Arachnophobia

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.