Molweni

Tonight I'm still not on my writing game, we are all too tired to function after the most intense day possible. I promise soon these posts will get less dry and more clever.
To start, I'll give a brief update on living arrangements and volunteers. We are living in Hout Bay which is about 20-30 min outside of the heart of Cape Town. The beach and mountains are incredible here, and we live in a nice little neighborhood across the street from the beach. We are living in what is technically a hostel (called a backpacker here) that holds about 12 people. Since there are 9 of us, which is a strange number, I got odd man out and put in a room where 2 guys not volunteering with us are living along with our project leader Ashley. Both of the guys are ok and Ashley's nice but I didn't like feeling so removed and being the only one getting up the first morning. So after the first night I moved my stuff into a different room with some of my fav girls here where there was an extra mattress. So far that is working out well and we're all bonding. That means I am now living in a room with Tess from Boston, Erica from Chicago, Jackiy from somewhere in Canada and Claudia from Miami by way of Venezuela.

On our first full day our project leader had arranged for us to get a tour of the local township by a resident named Afrika. A township is kind of like a shanty town where the local poor all live together in either shacks or gov/habitat for humanity-built homes. It is just like the setting in the movie District 9, like I was thinking it might be. There is a HUGE township called the Cape Flats that sprawls around the airport, but the local one is called Imizamo Yethu which if I remember correctly means 'our struggle together' in Xosa (the local language, and the x is pronounced as a click!) This place was incredible, it was set up for about 2,000 people back in '91 but has turned into closer to 20,000 people all piled on top of each other. It can't sprawl like the Cape Flats because it is nestled right into the hillside, which means it has amazing views. So does the hill directly across from it (where our neighborhood is), which our colorful tour guide kept interchangeably referring to as California or Beverly Hills. It was really interesting to see how wealth and extreme poverty literally live right next to each other here, which is a general characteristic of South Africa.

Before going we had been told that this township is surprisingly safe, especially for white people. They give tours and like to show people how they live, and with Afrika we all felt welcomed. It really did seem like a good place to live, everyone was super friendly and Afrika said hi to literally EVERYONE walking down the street, often in varying languages. He taught us some Xosa, which we all promptly forgot except for "molweni" which means hello. He offered to write these words down for us, which I really hope he does. We walked through most of the township all morning, and Afrika even brought us down to the construction site where they are building a school for the township. We all got hardhats and everything and the construction workers seemed pretty enthusiastic to show us around. Multiple guys came out of their clapboard houses to take pictures with the group of cute white girls. Also plenty of little kids kept coming out and getting really excited to have their pictures taken, and half a dozen dogs came out to greet us and try to get some attention. It really was amazing.

Then we ventured up to a different section of the township further up the hill that Afrika called "notorious." By this I think he meant the rougher side of town. Thankfully he kept us safe, but you could tell it was different just by the way people looked at our group. Halfway up the street some super cute kids got excited about us taking pictures of them and came to interact with us, posing and taking pictures with us. They got pretty rough and kept trying to grab our cameras which made us pretty nervous. Then one of the older boys there walked up to one of us and lifted up his shirt, exposing a pellet gun in his waistband and asked for 10 Rand (only about $1.50). I think that's when we decided to leave... But at least we got some great pictures.


Afterwards we hopped a double decker hop on-hop off tour bus to get into Cape Town proper. The plan was to buy tickets to see Robben Island, the prison where Mandela and other political prisoners were held, for the next morning. When we finally got there we only had about an hour until the last bus, so we decided to just buy tickets online and get some lunch. Neither of these things happened once we got distracted in a craft market where most of us bought these amazing paintings. As such we decided to get home, skip making dinner together and go out to a seafood restaurant on the Hout Bay beach. The food was so good, especially after only having one meal all day. We are going to lose so much weight here making our own group dinners and packing lunches.

I can't explain how exhausted we all were that night, I'm not even totally sure why. Maybe it was jetlag, maybe it was culture shock. I still kind of feel it, but tonight I have a definitive reason. But that next...