First Days in South Africa

Happy Birthday Mom!
I have finally arrived in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. After thirty-six long hours of sleeping on planes and pacing up and down Terminal 5 at Heathrow, London airport, I can now say that South Africa will be my home for the next five months. After being here for a week, I constantly keep pinching myself in disbelief and waiting for the moment I open my eyes and I am lying in my bed back in townhouse 124 at Fairfield University. But my life is far from a dream and I am starting to learn the ins and outs of the city and the cultural importance of race in South African society. Today we traveled to a township in the Cape Flats, where shacks were spread on the South African soil as far as the eye could see. There is a railroad separating the two townships, being the solid dividing line between coloured people and black Africans. There is a distinct difference of the quality and condition of the houses. For instance, many coloured people live in two story apartment buildings with shacks acting as makeshift porches. All the while, the black Africans live in shacks that could not provide shelter to a family any better than a cardboard box. Even though apartheid is more than a decade old, the issue of the color of your skin is still an ever-present factor in South African culture. For instance, the coloured and the black Africans, who are divided by the rail line, do not cross the threshold into one another’s townships. Moreover, the color of your skin is the symbol of your culture and language. Therefore, many African Americans are commonly approached on the street being greeted in Xhosa, one of the eleven official languages. My one African American friend has had this happened to her at least twice on Long Street and she politely smiles and responds with a hello. With that said, Cape Town is fair from the atmosphere that I have been exposed to for the majority of my life living in Pennsylvania and Fairfield University. Even though it is different, I enjoy learning about other people’s cultures and the interesting life stories that have helped them to define who they are and who they want to become.
I am still trying to digest the splendor and the beauty of this very diverse land. Table Mountain is a ubiquitous force in the city that watches all of the movements below in Cape Town. The University of Cape Town, where I will be studying for this semester, is located on the highest point of the mountain. The ivy-clad buildings capture the beauty of the silent, grand mountain that looms over the UCT students. Even though the upper campus, where all of the classrooms are located, is an up hill hike, I would not trade the scenery I see walking to class every day. Hopefully when I come back to the States I will have buns of steel and muscular legs, one can only hope. This coming Friday is class registration and I have now learned never to complain about Fairfield registration. I still cannot believe that I use to fret about picking classes and pushing a button online in order to be registered for the next semester. UCT registration is much more old-fashioned, well for me anyway, since I am growing up in a country and time where high speed Internet is a social normalcy. Today, I had to walk around to different department heads in order to be approved to classes and Friday I will be waiting in line in order to register by hand with the rest of the humanities students. For a person who needs to learn that patience is a virtue, a semester in South Africa will defiantly teach me the importance of slowing down and enjoying life. Coming from a society and mother who stress being punctual and being trained as a little girl to always be early so you are never late, this will be a day by day learning experience. Well, if I leave early to arrive someplace in South Africa than I will be waiting for a very long time. Nothing here starts on time and everyone is so laid back and takes their time. This will be some getting used to, but slowing down and not rushing will allow for me to take a deep breath and appreciate where I am and the sacrifices that my family have gone through in order to send me to this beautiful and diverse country.
So I am going to end here with a few final words. My skin is doing something that I have not witnessed in a while; it’s getting some color. Therefore, the South African sun is turning me less into a ghost and my hair is drying wavy. So watch out, when I come home in 5 months I will be a completely different person, maybe.