52. Finals and Papers. And Farewell to Stellenbosch!

Hey Everyone!

So, the Monday after Mzoli's, 3 June, we watched District 9 and then commenced the most insane rush of papers and presentations and exams conceivable. (Not really, but compared to how pampered we've been all quarter...it seemed pretty horrendous.)

District 9 Trailer for your viewing enjoyment: (It's a blatant parallel for apartheid. Really interesting othering going on.)

Just in case you were doubting that I did work here:

I had a final development/volunteering reflection due that was 4 pages single spaced.

I had a final public health refection due that was also 4 pages single spaced.

Then I handed in a group project with my three fellow Prochorus volunteers that was 33 pages.

Then I gave a 40 minute presentation on said 33-page paper.

Then I handed in a film review for my culture and language and identity class that was 7 pages.

Then I handed in a final research paper for my public health class on breast cancer that was 19 pages.

Then I handed in a final research paper for my politics class on rhino conservation that was 11 pages.

Then I took a 3 hour all essay-format politics final on Monday.

Then I gave a presentation on language politics in South Africa vs America. 11 official vs 0 official languages. It was actually really interesting material.

Then I wrote a take-home written final for development that was 7 pages of essays.

Then I took a 3 hour public health final that was 5 lengthy essays.

THEN I WAS DONE WITH JUNIOR YEAR!!!!! So yeah, that's why I haven't been updating my blog. But honestly, I only had one adventure in that whole time and it was a trip to a wine farm restaurant called Solms Delta. It grows all its own vegetables, fruits, and spices.

And it was pretty.

Now it's Thursday night. I spent the day after my exam wandering around Stellenbosch with a friend and having a great time. It's good to be done with junior year! Also weird. 

Tomorrow morning my internet is being shut off at 8am...so in about 7.5 hours. And then I'll be heading into Cape Town for Friday afternoon-Saturday to enjoy the city one last time with some friends. Keeping my fingers crossed for good weather!

And then on Sunday, I head off to Kruger again for my two week research project. I am so excited!! It's going to be incredible. Not sure what the internet status will be, but hopefully I'll be able to check in periodically. If not, I'll upload my last blogs when I get back to America on 2 July (or when I recover from jetlag). 

Stellenbosch, it's been real! And it's been fun! I can hardly believe that I am leaving it. It's become a home away from home to me. I wonder if I'll ever be back. Usually, I have a feeling when I leave a place one way or another, like yes, I'll be back here or no, I won't. With Stellenbosch, I honestly can't quite tell. Hopefully someday, the wind will bring me back to Stellenbosch. But I know that even if it does not, it will always be on my mind and in my heart. I know that I will always have the memories. And there are lots of them! And I look forward to reminiscing on my time here in person with you all when I return. Stellenbosch is a place that has taught me more than I can ever express. From the tree and café and restaurant lined streets, to the gorgeous mountain backdrop, to the grape vine covered hills of the wine farm estates, to the stately Dutch colonial architecture of the University buildings, to the kids crammed into the creches in Kayamandi to the inspiring priest at St Nicholas Kerk to the deliciousness of melktarte and boboetie to the friends I've made and the countless priceless conversations I've had with them to the random rainforest I discovered in a huge and mysteriously secret botanical garden I wandered into this afternoon - I've loved it here. I've been so blessed. I don't think I want to leave it. But I also know that life must go on. And that other things await me. My adventure in Kruger. And my adventure of returning home. My adventure of learning how to apply what I have learned, seen, heard, felt, smelled, tasted here to my life back home in America. 

51. Mzoli's Meat

Sunday 2 June

After a very rainy walk to church in the morning, and a few hours' attempt to work on my homework, I went with 9 of my friends for lunch to a restaurant called Mzoli's Meat. Mzoli's is a "restaurant" located in a Cape Flats township called Guguletu. The reason I put the word restaurant in quotes is because...well. Mzoli's is like no place I've ever been, like no other restaurant in the world.

Here's how Mzoli's works. You walk into a butcher shop type place. Keep in mind, this is in a township, so it's just one tiny building front of many corrugated tin buildings. And you point to cuts of meat that you want. There was a hefty portion of a pig...still identifiable as a pig...being artfully hacked into nice cuts of pork. There were a ton of chicken bones, thighs,  wings, etc. There were T-bone steaks and other kinds of meat. You just point and ask for how many of each cut. Neha and I ordered together, and we ordered so much meat. We got 4 chicken drumsticks and a giant T-bone steak and a couple smaller steaks...for about $8. Eight. Yeah. Just eight. Then we asked for bbq sauce, paid for our meat and ordered a piece of traditional bread to go with it. Then we took our platter of raw meat down a path behind the butcher shop to a shack with a ton of grills. We handed our platter to a man who then threw the meat on a grill. Then we went back out front and down the street a few doors to a giant red tent where there was basically a giant party going on. We sat down at a giant table and munched on our bread and samp and beans that we'd ordered and waited for our meat with our friends. There was a DJ, there were some other American students, including a guy that had transferred from Northwestern to USC. What???? 1) he's crazy. 2) small world! There were tables everywhere and rain coming in here and there. There were groups from Guguletu. The guy who picked me up at the airport the day I landed in Cape Town, on April 3...the first person I met in South Africa, Angus was there. There were like twenty kids from Guguletu under the age of 10 celebrating some little kid's birthday party. It was a crazy melting pot of people all coming together for a unique (or weekly if you live in Guguletu) cultural/life/culinary experience. After about thirty minutes, Neha and I went back and got our meat and then brought it to the tent and ate it. It was incredible!

We intended to leave after about two hours, but the place was so fun, and we were having such a great time that we decided to stay there for a while, we kept on munching on our food and then going and dancing and wandering around the vendors along the street. We ended up staying til 5pm. It was crazy. Like nothing I've never experienced (I feel like I say that a lot..but I guess that's the point of study abroad). I didn't bring my camera because I didn't think that was a good idea to bring my camera to a township...so unfortunately I have no pics, but I'm not even sure they could've captured the experience.

50. Dillo Day, South Africa-Style!

It's June! And it's Dillo Day!

Saturday 1 June was Dillo Day at Northwestern. Which means it was Dillo Day for Wildcats all over the world. Which means that a micro-population of Stellenbosch, South Africa had to celebrate one of the biggest holidays of the year. Which resulted in Dillo Day South Africa-Style.

In solidarity with the concert-got-rained out Dillo Day in Evanston, Stellenbosch and Cape Town had one of the biggest and coldest rain storms in their history. That totally rained out our plans to visit Cape Town for the day, so we all decided to sit in our rooms and do homework for the morning since we had a million papers due the next week. Then we decided to watch movies, play games and hang out all afternoon. It was loads of fun and soothed the pain of missing out on Dillo Day. We listened to lots of music. Told stories of Dillo Days gone by. And made a jello casserole with gelatin and orange juice because South Africa hasn't heard of flavored JELL-O yet. The horror!

Neha and I decided to order Thai food for lunch since it is one of two places in Stellie that deliver: Pizza Thyme and Thai Kitchen. I was very excited for some nice yummy thai food. And it was raining too hard to go anywhere, so we called and ordered it. And waited and waited for a phone call. Finally, at about 1:30, an hour after it was supposed to be delivered, we called them and were like where's our food, and they said that the guy had left with it a few minutes ago, so it should be here ASAP. And so we walked out to the residential area gate and waited and waited and waited in the rain for about twenty-five minutes. And then, thoroughly soaked and cold and defeated, we decided to walk back to our dorm since we knew Murphy's law would kick into effect and the guy would call the second we got back inside my room. Well, we got back, dried off, thawed out, warmed up, called the place back a few times to no answer. And then...the food was never delivered. It is to this day, the mystery Thai food. Where did our food go? Was it ever made? Was it ever delivered? Who ate it? Such sadness. I was so looking forward to it. Thai Sookdee, you've never failed me so. And I will look forward to reuniting with you and your yummy pad see ew in September.

We kind of made up for the thai food fiasco by convicing everyone to go eat sushi with us for dinner. We went to Stellenbosch's one sushi place, well, we basically swam there in the rain. And then we were seated inside a tiny red wood and glass hut outside in the courtyard in the front of the restaurant. I felt as if we were in a glass-windowed bird cage. It was very odd. There was only one of them, but it had a table for ten and there were 8 of us, so it was perfect. The sushi was delicious - I only eat vegetarian sushi and their avo and cucumber rolls were so scrumptious. Hadn't had sushi in Africa yet, so it was a lovely treat, perfect for Dillo Day.

49. A Trip to Parliament

31 May Friday was my little sister's 12th birthday!!!! OMG When did that happen? The day she was born, that crazy day when my parents, brother and I got on an airplane to fly to California since she decided to come a few weeks early. Classic Lucie. 

This day was also our field trip day for our Politics and Economics perspectives class, so we went to a couple women's rights and gender equality NGOs in the morning (the prof for this class is the one who is also on the Commission for Gender Equality for South Africa). We went to the Women's Legal Center which is an NGO that provides free service to women for gender rights abuse cases that they think might set new precedents. It was cool. Women's Legal Center 

Then we went to an NGO that fights for women's rights and fights against gender-based violence by targeting men and boys. What a brilliant strategy! Sonke Gender Justice 

Then, we went to Parliament and had a tour of that. We got showed around all the different buildings of the complex. We got to go into all the chambers and we caught the tail end of a session on housing legislation. It was actually really cool to see the RSA's parliament in operation. And then we went to the old legislation chamber where all the apartheid laws were signed into being. It was horrifying being in there and seeing the chairs where the legislators of one of the greatest long-term human rights abuses in history sat and signed these laws into being. 

After our tour ended, we went out to lunch at a sandwich shop in Cape Town because why not. Also, I suffered some minor PTSD when we walked past the Eastern Food Bazaar, the fateful place where the man snatched my purse. And of course, we walked past it...not once, but twice! Just for me.

48. Sala Kakuhle, Kayamandi

30 May Thursday was my last day volunteering at a creche in Kayamandi. We arrived there very early in the morning and the four of us were split up to go to three different creches on 7th Avenue in Kayamandi which was a pretty long walk away from the Prochorus center. I volunteered to go to a creche by myself, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into for the day.

It was quite a shocking experience for me. I do not know if this crèche mother regularly attends Denise’s training sessions, but if she does, there was no manifestation of it in her crèche today. I try to remind myself that I see only a few hours, one day of activity in the crèches and that perhaps the crèche mothers do not operate normally because I am there. But this time, it was as if the crèche was a child warehouse. Denise spoke about these types of crèches and the width of the spectrum among her own crèches in Kayamandi in this regard. 

When I arrived, there were about twenty-five children just standing in a very small dark shack and an older woman watching television sitting in the corner feeding a baby on her lap while a few other infants slept in the corner. She was wearing her nightgown and robe and the room was in chaos. A few more children trickled in over the course of the morning, until there were about thirty-three children in the room. Eventually, the crèche mother got dressed and continued feeding the babies and changing their diapers. Her only interactions with the older children were translating to me that some of them needed to go outside to pee in the bucket and handing them their snacks from their backpacks. There was no lesson. There was no singing or alphabet or counting or anything like that. I did my best to engage them and count with them and do the alphabet and identify colors and sing and play games. But they spoke no English – not a work – so it was extremely challenging for me. I struggled with frustration from time to time, and noticed that I kept checking my watch far more frequently than is usual. So I told myself that this was not fair to the children I was working with. 

             So as I sat there, opening little yogurt cups and chip bags for the kids, as they grabbed my hair with their hands that had not been washed (this was the first crèche I was at that did no hand-washing before or after potty breaks and eating times), I thought back to the calm beautiful relaxing Garden Route excursion. Woahhhh I missed that. 

And then of course I thought about worldviews. I thought about how my worldview, which I have been analyzing a lot lately, influenced by my background and education, could help me out in this situation. I know I've talked about this before, but I am going to say it again, because it's helpful for me to write about it. I am a firm believer in the value of the idea of Christian solidarity, something that is pertinent to my own worldview. I have recognized the usefulness of this ideal a few times before and so this day, I thought about it in terms of worldview and also development. The way I see solidarity is as truly being with the people you are with at the moment; it is about living in the moment but with care for the future. I felt so helpless and so hopeless in the crèche this morning. So I challenged myself to see the world from the eyes of these kids for a second. They are not the least it horrified by the conditions they are in. The fact that their teacher was running around in her nightgown and robe all morning is not strange to them. The smell in the room, the condition of their clothes, the quality of their food does not make them feel sorry for themselves or feel poor. They are at crèche. They are there to be safe, to learn, to have fun, to stay out of the streets, because their parents made them – whatever their reasons they were there and so was I. 

I felt somewhat disparaging of the fact that I would only be in these kids lives for a few hours. What difference could I make? Was this sustainable? Could I really contribute? If done well, yes, yes I could. I could live in the moment with these kids. I could teach them the “If you’re happy and you know it…” song that I have loved since I was their age. They might forget it tomorrow. Or they might remember it forever as the song the crazy white girl from America taught them. Or they just remember it and not know how or why they had learned it. But at least for the time I was with them, those kids would know they were special and loved and would learn a song about feeling happy. After a lot of hand gestures and exaggerated facial expressions on my part, we taught each other the English and isiXhosa words for happy, sad, cry, smile, clap, etc. We stood in a circle holding hands, which took about fifteen minutes of motioning and negotiations, and I made each child perform, dance, or tell us something (I had no idea what they were saying but the other kids did) – for the rest of us. I had been inspired by the teachers from playgroup; individual attention is so valuable in early childhood development.

At the end of the day, when it was time for me to leave, I couldn't wait to get out of there fast enough, but I also felt like I couldn't leave. I didn't want to leave this children, not ever. I wanted to run home and shower. I was so conflicted. But obviously, I had to go and when I walked back to Prochorus and got my backpack and left, I felt a sad and sick feeling to be leaving Kayamandi to never work there again. This community, Prochorus, working in a township, playing with the smallest and most vulnerable members of this community every week for a day, that was a life changing experience for me. It's something I'll never get to experience again. I'm so grateful I had the experience, but at the time I just had so many conflicting emotions whizzing through my brain.

When I got back to my dorm, I wrote my reflection journal for Development class on the day, and poured my heart into it. And then I wrote another paper for my Public Health class on my personal worldview. It was a really interesting assignment, and I actually had a lot to say. Then, as I stood in the shower washing my hair, I closed my eyes and all I could see was the images of the children from the morning. Rushing at me, all trying to touch me, all trying to get close to me, all trying to touch my hair and my skin and my face, all trying to give me the local "thumbs up" sign (I still need to figure out what that means), all saying words in isiXhosa, all asking for love and attention with their eyes. It was like an awake nightmare and escalated into a borderline panic attack. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't open my eyes. I couldn't close them. I almost broke down into tears, but I held them back. Why? I have no idea. I think I do not want to admit the horror of what I saw. I don't want to admit that that's ok and that it happens and that life goes on for people in this way. That this is a reality of life and that people are not horrified by this. 

47. Can't be a tourist forever

Wednesday 29 May, I felt a tiny bit sad to be back in Stellenbosch. The Garden Route trip was so fun, and I hadn't really anticipated it that much because I'd been so busy leading up to it that it was kind of a surprise for me. I hadn't mentally prepared myself for five of the most beautiful, exciting, wonderful and carefree days of my life. But you can't go on being a tourist forever. And I wouldn't really want to, but that doesn't make the first day back in reality any easier. Everyone was kind of bummed and sad I think, just realizing that we only had two and half weeks left in the program and most of that time was designated for writing papers, giving presentations and taking finals. Ewww.

But they let us ease back into class with a movie on Wednesday morning. We watched The Bang Bang Club about a group of photographers who worked for The Star, a paper in Johannesburg, during the final years of apartheid and the transition years. There was so much violence and bloodshed in the townships between the government-sponsored, Zulu Nationalism Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC "Mandela boys." Anyway, it was a really interesting movie. Here's the trailer if you're interested. I would definitely recommend the movie, but I have to warn you it's intense and there's lots of not so pretty things, but then again, reality, especially in apartheid-era South Africa was not something pretty.

Then in the afternoon, an Art History professor from UCT (University of Cape Town) came to lecture us about landscape art and South African history. It was kind of interesting, but his target audience was definitely a classroom full of grad students studying the art history of politics, not twenty undergrad American study abroad students who got back last night from a five day road trip on South Africa's garden route. I alternated between being fascinated and falling asleep. But c'est la vie.

46. Body, Soul and Spirit: Sangomas, Plants and Worldviews

Monday was Memorial Day! But we didn’t observe it. We did school instead. We started out our day at a hospice for palliative and chronic care in Knysna. It provides free of charge services to the lower income areas of the community and focuses on traditional medicines and herbal remedies that people like to use since it is a huge part of African medicine. We met a guy named Frank Muller who spent the next two days with us. He is a doctor but he researches African traditional remedies and actually puts a lot of faith in healing via chemical substances in plants since it is technically more natural to receive vitamins through dietary (fibrous) paths than through multivitamins and supplements so it’s better for your body to do it the way evolution relied on than via synthesized substances. Interesting points. 

            We got to watch some ladies making a substance out of different leaves and Vaseline. It is used as an all-purpose skin treatment in a gel form and a deeper muscle/arthritic treatment in an oil form that seeps deeper into the body tissues. These two older community members shared with us their history and affiliation with the project. They have been volunteering for many years, sharing their remedies and treatments with the community for minimal costs (only R5 for a bottle) to buy the supplies and sustain the project.

After our visit, we got take away pizza and drove up to the mountaintop where we enjoyed the incredible views and the yummy pizza.

They call it the "Map of Africa" - do you see it?

I felt like this view was too beautiful for pizza.

Then we drove to George Botanical Garden where we waited for our profs who had gone to pick up a guest lecturer for us. We played volleyball with an old random soccer ball while we waited. It was fun!!

Playing volleyball/soccer

The Medicine Mound at George Botanical Garden

Then a guy named Richard came to lecture us on traditional African medicine. He has a bachelors in chemistry, an MD, and he is a natural sangoma, called to heal body, soul and spirit in the art/science of traditional African medicine. It was a very weird experience. I don’t really know how to explain it. He had a lot of interesting and radical views. But he comes from a completely different worldview than I do. He taught us what different plants do and showed them to us in the healing mound of the botanical garden and then when we got to the top of this mound, we had a lecture and Q&A session. He was a freedom fighter and was actually sentenced to life imprisonment during apartheid but then he escaped to Mozambique. He’s been a healer from a young age, but he also went to medical school in Russia because he was curious but as a black man he could not attend medical school in South Africa during apartheid. Now he practices free of charge in a very low income area of George. He practices sangoma healing though, not western medicine.

After the botanical garden experience, we drove way out into the middle of nowhere to a place called Laila’s arms. It was a farmhouse converted into a quasi restaurant. But we were the only people there besides the owner/cook and a few of her staff members. We had a debriefing session with Dr Snyman and Dr Muller about what we had just witnessed. And then we took a break to eat some delicious home cooked food and then went back to our debriefing session. I think I’ll have to write about this later because I’m still terribly confused and don’t know what to make of it. Probably because I come from such a strongly Christian & Western/material worldviews background, this was an extremely intellectually challenging exposure for me. I just struggled to understand, to conceptualize this belief system. But I acknowledged that and as always, when I have a gut reaction to something, I get unsettled and don’t like to accept it. I like to analyze gut reactions and challenge them. See where they come from and why. So I asked Dr Frank Muller a million questions and that helped me a lot. But I’m still mulling it over in my head. 

Then finally it was time to leave and we drove back to Knysna where we were spending the night at a backpackers called Afrovibe on Myoli beach, a lovely, quiet beach with warm beautiful water. It was pitch black when we got there, but almost all of us went out to the beach as soon as we put our bags into our dorm rooms because how could we not?! It was so beautiful. I even lay down in the sand at one point at the end of a row of people and then Dillon jumped over us. We went from three up to six people (and somehow I always managed to be on the far end…scary!) 

I was walking back to our hostel when Mariah and I saw a sky lantern floating towards the beach from the town, and we raced, following it. It landed on the beach and we ran over to it just before the flame died out. It was beautiful and I decided that sky lantern is something I will have to add to my bucket list. Good night, Beautiful World!

Good Morning, Beautiful World!

Early morning by the Indian Ocean.

Monday morning, after visiting the beach and saying farewell to the Indian Ocean, we visited Nelson Mandela Municipal University outside George, a nature campus with lots and lots of fields and natural spaces and things like that…where students can study environmental science, animal sciences, conservation, etc. It was a lovely surprise for me, and a beautiful campus. I think I might transfer…. A man named Quinton Johnson spoke to us about his work with plant remedies. He is isolating the active ingredients in traditional African medicines and studying the orgo of those compounds. Ick. Haha Just kidding, it was really interesting and he was a very very charismatic speaker. He’s won prizes all over the world for his science and wrote a book of which he gave all of us free copies for coming all the way from Chicago to visit him and listen to him. Then we went outside and had a discussion on Worldviews – we broke it down into the five predominant worldviews in South Africa: Christian, African traditional, Secular, Muslim, and Hindu in order of decreasing population percentage. Frank asked for one of us to represent each worldview, and surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) we were able to represent all five to some extent. Maybe Northwestern is more diverse than everyone thinks… We had a student who is first generation Nigerian, I represented the Christian, we had a girl who practices devout Islam, a guy who is agnostic and someone whose family follows pretty strict Hinduism. Go us for being so diverse! Frank asked each of us questions and asked us to explain them from our represented worldview. It was really cool, and also really interesting for me to see how similar several of the religious worldviews are. Makes me wonder how people get into wars over the little technical stuff when a lot of the big picture things are so similar. Ugh people!

            After our lecture and discussion ended, we departed for Stellenbosch. It was about a five hour drive back, but we put on some tunes and had a sing-along party in the car taking turns DJing with our iPods (for those of us whose iPods had not been not stolen).