I've been compiling a list of things that I find interesting about Cape Town culture so here are a few...
1. Nobody seems to use coffee makers here. It's all about the French press, which in my opinion is far more efficient cuz the coffee is ready so much faster.
2. Liquor stores are closed on Sundays. Usually wine is sold in grocery stores and even though grocery stores are open on Sundays, the section with the wine is covered with a tarp and roped off. There are only a few places in the greater Cape Town area that sell wine on Sundays and fortunately for us, we happen to live right around the corner from one of them (note: this may or may not have influenced our decision to move where we have).
3. People don't barbeque here, they braai. That means cooking on broquettes instead of using propane. You can't control the heat and the braai takes 45 minutes to heat and you have to throw the used broquettes away afterwards and buy new ones every time, but there is a culture to chilling around the braai, having a beer or wine and waiting for the food to cook.
4. The movie theatres have preferred seating, which is awesome. So when you buy your ticket you get to look at the seating plan and which seats are still available and decide which seats you want to sit in. This is amazing because you don't have to sit in the movie theatre guarding a seat an hour before the show...in fact, most people seem to show up when they think all the commercials and previews are done!
5. Car parking garages at malls, etc. have car washes in them.
6. A lot of people go barefoot out in public. This is seen a lot on the UCT campus. Students walk around with no shoes on and it's not because they are poor and can't afford shoes - these are affluent students who just prefer to go barefoot.
7. One of the most frustrating things about South African culture is the use of the phrase "just now". When someone says to you, "I'll be back just now," or "I'll get that for you just now," you are pretty much guaranteed to be waiting forever. Translation: "just now" = "whenever the hell I feel like it and possibly never!" However, the less commonly used phrase "now now" is a much better thing to hear because "now now" means pretty much immediately.
We have had our first spider victim here in Cape Town. My roommate Ilya suffered a rather painful and weird-looking bite on his ankle that got progressively more swollen. He went to the clinic yesterday (we thought he was being a hypochondriac at first) and he returned to tell us that the doc said he was bitten by a sac spider. Sac spiders are venomous and the doctor had to spray the bite with a neutralizer so that the bite area wouldn't decompose into a crater! This whole process of course spawned a few hours of looking up spider bites on the internet, which was a VERY STUPID IDEA!!! I nearly went into shock reading about tarantulas (called baboon spiders here) that live in the Cape Town area and a similar big hairy species that are COMMONLY FOUND IN PEOPLE'S HOMES IN THE CAPE TOWN AREA!!! Although the venom will only make you sick and won't kill you, they have been known to cause death in animals due to shock because they stand up on their hind legs and hiss at you when they are going to attack! I quickly proceeded to clean my bedroom so that there is no pile of clothes for any spiders to hide in. I also nearly died when I walked upstairs and saw my roommate's hair clip, which resembles a trantula, sitting in the middle of the floor. I wish I could go back to the innocence of yesterday when I didn't know that these spiders existed here!!!
On a happier note...I was asked to fill in for a colleague on Wednesday to give a presentation to refugee leaders on HIV and AIDS. The law school at UCT hosts a series of workshops for refugee leaders that discusses topics such as property laws, human rights, etc. and the refugee leaders had desperately requested that HIV and AIDS be a part of their programme as well. I was told that I would be speaking in front of 40-50 leaders from the community, so I prepared an elaborate powerpoint presentation that covered everything from the basics on HIV and AIDS, right up to how refugees can run into trouble accessing treatment in South Africa, even though they are entitled to the same access to treatment as citizens. I invited my roommate, Jen, to come along and help me since she is in the same programme as me. The presentation portion went fairly well, though it was difficult to compact so much important information into a 20 minute talk. Then came the question and answer portion and WE WERE GRILLED. This period lasted for about an hour and people were throwing questions about biomedicine, politics, history, religion, treatment, etc. at us. It was amazing!! Jen and I were able to answer every single question. The crowd was a bit intense...some people got pretty heated when they spoke to us and they often got heated with one another since they were all from different countries and had different views on whose country had the worst HIV problem and whose country was handling it the best, etc. I was sweating profusely from the intensity of questions that were being thrown at us. The topic is incredibly controversial and people are very opinionated about it. After the session was done, numerous leaders came up to Jen and I and hugged us and thanked us for our presentation. Many took town my email address to ask even more questions. I must admit one man made me blush with his "practical" questions that he asked me afterwards. Haha. Jen and I left the presentation on an amazing high. We felt like our performance had somehow shown that we have graduated into AIDS experts in the few months we've been here. Amazing, amazing feeling.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Jaws!!!
So as I mentioned previously, last week was my end of first quarter holiday from school. My roommates (Jen and Ilya) and I set off on a jam-packed roadtrip with two of Jen’s friends from Canada along the Garden Route and up to Lesotho. Our first destination was Gansbaai for cage diving with great white sharks. We signed our lives away, suited up in full piece wetsuits (booties and hoodies too), endured a brutal 20 minute boat ride out to the dive site and got ready for the thrill of a lifetime. The cage was about 3 feet wide, 7 feet long and 10 feet deep. The five of us squished in side by side into the cage and waited at the surface of the water. The dive masters threw massive amounts of chum in the water around our cage and when they saw sharks coming, they yelled at us to dive down under the water into the cage. We wore weight belts so that we could pull ourselves down easily, but we still had to put our feet and hands on the cage bars in order to move up and down which was really freaky. We were all constantly terrified about our feet going outside the cage and being bitten off. The first shark sighting was crazy…we pulled ourselves down and excitedly panicked as a 3 meter shark grazed our cage. We spent as long as we could tolerate in the water (the water was freezing) and all in all we saw about 13 sharks. Some came at our cage with jaws wide open, others thrashed against our cage violently as they competed for the chum. It was probably the most amazing experience I have ever had and it was an opportunity of a lifetime to see such a powerful predator up close and personal. I highly recommend it for any thrill seekers who come to South Africa.
The next stop on our road trip was Oodtshourn, where we spent a day visiting the Cango Caves and an ostrich farm. The caves were fun, but the ostrich farm was particularly cool because I got to RIDE an ostrich!!! Ostriches are terrifying FYI…I got bitten by one when I was trying to feed it, bringing my record of African birds that have bitten me to 2! They are even crazier to ride. I didn’t have a saddle, I just climbed up on one and held onto its wings as it ran around crazily. I held on for dear life because the ground was covered in ostrich poo and there was no hope in hell I was going to be tossed into that! I took a video of it, so I will attempt to attach it if I can. After Oodtshourn we headed to Knysna, where we stayed in an amazing lodge for two nights. We visited the nearby Tsitsikamma forest and did a treetop canopy tour, which essentially involves flying from tree to tree via huge ziplines. It was a nice way to see the forest, but it wasn’t as scary or as thrilling as I was hoping for. Then we headed to the Bloukrans Bridge, which has the world’s highest bungee jump. At a whopping 216 metres, the bungee jump is incredibly terrifying. I had every intention of doing it, but wasn’t ready on that particular day. Glen was brave enough to do it though. I took a video of him so that I can study the tape for the next few months until I have the balls to do it! Ironically enough, the biggest threat to safety is not the jump itself but the walk along the path to the bridge…puff adders and cape cobras (both can be lethal if you get bitten) sunbathe on the path so you have to watch your step!
Next we headed off to see elephants in the wild. We drove around a game park for 4 hours hunting them down. Fortunately the hunt was really easy for us since on many occasions the elephants walked across the road right in front of us. At one point, a family of elephants walked right past our car and if I had wanted to, I could have touched them through my window – they were that close! Apart from tons of elephants, we also saw kudu, “Timons” and “Pumbas”, zebras, ostriches, a jackal, the back end of a lion, and a bunch of other grazing animals. It was a really awesome wildlife experience. To see the “Big 5” animals you have to go up to Kruger near Jo’burg, but we knew that the area we went to was popular really only for seeing elephants so we were not disappointed.
We continued up the coast to East London where we spent the night at a hostel. Then we headed up to a small town outside of Lesotho where we spent an evening enjoying the natural hot springs. The experience was a bit tough for me because the water smelled like rotten eggs thanks to the sulfur content and because there were lots of “floaty things” in the water, but I managed to suck it up and stick it out for awhile for the sake of beautifying my skin! Haha.
The next morning we headed off to Lesotho, which is its own country within South Africa. What a crazy place! Unlike much of South Africa, which completely surrounds the country, Lesotho is not very modern at all from what we saw. It is very rural and very poor looking. It reminded me of my experience in Niger. Let me also say that there was an absence of bathrooms as well, so I am slightly biased against the country since I drank a considerable amount of water that day! Haha. When we crossed into Lesotho we went searching for dinosaur tracks. I wasn’t overly psyched, but it was kinda cool to see fossils of dinosaur footprints in the ground instead of in a museum somewhere. We didn’t spend as much time in Lesotho as we would have liked, since it was Easter weekend which is a crazy big deal here. There was no place for us to stay, so we had to drive straight through and back into South Africa to stay the night in Bloemfontein. And that was pretty much it for our amazing adventure. We drove all the way home the next day and reminisced about our trip. It was amazing to just get away given the housing drama we had been facing and it was even nicer to return home to our house in Hout Bay knowing that it is at last OUR HOUSE!! One thing I’ve learned though is that we have become Western Cape snobs in our two months of being here. It felt like we were in a foreign land when we headed to the Eastern Cape. The Western Cape is pure money and luxuries and quite frankly I’m not ashamed to say that I feel at home with that. Haha.
The next stop on our road trip was Oodtshourn, where we spent a day visiting the Cango Caves and an ostrich farm. The caves were fun, but the ostrich farm was particularly cool because I got to RIDE an ostrich!!! Ostriches are terrifying FYI…I got bitten by one when I was trying to feed it, bringing my record of African birds that have bitten me to 2! They are even crazier to ride. I didn’t have a saddle, I just climbed up on one and held onto its wings as it ran around crazily. I held on for dear life because the ground was covered in ostrich poo and there was no hope in hell I was going to be tossed into that! I took a video of it, so I will attempt to attach it if I can. After Oodtshourn we headed to Knysna, where we stayed in an amazing lodge for two nights. We visited the nearby Tsitsikamma forest and did a treetop canopy tour, which essentially involves flying from tree to tree via huge ziplines. It was a nice way to see the forest, but it wasn’t as scary or as thrilling as I was hoping for. Then we headed to the Bloukrans Bridge, which has the world’s highest bungee jump. At a whopping 216 metres, the bungee jump is incredibly terrifying. I had every intention of doing it, but wasn’t ready on that particular day. Glen was brave enough to do it though. I took a video of him so that I can study the tape for the next few months until I have the balls to do it! Ironically enough, the biggest threat to safety is not the jump itself but the walk along the path to the bridge…puff adders and cape cobras (both can be lethal if you get bitten) sunbathe on the path so you have to watch your step!
Next we headed off to see elephants in the wild. We drove around a game park for 4 hours hunting them down. Fortunately the hunt was really easy for us since on many occasions the elephants walked across the road right in front of us. At one point, a family of elephants walked right past our car and if I had wanted to, I could have touched them through my window – they were that close! Apart from tons of elephants, we also saw kudu, “Timons” and “Pumbas”, zebras, ostriches, a jackal, the back end of a lion, and a bunch of other grazing animals. It was a really awesome wildlife experience. To see the “Big 5” animals you have to go up to Kruger near Jo’burg, but we knew that the area we went to was popular really only for seeing elephants so we were not disappointed.
We continued up the coast to East London where we spent the night at a hostel. Then we headed up to a small town outside of Lesotho where we spent an evening enjoying the natural hot springs. The experience was a bit tough for me because the water smelled like rotten eggs thanks to the sulfur content and because there were lots of “floaty things” in the water, but I managed to suck it up and stick it out for awhile for the sake of beautifying my skin! Haha.
The next morning we headed off to Lesotho, which is its own country within South Africa. What a crazy place! Unlike much of South Africa, which completely surrounds the country, Lesotho is not very modern at all from what we saw. It is very rural and very poor looking. It reminded me of my experience in Niger. Let me also say that there was an absence of bathrooms as well, so I am slightly biased against the country since I drank a considerable amount of water that day! Haha. When we crossed into Lesotho we went searching for dinosaur tracks. I wasn’t overly psyched, but it was kinda cool to see fossils of dinosaur footprints in the ground instead of in a museum somewhere. We didn’t spend as much time in Lesotho as we would have liked, since it was Easter weekend which is a crazy big deal here. There was no place for us to stay, so we had to drive straight through and back into South Africa to stay the night in Bloemfontein. And that was pretty much it for our amazing adventure. We drove all the way home the next day and reminisced about our trip. It was amazing to just get away given the housing drama we had been facing and it was even nicer to return home to our house in Hout Bay knowing that it is at last OUR HOUSE!! One thing I’ve learned though is that we have become Western Cape snobs in our two months of being here. It felt like we were in a foreign land when we headed to the Eastern Cape. The Western Cape is pure money and luxuries and quite frankly I’m not ashamed to say that I feel at home with that. Haha.
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