’s been in the community for 17 years now, some of
the original very young ones are now adults. Might be interesting…we’ll see
though.
Monday night was a lot of fun. After class, I went to the grocery store and was super
efficient and felt like a pro. I think I’m conquering the South African grocery
store system. My friend Neha and I had decided to make sweet potatoes and black
beans and chicken for dinner. Chicken breasts aren’t really a thing here, so I
bought a rotisserie chicken, which turned out to be delicious and was pretty
inexpensive. Mexican food is not really a thing here…so the whole black bean
idea was shelved (Mom, first meal at home suggestion pretty please, cough cough
wink wink?). But I did find sweet potatoes and had home frozen green beans in
my freezer from last week so decided we’d cook those instead.
When Neha and I started cooking a few challenges presented
themselves to us. We were both bummed about the whole black bean situation, but
whatever green beans are healthier I suppose. But then I started peeling (with
a steak knife, the only knife I have…) and the sweet potatoes were not orange,
but white. I was quite concerned, but then after being very distraught and
wondering how they would taste sautéed in a pan, I found my receipt and it read
“white sweet potatoes.” Didn’t know that was even a thing. Oh well. They turned
out quite nice, tasted kind of like regular potatoes. The green beans were fine
after all, we even added a clove of garlic to enhance the flavor since neither
of us had salt. And the chicken was great. We plated our meals, poured
ourselves each a glass of Stellenbosch sauvignon blanc that Neha had bought at
the store, decided we wanted to watch an episode of Shameless, a TV show based
in Chicago (which we might miss just a tiny bit). But the internet wasn’t
working so we had to move the table so we could plug in my computer to the
Ethernet on my desk. And then I sat back, stared at our home-cooked feast (the
first time we’d ventured beyond pasta, pizza, hummus & pita, or grilled
cheese in our little kitchenettes) and then to my horror realized that the
coffee table was not level. I looked down and said, “Neha something’s wrong
with the table” just as it collapsed, sending our food, wine bottle, glasses,
and plates sliding to the floor. Magically, our food was still mostly on the
plates. Glasses broke, wine spilled everywhere, silverware and somehow the
green beans were everywhere. The two of us sat there in shock and then just
lost it and started laughing.
 |
| Gourmet Dinner |
Just then someone knocked on the door, but it was
ok because it was just my friend Emily who came in and started laughing at us
too. Between fits of hysterical laughter mixed with sadness, we used bath
towels, a broom and paper towels to clean up the disaster. By the time we
finished, our food was cold, saturated in our splurged R19 (that’s about a
$2.11) bottle of local wine, and our sides ached from laughing so hard. But we
pulled ourselves together and enjoyed that meal while watching our TV episode
with Emily. The three of us may or may not have spontaneously burst out
laughing every few minutes.
 |
Dad, you don't have to worry, I don't have to pay for a broken coffee table replacement in a dorm in South Africa. The next morning I went to tell the dorm manager and I said, "I was eating dinner on my coffee table last night and it..." and she finished the sentence for me "collapsed?" Apparently it happens from time to time...
Monday night was a lot of fun. Until we heard about the
events in Boston. After dinner and our TV show that stopped every 3 minutes
because the internet would die out, we decided to just hang out and talk for a
while. It turned into 4-hour conversation until midnight. During that
conversation, Matt texted me (on my iPod texting app) about the tragedy in
Boston. We were shocked and horrified and for some reason it made us all feel a
bit homesick. I love seeing our country rally together, but it’s always so sad
that it usually seems to be provoked by such tragic events. It’s also weird
that my facebook newsfeed and news site homepages were flooded with information
and words about it, but that here, nobody really seemed to talk about it. It
wasn’t all over the news and I didn’t hear a single non-American even mention
it. I felt proud to be American though. When tragedy strikes, nobody knows how
to better rally together and be brave than Americans.
Tuesday morning we had the head doctor of HIV/AIDS and TB in
the Western Cape lecture us for three hours. It was really fascinating, except
he didn’t get to talk about TB very much because he took too long talking about
AIDS. I actually don’t know why most deaths in this country occur because of TB
and I don’t have a lot of background on tuberculosis other than the section
from my Microbio textbook last summer, and I would have liked to learn that…but
I’m on a Public Health study abroad program in SA…I will have plenty more
opportunities.
Our lecturer’s perspective on HIV/AIDS was really
interesting because he went to medical school before HIV was identified as the
cause of AIDS anywhere in the world. But even up until ten years ago, South
Africa’s president was denying the causative link between HIV and AIDS, and
ARVs were not permitted in this country. My favorite part about this guy was
that although he might be kind of a big deal, he is really down to earth and
still is a compassionate doctor. When he had nothing to offer HIV patients but
palliative care, he opened up a clinic, the first AIDS clinic in all of South
Africa for patients who were at the end of their lives. His was the first
clinic to test ARVs in South Africa, because thanks to Mbeki, people didn’t
believe in ARV treatment and were too afraid of the negative side effects to go
on treatment. Now, every single clinic in South Africa is equipped with HIV
testing ability, counseling, and treatment. 70% of the patients that come to
public health care centers are HIV-positive and have TB.
Yesterday again Neha and I had some cooking adventures.
Fortunately no tables or glasses were broken, but you never quite know what
you’re going to get. I had purchased avos (avocados) last Monday at the grocery
store and had been waiting a week for them to stop looking lime green and
feeling rock hard. I’m not sure if they froze in the fridge (like the eggs did
last week… oops) or if they just never ripened or if this is what South
Africa’s avos are like. They eat a lot of them but never as guacamole (the
sadness!). Everything is “w/ avo” but who knows…
We wanted to make chicken quesadillas with our left over rotisserie
chicken, but again, Mexican food not being a thing here, the only tortillas we
could find were sun-dried tomato so we decided it would be more of a
Mediterranean dinner. And the avos wouldn’t mash obviously, so guac was out of
the question, so we decided to get creative, and I threw the cubed avo, tomato,
onion, a little bit of garlic, and some salt & pepper (stolen from a
friend) into a frying pan with a splash of olive oil. We were both extremely
skeptical, but our chicken/mozzarella/mushroom quesadillas topped with our
sautéed guac ingredients actually were delicious. Mmmmmmmm. Who knew cooking
was another one of the many things I’d learn in South Africa?
Today was a torrential downpour. I’m pretty sure the rains
that were coming down and the wind that was blowing (remember, one of the 3
windiest cities in the world) would have been classified as a hurricane in the
US. Also, they don’t have the same kind of drainage systems that we have back
home, so there were lake-sized puddles everywhere. I was walking ankle-deep in
water on the 25-minute walk to and from class. And my umbrella kept inverting
haha!
We had Politics class this morning and talked about the
one-party-dominated system in South Africa. It’s 2/3 the ANC. So they can
pretty much do what they want. Kinda scary, actually.
But in the afternoon, we had our Culture class and it was on
Xhosa culture. Again, we had a little language course and two professors from
the African languages department came in and tried to get us to learn correctly
the three types of clicks. I’m afraid that our profs are going to be trying in
vain to get us to pronounce these clicks all quarter and will never succeed.
But I should not have that attitude, because one of the profs asked us each our
names and then told us what a Xhosa name for us would be. Mine was Tumelo, and
my nickname would be Tumi. It means success!
Oh la la! Or thyini! As the Xhosa would say (although warning: th isn’t what it
looks like. There is some serious teeth and tongue work involved in that word!)
We learned about initiation rites and marriage and
traditional Xhosa ways. It was pretty interesting. The professor who spoke
about that actually grew up in a rural Xhosa homeland, it was the Ciskei
homeland during Apartheid in what is now the Eastern Cape. Although
industrialization and urbanization in the last 19 years have changed a lot of
Xhosa traditions, in the very rural areas there are still no cars, no electricity,
no TV, but magically there are cell phones! Haha – what is it about the cell
phone that penetrates every place in this world, no matter how isolated?
 |
| I found this pic on the web... I didn't have my camera in class. But this is kinda what it looked like. |
Our culture lecture ended with what is possibly most central
to every culture – food. There was bread made from maize, and it was sooo
yummy. There was Xhosa chicken – very tough and fatty. And there was…sheep’s
head. Complete with eyes, tongue, and yes, a smile. They cut the head in half
from the back of the head to the nose and lay it out, smear it in brains, and
roast it. In South Africa, it’s called a “smiley” because the sheep looks like
it’s smiling on both sides when it’s set out on the plate. And yes, I decided
to be adventurous and try it. When else in my life is someone going to offer me
Xhosa-prepared sheep’s head and tongue smeared in brain? (the eye was a bit too
far for me) Again, my chief complaint was that it was fatty. I think I turned
off my taste buds from fear because it just kind of tasted like generic meat
with lots of fat. But hey, you can’t say I didn’t try it.
I think this evening is going to be a reading and writing
and relaxing one since this weather is keeping me inside. It’s probably good
though that we’re all being forced to relax a bit because on Sunday we leave
for our 12-day journey around the northeastern part of the country. More on
that later, but expect no blog post during those days since for at least 8 of
them I will be as far from technology as it gets. As my friend Beth always
says, no news is good news!
No comments:
Post a Comment