Settling In

It has been awhile since I have written so I guess I have a lot of catching up to do. Here are a few highlights of what has happened over the past couple of weeks…
For starters, last weekend I went to see a play with some friends. It was called “Truth in Translation” and it was centered around the people who served as translators at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings. The chairman of the TRC was Desmond Tutu and the hearings were meant to initiate healing from the atrocities that the country faced during apartheid times. Rather than attempt to prosecute an impossible number of people, the TRC encouraged people to come forward and tell the truth in exchange for amnesty. The thought was that the truth would allow for greater healing and bring the country closer to the Rainbow Nation that Tutu was striving for. The play highlighted the fact that the translators had the emotionally trying job of having to speak the words of the families who had suffered great losses, as well as of the people who told the stories of the horrendous crimes against humanity that they had committed. Inevitably, the translators had to shoulder a lot of psychological duress themselves as they recounted horrors such as “necklacing”, where people had tires put around their necks, filled with petrol and lit afire. The play had a great cast, including one of the actors from “Hotel Rwanda” and definitely opened our eyes to the brutal history this country has suffered.
This past week the university had a huge HIV testing campaign. On Friday, a couple of my friends and I decided to go get tested in support of the fact that my roommate and I are in the HIV/AIDS Masters program. I can safely say it was the most nerve-wracking experience any of us had ever been through. We waited with hundreds of other students to go through pre-test counseling, which highlighted questions about how we predicted we might act if we got a positive test result…how can a person honestly predict that? Then we waited in a long queue again for our turn to have our blood tested. Finally, we sat and waited nervously for our results. Even though none of us had anything to worry about, the tension of hundreds of other people around us drove us nuts. What if someone there with us tested positive? One by one they called our names and took us to private stalls to give us our results. We all tested negative of course, but it was an extremely mentally draining hour and a half long process. I can’t imagine how people handled being told that they were HIV positive, how their lives would change forever. How did the counselors mentally prepare themselves to deal people such life shattering news? That is the scenario for so many South Africans everyday…what a thought…
On a happier note, we bought a car!!! It’s a 1991 Mazda 323. It sure as hell isn’t flashy, but it should do its job of getting us around the city. On Saturday we drove to Table Mountain and took the cable car to the top. What a view! The entire city was covered in a thick layer of clouds and we were way above them. Pretty incredible.
On the Rotary front, I’ve been doing some volunteering with my roommates’ sponsoring Rotary clubs. We helped out painting kids faces at a huge fair last week and then this weekend we were marshals at the Cape Argus, which is a huge internationally renowned bike tour. We were responsible for marshalling the most dangerous part of the course and I guess we didn’t do too good of a job because there was a ginormous crash that resulted in a few bikers being taken to hospital. We were basically supposed to flag the riders into a bottleneck that led to a sharp turn around a corner at the bottom of a hill. Now imagine 100 bikers going 70 km/hr, suddenly being forced to bottleneck…didn’t work. We literally ended up standing in the middle of a herd of flying bicycles, just standing still and desperately hoping that they wouldn’t hit us. It was still a lot of fun though.
This week I’m going surfing so I’ll let everyone know how that goes. Until then, peace out!