Time: ooh…2am. Ouch…class is going to be rough tomorrow…
Days abroad: 57 (how is THAT possible?!)
I feel like it isn’t very conducive for me to start every post with “oh man, I am a terrible blogger and I’ve been neglecting you all…” so I am going to stop apologizing for it and everyone is just going to have to get used to the fact that I am verrrry bad at keeping up with the blogging…time just goes so fast sometimes...if it is any consolation at all, I haven’t written in my handwritten journal since…maybe the first week of February..? (sorry mom!). So, in comparison, I am doing very well blog-wise, right?
Okay, on to the good stuff….
So, last weekend (not the one that just happened…March 11th- March 13th) our program had arranged a homestay in a Coloured community for us. We all got host families in the town of Ocean View and we stayed with our family and, in most cases, one other American student all weekend. It was an incredibly educational weekend. Many of the families in Ocean View were forcibly removed from Simons Town during the Apartheid era…for those of you who don’t know…Apartheid had several classifications of “race” and Coloured was one of their classifications. From what I understand, Coloured is a mixture of the other races. They are not Black, not White, not Indian, not Malay…rather, they are a mixture of any and all of these things. There is a distinct Coloured culture as they were classified as ther own race and forced to live in the same townships during Apartheid.
My host family was a single mother, her mother, and her 16-year-old son. They were so great. They didn’t have a car so Friday, a family friend picked us up at the high school and took us to their house in this little neighborhood:
Saturday, we took the mini-bus taxi to their mall and went shopping. My host mom needed groceries (yes, the pick n pay was inside the mall) and the son wanted to look for a shirt. Then, we went back to the house and watched some cricket (it’s the world cup right now) with Grandma and ate a DELICIOUS sandwich called a Gatsby. It had steak and french fries INSIDE the sandwich..among other things, haha. After lunch, we took their 2-year-old nephew across the street to the “farm”. They had camels there! And a ton of delicious baked goods (I may or may not have purchased a few desserts…) and a petting zoo with a million rabbits. They also had a bunch of cute little souvenir shops with things mad by the local people in them. Saturday evening, my host-mom braiied South African sausage and chicken for us. We also had corn and potatoes and green beans and Coke. Then Megan (my American host-sister) and I went out in the street to play with some of the kids…as soon as you pull out a camera they lose all interest in soccer and only want to have you take a million pictures and look at them all:
Sunday, the Cape Argus cycle tour was taking place in Cape Town. It is one of the biggest bike races in the world and it goes right through Ocean View: 
Apparently, it is a HUGE thing in Ocean View every year, people set up tents alongside the road to eat and drink and watch the cyclists go by from 6am until 4pm. I was astounded at the number of bikers, there was a steady stream from the time I went out there at about noon with my host brother and the time I left at about 3…the oldest cyclist in the race was a 92 year old man who hails from Ocean View…he was trying to beat his time from last year (somewhere around 6 hours)…
Sunday afternoon, my host mom and grandma prepared a HUGE meal for us (I guess Sunday lunch is a big deal in the community) and they sent me home with a Tupperware full of dessert (homemade lemon meringue pie and something called milk tart which I must google a recipe for). On the bus on the way home, every student was clutching a tupperware of food that their host family had sent with them…general consensus: it was a great weekend.
The week between Ocean View and this last weekend was somewhat uneventful I think…OH! Except Friday! Friday I started volunteering (FINALLY) with a group called Young in Prison. They took us out to a youth facility where boys go who have been in trouble with the law…I believe most of them are awaiting trial still but some have been sentenced to the facility…anyway, the boys are between 13 and 20 and they live at this youth facility all week and go home to their families on Saturday. Our main purpose while volunteering is just to distract them from their situation and give them some positive role models.
I had no idea what to expect but it turned out to be so much fun. There was a group of about 10 of us Americans on Friday and a lot of the boys at the facility were gone on a field trip for the day so there were only 10 or 12 of them but we played a whole bunch of get to know you games and amused each other for about 2 hours. We played 2 truths and a lie and scramble and something called rock paper scissors evolution and human knot. Oh, and an all-time classic, heads up 7up…hahaha…The boys were all a lot of fun, they were all super eager to participate, I had a blast with them. I think next time we go we are going to teach them the great American game of kick ball…some CIEE students introduced it to the kids at the LEAP school (where I go on Mondays) a couple of years ago and they LOVE it…that is all they want to play during sport anymore…the boys all asked if we could bring music next time as well, they want to have a dance off, Americans vs South Africans…I think we all know who will win that competition…especially if I am on the American’s side. Hahaha. They also want to play soccer, Americans vs South Africans…once again…I better pre-apologize to my team on the way over there….
Other than Friday…it was a fairly uneventful week…I went to LEAP on Monday (man, I am running through the week backwards here…woopsies) and I went to the grade 9 life orientation again…there weren’t very many kids there because there was a taxi strike in the city on Monday so a lot of them couldn’t get to school…we had a discussion about Americans…White Americans in particular…my friend Mercy went this week too and she was born and raised in America but her parents are from Ghana so we had a talk with the kids about whether they considered her American or West African…it was quite an interesting (but very intense) discussion about race…
This weekend (the 19th and 20th of March) was a long weekend because Monday (the 21st) was a public holiday! Yay, no school! It was Human Rights Day here in South Africa…so everyone had a 3 day weekend.
We went to Robben Island as a house on Sunday (CIEE pays for trips that are educational and cultural…so our RAs ask and CIEE either grants our house the money or not...). Robben Island has an incredible history which I am not going to get into right now because it is 1:45 am and I have class very early tomorrow…so, here are some pictures…and I will blog more on that at a later time…or you can google it…haha
Basically, what you NEED to know about Robben Island is that it was used as a maximum security prison for political prisoners during the Apartheid regime. Many political prisoners were held there, Nelson Mandela included…we took a tour of the island that took about 3 hours and both of our tour guides had been prisoners on the island during the late 60s.
This picture is the stunning view of Cape Town and Table Mountain from Robben Island...
This is one of our tour guides with some pictures of some of the prisoners. The ones who were considered leaders were locked up in individual cells that were 2 meters by 2.5 meters. They had to sleep on the floor and the only feature of their cell was a bucket to relieve themselves into which they had to remove and clean themselves every morning. The “non-leaders” were locked in communal cells of about 30 prisoners. There were microphones placed in all the cells so guards could hear what was being said and prevent political news from spreading or plans from being created. Rules are made to be broken though…the prisoners were forced to perform hard labor digging limestone every day. They had a cave in the limestone quarry which is where their bucket was…under Apartheid law, no White man was allowed to enter a Black toilet so the prisoners could go into the cave a scheme away and there was nothing the guards could do about it…pretty ingenious if you ask me… Anyways…
That was Nelson Mandela’s cell…
I really do need to be off to sleep now…I have a very busy week…
Thursday, I leave for my mid-semester break trip…another girl in the program and I are flying to Windhoek, Namibia where we will get on an overland truck and spend 10 days camping our way across Botswana (including the Okavango Delta and Chobe National park) and we will end at Victoria Falls in Livingston, Zambia…then fly back to Cape Town on April 2nd. A once in a lifetime trip, I am sure…please pray that I don’t get eaten by a hippo.
I hope everyone is well, I miss you all terribly!
Love love
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