Cape Town Thursday & Friday!!

I know this post is overdue! We've been busy and the lack of sleep caught up to me.

Okay, so we ended up going to the Cape Town jazz festival on Wednesday night. We saw a free concert in the downtown square - it was a really popular band, kind of a reggae/jazz combo. Wish I could remember the name of the band! It was a beautiful night and a lot of fun.

We had a much more uplifting day on Thursday. We had a free morning, so I went with a bunch of people to a little plaza called green market square, where vendors sell locally made crafts and whatnot. We got breakfast at a cute little cafe (you know how I love those) and spent the morning bargaining for souvenirs. I am normally pretty shy, but I became an excellent haggler by the end of the morning and left with a big bag of goodies :)

We spent the afternoon on a tour with Uthando, a nonprofit organization sponsoring disadvantaged communities here. Uthando basically provides a safe tour of townships, while bringing visitors to inspirational sights that we can support through Uthando.  And Uthando means "love" in Zulu. :)

We visited the township of Guguletu first on this tour. I have referenced townships before, but I don't know if I defined them - they are settlements of people (several thousand) living in poverty, with tin shanties and the like. Nelson Mandela was from Guguletu. So in this township, we visited the monuments dedicated to the Guguletu 7 (murdered by white policemen during apartheid uprisings) and Amy Biehl (murdered by black rioters for the same thinge). Both of these monuments had been placed in the same spots that the murders had happened. Nearby, wild goats rummaged through piles of trash. Cardboard covered broken windows. Porta potties substituted for bathrooms. The whole thing was very surreal.

We then visited the township of Khayelitsha. Here, we visited a large garden started by a young man who wanted to teach his community the value of the barren land they hated so much.  He taught himself to garden and began a vegetable patch that has grown into a large garden for the township. Painted tires and glass bottles decorate the garden and remove litter from the walk paths. Older women paint the fences if manual labor is too difficult. Children go home to plant seeds in buckets and tins after helping in the garden. Many of the children had never seen butterflies before, but now they see them in the garden. 

I spent last summer volunteering at a community garden in Humboldt Park, which I found I was really passionate about. The ability of the garden to rehabilitate at-risk populations and supplement nutrition was so amazing to me. I had a lot of questions for this inspirational person... He told me that there are vegetables now for those who many not eat them otherwise.  Kids love to eat spinach now because they grew it themselves. The garden even sells its produce to restaurants in Cape Town, which is a major source of income for the community. 

I was so inspired by this young man. In the United States, I feel like volunteers are hard to come by. Yet here was someone who rose up out of total destitution to change his community through activism.  It was an amazing sight. As we left, all the kids from the nearby school waved to us. Our tour guide had a big belly like a giant Santa, and about 15 little kids ran up to him and started rubbing his belly. It was so much fun to watch. The human spirit is such an incredible thing.

Next, we visited Ekhaya Ekasi, a center for women in the township. The center teaches women baking, reading, yoga, sewing, and silk screening skills so that they can become self-sufficient and earn income. The women make all kinds of crafts and sell them at the center. 95% of the proceeds go to the women, and 5% goes to this amazing program. They also invite residents to come check their HIV statuses for free. We chatted with the women as they made bracelets in this clean, colorful place - a glowing beacon of happiness in such a desolate place. I felt empowered just by watching them. The women gave us all bracelets to thank us for visiting, too. I felt we should have been thanking them instead. 

Our last stop was in Langa township, to a budding organization called brothers for all. This organization was formed by a man who spent 11 years in prison for assault and robbery. In prison, he joined an occupational rehab group and decided to change his township when he was released. He taught himself computer programming, and now teaches it to at-risk youth and ex-convicts so that they can aspire to have meaningful jobs as programmers. He told us that poverty and crime are a closely-linked cycle (which is of course true), and that he wanted to change lives every day. He believes programming is for everyone. His organization has expanded; they also work to educate youth about HIV and gender violence. They also make jewelry out of cardboard boxes and sell it to fund the computer education program. What an amazing story. His sincere wish to help prevent crime among youth was so inspirational. I want to go home and do something important now. I can only hope to do something half as wonderful. This tour was also the perfect last educational thing to do. It was uplifting and inspiring and educational. 

A After the tour, we went on a "cruise." I say it like that because we were somehow all under the impression that this was going to be a boat ride with champagne to watch the sunset on a relatively large yacht-type thing, possibly with some seafood scampi for dinner. However, they pointed us in the direction of this little sailboat on the dock. It was pretty funny actually.  So we all crammed onto this tiny boat and took off to watch the sunset. They gave us sparkling rose wine instead of champagne (also pretty funny) and then we were off.  It was an extremely windy day, and the water was really choppy, and if you can picture about 20 people on a sailboat hanging on for dear life while a boat tips dangerously to the right and water sloshes over the sides of the boat and champagne glasses fly overboard and your professor lets out a girly scream, that was this ride. I sincerely thought we were going to be shark bait. However, after about 30 minutes, we all managed to hang onto our stomachs and enjoy the sunset. It was incredibly beautiful. I really really wish my pictures did the view justice. 

An hour later we hobbled off the boat (all pretty soggy in our nice "cruise" outfits) and went to dinner at this excellent restaurant on the beach. Our table was on the sand! Cape Town is really quite a romantic and pretty place. 

Light reflecting on the ocean

On Friday, we had a completely free day.  I went with a couple people to walk through Bo-Kaap, that colorful neighborhood, and Long Street, which reminds me a little of the Clark/Belmont area. We walked to some upscale shops and tried three different cafes becaue they were all so darn cute. I had loads of juice that day.

"Yellow fever" trees are all over the neighborhoods. 

The afternoon was spent as a class at the waterfront again, which is a lot like Navy Pier, but prettier. We did some shopping, had one last dinner, and headed to the airport. Goodbye, Cape Town!

Oh, and our flights were such a disaster again. When we got there, they told us we missed our flight, which was scheduled for yesterday.  I'm not sure if these bizarre mishaps are the fault of KLM or what. After everything was sorted out, we were about to board the plane when they told us they had to check all our passports again because someone snuck into the gate with a fake passport. Great! 

Anyway, we made it home! I am so happy to be back. I have one more post coming as well :)