I Bless the Rains

A Temporary Good-bye

2007-06-28T03:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Family,

In a few minutes I have to go close my student account and forsake internet access. On Sunday, I leave for my 20-day camping expedition with Nomad Tours that will take me through Namibia, Botswana, and land me in Zimbabwe at Victoria Falls. Then I return to South Africa for a two-week road trip across SA's famed garden route. I will be out of contact for a while, but I am not saying good-bye yet to this blog. I'm hoping to return to such primitive methods of documentation as paper and pen while on the trip, and then at some point type it all up and post it. But I want to say thank you to all of you who have supported I Bless the Rains this semester. I miss you all and, while I am very excited about this next month of adventures, I am looking forward to my return home at the beginning of August.

So if you are still interested, be on the lookout for updates around the end of July. Enjoy yourselves and take care!

Love,

Jill

Spy Games: A Tribute to Geraldine

2007-06-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

Things are quiet here in A320. Geraldine left two weeks ago.

She left suddenly; she was supposed to go in July, but her mom was working on getting her an earlier flight. On Saturday the 9th, her mom e-mailed to tell her that her flight was on the 12th. A whirlwind three days ensued, during which Geral packed all her things, closed all her accounts, and then left. Barbora and I, in a rare and spontaneous move, went to a pub and drank to forget her.

It didn't work, though, at least not for long (we were distracted for a little while by a bartender who could balance, I am not kidding, an entire table on his chin, and also a three-tiered pyramid of beer bottles on giant trays, set on top of a single upsidedown beerbottle, the mouth of which was balanced, let me say this again, on his chin), because I still remember her. Geraldine believes in fate and destiny and souls and other things that I've always considered slightly ridiculous, but that Geraldine makes seem not ridiculous at all. She has been enormously instrumental in helping me open my mind, which I hadn't realized was closed. She always washed the dishes. If you finished eating and put your plate down and turned your back even for a second, she would snatch up your plate and wash it. She takes amazing pictures; she has this way of capturing people at the most perfect, expressive moments. And she has a camera with a badass zoom. She also helped me train to become a spy, which has been a dream of mine for many years, but which I had reluctantly cast aside due to the fact that I have no stealth. At all. So I believed. Until Geraldine helped me prove myself wrong.

At the beginning of the month, Susan left for a three-week trip, and left her laptop in Geral's care. Before leaving, Susan got on DC++ and downloaded season 3 of Lost for Barbora and me. Geral goes to bed very early. Barbora and I go to bed very late. So in the week before Geral left, Barbora and I would stay up late watching Lost, and it became my mission each night when we were done to get into Geral's room and replace the computer without waking her up.

At first, it was terrible. I never saw Geral wake up while I was in the room, but each morning I'd come out to the common room to find out how I'd done, and she'd shake her head. "I heard you opening the door" she'd say. Or, "I woke up when you put it on the desk." One night, around 4 am, I literally had my hand poised in front of the door, ready to push it open and sneak in, when I heard her voice from within: "Don't bother, Jill, I'm already awake."

And finally one night it happened: I got the laptop in and on the desk without waking her up. So we decided it was time for a mission upgrade.

It was two nights before Geral left. Barbora and I were done with Lost. Geral said she would take the computer into her room that night and leave it on the desk. She would hide a number somewhere in the computer. My job was to get into the room, start up the computer, retrieve the number, put her Jack Johnson CD at low volume, and get out - all without waking her up.

Immediately I started planning, drawing upon the knowledge that I'd acquired on my previous attempted missions. The door creaks if you open it slowly: I would have to push it open in one swift, fluid movement. Lingering in the doorway creates sleep-disrupting shadows: I would have to duck into the room as soon as the door was open.

I chose what I thought seemed like optimum spy hour: 2 am. And I realized something: probably the reason that I had failed on so many previous missions was that I was not wearing proper spy gear. So this time, I dressed for the occassion.

Barbora: "I sure as hell hope you don't wake her up, if she sees you, she'll probably never sleep again."

At 2:00, disguised as a shadow, I padded across the common room and flung open Geraldine's door in one swift, fluid movement. It didn't creak. I hurried inside. The computer was on her desk, already open, but with a screensaver on. Angling my body to disguise the change in light intensity, I touched the mouse. Geraldine stirred in bed, but remained asleep. I crossed my fingers and opened Microsoft Word 2003. Clicking file, I scanned the list of recent documents. Nothing. My heart sank. Geral stirred again. I turned back to the computer. Then I saw it. Nestled between Susan's academic papers and course syllabi and what have you, was a document called "Butternut soup." Geraldine and I love butternut soup. I opened the document. And found this message:

"Congratulations Jill. The number is 8."

I smiled to myself, closed the document, exited Word, opened iTunes, put on Jack Johnson, and left the room on feet of feathers, closing the door behind me in another swift, fluid movement.

The next day, Geraldine confirmed my success. And I now have a newfound confidence in my ability to become an international superspy.

Geral is one of those magical people with her own gravitational force or something. I loved talking to her, and at the same time I think I was always a little afraid of her. Not because of anything she did, but just because there is something she has in her personality that is indescribable and so, so unique. I have simply never encountered anyone like her in my entire life. I guess you can say that about anyone; I can even say it about Joy. But with Geraldine it is particularly true. It's funny because even though our conversations about fate and destiny vs. choice and chance and consequences all ended in a sort of 'agree to disagree' truce, it's almost hard for me to believe that it wasn't fate that I met Geral. There were hundreds of international students. I could have been stuck in a flat with anyone. How did I get so lucky? It's very rare in life that you find someone who will wash your dishes.

So here's to Geraldine, and to fate, to souls, to dishes, to amazing photographs, to stealth.

The Ikaya Gazette

2007-06-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

English tutoring in Kayamandi ended a couple of weeks ago. The students' final project was to write an article for a school newspaper. They could write about anything they wanted: their school, their families, sports, national and international events, the community, etc. Then we took all the articles and made a newspaper called The Ikaya Gazette, complete with photos taken by the students. I don't know if anything I've seen or done here in South Africa has made me feel as simultaneously ignorant, moved, confused, and impressed as the Ikaya Gazette. There were articles about everything from the school netball team to shopping trips in Cape Town to the government's broken promise to replace the shacks in townships like Kayamandi with actual houses (actually, the government is replacing some of the shacks in Kayamandi with houses - the ones closest to the road, so that people don't have to stare that kind of abject poverty in the face when they drive by. They're renovating the parts of Kayamandi that the tourists might see when they come for the World Cup in 2010. Thanks, government. You're a real pal.) There was an editorial saying that teachers should stop beating students ("Well duh," I thought reading it, and then I felt guilty and ignorant, because I had no idea that teachers in Kayamandi did beat students, and then I felt even more guilty and ignorant for thinking, 'well, I guess you would expect that kind of thing in a place like this...'), and another about how men should stop abusing and raping women and children. I didn't even know what rape was until I was in fifth grade. Some of these kids have witnessed it, and some have experienced it, and I can't quite wrap my mind around that. I wish that I was the kind of person who could just go in there and help in any way I can, and not judge, or flinch back, or feel guilty. But it's so strange. This big group of white university students, mostly from the U.S. and Europe, studying abroad at a white, Afrikaans-speaking university, come into this township every Wednesday in big shiny vans to help black, Xhosa-speaking children living in a community cut off from and shunned by the Afrikaaner-dominated town it's supposedly a part of learn the English language. If I lived in a shack, would I give a shit what an internal rhyme was? If I lived with the constant possibility of being beaten or raped, what good would it do me to know when to use a period and when to use a comma? If I didn't have food or clean water, would I want to write a newspaper article about netball? These kids are so friendly and vivacious and intelligent. But they play in fields and playgrounds covered in broken glass (Barbora found a knife under one of the trees by the school a couple weeks ago, and a kid grabbed it and she spent about ten minutes trying to bribe him to give it to her.) They come to class sometimes with bruises and scrapes and you don't know if they're from playing or fighting or something else. I guess there's some fundamental ignorant, prejudiced part of me that doesn't understand how they can be happy, living like this. And another idealistic, hopeful part of me that believes that human beings make their own happiness, and hates that other part of me for believing that happiness is directly linked to the material. People survive however they can. I do believe that people can make their own happiness, but at the same time it's so hard for me to imagine living in Kayamandi and still functioning as a human being. Several students wrote articles about Kayamandi, calling it a "beautiful place," and saying how much they love it. The kids who wrote articles about their lives wrote about "normal" things: hanging out with their friends, going shopping, playing sports, etc. I feel like I'm really rambling here, and I think my thesis is this: That Kayamandi is an unforgettable and beautiful place in many ways, but I still can't quite reconcile it with the way I believe that human beings should live. I'm still a little appalled and confused by it. I feel that my volunteering efforts there have been weak, and motivated more by a sense of guilt than a genuine desire to help. That is an ugly thing to have to realize about yourself. I think I was sort of expecting South Africa to lend me a strength that I don't really possess as a person. I saw my life, my abilities, my purpose coming clear to me here. But it turns out that I'm the same person here that I was back in America, except more confused and less sure of myself. It's okay. It's not so bad. I think thwarted expectations are part of any learning process. I'll save further introspection for my summation article in a couple of weeks. What I want to do now is share my favorite article from the Ikaya Gazette. There were so many good articles, but there is something about this one that I especially love:

My Life
by Nkosinathi Gege

I was born on 21 July 1994 and I am 12 years old now. I live with my parents in Snack Valley and we have two floors. I stay with my parents, two brothers, and a sister. I love my family because they do everything for me. Especially my family, I love them because they brought me to school and that is why I love my parents.

When I was young, I saw a plane flying in the sky. In the future, I want to become a pilot because I can go everywhere I want. It is very cool to drive a plane, and I will help my friends and the school to build a better Kayamandi. If I have money, I will move to Stellenbosch with my family. And I will have a nice girlfriend and she is going to be beautiful and we will always be happy with my family.

I will fly by plane. And people can travel to America, Durban, to China and USA by my plane.

Now I have to work hard studying to become a pilot.

Some Afrikaans Poetry

2007-05-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

Spar

Vandag het ek gegaan na Spar,
Om te sien wat was beskikbaar -
Melk, eires, en veerlik drank,
Maar nie liefde gevind op die plank.

English Translation:

Today I went to Spar,
To see what was available -
Milk, eggs, and delicious liquor,
But no love did I find on the shelf.

Wat Doen Jy Met die Mes?
(for Barbora)

Wat doen jy met die mes?
Slag 'n kind, steek my vleis?
Jy is wreed, jy is mal;
My bloed vlekke rooi jou wit wal.

English Translation:

What are you doing with the knife?
Kill a child, stab my flesh?
You are crazy, you are cruel;
My blood stains red your whitewashed wall.

Roosterbrood

Ek is lief vir my roosterbrood,
Dit is baie, baie goed.
Met heuning, konfyt, of knoffel botter,
Roosterbrood het moed.
Hoewel ek eet my roosterbrood
Tot ek bars my voeg,
Jy moet stem saam dat agt snye
Is meer as genoeg!

English Translation:

I love my toast,
It is very, very good.
With honey, jam, or garlic butter,
Toast has spirit.
Although I eat my toast
Until I burst at the seams,
You must admit that eight slices
Is more than enough!

(This poem was written in honor of a toast-eating competition Barbora and I held a few weeks ago that nearly claimed both our lives. We each ate eight pieces, and then we ran out of bread. It was disgusting. In a poetic way.)

A Shark Bit the Cage

2007-05-17T05:59:00.000-07:00

First of all, can anyone explain to me why Blogger will no longer let me publish photographs? I want you all to see my orange fisherman coat that smelled like dead fish.

Second of all, A SHARK BIT THE CAGE.

And all I asked for was semi-aggressive bumping.

I was not in the cage when it happened, though. More on that in a minute.

Let's start at the beginning...

(Ripply flashback thing)

My day began at 5 in the morning, when I decided that I no longer wanted to go shark cage diving, because it was 5 in the morning. Eventually I got myself up, went outside (Quick shout out to Erin Bunting and family: When I went to pick up my backpack, it was really heavy. ‘Why is this so heavy?’ I asked myself. I opened the front compartment and found a butternut squash and a telephone. These were from a shopping trip and a theatre rehearsal, respectively. But of course I thought of Squashphone.), and met Susan, who informed me that she had made a small oversight in planning because the shark diving place wasn't actually IN Hermanus per say - it was actually somewhere PAST Hermanus in a town we'd never heard of. We had allowed ourselves 2 hours to get to Hermanus, which I was already a little wary about, as I recalled that the first time we went to Hermanus, we were driving for 2 hours and twenty minutes. I had a sneaking suspicion that going somewhere beyond Hermanus would take even longer.

"I was going to call Suliman last night, and tell him we should leave earlier," said Susan. "But I thought he might be sleeping. So I decided to just wait until this morning and tell him to drive fast."

So we told Suliman to drive fast. And he did. We also took the N2 instead of the N1, which you're not supposed to do because people stand on bridges and drop rocks on your car and kill you on the N2. But the N2 is much faster. And after a stressful hour and fifty minutes, we arrived in Gansbaai - ten minutes early, and the first ones there.

The served us a delicious breakfast comprised of unrecognizable things. Then we watched a video that informed us that 652 people were killed by chairs last year, and only four were killed by sharks. Also, humans kill 100,000 sharks every year. After seeing those statistics, I feel kind of bad about everything I said about sharks loving to kill humans. Because really, those stats make it look kind of like we love killing sharks.

Some things I learned on my sharkventure:

-Sharks see in color.
-There is a handle inside the cage that you are allowed to hold onto
-The cage is not made of Linkin' Logs. It is made of drinking straws.
-Sharks are attracted to urine.
-If a marine biologist tells you to keep your hands off the black floaty things - keep your goddamn hands off the black floaty things.
-Nobody has ever seen great white sharks mate.
-I am not immune to seasickness just because I believe I should be.

The experience went something like this:

We boarded our boat, which was called the Shark Fever. We motored out to Dyer Island, which is where they film on the Planet Earth and Discovery Channel stuff. It is home to penguins, seals, whales, dolphins, and sharks. We anchored. Some guys threw some fish oil in the water and put some severed tuna heads on a rope. (They do not actually feed the sharks at all, because they do not want to condition them to approach humans. Good call.) Then we waited. And waited. And waited. I started feeling sick, even though I had taken some motion sickness medicine. Susan started feeling sick, even though she had taken motion sickness medicine. Suliman fell asleep.

And then the first shark came. Followed shortly by another. And another. They were just cruisin’ around, being sharks. We put on wetsuits, and five people got into the cage. I was one of them. My mask would not stay on my face, so I had to hold it there. You will notice if you go to the shark diving website, which has pictures on it, I have been cropped out of the picture of people in the cage, probably due to the fact that I looked real dumb holding my mask onto my face. I should explain the mask: it was not a snorkel mask or anything - the cage was attached to the boat, so you just bobbed there in the water with your head above the surface, and then when a shark came, someone would yell "SHARK ON YOUR LEFT (or right, or whatever)!!!!!!!" And then you would put your head under and swim down and stay for as long as you could hold your breath. Or until your mask filled with water, if it wouldn’t stay on your face. It was really cool. They came SO close. And you know what? Even though they’re really big and have a lot of teeth, they’re actually not that scary looking. When they’re just swimming around not eating things, they’re actually kind of cute. Maybe a little majestic. I’m still not sold on "beautiful." But then when they attacked the bait and the fake seal, they were not as cute. After they got the sharks to do about six passes, we swapped out and new people got in the cage.

I should add here that I had my wetsuit on inside out. Score another retard point for me.

It was also around this time, when I got out of the cage, that I started getting really seasick.

But I didn’t barf.

When it came time for second rounds of cage diving, I was feeling really cold and nauseous. So I decided to sit this one out and go with the next group.

I will regret this for the rest of my life.

At first I was happy with my choice, because the sharks seemed to have lost interest in the boat and the bait and the weird people staring at them. So I was like haha, look at all you losers partially-submerged in the freezing sea surrounded by chum waiting for sharks that aren’t coming back.

I should add here that when I was in the cage I accidentally swallowed a giant mouthful of chum water.

Now if I could post a picture on Blogger McDumbturd, you would all be able to see the cage. And you would see that just inside the cage, above the "viewing window", is a long black float. This is what keeps the cage buoyed up. We were warned at the beginning NOT TO PUT OUR HANDS ON THE BLACK FLOATS, because every once in a while, a shark will try to "explore" the floats. But we’d been diving for a couple of hours, and I guess people were kind of "forgetting" this warning, because suddenly there were hands and arms draped all over these black floats. And then the marine biologist named Alison saw this, and yelled "GUYS GET YOUR HANDS OFF THE BLACK FLOATS!"

And so the divers took their hands off the black floats. Good thing, because just then, out of nowhere, this shark swims up to the cage, pops its head out of the water, and starts BITING the black float, right in front of the face of the girl who was in what should have been MY spot in the cage. I wish I could explain this better. The shark’s TEETH were INSIDE the cage, right in front of her FACE. Even from the boat, it looked terrifying. But I, like everyone else who was safe on the boat, was laughing and saying "Awesome."

I don’t think the girl thought it was that "awesome." Because when the shark finally swam away and she came up again, we heard her yelling "GET ME OUT OF HERE. GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW!! "

So they got her the hell out of the cage.

She was okay. She was laughing a lot and saying "Holy shit" over and over again. I think she was considerably shaken, though.

AND IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME.

As much as I wish it could have been, I in my infinite honesty will admit that it’s probably a good thing it wasn’t. I couldn’t even put my wetsuit on right. I was the only one who couldn’t figure out how to anchor myself in the cage. My head probably would have floated right into the shark’s jaws. Or I would have seen those teeth right in front of me and tried to scream and swallowed water and died. Seriously, it’s kind of scary to imagine.

But it wasn’t me and I’m over it. Sort of. I went down with the next group, hoping that the fiesty shark would come back to bite the cage some more, but he didn’t. One shark did come right up to my corner of the cage, and I made eye contact with her small scary eye.

We saw six great whites total, four females and two males. They were all over two meters long. Missed opportunities, ineptitude and seasickness aside, it was a really, really cool experience. Truly. I have a newfound respect for the majestic great white shark.

Also, we got a DVD of our trip, and every time Susan and I appear in it, I look completely confused, as though I have just woken up after being drugged and kidnapped and thrown on a shark diving boat, and am trying to figure out how I got there, and Susan looks incredibly pissed off. Every time Suliman is shown, he is wearing his awesome sunglasses, looking really cool, waving at the camera with a huge smile on his face. Susan and I never even knew when the camera was on us. When we disembark at the end of the trip, Susan has her face stuffed with some kind of food and is chewing angrily, and I am clutching a bundle of sweaters in my arms and looking completely disoriented, and we are the only two people to get off the boat without waving at the cameraman.

I have no idea how a video could possibly make me look less fun than this one did.

But I promise. I had a good time.

The fun all happened inside.

Okay, since the intial publication of this entry, Blogger has capitualted and decided to let me publish picutres. So here are some pictures to help you visualize. the first one is the picture I was cut out of because I was clutching my mask to my face. The second is one where you can really see the cage. See the black floaty thing? That's what Shark #4 bit. It's teeth were so sharp that you couldn't even see bite marks in the float afterwards. The third picture is (I think) Shark #3. He had more white on him than the rest, if I recall. Then there is the group photo in front of the Shark Fever, and some picutres of Susan and me showing that we are actually capable of looking happy.

P.S. - If anyone is interested I also added a picture of the "Red Twins" from Ulysses. Tell me we don't look like convincing made-up fictional characters.

At Last

2007-05-12T12:19:00.000-07:00

At long last, the time has come.

I went to South Africa with one goal. I pretended to have a few others, so that I would be allowed to come here to study abroad, but actually, I only had one:

To go cage diving with great white sharks.

And that's exactly what's going to happen tomorrow.

Unless it rains.

I am so excited. I love sharks.

And by love them I mean I think that they are absolutely terrifying and have recurring nightmares about them eating me.

You know how people are always talking about having a "respectful fear" of wild animals? That's like how I feel about sharks, except that my fear isn't really respectful. It's just straight up fear.

Because have you LOOKED at them? If you think about land predators, like lions and bears and wolves, you can sort of imagine them possessing a certain capacity for compassion and mercy - because even if they eat you, at least they're cute. You think of The Lion King or White Fang or Grizzly Man, and you don't feel quite so terrified. Simba wouldn't eat me, you say.

Sharks, on the other hand, look as if nothing would give them greater pleasure than rending your body in two. Not only would they eat you, they would enjoy it. They look as though they are just hoping that when they chomp down on you, one of your friends grabs you and tries to pull you out of their jaws, so that they can engage in a game of tug of war with your mangled body and WIN.

You know how there are all these movies about little kids befriending wild animals: bears, tigers, wolves, black stallions, seals, orcas, dolphins, and I think there was even one about a manta ray? You ever wonder why no one makes one about a little kid who befriends a great white shark? Because a great white shark would eat the child. Immediately. A great white shark does not care if you are an adorable eight year old girl whose foster parents are cold and indifferent, or a twenty year old surfer, or a seventy year old man trying to stay in shape by swimming laps in the ocean - all a great white shark wants to do is eat flesh.

But I do love sharks. In theory.

Most of the time my fear of sharks is a "moot point", as they say, since I am always on land, and they are always in the ocean. The only way this fear could every really become valid would be if I were to say, take a boat out to the middle of the ocean where all the sharks live, actively bait the sharks, then descend into the water in a cage that, let's face it, appears to be made out of Linkin' Logs.

I got the idea for going cage diving while watching Shark Week on the Discovery Channel last summer, and they made that guy who hosts Dirtiest Jobs go to South Africa and cage dive. And I said, "I'm going to do that." Let it never be said that I am not a woman of action. I learned a lot from Shark Week, such as that the liver of an adult hammerhead shark weighs forty pounds, and that once in the 1920s a great white shark got into a river in New Jersey and started eating children, and they reenacted this event in sepia tones with all these kids in pre-depression costume splashing in the river intercut with shadowy shots of something moving under the water and this narrator who was not British but always pronounced the word "again" "agayn". The people on shark week were always calling great whites things like "majestic" and "beautiful". I'm sorry, I love and respect them and everything, but they are not majestic. Or beautiful. They have about thirty rows of teeth and in pictures there's always little bits of flesh clinging to the teeth, and bloodstains around the gums and they look like they swam into an anvil. And they have small, scary eyes. I probably shouldn't be saying this, lest they find out I've been talking smack about them through some kind of echo-location/ESP thing.

I don't think the shark diving guides are going to like me much. They're going to be telling us things like, "The majestic great white can swim for years without stopping to rest..." and I'm just going to be like, "Have you ever seen a shark decapitate anybody?" Because the fact is, that even if people love and respect sharks, the reason they go cage diving - at least this kind of cage diving, which requires no diving experience whatsoever - is because it sounds like a really cool dangerous thing to do.

I want to make it clear again that I love and respect sharks.

And I think it would be kind of cool tomorrow if one of them semi-aggressively bumped the cage. But did not actually attack. Also, there seems to be some discrepancy among my friends as to whether urine repels or attracts sharks. At one point I did think that this was something I should clear up before going, but the thing is that if a great white shark gets within ten feet of me, the odds of me not wetting myself are next to nothing. There's just nothing I can do about that. Also I'm kind of nervous because you're not supposed to hold the cage at any time - because a shark could eat your hand - but what if I forget and involuntarily try to stabilize myself? And a shark eats my hand? And then a whole bunch of other sharks come because of the blood and they break the cage open and I shove Susan in front of me and use the few seconds it takes them to devour her to get the people on the boat to pull me to safety by my bleeding stump. And then I have to deal with survivor's guilt?

Really I shouldn't even speculate on all this, since what's probably going to happen is that we're going to float around in the boat for eight hours and not see a single shark - or worse, we'll see a fin off in the distance and the shark diving people will be like, "Score! We don't have to give them their money back." and then they'll put us down in the cage for a few minutes and the water will be too murky to see anything and then they'll take us back to land.

Let's just hope that whatever happens tomorrow involves aggressive bumping and possibly a harpoon gun.

Ulysses...Come on!

2007-05-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

Last night Susan and I attended a theme party held by Lesbigay - the organization we signed up for at the beginning of the semester, thinking, Oh, gay and lesbian groups are always looking for straight allies to help them fight for their rights. We forgot that in South Africa they already have their rights. Still, we thought it would be a fun group to join. As it turns out, they're not the friendliest bunch of people I've ever met. Or maybe they're just wary of Susan and me because we're straight and we ate a large portion of the free pizza at the opening function. Anyway, we have only befriended one Lesbigay member throughout the entire semester. So we figured, hey, it's time to get our 80 rand's worth and go to this party and make some friends.

The theme of the party was to dress as your favorite fictional character. Susan and I were really excited about this. Until we realized that we don't actually have any clothes that would help us to look like our favorite fictional characters. Also we did not know who our favorite fictional characters were. I thought about dressing up like Hester Prynne, but I did not have a puritan-length skirt. Or a scarlet A.

Then Susan and I came up with a great idea. We each had a red dress. And black shoes. We would pick a book that nobody in the world has ever actually read - such as Ulysses, by James Joyce - and say that we were characters from that book. And then when people were like, "What?" we'd be like, "You know...from Ulysses...the Red Twins...with the crazy hair and the...Ulysses! Come on!" Like you'd have to be real stupid not to know what we were talking about.

So after Afrikaans, Susan and I went into the bathroom of the arts building, changed into our red dresses and black shoes, drew asps on our faces and clavicles, made our hair look weird, and headed off to the Mystic Boer.

We paid the 10 rand entrance fee, then stood there in the midst of lots of people - male and female - dressed in underwear and fishnets. We felt very awkward. And anxious. I do not do well in groups of more than five people. Especially if I don't know them. I do not like making new friends. Really, going to the party was probably not a good idea at all. But we really wanted the chance to say "Ulysses...come on!" to someone. So we went up to a girl dressed as Heidi and her friend who was dressed as...whatever Heidi's boyfriend's name is. Heidi asked us who we were supposed to be.

"Oh, we're the Red Twins. From Ulysses," we said.

"Cool," said Heidi.

Clearly someone hasn't read Ulysses. And doesn't want to admit it.

So we moved on. I wanted to go home. But Susan said we had to stay until we'd made at least three new friends. So we had excruciatingly awkward conversations with Holly Golightly, the Playboy Bunny, and a caveman named Johann.

But we still hadn't had a chance to say "Ulysses...come on!" to anybody.

Then, a man came up to us, dressed in normal black clothes.

"Are you people?" he asked us.
"What?" we replied.
"Are you with the people?"
"Are we with...what people?" we asked.

This went on for approximately ten minutes, before the man finally said:

"Do you like guys or girls?"

"Ohhhhhh. Guys."

"Okay. I just wondered. It's so hard to tell sometimes."

"So who are you dressed as?" Susan asked.

"Fictional Character," said the man.

"Any particular one?" Susan asked.

"Fictional Character," replied the man.

"Cool," we said.

"And who are you?"

"We're the Red Twins. From Ulysses."

"From what?"

I could tell this was going to be our window of opportunity. "Ulysses. By James Joyce. We're the Red Twins..."

He wasn't saying anything. I knew it was now or never. "Ulysses," I said. "Come on!"

And I realized that, if you say something like that to someone you don't know, it doesn't sound like you're pal-ing around - it just sounds rude. Like you think the person's really stupid for not sharing your pretended wealth of literary knowledge. This guy did not walk away from us. He slid. Like, "Okay, I'm just gonna sliiide over here and..." He was gone.

So Susan and I went home.

I think it was one of those ideas that just sounded better in theory than in practice. Like communism.

A Lesson in American History

2007-05-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

Last night, Susan and I decided to show off our knowledge of American history to our non-American flatmates. Unfortunately, in our attempt to do this, we discovered that we do not, in fact, know anything about American history.

So we did what any loyal, patriotic Americans would do, and made things up.

Get out your history textbooks and your red pens, guys. Because y'all have some revising to do.

AMERICAN HISTORY, ACCORDING TO JILL AND SUSAN:

THINGS AMERICA INVENTED: Having Labor Day in May, changing Labor Day to September, the metric system, airplanes, the Internet, books, apples, electricity, Mexico, Communism, babies, language, the concept of self.

WHAT 'A' STANDS FOR:

Jill: A is for Awesome. And America. And...Affluence.
Susan: And airplanes. Which we invented.
(High Five)
Jill: And apple. Which we also invented.

SIX DEGREES TO WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON

Susan: There are lots of presidents we never really think about. Like William Henry Harrison. Who was related to another Harrison -
Jill: Harrison Ford.
Susan: Right. Who was related to Gerald Ford. Who was related to -
Jill: Gerard Depardieu.
Susan: I was going to say Henry Ford.
Jill: That's what I meant.
Susan: Henry Ford, who was related to...William Henry Harrison! We did it!
Jill: Did what?

THE PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION:

Jill: We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union...combat terrorism...and always be first on the list of countries when you order something online even though they are ostensibly in alphabetical order...do hereby declare...hear ye...Yeah, I don't know it.

THE FAMOUS PART OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE:

Susan: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. Except blacks and gays. And Jews.
Jill: And women.
Susan: They aren't men.
Jill: They are if you take away their woe.
Susan: Deep.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS:

Jill: What are our rights?
Susan: The right to free speech. The right to bear arms. The right to a speedy trial. What else?
Jill: Aren't those amendments?
Susan: They're also rights. The right to remain silent...
Jill: The right to bear alms.
Susan: I don't think that's real.
Jill: What is an alm?
Susan: Like a church donation.
Jill: Why'd I think it was a leaf?
Susan: You're thinking of palm.
Jill: No. I'm thinking of alm.

Barbora: Do you not have any limits on freedom of speech?
Susan: Uh...
Jill: Not really.
Susan: You just can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. I think that's it.
Barbora: But you can say that you're going to kill Bush?
Jill: You probably shouldn't. Patriot Act and all.
Susan: Yeah, they'd probably take you in and interrogate you, but you're allowed to say it.
Jill: I think as long as you don't say you're going to set Bush on fire in a crowded theatre...
Susan: You're allowed to say 'fire' in a crowded theatre if there is a fire.
Jill: But not if the president is on fire.
Barbora: And you're allowed to say that black people are inferior?
Jill: Of course. That's what our country was founded on.
Susan: Free speech.
Jill: I was going to say the idea that black people are inferior.

Barbora: When did women get the right to vote?
Susan: 1927
Jill (simultaneously) 1918.
(Pause)
Jill: Maybe I'm just thinking because it was the 18th amendment...
Susan: Was it the 18th?
Jill: Probably not.
Susan: It was the 18th or 19th. I think 18th was prohibition. And 21st repealed it.
Jill: Shouldn't we just get rid of both of them? They cancel each other out. What a waste of crinkled yellow parchment.

Jill: What are some other amendments?
Susan: There's one about not quartering soldiers.
Jill: Is that like, drawing and quartering soldiers, or keeping them in your house?
Susan: The second one.
Jill: They should really add one about drawing and quartering. That's a lot scarier of a prospect.

WHITE HOUSE SCANDAL:

Susan: there's always been a lot of presidential scandal. Like the Teap -
Jill: (joining in) Teapot Dome scandal!
Barbora: What is that?
Jill: It's so bad, we're not allowed to talk about it.

Really, the only thing we managed to do successfully and accurately the entire evening was sing the "Fifty Nifty United States" song. And Susan got lost after Delaware.

Someone should do something about the American education system.

A Whale of a Time

2007-05-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

There is a character in this wild and winding tale of South Africa who has gone hitherto unmentioned. His name is Tyrone Savage, a political science professor who teaches four classes offered only to international students, all based on the common theme of conflict, justice, reconciliation, and transition.
Tyrone Savage does not look forty-two. He does look like a hobbit. All of his classes are conducted in the courtyard of the art museum, where a beautiful fountain burbles and statues watch over us and ivy crawls along the stone walls. The classes are three hours long, we are all encouraged to take breaks to go next door to the Greengate coffee shop to get coffee and scones and bring them back to class, so that we can sip and munch in the sun and discuss what a shithole the world is, but how rainbows of hope are everywhere, arcing from continent to continent, from individual heart to individual heart. We have never actually talked about that. But instead of standing up there and lecturing and making us memorize facts and dates and systems, we are encouraged to read about the various atrocities being committed by various countries and talk about how it makes us feel.
I am in Tyrone Savage’s Tuesday Justice in Post Conflict Society’s course. Truly, you have never seen so many blond American girls suddenly so interested in transitional justice. I am not scorning them, as I too am simply not convinced that Tyrone Savage is forty-two. Or that the fact that he is forty-two is a problem.
I do, however, know that he is beskikbaar. That’s single, for all y’all who remember that one entry where I said that.
He and I share a love of Greek art, particularly the peplos kore.
ANYWAY, Tyrone Savage works with an NGO group, traveling around the world and attending peace conferences and transitional justice talks and trying to help people resolve conflicts. On Wednesday April 18th, a symposium was held in Cape Town by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation on “The State of Democracy in South Africa Today”, with two speakers who had been negotiators for the 1994 South African Political Settlement: Dr. Matthew Phosa, former premier of the Mpunalanga province and current member of the ANC National Executive; and Mr. Roelf Meyer, former Minister of Constitutional Affairs. People would be coming from all over the Western Cape to attend: lawyers, NGOs, politicians...Tyrone invited forty of his students to go. So Geraldine, Susan, Barbora and I all signed up. The event was held in the Museum of Natural History, in a section called the Whale Well, which has an enormous jawbone of a blue whale on the floor, and hanging from the ceiling, the skeleton of a sperm whale, and a life-sized replica of a humpback whale. There were three levels, all overlooking the main space, and a ramp that would its way up each of the levels. The main event was taking place on the floor, with a stage set up beside the blue whale jawbone, and chairs for all the big important people who where there. Because there were so many students, there wasn’t even enough standing room on the main floor, so we strung ourselves out along the ramp leading up to the second level.
And then Barbora, Geral, and Susan and I noticed something. It was a glass capsule on the second level, looking out onto the floor with a perfect view of the podium. It had seats in it.
“Do you think we could sit there?” Geral asked.
“I don’t see why not,” I said.
On the side of the capsule, in big, happy letters, it said: WHALE SOUNDS.
So we went up and took seats inside the capsule and waited for the event to start. The Whale Well was full of people, in dresses and slacks and suits and ties. Tables were being set up at either end of the room with wine glasses. And as we waited, we began to hear little squeaks and gurgles and sighs and hums: whale sounds.
“Wow,” said Barbora. “You’d think they’d turn this thing off for the event.”
“Are we going to be able to sit here?” asked Geraldine. “It’s going to be distracting.”
“I think it will be okay,” I said. “The whale sounds are really quiet.”
“But what if we laugh?” said Geraldine. “What if they start talking and we keep hearing these whale sounds and we’re up here laughing while they’re talking?”
“Let’s just try it,” said Susan. “And if it gets too bad, we can leave.”
Finally, a white-haired man stepped up to the podium and began his introductory speech.
“Democracy in South Africa is still young, but—”
UUUURRRRRRRRAAAAAAGLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHH...
Suddenly the whale sounds were not so quiet.
“We are a nation of—”
WEEEEEIIIIIINNNNIIIIIIIIIRI-RI-RIRRRRRIIIIIII MRIOOOOO.
“But we have been divided—”
NEEP! NNNNNNNRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOUHMMMMMMMM!
“—by a legacy of—”
NEEP NEEP BWUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHH-LAAAAAHHHHH
By this time we had all bolted from the whale sounds capsule, and laughing so hard that we had to go hide behind some exhibits to recover. Meanwhile the whale sounds were growing in volume and force. Students were looking all around, trying to figure out what was going on. The NGOs and the lawyers and executives and politicians all steadfastly tried to ignore it. The white-haired man just kept right on with his speech, as though nothing was happening.
I slunk out from behind the exhibit and sat down on the floor and tried to focus my attention on the white haired man, but the whale sounds had become thunderous, and I was trying so hard to control my laughter that I really thought I was going to pop an intestine. Finally I saw a museum worker race up the ramp and unlock the door to a back room and dart inside. A few seconds later, the whale sounds stopped.
The debate plugged on, with Dr. Phosa making a rousing speech about economic inequality. Then the Roelf Meyer stepped up and began to speak about racism and poverty. After about fifteen minutes, Barbora and Geraldine decided that the whale sounds really were turned off for good, and that it would be safe to go back into the capsule. So they did. Another twenty minutes or so went by. I was starting to get kind of bored. The debate was getting a little circuitous. I pulled out my notebook and began to doodle.
MREE!
I looked up.
NEEP NEEP BUUHRRREEEEP!!! GOOGA GLOG GLOGRRRRREEEUUUHHHH.
WWWHHHHAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Barbora and Geraldine had already fled the capsule. People were starting to look up at us, and not just students.
MUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHH!!
MMIIIIIIRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGLIIIIII!
The man at the podium kept speaking. You could tell he was getting a little rattled though.
Poverty. Aids. Affirmative action.
MMMRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAHHHHHHMMMMMMMMM
Apartheid.
BRRREEEEEEUUUUU!
Soaring crime rates.
MWOEE-MWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM!
Hope for tomorrow.
BRRRRNNNNNNNNNUUUUUUUUUU!
The whale sounds were echoing off the walls.
WHHHOOOOOO PE-WEEP, PE-WEEP...
Seriously, it sounded like we'd wandered into Moby Dick's bar mitzvah. The museum worker raced up the ramp again and into the back room and turned the whale sounds off. But by this time everyone in the room except the people onstage and a few dedicated audience members was looking at us.
After the event, while we were having refreshments, a woman came up to us.
“So, you were the girls with the whale sounds. What, were you like pressing a button or something?”
Horrified, we tried to explain that we hadn’t done anything; that the whale sounds were completely beyond our control.
This happened several more times. “Couldn’t you just turn it off?” someone asked.
No, we explained. No, there were not controls for the whale sounds. They just—happened.
Many months ago, we were told at orientation to make sure that, in the course of our study abroad experience that we don’t just take, but that we also give. That we offer South Africa a part of ourselves in return for what it gives us. That we make lasting memories and lasting impressions.
With the political elite of the entire Western Cape under the impression that I was making whale sounds during a symposium on democracy and reconciliation, I’m going to go ahead and say that I’m not doing too badly for myself on that front.

Back to the Wild

2007-04-19T03:47:00.000-07:00

I can’t promise this will be completely coherent, because I am listening to R. Kelly’s Greatest Hits as I write, and I’m a little distracted.

On March 31st, I departed Stellenbosch, bound for Kruger National Park. There was a long bus ride involved, a train that apparently claims the lives of all white people who ride it, a hostel that should probably be featured in any forthcoming sequels to the movie Hostel, and some wild animals. Here’s how it all went down:

At about 3:30 on March 31st, Susan and I were packed and ready to go. We had finagled a ride to the train station, which would have been about a thirty-minute walk otherwise. We had tried, while arranging the ride, to subtly hint to Suliman that it would be even better if he would just go ahead and drive us forty minutes to Cape Town to the bus station. Suliman did not get the hint, which took the form of comments such as: ‘Thanks, Suliman, we really appreciate you agreeing to drive us to the really dangerous train station, so that we can ride the really dangerous train with all of our valuable luggage to Cape Town.’ (forced chuckle) ‘Gosh, if only there was another way to get to Cape Town that didn’t involve riding that dangerous train. That would be so great! And so much less dangerous.’ Then we had a brilliant idea, which was to just flat out ask Suliman to drive us to Cape Town and buy him dinner for his troubles. This worked out well, as Suliman said yes, and we ate a really good dinner, which he then tried to pay for. Luckily, I have learned a thing or two about being assertive during my time in South Africa, and I flung myself across the table and ripped the bill from his hands, which is a sight Susan says she will never forget.

At 6:30, we boarded the Greyhound bus bound for Johannesburg. We had two basic reasons for taking the bus instead of flying. #1) To save money. #2) To have a chance to see some of the beautiful South African countryside. For 20 hours.

This is how much money we saved: 600 rand (approximately $80). This is what the South African countryside looks like: Rock. Rock. Tree. Barren arid region. Rock. Shrub. Barren arid region. Rock. And so on.

This is just the route to Johannesburg throught the Karoo. There is of course plenty of South Africa that is absolutely beautiful. We just didn’t see it.

Every few hours, the bus would stop at a BP station, so that we could "eat" and "wash up". At one stop, Susan bought something called a Yogbar.

I think we were both under the impression that a Yogbar would be something like a granola bar, coated in yogurt. But Susan opened the wrapper to discover four squares of solid strawberry yogurt. Okay. Susan put one square in her mouth and chewed, looking thoughtful, but not distraught. "Do you want to try some?" she asked me. "Sure," I said, taking a square. I put it in my mouth. It was strange, and very, very hard, but I was ravenous, so I wasn’t complaining. Suddenly, a strange expression came over Susan’s face. "Actually, you can have the whole thing, if you want." Poor, naive me. When there is food involved, I don’t think clearly. It didn’t occur to me to as why she had suddenly decided to give me the entire Yogbar—my only thought was ‘Free food!’ I took the bar from her, with the first square still in my mouth. And that’s when the Aftertaste hit me.

The aftertaste of a Yogbar is like...

I don’t know what it’s like.

It’s like a little creature has made its home in your mouth. And all this creature does is eat vaguely strawberry flavored curd and then vomit it onto your tongue. Over and over again. So all you can taste is just this creature’s vomit.

It was one of the worst things I have ever put in my mouth. Hands. Down.

One thing that makes twenty hours on the bus pass faster is if you sleep. This would have been a fun and easy thing for me to do, if the seats of Greyhound busses were not designed specifically to cause lasting damage to the spine. There is one way to make the seats slightly more comfortable, and that is to recline them. So, around midnight, I reclined my seat, closed my eyes and invited sleep to come. What came instead was a hand on my shoulder, tapping very rapidly and insistently.

"Hey...hey! Hey...hey...Can you put your seat up?"

I can’t even tell you how much I wanted to say no. But the fact is, that there was very limited leg room on this bus, and I was actually surprised by how far the seat reclined. I figured I was probably invading this woman’s personal space, and I could see why she would be unhappy about that. So I swallowed my rage and spitefulness, and put my seat up about halfway. It turns out that this is actually less comfortable than the fully upright position. But I wasn’t about to put my seat up all the way. I had to show her. Show her that while I might compromise, I wasn’t about to give in. I was really uncomfortable. And really angry. I don’t know why. It wasn’t really unreasonable of her to not want her limited space completely usurped. I might have even forgiven her, eventually, if she hadn’t turned out to be Satan’s spawn. Right after she made me un-recline my seat, she decided that this was the perfect time to strike up a conversation with her seatmate, who had his own passive-aggressive way of trying to suggest that Susan put her seat up, too, which was to dangle his hand over the edge of her seat, right beside her face, as she slept.

So between the hours of about 1am to 5am, while the rest of the bus tried to sleep, Debbie Demanding and Peplar Passive-Aggressive got to know one another. It’s not like I could sleep anyway, with my seat trapped in its strange, spine-distorting purgatory, but I would much rather have sat awake in silence than listened to them.

When morning rolled around, I was happy to get to watch the sunrise, sort of. I couldn’t really see the sun. I just watched it getting light. Morning brought with it a new sense of hope. Even the barren countryside looked more pleasant. I was feeling better, ready for another BP breakfast. When suddenly:

Tap-tap-tap. "Hey...hey! Hey...could you close your curtain?" There was a rather intense beam of sunlight coming directly through my window, and apparently now that it was 7am, stupid satan woman and her seatmate had decided it was time to sleep. I grudgingly pulled the curtain just enough to block out the worst of the sunlight.

"More...more...."

She just kept saying the word ‘more’ over and over again, until my window was completely covered.

I know you are probably thinking that I am weak and feeble and cowardly. And you’re right. Why didn’t I stand up for myself, and say, "No, I’m not going to shut my goddamned curtain, and I am going to recline my seat right into your stupid stomach, and I’m going to find out where you live and when this is all over I will hunt you down and kill your children in front of you"? The answer is, I don’t know. It’s easy to look back on these situations and think about what you should have done, should have said. In the moment—tired, dirty, sleepless, and still sort of tasting the Yogbar—I was powerless. I hate conflict, and I had already used up all of my assertiveness taking the bill away from Suliman the day before.

So I couldn’t look at the scenery anymore. We stopped about ten minutes later, and then I ripped the curtain open, promising myself that if she tried to make me close it again, I would not.

Then came the miracle. Almost. We stopped at a BP station. We had twenty minutes. After twenty minutes, the bus started up and pulled away. Minus one passenger—Daughter-of-Hell’s passive aggressive seatmate. Did I dare hope...?

"Hey...Hey! Hey...stop the bus!"

No.

"Stop the bus, we’re missing somebody!"

So we went back and retrieved him. But God...so close...

The rest of the bus ride was horrible and smelly and actually ended up taking two hours longer than it was supposed to. We arrived at the Greyhound Station in Jo’burg around 3:30pm, and waited for the driver from our hostel to come pick us up. Everyone makes it sound like the instant you get into Jo’burg, the bullets start flying and the people start dying, but this is not true. Susan and I were there for at least ten minutes before we heard our first gunshot (Kidding. It was more like seven minutes.) The city didn’t look so bad. The thing is, it is literally covered in trash. But if they cleaned it up a little, and got people to stop stealing each other’s cars and knifing each other...It would probably be okay. Sort of.

At four o’clock, we arrived at Diamond Digger’s Hostel, where we were told that we should take a seat—they were doing something with the computer, so they couldn’t check us in right away. We sat down on the couch (it was a very nice, homey-looking place; they even had dogs.), and watched a Discovery Channel special on the ten most effective bomber planes. An hour and a half went by. We wanted to shower. We wanted to eat. We wanted a room. We discovered that we couldn’t change the channel on the TV. Just when we were about to give up hope, we were told we could enter the check-in room. We gave the woman our names, and she informed us that we were not booked there. We assured her that we were. She assured us that we were not. And because in South Africa, most business transactions, if documented at all, are done so on paper napkins in lipstick, we had no way of proving that we had in fact made a reservation weeks ago. But then the woman said she could put us in a dormitory room with three German girls who were—coincidence of coincidences—also students at Stellenbosch, and also departing for Kruger Park the next day. So Susan and I said, great! We can make friends with them, and then tomorrow we can all wake up at 4am together and get ready for the tour.

Never in my life have I met such surly Germans. They did not want to be our friends. At all. What they did want to do was stay awake talking and giggling in German until 1 am.

We woke the next morning, not particularly rested or recovered. We had paid 10 extra rand when we checked in so that we could have breakfast in the morning, and so we entered the kitchen to find a loaf of stale bread, a half box of generic bran flakes, and a tub of cream cheese from 2006 waiting for us.

I had myself a piece of toast. I didn’t even need to put it in the toaster.

Livingstone Tours picked us up at about half past five, and the driver, David, informed us that we would spend the entire day driving. Which was exactly what I wanted to do, after twenty-two hours on a Greyhound bus. I was highly impressed by Livingstone’s ability to anticipate my needs. The minibus was very small and very cramped, although I maintain that the seats were more comfortable than those on the Greyhound. We stopped at some beautiful places, including God’s Window, the Bortluck Potholes, and the Blyde River Canyon. Along the way, we got to know some of the other people (sixteen of us in all), including Gary and Jen, a young couple from Australia traveling the world for three months on their honeymoon. They were very nice. Susan and I discovered at God’s Window that Gary was a bit of a moss enthusiast, so when Susan and I were wandering around Blyde Rover Canyon, and discovered this:

we figured we should tell Gary about it.

Susan: "Hey Gary, did you see the Lichen Trail over there?"
Gary (suddenly interested): Really? Where? (Takes off to go investigate).

Now the funny thing about the lichen trail is that it is not a trail that goes into the woods or anything. It is just a very, very small loop of path, completely out in the open, about fifty yards from the parking lot. I guess there’s some lichen on it. If there is one image I hold with me from this spring break for the rest of my life, it will probably be Gary, standing alone on the lichen trail, which wasn’t a trail at all, looking at lichen while tourists wandered past and monkeys romped in the grass.

Around 7pm, we arrived in the Shangana Tribal Village, where some of us were staying the night. The hardcore people. The wusses were going to a nearby lodge, with electricity and showers and beds and all that. Losers.

A very nice young man in a loincloth whose name I did not catch gave us a tour of the village. The village exists to preserve the culture of the Shangaan tribe—The tribe members only live there three days a week. Anyway, this man, who was the grandson of the old chief, was giving us a tour of one of the mud huts where we would be sleeping. He had a thick accent, so it was difficult to understand him at times. This is what I heard:

"[Thickly accented English, thickly accented English, thickly accented English]...And the walls are very strong, because of the termite saliva." When I heard the words "the walls are very strong", I had reached out to touch the walls. Now I drew my hand back. Then he said some more things that I couldn’t quite make out. Then, clear as day: "The floors are made of cow dung."

Cool.

I loved the village. I loved my mud hut, termite saliva and cow dung and all. The food was amazing. And the villagers danced for us, which was incredible (and then they made us dance for them, which was incredibly humiliating. But really fun). The next morning, it was time to push on to Kruger.

We made one more stop before entering the park, at the Cheetah Breeding Project, where we were shown a traumatic video about baby rhinos being poached and elephants who die of broken hearts. Then we went to visit the cheetahs. This is a picture of two male cheetahs who groom each other—male cheetahs do not do this unless they are brothers, so they think these cheetahs are gay:

After this, our guide picked us up, and at long last, we arrived in the park.

Kruger was really cool. Really, really cool. But what I didn’t realize about the tour was that it consisted entirely of game drives. (I didn’t know what I’d expected, but I definitely thought there would be some walking in there somewhere). Two and a half days of driving around a park the size of Israel, looking for wild animals. After three days of driving on busses. I think I sort of envisioned it being like Jurassic Park (I tend to relate pretty much everything in my life to a scene from either Jurassic Park or Titanic, so get ready to play count-the-references), where we would enter the park and stop the jeep and then our jaws would drop and the camera would pan away and there would be elephants, rhinos, lions, leopards, pterodactyls, etc. just roaming free. And the Jurassic Park theme music would start to play. It was not quite like that. The animals were pretty good at hiding. We did see them, though. We saw all of the Big Five, and a whole bunch of giraffes, zebras, impalas, wildebeests, kudu, hornbills...I cannot stress enough how awesome this was. Once, we had to slam on the brakes because a giraffe ran across the road in front of us. A giraffe. Not like, hey, watch out for that rabbit, or whoa, don’t run over that dog. Hey, slam on the brakes so you don’t hit that giraffe.

Camping was not nearly as awesome, mostly because it rained the first two days, and our tent became very moist. And I was constantly wet anyway, because of the rain, and also because for some reason, whenever there was a situation in which it was possible for large amounts of water to get on someone, I was always that someone. Always. I estimate I was dry for a total of maybe eight minutes during the entire three days.

One evening, we went for a night drive. This drive lasted about three hours, and the first part was great, because we saw the sunset and a leopard. Then it started to get a little tedious. It was raining, and it was cold, and we were in an open-air vehicle. And I was in charge of holding the torch. For three hours, it was my duty to sweep the light back and forth across the miles and miles of grass and trees, and yell "stop!" if my light caught a pair of glowing eyes. I felt like the guy in the lifeboat in Titanic searching for survivors, and I kept wanting to yell "Is there anyone alive out there?" But I refrained. It also felt like Jurassic Park, when they’re driving around at night and it’s raining—just before the T-Rex comes I was kind of hoping our vehicle would get attacked by a lion or something. Anyway, I was the torchbearer. At first I really enjoyed it. Then when I realized that every glowing pair of eyes my torch fell upon belonged to an impala, I started to get a little tired of it. My arm was also tired, which is why I decided to rest the hand with the lamp on it against the edge of the metal vehicle. That’s when the torch began sparking in my hand, and, continuing my longstanding tradition of being completely underwhelmed by potentially fatal situations, I turned to my vehicle mates, who were all scooting as far away from me as possible, shouting things like "Oh my God! Oh my God", and asked, "Hey...why is this sparking?"

It turns out it was sparking because there were several exposed wires dangling from it, like dangerous, electrically-charged angelhair pasta.

And still I held it for the rest of the drive, waiting for the moment when the light would fall upon a massive lion, standing at the side of the road, waiting to attack our vehicle. Or really just anything besides an impala.

Our last morning in the park, we did have the option of going on a bush walk (for 250 extra rand). I went, and we got up close and personal with a huge herd of Cape Buffalo. Also, the rain stopped. Our guide taught us how to tell the difference between male and female giraffe poo. And we saw the most amazing sunrise ever (The picture does not even begin to do it justice).

We arrived back at camp, packed up, and prepared for the drive back to Johannesburg.

Movie Preview Voice: Jill Smith was an ordinary girl
With an extraordinary capacity
[clips of Jill missing the flight to Johannesburg. And the flight to Cape Town.]
For missing her intended means of transport.
Now, she’s about to discover
Jill (to the tour guide): We have to be at the bus station by 6:00.
Tour guide: That’s not going to be possible.
That God hates her.
Jill: No. No. You don’t understand. We have to be on that bus.
Tour guide: There’s going to be traffic.
Jill: I don’t care.
Susan: Oh my god, we’re going to miss our bus?
Jill: No. We will be on the 6:30 bus to Cape Town if I have to rend the fabric of space and time.

Luckily, I did not have to do any rending, because we made it to the bus station by 5:30. And then the bus was delayed four hours.

I hate Greyhound.

Greyhound turned me gangta.

The ride home was even longer than the ride there, because we were stuck in traffic for a very long time. I think this turned us all into savages. At one stop I pulled a Billy Zane and refused to let the women and children use the bathroom first. There was a crying kid (who, like a champ, did not start crying until the twenty-third hour of the bus ride), and a group of people who were going to be running the Two Oceans marathon the next day, and needed to be in Cape Town by a certain time or they wouldn’t be allowed to register. All in all, we were not a happy group of people.

We arrived in Cape Town around 4:30 on Friday, April 6th. I was way too tired to care about what might happen to Susan and me on the train, even when I asked the bus driver where the train station was and he said, "You’re taking the train?" and gave me this look that said, in no uncertain terms, that he knew that no one would ever see me alive again. As it turns out, nothing happened to us on the train, because the Train of Terror is actually just a normal train—no blood splattered on the walls or corpses piled in the end cars. There was a deranged man spitting Doritos out of his mouth, which for me was almost worse than death, but really, the train ride was anticlimactic. We arrived home, safe, well, and triumphant.

And that's what we call an April Holiday.

Spring Break Woot!

2007-03-31T03:19:00.000-07:00

I don't know how to spell Woot. Whoot. I don't even know what it means. But what I do know is that it is time for Spring Break. Aka, April Holiday. Since it's actually winter here.

In just a few short hours, Susan and I will go to the train station to ride the Train of Terror to Cape Town. If we live through that, we will then board a Greyhound bus, and twenty hours after that, we will arrive in Johannesburg. Johannesburg, for those of you who don't know, is the hijack and violent crime capital of the world. And due to some strange scheduling problems, Susan and I will be spending the night there.

Some South African advice regarding Jo'burg:

"Don't go." - Marvin.

"If you get shot, don't fight back. You'll only get shot again." -George.

"Don't ever go there." - Our Afrikaans teacher.

"I was almost killed there." - Ann.

"There's nothing to see." - Everyone.

"Why would you go there?" - Everyone.

"Don't go." - Everyone.

I'm picturing a kind of montage, possibly set to "You're My Best Friend" by Queen, of Susan and me walking around Johannesburg with balloons and ice cream, smiling obliviously as bullets whizz by our heads and people groan on the pavement around us surrounded by pools of blood. Here's the good news: If we survive our day and night in Jo'burg, then Monday morning a vehicle will come and pick us up and take us to

KRUGER NATIONAL PARK.

The first night, we will stay in a tribal village and sleep in mud huts with the tribal people. The next day we will go into the park and see tons of wildlife. The third night, we get to go on a night game drive. Do you have any idea how many stars we're gonna be able to see? And I'm finally clear on the Big Five now: Lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos, and buffalo. And I'm going to see all of them. I hope. If I don't, I'll cry.

If I die in Jo'burg, or on the Train of Terror...I love you all. Thanks for reading.

America, F*@% Yeah!

2007-03-25T01:44:00.000-07:00

Thursday was the ISOS International Food Evening. Fifteen countries from around the globe set up tables in the Sanslaam Hall of the student center, and provided samples of their native food. America served a traditional Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing, and pumpkin pie. The cost of a ticket was 5 rand; you could buy as many tickets as you wanted, and one ticket gave you the option of eating at one table. In true American fashion, we charged one ticket for the turkey, stuffing, and potatoes, and a separate ticket for the pie. We were the only country to do this. We also served people the disgusting, dark, slimy turkey remnants when we ran out of good meat. "Cover that up good," the guy serving the turkey said to me, as he handed me a bowl of meat that I wouldn't touch if I was a dog (or a person who ate meat) so that I could put potatoes on top of it.

God bless the USA.

All in all, it was a good evening full of dancing, food, and friendship. Gabon won the best-decorated table competition (come on, people, we had leaves on our table! Actual leaves, from outside! And twigs!). I was glad to see that someone beat Mauritius, though. A pile of sand does not make you better than the rest of us, Mauritius.

Pictures

2007-03-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

A picture guide to some of the key players in the South African game.

Suite A320 (minus Joy, plus Susan)
From left to right: Jill, Geraldine, Susan, Barbora

Geraldine and I wander into the sea fully clothed on a visit to Cape Town.

The first trip to Hermanus, on a cold and rainy day. Well and me, center.

Hermanus Part 1, cont.

Back row, L to R: Random woman we met, Arab whose name I don't remember, Well, me, Barbara, Susan, random woman we met. Front: Barbora, other Arab whose name I don't remember, Suliman

The sunset, viewed from the cliffs, on the way back from Hermanus.

The trolley races, Jool 1007

A baby baboon.

A sideways ostritch

Joy and Barbora.

Cape Point. Back: Well, me, Barbora, Susan, Geral. Front: Suliman

Cape Point.

My naked emotions climbing Stellenbosch Mountain (only two weeks after the Table Mountain debacle)

Sondre. Not the blond one. The red sweatshirt.

(Geraldine snapped these stealth shots of a conversation between Sondre and me on the steps leading up to the lighthouse.)

Me at the end of the continent.

And at the edge of the world.

Driving in South Africa

2007-03-21T14:33:00.000-07:00

The South African highways are magic. They are also poorly paved. But if you look past that, there is nothing in the world like riding in a car on the South African open road. Everything looks free. There are mountains, there are cliffs, there are shrubs, there is dust, there are baboons...On the way to Hermanus last Saturday, we passed a roadside market where a few old people were selling bean bag chairs and dead fish. Out in the middle of nowhere. Driving in town is always an adventure—and by an adventure I mean terrifying beyond reason and potentially fatal—but driving on the highway offers peace, and an amazing sense of being a very, very small part of an enormous continent.

Another thing I love about driving in South Africa is the road signage. At some point the South African government decided that the best way to communicate the rules of the road/information about lodging and food was through a series of elaborate pictorial signs that no one in the world could possibly understand. A typical South African roadsign might look something like this:

The savvy traveler of course knows that this means that there is a hotel nearby. A lot of fuss is made around here about the number of driving deaths that occur each year that are said to be alcohol-related, but really probably result from people trying to figure out what in the name of hell this means:

and in the process, running off the road or into another car, or a pedestrian, etc. Is it a sign for a bed and breakfast, or the way mutinous courtiers in centuries yore communicated to potential conspirators that there was a plot to kill the king? I don't know, I can't tell, is this even relevant to my driving - Oh my god, there's human blood on my windshield.

Our second trip to Hermanus was more successful, in terms of weather. Barbora and Susan and I built this kickass sandcastle.

Is that a dragon climbing up the back? Yes. Yes it is.

On our way back, we stopped to watch an amazing sunset, from the cliffs above the sea. We had two cars, and I managed to arrange it so that I rode with Suliman both ways, because I had it on good authority that Well is extremely fond of love ballads and the Backstreet Boys. Sure enough, Barbora and Susan said that they listened to a BSB, N'Sync, Savage Garden mix for two hours, both directions. And Well sang along. Apparently the Middle East loves boy bands. Well also showed me extensive video footage on his cellphone of a Westlife concert he attended a couple of weeks ago. Ask yourselves: do we really need to be fighting the war on terror?

How Food Makes Me Lead

Those who know me know that I would never volunteer to be in charge of anything, ever. And that I don't particularly enjoy helping out when there are events that need to be planned and executed. But there is an exception, when food is involved. Four weeks ago Susan, a random German named Heinrich, and I formed The Food Society. The Food Society meets every Tuesday evening at 8 and goes out to dinner. I declared myself president, by virtue of the fact that I can eat more than anyone else. One of the places the Food Society did a couple weeks ago, Zest, has a challenge: if you can eat 8 of their pizzas, you get them for free. If you don't succeed, you pay double. So this is what I'm in training for, for the end of the semester. I already stunned a board of directors at a luncheon on Monday at Col'Cacchio. I think I've got this one in the bag. But just in case, I've been listening to a lot of songs from the Rocky IV Original Motion Picture soundtrack and imagining the taste of victory in my mouth. It will probably taste like pizza, and maybe a little vomit. In addition to being president of food society, I volunteered to be on the committee to represent America at the International Food Evening tomorrow. Basically, the idea is that a small group of people representing each country at Stellenbosch will prepare samples for 200 people of a dish from their native land. They will all cook this food on the same day, in one kitchen. Somehow this sounds more like the plot for a reality tv show than the recipe for an evening of international fun (So Gustav's been hogging the dough retarder all day. Like, does he even realize that my country could invade his in like, two seconds? And who's even going to want to eat his nasty-ass Nazi schnitzel anyway?) Anyway, the Americans, always thinking pre-emptively, decided to get the kitchen a day early. So I spent all day baking pumpkin pies in an enormous commercial kitchen where none of the ovens worked, in preparation for a Thanksgiving Dinner that will blow peoples' minds. Let me just say this: Germany, your Stroganoff doesn't stand a chance. And Scandanavia: I stole one of your pots to cook cornbread stuffing. Suck on that! We are also supposed to dress up in our country's native garb, and play traditional music and whatnot. I suggested an aggressively accurate depiction of Thanksgiving, complete with the rape of native land and the distribution of smallpox blankets, but I couldn't get anyone to jump on that bandwagon with me. Anyway, I will let you all know how it goes tomorrow.

In other international news, Sondre and I bumped into each other at the SuperSpar, in the produce aisle. We got into a conversation about soy milk, which he has never had, but says he will try someday on my recommendation. He asked me about the health benefits of soy vs. cow's milk, and I was happy to fill him in. I even brought up the pus-from-infected-udders risk. It was good, because I was in my element in this conversation. But if you have never tried to lean casually on a rack of bananas, don't. It will only look awkward, and it is not that sturdy. There are better ways to show someone that you are not at all intimidated by their presence, or by the love that is suddenly filling your normally-calloused heart.

The shower screamer is getting out of hand. He no longer screams just in the shower. He screams at random intervals throughout the day, sometimes several times in a row. Our theory right now is kidney stones. He also tried to put a towel up on his window, to prevent us from watching him shower. But it fell down.

Turning to more serious issues, a couple of weeks ago a white American guy was beaten up in a pub by a bunch of Afrikaaners for dancing with a black girl. Apparently the Afrikaaners called the girl something really nasty, so the American said something bad to them, and then they all jumped him. And the police did nothing. In fact, rumor has it that the police actually said they couldn't do anything because the guys who beat the American were white. Which is bullshit. I like a lot of things about this town, but as I am discovering, it is one of the more backwards places in South Africa. A lot of people here are stuck in the past.

It is official: I am not coming home in June. I am staying on afor a month and touring Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, ending up at Victoria Falls. Then Barbora and her boyfriend and I are renting a car and going on a road trip across South Africa. I am very excited.

That's all for now: Coming up: the International Food Evening, a trip to Parliament with the seventh graders of Kayamandi, and an April holiday spent in Kruger National Park.

Checking In

2007-03-09T13:18:00.001-08:00

Life has actually been fairly uneventful these past couple of weeks - hence the lack of updates. But there are a few things worth mentioning:

HERMANUS BEACH, Part I.

Last weekend, Susan, Barbora, Barbara (this awesome Swiss baker/potential veterinarian who I think has gone hitherto unmentioned in this blog), and I went to visit Hermanus Beach with the Saudis. In addition to Suliman (I finally learned how to spell his name) and Well, there were two new Saudi computer programmers, whose names I cannot spell. They are an enjoyable group, and very open to questions about their culture and religion. In return, they like to ask questions about American views on the Middle East, and it's funny, because they seem to think that asking why I'm a vegetarian is a very personal and possibly invasive question, while they have absolutely no qualms about asking me who I think was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and whether or not I thought Suliman was a terrorist when I first met him. They also continue to pay for all of our meals, insisting that it is "part of their culture." It very rarely rains here - every single day is sunny and hotter than balls. But it sure did rain on Saturday, and still we drove 2 hours to Hermanus (the beach is famous for being the place that the whales go to give birth every year. It is also, we realized later, the place where people go to shark cage dive). It was a cold rain, too, but I went swimming anyway, and it was awesome, because I had on this bright red dress, and the skies and water were completely gray, and I had just been planning to wade, but then a huge wave came and soaked the bottom of my dress, so I just went all in, dress and all, and it was perfect. One thing I hate about "moments" in my life, is that I always stop to classify them as "moments" while they're occuring. Not this time. I was just completely free, and utterly delighted. The waves were huge, and they did this thing where they would crinkle along the edges when they came onto the shore, and sometimes it looked like they were going two directions at once; being pulled back toward the sea even as they were going forward onto the sand. Only Well and Suliman were willing to brave the water with me, and we didn't stay long, but it was so worth it. We are actually going back tomorrow, though, when it will (supposedly) be sunny.

CONFLICT DIAMONDS

Last week I went to see Blood Diamond, staring Leonardo DiCaprio as a man with a passable South African accent. Whether you are young or old, male or female, rich or poor, gay or straight, black or white, this movie will make you want to kill yourself. I recommend it. The last time a movie bound the public together in this way was when there was that one movie that had Paul Walker and Jessica Alba on the screen at the same time.

SHOWERS

A big thing in A320 is watching people shower. The windows of the bathrooms in Concordia all appear to be tinted, but in actuality are not. I realized this one day way back in the beginning, when I was reading in my common room, looked out across the courtyard, and saw...everything that the guy in D312 had to offer. So it's quite common in the evenings for my flatmates and I to be sitting in the common room talking, and then suddenly someone will yell "shower!" and we will all turn and stare out the window and watch the shower. We even know all the best showers to look for ("Aw, I've already seen that one." "Is that - oh my god, is that Marvin?" etc.) Anyway, there is one guy who lives right across the complex, who showers about the same time every evening. And while he is showering, he likes to emit random screams of agony. I don't know if they're really screams of agony. But always, while he's showering, every few minutes, he just yells: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

And it sounds terrible. I mean, it really sounds like he's being killed. But he's just showering.

Anyway, that's my favorite shower.

NORWAY

For those of you who requested updates on the Norwegian-American alliance, I am sorry to say there is little to report. Negotiations are still taking place. There was a nice birthday party a couple weeks ago. That's about it.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Hermanus, Part 2. Tomorrow.

For my midsemester break, I am traveling north to Kruger National Park, which has what we call the Big Five: rhinos, elephants, lions, leopards, and malaria. I'm just kidding. I mean, it does have malaria, but it is not part of the Big Five. I can't remember the fifth one. Maybe I'll remember when I SEE IT, because I'm going to Kruger Park!

The kids of Kayamandi are working on creating their own school newspaper. They are brilliant and I love them.

Where I live.

The Language of the Oppressor

2007-02-24T08:36:00.000-08:00

February 22nd, 2007

Goeiemiddag. My naam is Jill. Ek praat Afrikaans. 'N bier, asseblief! Wat is jou stokperdjies? Totsiens.

Translation: Good afternoon. My name is Jill. I speak Afrikaans. A beer, please! What are your hobbies? Goodbye.

Almost everyone here speaks Afrikaans. They all speak English fluently, but most choose to converse with one another in Afrikaans. This is perfectly understandable; it is their mother tongue. But an interesting thing tends to happen when South African students find out that I am American: they express sympathy for the language barriers I am encountering ("Oh, so it must be really hard for you, since everyone speaks Afrikaans...") - and then go right back to talking to each other in Afrikaans. They take the time to introduce themselves to me in English, sympathize with me for the fact that I have to struggle constantly to understand what is going on around me, then ensure that there is no way I can partake in their conversations. I don't blame them at all for speaking Afrikaans. I'm the foreigner here, it's my job to adapt; I'm not asking South Africans to change their ways on my account - but particularly with the theatre students: You know I don't speak Afrikaans, and you all speak English. Maybe just once in a while, when I'm around, you could have a conversation that I understand, and can participate in?

I was at a meeting for the theatre society the other day, and the president started the meeting in Afrikaans, then stopped and asked, in English, "Is there anyone here who only speaks English and doesn't understand Afrikaans at all?" And of course I was the only one who raised my hand, and everyone turned to stare at me...And the girl proceeded to conduct the entire meeting in Afrikaans! Okay, I realize I'm the only one out of at least forty people who doesn't understand Afrikaans - they shouldn't have to accomodate me. But I didn't understand a word of the meeting - and they knew that! Then at the end of the meeting, the leader said, "Okay, for the English speakers who didn't understand that, come up and see Anabelle, she'll explain to you what the meeting was about." So let me get this straight. You conduct a thirty-minute meeting in Afrikaans, even though everyone at the meeting speaks English but one person doesn't speak Afrikaans. Then you want me to stay after to have the entire 30 minutes translated for me? Wouldn't it have been easier just to do it in English in the first place? Anyway, I went up to see Anabelle. And Anabelle told me, don't worry, we'll send out e-mails about what's going on, and the e-mails will be in English and Afrikaans.

I don't mean to be whiney. It was my decision to come to an Afrikaans university. And like I said, I don't expect anyone to go out of their way to accomodate me. And I'm taking an Afrikaans course, which is how I know how to ask for a beer and tell people I am available (Ek is beskikbar. Baie beskikbar.) Also, I have discovered something very important about the Afrikaans language. Take a look at the following sentence:

Maak my portaal Afrikaans.

You know what that says in English? It says, "Make my portal Afrikaans." This appears on the university webpage everytime I log on. So you see, all they've done is to take English words, and add an extra 'a' to them! So really, the language is very easy. My naam is Jill. See? It's the same. Except for the 'a'. My naam is Jill. I like vegetaables. I aam a theaatre maajor.

It's like pig latin!

So I have a feeling I am well on my way to mastering Afrikaans. But it is frustrating, to be shut out of the social scene because of language barriers. I mean, I'm not a huge socialization fan to begin with. On a happier note, I was accosted by a group of third year drama students the other day who were on their way to speech class - where they are learning to do an American accent. They mobbed me and begged me to talk so they could hear my accent, and then one girl thrust a monologue in front of me and made me read it while she hung over my shoulder listening and imitating me under her breath. I also did a West Virginia accent for them, which they seemed to find amusing. Then one of the guys asked for my phone number and said we should go out for coffee. Later that day, he sat with me in theatre history (where I also have problems with Professor McLecturesinAfrikaans. The course says it's taught in English, but it's not.) Apparently they have a competition going to see who will master the American accent first. Which means, if they want to learn firsthand from a native speaker, they all have to compete for my affections. So basically, they are all just using me. But what a great way to form tenuous, short-term friendships.

Two other interesting language experiences I had occured in Kayamandi. On Wednesday I went there to do English tutoring (I don't think I wrote about last week's tutoring session at all, but it was the first one, and the girl I'm tutoring is really sweet. Her name is Nosamphiwe, and she wants to be an R&B singer when she grows up). We were doing a poetry exercise with the students. If you have never tried to explain to a twelve-year-old what a rhyme is, I suggest you try it as one of the things to do before you die. It seems so simple. But it's not. Phiwe was trying her best: she would find two words in the poem that started with 'f'. Or she would find two of the same word, like "the". And I understood her logic, but I couldn't figure out how to convey the idea of two words with the same sound. Phiwe finally got it, sort of, and I was so happy for her, but wow. I've never thought about how to teach a concept like rhyme. Then on Thursday, I went to Kayamandi again, with a friend of mine who does a lot of volunteer work there. I helped in the Crech, which is like a kindergarten/daycare center for very small children, ages 2 months - six years or so. The children speak Xhosa, and no English, so communication occurs only through body language. I was supposed to be playing with the kids and keeping them entertained and out of trouble while they waited for their parents to pick them up. And I was trying to think of activities/entertainments that would transcend language barriers. So I sang them some Meatloaf (if anyone is intracultural, it's Loaf. And they seemed more keen on "I Would Do Anything for Love" than "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.") We also danced a lot. The kids are very good dancers. Even the babies had some mad moves. I was impressed.

R&J

2007-02-17T16:33:00.000-08:00

Last night, I went to go see a production of Romeo & Juliet at the Manyardville Theatre, which is a big open-air theatre near Cape Town. It is a beautiful venue. Trees everywhere; mountains in the background, gold lights strung around the gates...And I was so excited. I was truly so excited. I hadn’t seen theatre for months.

Let me attempt to describe this production.

The concept was not particularly extant. The set consisted of four rotating square pillars that were alternately used a tombs, doors, decorations, and framing devices for when they snapped on the blue lights and fog machines to make the figures onstage appear as silhouettes and create cool stage pictures in an attempt to compensate for the fact that the show had absolutely no substance. The costumes looked like Elizabethan S&M-wear. Lady Capulet had on this bustier, riding breeches, boots, and then this contraption almost like a crinoline hoop that stuck out from her hips and had fringe on it. Lord and Lady Montague looked like members of the bloodplay community. The Capulets’ costumes were all white, and the Montagues’ all black, which did help, since I was sitting towards the back of the theatre. Also, in the first scene, the two Capulets were white-skinned, and the two Montagues were black, and I thought maybe we were going for some kind of apartheid-theme or something. We weren’t. There was nothing African about the production (in terms of set, costumes, etc.) except for the fact that in between each scene they would play wailing African music. I don’t know why. Lord Capulet was an effete bald man who made elaborate hand gestures and spoke with a lisp. Lord Montague was utterly unintelligible, rushing through the verse as though there was a prize for finishing first. Looking back on it, he might simply have been trying to offer us, the audience, some small mercy, knowing that we were in for the longest two and a half hours of our lives. The prince/chorus was an old crone in a wheelchair who would get pushed out to center stage and then get to her feet using crutches and make her speech, then get wheeled away. The friar was a young man whose first monologue was like watching some garden channel documentary: "Oh, hello audience, I almost didn’t see you there. You know, it’s days like this when I like to just put on a pair of clogs, grab my trowel, and head out into my garden. You’ll see here, we have some baleful weeds and precious juicéd flowers...) And Romeo and Juliet the most obnoxious pair of star-crossed lovers to ever walk the fictional earth.

My first exposure to Romeo and Juliet was the Wishbone book version when I was nine. I read it cover to cover without stopping, and I was enthralled. I’ll never forget that. However, once I got older and read the actual play, I realized that the plot was really stupid. And one of the things I hated about it was the idea that in a span of five minutes, two fourteen year olds could fall into a love that transcends time and reason. I always thought that if Romeo and Juliet had lived, they’d look back on all this in a couple of years and be like, "Boy were we ridiculous." Then Erin and TJ showed me that you can have Romeo and Juliet be romantic and transcendent and all that, and have that teenage rashness be part of their characters. The balcony scene doesn’t have to be this scene of timeless, perfect romance; the two lovers can be a little awkward, a little fumbling, but the beauty of the language carries them through.

This particular production took that idea a little bit too far.

Romeo was an angry, petulant teen. Juliet was a sighing, petulant teen. Together they were so petulant you just wanted to buy their parents the Kenneth Wanning series. They were also incongruously costumed, with Romeo in leather pants and a pink shirt unbuttoned to halfway down his chest, and Juliet in a poofy white gown. Once they fell in love (which occurred when Romeo sidled up to her at the party, grabbed her hand, made his little rough-hand speech, then started eating Juliet’s face while the rest of the party-goers danced a vaguely African dance in their Eliza-BDSM gear.), they were unbearable. Juliet, whether she was angry, in love, or hysterical, would draw out the last word of nearly every line she spoke, or sometimes a key middle word. "It is thy na-a-a-ame that is my enemy..." "It is not yet da-a-a-ay. It was the nightingale, not the laaaaahk that pierced..." "Stay but a little and I’ll come aga-a-a-ain." "O happy dagger, this they sheath. There rust and let me diiiiiieeee." O happy dagger. You were my favorite character in this production.

Then there was the balcony scene. The balcony scene was set up so that Romeo was on top of the wall, just below Juliet's balcony. Once Mercutio and Benvolio leave, Romeo mutters, angrily and petulantly, "He jests at scars that never felt a wound," reclines on the wall, reaches into his pants, and starts masturbating. Juliet is nowhere in sight. And the lines "It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise fair sun, etc., etc...."are his jerk-off fantasy.

Let me say this again. Juliet is not even of the balcony. Romeo. Has his hand down his leather pants. Actively stroking his own genitalia. And is speaking some of the most beautiful and famous lines in English literature.

At the time it happened, I think I was too shocked to actually process it. I just kind of shrugged it off, giggled uncomfortably with the rest of the audience, and moved on. Then in the second act, it hit me. I will never be able to watch that scene again. I will never be able to hear those lines, without picturing Dorky McLeatherpants pleasuring himself on the orchard wall.

I’m ruined.

I will need years of counseling.

The lack of concept, I can deal with. The overuse of the fog machines and gong-sounds, I will get past. As long as I never have to see her in anything ever again, I can forgive the girl playing Juliet for being terrible. But even when I am old and decrepit and have Alzheimer’s disease and can’t recognize my own children and don’t even know my own name, I will remember Romeo masturbating outside of Juliet’s balcony while apparently envisioning her as the sun arising to kill the envious moon who is already sick and pale with grief, etc.

The idea, I guess, was to make R&J more accessible to modern audiences, by showing that, while they do speak in iambic pentameter and heightened language, they’re really just your average, run-of-the-mill teenagers who masturbate outside each others’ windows, giggle and sigh a lot, are petulant, etc. The director also made sure that the audience could identify with all the characters, by using every reference to sticks, shafts, swords, lengths, widths, sizes, and the like as an excuse to have the character grab the nearest dagger, sword, canteen, whatever, and make a penis gesutre. Ha ha! Look, Shakespeare can be cool, if you put enough penis jokes in it!

The one idea explored in this production that I did find interesting, and I wish that I could see it pursued by a better cast in a better production, was that of Mercutio being in love with Romeo. It certainly added an intriguing dynamic, particularly to the Queen Mab speech, and the scene where Mercutio and Benvolio are calling for Romeo after he’s just leapt the orchard wall. If I had cared at all about any of these characters, it might have been cool. Unfortunately, Mercutio was an extremely unpleasant character. And Benvolio, who is supposed to be the confidante, and as everyone who has taken Directing 1 at Case knows, the confidante is supposed to be warm and charismatic, also came off as a slimy idiot. There was no one in the entire production you could even like! They were all disgusting and obnoxious and looked ridiculous. I’m pretty sure that in this production, the reason that the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets ends is because everyone is so relieved that they’ll never have to hear Romeo and Juliet talk again that a hitherto unexperienced joy descends on fair Verona, and nobody sees any reason to fight anymore. ("Why...art....thou...yet...so...fayuuuuhhh?" croaks Romeo in his last moments, before picking up Juliet’s "dead" body around the middle, so that her feet swing just above the ground, and carrying her around the tomb for a while. Jesus Christ. Will you please just drink the goddamn poison?) And let’s not forget the moment when Romeo is told of Juliet’s death, and he drops to the ground and SCREAMS, and suddenly the blue backlights snap on and the gong-noise sounds.

All I wanted was for the Case theatre department to have been there with me. Not because I want R&J to be ruined for you for all time, but because I needed someone to talk to about this.

I Bless the Rains

2007-02-17T16:32:00.000-08:00

February 9th, 2007

Yesterday we had a meeting about the Kayamandi project. Sondre was there. He asked me if I wanted to go for a drink afterwards. I said yes. And then this Dutch girl named Marjolein showed up. And wanted me to walk her home so she wouldn’t get raped or robbed. And I thought, Marjolein, now is really not the time. But I agreed. And she said that Sondre and I could come to her friend’s braai. But somehow on the way, Marjolein and I got separated from Sondre and the other girl who was walking with us. And that’s how I ended up at a braai with a whole bunch of Dutch people, who were using this braai as an opportunity to speak Dutch to one another. Finally Sondre showed up, but he ended up at a different table, and I didn’t even get to talk to him. Then it started to rain. And the girl whose party it was couldn’t believe that after weeks of dry heat, it would rain on her twenty first birthday. And then another girl from Botswana told her that in Africa, the rain was considered a blessing.

And I thought, wow. Maybe Toto actually does know what they’re talking about.

Today I remedied last night by asking Sondre out for drinks. He said yes. It was a good time.

Kayamandi

2007-02-17T16:30:00.000-08:00

February 9th, 2007

Today we went on a tour of Kayamandi, the black township where I will be working as an English tutor. At first, it was really hard to believe. Just so incredibly difficult to comprehend that this life was a reality for thousands of people living in South Africa. But at the same time, going there and seeing it up close, and seeing - again -the hope they have there, the ongoing effort to make things better, really helped. Because it forced me to see the township, not as some kind of tragedy - miserable, emaciated children, toothless old men, three-legged dogs hobbling around, and disease everywhere - but as a community, with a life and character of its own. The people there were very friendly, and although their living conditions are appalling, these people are living. They have lives, and their lives are not all misery and pain. There were neglected dogs and mangy chickens and shacks with people crammed like sardines, but there are also brick houses being built, and happy children playing. This township gets a lot of support from various groups, notably the Shofar Church, which I attended last week (I meant to write about that, but I never did. Trust that it was a memorable experience).

They showed us the new rape crisis center that is being set up. Rape is a big problem in Kayamandi. The center seeks to educate women about rape, and help them understand that if their husbands or boyfriends have sex with them without their consent, it is still rape. A lot of the women have trouble believing this. They also showed us one of the counseling rooms. It had toys in it, for the child victims. We were told that children are often raped in Kayamandi by men who are HIV positive, because of the widespread belief that having sex with a virgin will cure HIV. The center seeks to educate the people of Kayamandi about HIV and AIDS, and dispel those myths.

It’s not easy. Apartheid was violent and destructive in ways that are at once painfully visible and deeply hidden. There is evidence of it in places like Kayamandi, but it is in places like Kayamandi that you can see evidence of the changes that are taking place. Slowly, but surely, trying to find a way to undo the damage. Because of those years and years of violence and oppression and struggle, there are people who believe that there is an answer to their pain in the rape of children. And because of those years of violence and oppression and struggle, there are people who know what it is to fight, to keep fighting, until things change for the better.

That’s what I see when I look at South Africa. And I know I’m an outsider; I know there’s a lot that I don’t understand. But I look around, and I see a lot to admire. In Kayamandi, in Stellenbosch, in the people I meet. And I hope I can do something to help.

The Penguins, The Baboons, and the Edge of the World

2007-02-17T16:17:00.000-08:00

February 11th, 2007

Yesterday Barbora, Susan, Geraldine and I got two very nice young men from Saudi Arabia to take us to Cape Point to avoid paying the 80 rand we would have had to shell out if we went with ISOS (International Student Organization Stellenbosch). Unfortunately, our plan was thwarted by the fact that we got there and still had to pay 80 for admission.

However, going with Solomon (there is still some debate over what his name actually is; some are under the impression that it is Somnolon, while others believe it to be Solomon. Either way, he was a really good guy.) and Well turned out to be worth it, because we did not have to adhere to any guidelines regarding where we could go or how long we could stay. Boulders Beach is home to a colony of African penguins. Many of you already know how I feel about penguins. For those of you who don’t, I will tell you:

I. Love. Them.

I love penguins.

And I got right. Next. To. Them.

They were just lying around on the beach and on the rocks, rolling their little penguin eyes at all of us crazy tourists taking pictures and getting in their faces.

"Hey, Dolly, you should yawn and see if any of them have heart attacks."
"I yawned last time. You yawn."
"Fine, then you have to waddle."
"I’m not going to fucking waddle. I’m going to lie here in my sandpit."
"Alright, I’ll yawn."
25 Tourists, in unison: OH MY GOD, IT YAWNED! DID YOU SEE IT? DID YOU SEE IT YAWN? IT YAWNED!"
"Oh, here comes Barry. He’s gonna waddle."
"OH MY GOD, LOOK, IT’S WADDLING! DO YOU SEE IT WADDLING? LOOK HOW CUTE! (Six tourists have heart attacks).
"Hey, Eunice, stand up so they can see your baby."
"Tyler, no. No, it’ll be too much. That’s not funny."
"Come on! If we get rid of the rest of them, we can finally get some sleep."
"Alright, but I don’t think this is a good idea..."
"OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!!! IT’S A BABY!!! THERE’S A BABY PENGUIN!!! IT’S SO CUTE I’M GOING BLIND!! OH JESUS! JESUS CHRIST IT’S FLAPPING ITS BABY PENGUIN WINGS!! OH GOD!! OH GOD!! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" (The rest of the tourists die. The penguins go to sleep.)

If you look at the picture, you can see that I am right next to a penguin. I could have reached out and touched it, except every time I did it tried to bite me.

After Boulder’s Beach, we headed for the Cape of Good Hope. To get there, we had to drive through baboon country.

BABOONS ARE DANGEROUS AND ARE ATTRACTED BY FOOD

I was warned many times by South Africans that the baboons here are very aggressive. And as much as I love wildlife, I was prepared to maintain a respectful distance, should we encounter any baboons.

Geraldine was not. No sooner had I cracked some joke about being attacked by baboons, when we saw one ambling down the side of the road. So we all yelled "Pull over!" and Solomon pulled over and we watched the baboon. And Geraldine said, "Oh no, my camera’s in the back. I’m going to get out and get it." And she started to open the door. And we all yelled, "NO! No, don’t get out of the car! DON’T GET OUT OF THE CAR!"

You know that scene in Jurassic Park When the T-Rex shows up and the lawyer guy who’s driving the Jeep with the two kids freaks out and jumps out of the Jeep and just leaves it parked there with the kids in it? Suddenly, without any warning at all, Solomon opened the door, jumped out of the car, and ran. It turned out that he was just running to open the trunk and get Geraldine’s camera for her. But we thought he was running from the baboons, and leaving us in the car to get mauled.

So we started screaming for him to get back in the car, which he did. And then the baboon lumbered off into the trees without attacking, and we went on our way. I think we laughed hysterically for about ten minutes. Geraldine was mad that we’d made her stay in the car. She did not believe that baboons were dangerous, so I had to get out a brochure and show her the BABOONS ARE DANGEROUS AND ARE ATTRACTED BY FOOD page. IF YOU ENCOUNTER A BABOON, REMAIN IN YOUR VEHICLE, WITH YOUR WINDOWS ROLLED UP. Etc.

Anyway, we made it safely through baboon country, and arrived at

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

There are no words to describe the Cape of Good Hope. It is like Michelangelo teamed up with angels to paint J.R.R. Tolkien’s dreams. You climb up to a lighthouse on a cliff. And it is exactly like standing on the edge of the world. Because there is no more land until the South Pole. There was just wind and rocks and a sign that pointed the different directions to different places in the world, and said how many kilometers away the places were. It felt amazing to be there. We walked along the cliffs that overlooked the sea, and I sat down on the edge and did a little Titanic look-I’m-flying thing, and I was not even afraid of heights in theat moment. Then we walked the trail down to the beaches and stood on the coast and watched the waves attacking the land. The rocks were covered with metallic green snails.

When it got too windy for us, we left and drove into Cape Town, and had dinner at a Cuban restaurant. When the bill came, it was very difficult to figure out how to pay, since they don’t split check in South Africa. Or fake Cuba. So Well paid for everything, and said we shouldn’t pay him back. He had also bought us sandwiches earlier that day, and refused payment. He says it is part of his culture. I made him take 60 rand.

On the way back, we saw baboons. Lots and lots of baboons. Baboons with babies. Baboons eating bugs off one another. We also saw ostriches. They came right up to the car with the baboons. It was awesome. Geraldine had her camera with her this time, and got some amazing pictures, which I do not have yet. But when I get them, you will be able to see just how close I actually was to these dangerous creatures.

I think it was my favorite day in South Africa so far.

Americans

2007-02-17T16:14:00.000-08:00

I am suffering from culture shock. But it is not shock from South African culture. It is the shock of seeing my own culture out of context.

A whole slew of Americans live in the flat across the hall. They are from AIFS. And after listening to them, I am so glad that I did not come here through AIFS. I never thought I’d say this, but Claudia Anderson: Thank you.

One of the first nights I was here, these Americans across the hall got drunk, and held a little pow wow out in the hall.

They were so loud. And so obnoxious.

They were all swearing and trying to figure out where "Frank" had gone.

There was one girl in particular who made me which that my homeland would just sink into the sea and be lost forever. Her voice sounds like what would happen if you gave a Jack Russell terrier crack-cocaine and the capacity for human speech. But did not enlarge its brain. Actually, all you would have to do is give the Jack Russell terrier the capacity to say the words "Fuck" and "dick". Because that’s pretty much all this girl said. But she said them with such conviction and frequency.

Maybe I am just hypersensitive because I know the reputation Americans have in other countries. And I am worried about people here judging me because I’m American. I talked to Jacqueline Greene about this before I left, and she said that in her experience all you generally had to do if you encountered anti-American sentiment was clarify that you did not vote for G-Dubs, and things would be alright.

The thing is, the Americans here really are louder than everybody else. And stupider. During the Xhosa lesson, while everyone was practicing the Xhosa greetings for a single person and for a group of people, you could hear this high-pitched American voice, loud and clear: "I don’t get it!" What don’t you get? And why do you feel the need to announce that you don’t get it? And my personal favorite: during the first 5 minuted of Tsotsi, an American girl in the back row suddenly made an important discovery: "Wait, is it not in English? (No.) Is it in Afri-CANS? (It’s in Xhosa.) Do we have to read subtitles? (You don’t have to. But it might help if you don’t understand Xhosa) Oh my god, that’s so much work!"

Where do these people come from? I know, they come from America. But what are they doing in South Africa? I thought South Africa might be an escape from my culture. Instead, it’s serving as a context that highlights just how obnoxious, self-centered, spoiled, and grammatically lax my countrymen and women can be.

Today I was walking back to my dorm from the IT center when a guy drove up in a truck and asked me if I knew where something was. I told him I’m sorry, but I’m not from around here. And he said:

"Are you American?" and something about the way he said it and the way he looked at me made me think he was going to say something really not nice. So I braced myself.

"Yes," I said. And I waited for whatever he was going to say, reminding myself not to take it personally.

But he just said, "Welcome to South Africa," and drove away.

I don’t know. There is just something about this nation, and the healing it has done in the last thirteen years that just stuns and moves me. The hope here is contagious.

Why don’t I feel that hope in America? Is it because I live there, and my perception is skewed. Is it because I can’t even begin to hope again until 2008? Is it because I see South Africa making strides in 13 years that the U.S. hasn’t been able to make in 50?

I do feel welcome here. I feel like I’ve been invited to quietly observe something beautiful. It’s not all beautiful. But there’s something about the freedom here—the freedom to talk about the ugliness, instead of sweeping it into dark corners and pretending it doesn’t exist; the freedom to roam, the freedom to push forward—that feels more genuine that the flag-waving, Freedom-Fries, one-nation-under-God, check-out-this-homeland-security-budget freedom of my own country. But I want to feel this hope for my country. And here, I do. Here, in South Africa, instead of hating my country for what it’s not, I’m learning to love it for the potential it has, now that I’ve been able to step back from it. Now that I’ve seen it through the eyes of international students and South Africans. Nobody has anything particularly nice to say about America right now, and I certainly see why. But suddenly I believe that I’ll be able to go home and use the hope that I’ve learned here to do something to make America better. Because America is my home. I’ve never really thought about it that way. I still want to travel the world, and see everything. But now I’m realizing that America is probably always going to be my home base. And I’m okay with that.

Contrary to the way it might seem, sometimes, I do not hate my country. I like a lot of things about it.

I like its potential.

Table Mountain

2007-02-17T15:59:00.000-08:00

February 1st, 2007

Today Interstudy took all of its American students from various universities in South Africa hiking up Table Mountain. There were the three of us, John, Andy, and me, from Stellenbosch, one guy from the U of the Western Cape, and about sixty from the University of Cape Town. To get from Stellenbosch to the mountain, John and Andy and I rode in the Boogie Bus, which is a pimped out van painted like a colorful monster. The inside has CDs on the ceiling and US license plates on the walls. And a huge speaker system. The Boogie Bus is driven by Boogie Steve from Zimbabwe. Boogie Steve is awesome. He talked to us about motorcycles and South African economic disparities. The Cape Town people were very cliquish, so I spent most of the hike alone with my thoughts, which was nice. It was a beautiful hike. We passed through Fynnbos, which is Xhosa for "fine bush". It is the place that Rooibos tea comes from. I drink Rooibos tea almost every day. I was under the impression that it came directly from Heaven. The hike up took about six hours. We stopped by a beautiful natural lake to eat lunch. I grabbed what I thought was a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich. What it turned out to be was a peanutbutter and butter sandwich. Sounds disgusting, tastes great. That should be the peanutbutter and butter sandwich slogan.

The top of Table Mountain is the highest point in Cape Town, and the view from the top was, of course, stunning. I even ventured out on a treacherous rock despite my intense fear of heights to get this picture.

Then it was time to go down.

We had the option of taking the cable car down, or hiking down. The hike down was about an hour and a half. They said. And the cable car cost 15 rand. I wanted to save money. And be hardcore. So I decided to hike down.

On the way up, we used trails that looked as though they could be considered reasonably safe for human use. They were fairly wide and level, and firm, and went up at a gradual slope. The trail we took down went straight down. It was narrow, and comprised entirely of loose stones.

I mentioned before my fear of heights. The way up was so gradual and stable that I’d been able to all but forget my terror. But the way down was very sheer. I think the only thing that saved me from a panic attack was the fact that within ten minutes of climbing down, I was in so much pain that I actually wanted to die. So it really didn’t matter to me if I fell off the mountain or not. My legs shook with every step, and the stones under my feet shifted with every step, and pretty soon I was so physically and psychologically damaged that all I could do was take it step by agonizing step and wait for the inevitable plunge off the side of the mountain.

And think about the cable car.

I really, really hate admitting weakness. But there are some weaknesses you can’t really deny. Like the weakness of my decades-damaged ankles and knees. I had twenty rand in my pocket I could have taken the goddamn cable car. But I didn’t. Because a large part of my study abroad experience is about punishing myself for the things I can’t do, rather than exploiting the things I can.

I was also all alone, caught between two groups of people—the Captain Quick group, consisting of a bunch of athletic young men and women who were power walking down the mountain like they did it every day, and the Lieutenant Leisurely group, who didn’t seem to be having a difficult time; they were just taking things at their own pace, chatting and laughing, and occasionally stumbling and almost falling to their deaths, but still having a good time. It took me much longer than an hour and a half to get down that mountain.

I felt feeble and inadequate. And I can no longer move my legs. Barbora has assured me that the pain will be even worse tomorrow.

Still, I had a good time. I really mean that. On the way up, we walked through clouds. And one girl said, "When I was eight years old, this would have been the highlight of my year." And I silently agreed. Except walking through clouds is still one of the highlights of my year, even at twenty-one.

I made myself write down all this right away, about my weakness and emotional trauma, because I know in a matter of hours I’ll forget all about the horror and just be completely impressed with myself, and write about how I want to do it again tomorrow, and pretend that to all of you out there that I jogged up and down the mountain without any trouble. And that’s just not true. So there you have it, honestly: I had a good time, but I am in a lot of pain and was severely traumatized.

Picture of how I felt descending Table Mountain.

My First Braai

2007-02-17T15:57:00.000-08:00

January 27th - 28t, 2007

This weekend was jam packed with exciting activities for international students. On Friday, there was a pool party to welcome back the South African students. If you would ever like an exercise in physical inadequacy, go to a South African pool party. Anyway, they were offering free scuba lessons, so I suited up and tried it out, and it was fun. It’s very cheap to get certified here. I am seriously considering it.

STELLENBOSCH SWIMMING POOL FUN FACT:

There is no shallow end.
I swam around the entire pool, searching for a place where my feet touched the bottom. There was no such place. Somehow this seems a little dangerous. But maybe I am just a pansy-ass.

On Saturday, the Adventure Center, which helps students and tourists plan exciting and potentially fatal things to do while in S. Africa, hosted a braai. A braai is the South African version of a barbeque. It is a very important to the social culture of the country, and is often considered South Africa’s national past time. The national past time here is meat. Could I have picked a more appropriate country to go to? (In all fairness, though, the baked beans here are all vegetarian. I was very excited to discover this.) You light a fire in the braai pit, everyone brings their own meat, and whoever is hosting the braai grills the meat. It takes forever, and according to the carnivores, does not usually taste that good. But they say that what separates a braai from a barbeque is that a barbeque is about the food, and a braai is about the people. I can see how that could be true. Despite some initial misgivings, I ended up having a great time. I spent most of the time dancing, even though I was far inferior to the South Africans and Botswanans, and then somewhere I found the courage to ask Sondre to dance and so we were both inferior. Mama and Lizzie from Botswana had the real moves, but S.African Matthew and his gorgeous Polish boyfriend were also really good. I mostly just jumped around and waved my arms. But it was a good time. I look forward to future braais.

Orientation. Day 2.

2007-02-17T15:18:00.000-08:00

January 27th, 2007

The big draw at today’s orientation was a lecture on safety in Stellenbosch. This lecture was given by Ben Nel, a soft-spoken, perpetually anxious-looking South African who wants to make sure that we have a safe and enjoyable time here at Stellenbosch. So we need to know a few things:

a) We are not safe here. And we never will be.
b) An international student was mugged last night at 11 pm walking with her friend in town. She had her passport, phone, and all her money stolen. And now she is traumatized.
c) Every year, an international student flips a car. Always a German.
d) We are not safe at the beach. If the sharks do not get us, the undercurrent will.
e) Things aren’t actually so bad. Only about 5% of international students have anything horrible happen to them. There are 300 international students here. That means fifteen of us are going to die. I just did that with a calculator.
f) Don’t forget the imminent danger of AIDS.
g) There is a train that runs from Stellenbosch to Cape Town. Do not use it. Ever.
h) Put the police on speed dial on your phone.
i) Have a good semester.

Everyone came out of the lecture looking a little sick.

At seven, it was time to return to the Wilcocks Building for a nice, relaxing evening, watching a movie and drinking wine.

The movie they showed us was Tsotsi, the South African film that won the Best Foreign Picture Oscar last year. For those of you who have not seen the film, it opens with the protagonist and his gang boarding a train (the one from Stellenbosch to Cape Town, perhaps?) and stabbing a random man with an ice pick.

Okay, seriously. We get it. We won’t ride the train. We won’t go out after dark. We’ll steer clear of the beaches. We'll stay in our rooms and weep tears of terror.

The movie was actually quite good, and afterwards I got some wine (it had aromas of peach and wasted youth and tasted like maize) and went outside and talked to Sondre. He had skipped out on orientation today to look for lodging. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: So, did you like the movie?
Sondre Kippenes: Yeah. Did you?
Me: Yeah. So, did you find a room yet?
My thoughts: Do you want to use mine?
Sondre: No. I have to call someone tomorrow about getting one.
Me: Cool.

I think things are going well between us.

Orientation. Day 1

2007-02-17T15:13:00.000-08:00

I am in love. His name is Sondre, as in "sondry londes" from the prologue to The Canterbury Tales. Sondre Kippenes. He is from Norway. I knew we were destined to be together the minute I sat down at table 17 for the welcome breakfast, and our eyes met and I thought maybe he was a tour guide because his shirt looked kind of like the tour guide shirts and I was confused because the Indian girl was also a tour guide and there was only supposed to be one per table but I figured out that Sondre was not a tour guide and at the same time I realized that my soul suddenly felt complete.

I dealt with this by refusing to look or speak to him all throughout breakfast. I spoke to everyone else, and ignored him about as blatantly as you can ignore somebody. After breakfast we had an ice breaker, where every table had to make a flag representing the nationalities of everyone at the table. First we had to go around and say what was special about our country. Sondre said the geography. Oh Sondre. I’ll tell you what’s special about Norway. And it’s not the geography.

So together Divina from South Africa, Lief from Sweden, Stefaan from Belgium, girl-whose-name-is-one-of-the-strangest-combinations-of-consonants-I’ve-ever-seen from the Netherlands, Carius from Zimbabwe, Alyssa and Justin from America, Sondre from Norway and I drew a big circle and divided it into seven pieces, and each of us had to fill in our pie piece with pictures representing our country. Lief drew a ship. Sondre drew water. Stefaan drew beer. Divina drew lions and elephants. Carius drew a bunch of squares that I think were somehow meant to represent inflation. Alyssa, Justin, and I drew a mountain, the Statue of Liberty, and a TV.

There was a prize for best flag, but we did not win.

Later we had a crash course in Xhosa (I could not do the clicking; no one really could. But we learned a fun song, which we sang in rounds), and a lecture about AIDS.

The young man presenting the AIDS lecture was very fond of metaphors. AIDS was alternately compared to a train, a taxi, and a mental patient drawing spit circles around flies and crushing them when they ventured outside the spit. Then, at the very end, a picture of a giant wave came up on the screen, and the word DANGER in big scary letters. The guy explained to us that if you life outside of Cape Town all your life and never really see the ocean, then a big wave like this might seem very dangerous. But if you live in Cape Town, and you know how to surf, and you know that sharks only attack 1 in every 10,000 humans, then you might see this wave as an opportunity. And then the word OPPORTUNITY! Popped up on the screen in big, fun, reassuring letters. The guy told us that this is a lot like AIDS.

I am still not sure exactly how.

When we went on the campus tour, I decided to try a slightly less subtle approach to pursuing Sondre. I talked to him. There are three standard questions you have to ask international students you are meeting for the first time: "Where are you from?" "What are you studying?" and "Why did you choose South Africa?" I tried the second one. This worked out fairly well, because he was studying political science, and turned out to be an interesting guy. I was a little embarrassed because, like every international student, he seemed to know a great deal about America and American politics, whereas the only things I know about Norway are Vikings and Henrick Ibsen. And apparently it has nice geography.

When we were done with the tours, Sondre mentioned that he could go for something to drink.

And out of nowhere, my own voice said, "So could I!"

And that’s how I ended up in a bar with Sondre. And John. Drinking my first coke in four years.

Oh how quickly I will compromise my values for attractive Scandinavians.

My third roommate moved in tonight. Her name is Geraldine, and she is from Argentina, but has lived the last two years in Spain, and just finished a three month study in Japan. She 's adorable. She and Barbora and I talked for a long time. How is it that all these international students have been everywhere? It seems like anyone you talk to just casually mentions the time they spent in Cameroon or Greenland or Moldova. I haven't even been to Canada. I don't really understand where Greenland is. Andway, I'm really thrilled about my multinational flat. Argentina, Czech Republic... This is great.

Barbora

2007-02-17T15:07:00.000-08:00

January 25th, 2007

My flatmate Barbora from the Czech Republic arrived this evening. She seems really cool. She is studying political science. We talked for several hours about the Czech Republic and traveling, and Canada (she worked there two years ago for a summer). I know it sounds stupid, but I was really nervous before coming here about the prospect of interacting with international students. I was really excited about it, but I’ve never really talked to anyone my age from another country, and I guess I foresaw language barriers, or barriers caused by my own ignorance about other countries. So I have this weird sense of relief right now that I had such a good conversation with her and managed not to embarrass myself. Let’s hope that continues.

Observations

2007-02-17T14:58:00.001-08:00

Some observations about South Africa.

SOUTH AFRICA FUN FACT #1

It is really hot here.
There used to be a saying in Perkins High School. "Hotter than balls," we said. Well, I didn’t say it. But a lot of people did. And I thought those people were stupid. But now I have to concede. It is hotter than balls here. It is hotter than hotter than balls. I was outside for a total of maybe twenty minutes. And I came back with a sunburn. Apparently it’s over 40 degrees. I don’t know what that is in Fahrenheit, because I have no number skills. But I’ll bet it’s something crazy.

SOUTH AFRICA FUN FACT #2

Traffic laws are just suggestions.
There don’t seem to be any actual road rules here. For instance, South African drivers do not seem to feel any legal obligation to stop if there is a person walking in front of them. They also drive on the left side of the road, which I have a very difficult time processing.

SOUTH AFRICA FUN FACT #3

Everyone here is hot.
If you have ever wondered why all of the South Africans we Americans know, such as Charlize Theron and Dave Matthews, are very attractive, it is because they are hoarding the world’s best gene pool down here. Most regular people here are actually hotter than Charlize Theron and Dave Matthews.

SOUTH AFRICAN FUN FACT #4

The label on the tap doesn't actually have anything to do with the temperature of the water that comes out of it. In this way, every shower becomes an adventure.

The Wine Tour

2007-02-17T14:12:00.000-08:00

January 20th, 2007

Today we went on a tour of the wineries in Stellenbosch and the surrounding areas. The day began at 10:00, when a van full of people from all over the world came to our residence to pick us up. The tour consisted of four wineries, all of which had names that I could not pronounce. Except Fairview.

For those of you who have never done wine tasting before, I will describe the process for you. First, you look at a "wine list" which has the name of each wine plus a description that looks something like this:

Cabernet Sauvignon, 04. Thick, heady, full-bodied, gently-aged wine has aromas of peach, asparagus, summertime in Montana, and cardamom. The taste is at once fruity and sensuous, with lemony biscuit overtones and hints of rose petals and tiramisu. The background is a creamy, semi-sweet mixture of pumpkin log and leather. The foreground is an alluring blend of other abstract concepts and improbable flavors. This wine is all the things you wish you could in life have but can’t; it also once discovered its own unified theory of relativity. Aged in French oak barrels.

Then you tell the person at the counter that you want to try the...and then you point to a wine on the list so that you do not have to try to pronounce the name—which is at once French and German sounding, with lemony biscuit overtones. The person at the counter fills a glass about half full with wine, and then you are supposed to swill it around, stick your nose in it and sniff. Then you take a sip and exclaim something like, "Mmm. Oh, yes, I taste the freshly cut grass!" which of course you don’t; because it tastes like wine. Then you can either knock back the glass like it’s a shot, or else you wait until your friends aren’t looking and dump it in one of the spitting barrels. It is often better, before selecting one of these options, to sit with your glass of wine for a few minutes, swilling and sniffing, until someone comes up to you and asks, "Which one did you try?" to which you reply. "I tried the...(and then either say "this one", and point to the list, or just say something in French really fast). The other person will then ask you how you like it, to which you reply, "It’s good!" in a voice that suggests eternal optimism—even though it just tastes like wine. It also might be a good idea to throw in an "I love Chardonnay," even if you are not drinking Chardonnay, because it will make you seem classier. Chardonnay was referenced in an Alanis Morissette song, and if Alanis likes Chardonnay, then it is a safe bet that it is something you want to be affiliated with. You should then ask the other person what they are having, and if they are enjoying it. When they reply, "It’s good!" you can make a comment like, "I was thinking of trying that next," or, "The description looked interesting." The description probably stated that the wine had the aroma of a new car and tasted like an undiscovered galaxy. Once you’ve tried five wines or so, it will be time to move on to the next winery. It will also be time for you to realize that you have not eaten breakfast, and you just had five half glasses of wine on an empty stomach, and maybe that it why walking is not as easy as you remembered it.

The second winery was by far my favorite. It has goats. They live in a tower. The wines were good too. They tasted like truth and zucchini and the street where I grew up. By the time we were done there, I was really, really ready for lunch. Ten different kinds of wine is simply not the way to start your morning. Can you imagine what Cheerios would have to say about that?
For those of you who do not believe that drinking impairs your judgement in really dangerous ways, let me just say this: there were no meatless and cheeseless options on the lunch menu. Normally I just would not have eaten. But I knew that I could not possibly do two more wineries with nothing in my stomach.

And so I ate cheese.

Feta cheese, to be precise, which only two weeks ago I accused of smelling "like the apocalypse." That is no lie. Of all the cheeses I’ve hated through the years, only cheddar and powdered cheeses occupy the same circle of contempt in which I hold feta cheese.

Jill’s List of Cheese Hatred:

1. The cheese powder on cheetos, doritos, Kraft mac, etc
2. Cheddar
3. Feta
4 Parmesan
5. American
6. Colby Jack
7. Romano
8. Gorgonzola
9. Swiss
10. Provolone
11. Mozzarella

The feta was melted in with spinach and mushrooms and stuffed into a pancake, and I had enough wine in my system to convince myself to choke it down. It was pretty awful, and I felt unclean afterwards, and my breath definitely did smell like the apocalypse. But I ate it. The whole thing. And after that, I was ready for more wine.

The third winery, which had some hardcore Boer name, also had a beautiful view. It was up on a mountain, overlooking Stellenbosch and the surrounding regions. I had some Chardonnay, some Pinotage, and then I called it quits on the wine and sat outside admiring the view. I think the German woman was getting a little wined-out as well. The group from Finland was still going strong, however.

By the time we arrived at the final winery, I did not even want to think about wine anymore. I developed a clever plan by which, instead of tasting wine at this winery, I would just sit around not tasting wine. Unfortunately, instead of the usual tasting setup, where we would be given empty glasses and could go up to the counter and taste at will; this winery had already set out six glasses of wine for each of us. For a few minutes, I just sat there, staring at all that wine in front of me. Then gamely, I picked up the Sauvignon. And sipped. Then I picked up the next wine. And sipped. I just kept sipping, little sips, trying not to throw up.

In the end, I couldn’t even finish one of the six glasses. They didn't even have spit buckets. So I just sat there, admiring the trees until it was time to go home. That's where I am right now. In my flat. Trying not to think about wine.

South Africa. Day 1.

2007-02-17T13:47:00.000-08:00

January 19th, 2007.

One of the first things I did in South Africa was to drink the water. Twice. This was probably a little risky, as I don’t think my health insurance covers Retard. But I haven’t died yet, so I think it’ll be alright. The water here is "champagne colored", according to Erna at the front desk. This is a nice way of saying that it’s a little yellow. But it’s because they don’t bleach it so supposedly it’s better for your body anyway. The point is that I wasn’t thinking, and I drank two glasses of it. But I’m fine. I spent the day opening a bank account and shopping. As some people know, one of my three main goals for my South African experience—along with changing for the better and cage diving with great white sharks—was to find out if South Africans are familiar with the song Africa by Toto, and get a sense for how they feel about it in terms of accuracy, substance, use of pan flute, etc. Well, I was strolling through the Pick n’ Pay, when what did I hear but a very familiar drum beat and that twinkling instrument that I think might be a xylophone or something...and sure enough, they were playing Africa on the radio—in Africa! But then they cut it off before the chorus, which leads me to believe that maybe one of the baggers put it on as a joke, and the manager was like, "Come on, guys, it’s not funny anymore," and put on J Lo instead. Also, it turns out that one of the other two Americans who came here through Interstudy wants to go shark cage diving too! And here I was all worried that I wouldn’t be able to find anyone to go with me. That’s two of my three goals knocked off right there in the first day! All I have to do now is open myself completely to this experience and accept all the changes to my mind and soul that come with it. And I have six months to do that. So I think I’ll be fine.

Before coming here, I read about culture shock in the student handbook that Interstudy sent me. And I remember being sort of amused by the descriptions of it in the handbook, because they made it sound like a disease, with symptoms like extreme irritability and hostility toward the host culture, often focused on one particular aspect or phrase, or custom; and different phases, like Initial Euphoria, Slow Mental Deterioration, Suicide Attempt, etc. And I thought, well, people shouldn’t go abroad if they aren’t aware of what they’re in for. And doesn’t culture shock just mean that it’s a little "shocking" at first to be in a foreign country, but then you get over it in a couple of days? But I am willing to revise some of my attitudes now. I am thrilled to be here; it’s beautiful, it’s stunning, but when I woke up this morning to voices yelling in a language I’ve never heard, it suddenly hit me how far away I am, physically, from my home. And I would be lying if I said that it didn’t occur to me, however fleetingly, that I might have made a huge mistake.

But I know I haven't. I’m not terrified, or "shocked" or anything, but I can see how, if these feelings continued, they could potentially lead to everything that was described to me in my handy student guide.

My flat is very nice; I have my own bedroom and my own bathroom, newly renovated. My room looks out into a courtyard filled with trees and benches. There is a big common room and a kitchen with two refrigerators and a very strange cooking machine that I do not understand at all yet. I am the only one here so far, but this flat has the potential for up to three roommates. When I arrived last night I was given a bag of provisions to last me until I could do some hardcore grocery shopping. Nina at the JYA office will be happy to know that I was given my very own jar of peanut butter immediately upon arrival. I was also given a package of biscuits. They are Tennis brand biscuits, and let me tell you something about them. They were invented in Heaven, originally intended to be the only food eaten in the garden of Paradise. But then Eve ate the apple and ruined everything, so God sent Tennis biscuits down to earth along with humanity, to serve as a constant temptation. And of course Adam and Eve ate the whole package immediately, and there souls were damned. But then God realized that it wouldn't do any good to make Tennis biscuits a Hellworthy sin, becasue then no souls would ever make it to Heaven, except diabetics, and he decided that getting fat would be punishment enough for humanity. The package says that they are made with real butter, syrup, and coconut. I suspect that there is also a little bit of crack-cocaine in there somewhere. The good news is that because South African nutrition facts are written in such a way that I don't understand them, I have no idea how much saturated fat I'm consuming. And therefore I don't care.

When I was finished cramming crack biscuits down my throat in my lonely kitchen, I went out to explore the town, and of course I got lost. The town is laid out in a convenient way, in terms of everything you could possibly need being located in one place. The only problem is that, while the buildings in the town are beautiful, it seems the designers found one look that really worked well for them, and just stuck with that. Because all of the buildings look exactly the same. Also, Stellenbosch does not appear to believe in street signs. Not that that would help - nothing can save me from my complete lack of directional comprehension. But it seems odd, to never know what street you’re on. How do you give people directions?

In the evening, John and Andy and I went to dinner at a restaurant in town called the Wijnhuis (Wine House). I had something called a rocket salad, which was very good. When I came back, I went out to the courtyard to read under the stars. There were two cats in the courtyard. One of them was gnawing on something in the far corner of the courtyard, and as I read, the wind blew downy gray feathers across the grass to the foot of my bench.

I think I'm really going to like it here.

The Beginning

2007-02-17T13:11:00.001-08:00

January 18th, 2007

The following preview has been approved for all audiences by the Motion Picture Association of America.

(Movie preview voice)
Jill Smith was an ordinary girl
(Ordinary girl-type music starts playing. Shot of Jill walking down Euclid Ave, past the Triangle; Starbucks, Rascal House, etc.)
About to embark on an extraordinary journey
(Shot of South African Airways sign. Shot of plane arriving in JFK Airport, New York; Jill getting off the plane, smiling.)
Until something happened
(Music fades out; Jill strides in slow motion. Fade to black.)
That changed everything.
(Sound of a plane engine. Shot of Jill running outside, waving her arms as the flight to Johannesburg passes overhead. Slow fade, grainy shot of Jill inside the airport, falling to her knees in front of the SAA counter and being dragged away by airport security. Fade to black again.
Jill (vo, urgent): I need another flight to Johannesburg, tonight.
Airline worker (vo): I’m sorry, ma’am, you’ll have to wait until 5:00 tomorrow.
(Music starts up again.)
Now, she’s about to discover
(240 rotating shot of Jill standing in the middle of the JFK airport, staring up at the skylights)
That sometimes the greatest adventures
Are the ones that happen close to home.
(Cue explosion of angsty, modern, emotional-surge song, preferably the refrain of "She Said" by Collective Soul, over shots of Jill walking through the food court, buying a new gold watch at the MMA store, getting a facial at the ExpressSpa, brushing her teeth in the airport bathroom, riding the airtrain. Another rotating shot of Jill in the middle of the airport, arms spread wide, bathed in the light from the skylights.)
Jill (vo): I don’t ever want to leave. This place is like my home now.
(Shot of Jill in the dark terminal, stretched out across the seats in gate B30, pulling her coat over herself and settling down to go to sleep. Fade to black.)
Trapped in the Kennedy Airport
In theaters everywhere January 16th.

This film is not yet rated.

That’s the preview for a movie based on the part of my life where I was really really excited about going to South Africa, then missed the plane to Johannesburg. After four days of being baffled but impressed by the unusually mild Cleveland weather, I woke up the morning of the 16th to find that it was snowing. I made it to the airport, sent my bags on their way to Cape Town, passed through security without a hitch, found my gate, and waited for the plane to arrive and take me to New York. And waited and waited. And waited. I waited until it was forty minutes past the departure time. Then finally the plane arrived, and I boarded. And waited. And waited. And waited until the captain came on the intercom and announced that we would be waiting for another twenty-five minutes. It was a little after two-thirty. The flight to JFK was an hour and ten minutes in the air, plus another fifteen minutes to get to the gate. My flight to South Africa was to leave at 5:20. Now I can’t do math in my head, but even I could tell that those were dangerous numbers. By the time we got off the plane in JFK, it was 4:40. I tried to pull one of those cinematic mad dashes through the airport, elbowing people out of the way, running on the moving walkway, accidentally hitting children in the face with my backpack...unfortunately, JFK is a HUGE airport. Huge. It turned out that I was not even I the correct building to board the South African flight. I had to take the airtrain to Terminal 4. So I did. And I didn’t see a single sign for South African Airways. And no one seemed the least bit interested in helping me. Finally someone informed me that the reason there were no signs was because SAA was closed for the day, and my flight had already left.

I’ve only flown a handful of times in my life, and I’ve never flown alone. I have no idea what you do when you miss your eighteen hour flight to another continent. And no one at JFK seemed too keen on offering advice.
I called my travel agent, Megan Conway, who was, in the course of this debacle, the only person to be genuinely sympathetic and helpful. She gave me the number of the Holiday Inn Express at the airport, and said that there was plenty of room on the next day’s flight to Johannesburg and that I should be able to go to the airport the next day and get the tickets changed. She also said that my luggage would be fine, that it would be waiting for me in Cape Town. She even called Interstudy for me to let them know I would be arriving a day late.

Megan Conway has a special place reserved for her in the choirs of Heaven.

So I spent my 21st birthday all alone in a Holiday Inn Express in New York. I didn’t even have enough money to get a vending machine snack.

The next day I boarded a plane to Johannesburg. The flight was about sixteen hours, with a one hour fuel stop in Senegal. The plane was huge, and the seat backs all had little screens (as I said, I haven’t flown much before, so this was amazing to me) with full entertainment centers, including music, movies, tv, and video games. I was completely content for about the first six hours of the flight. I played chess, poker, blackjack, and a game called Invasion, the object of which was to move back and forth across the screen shooting down alien spaceships until the world was safe. A lot of you may have noticed that aliens did not take over the earth on the night of January 17th—you have me to thank for this. Although at one point the game paused automatically so the captain could make an announcement, and I used that time to eat some of my airline peanuts, and then the game started up again before I was ready. So if some of your homes and families perished, I’m sorry. I was eating peanuts.

I also watched a documentary on Shakira, an episode of Two and a Half Men, about three minutes of a British show called Doctor Who, about a young doctor who travels through time in a magic phone booth that looks exactly like a porta potty. I also watched the first halves of two movies, the titles of which I would rather not make public, because I’m embarrassed to have watched them of my own volition. One starred Uma Thurman and Luke Wilson, the other starred Alison Lohman and Tim McGraw. And that’s as far as I’m going to go. Keep in mind that the selection was limited. I was hoping The Queen would be an option. But I guess it was sold out.
After exhausting the entertainment system, I settled down to try to catch an hour of sleep before we made our 6 am landing in Senegal. You know how there’s always a crying baby on the plane? This thing wakes up at the same time I settle back and close my eyes, and starts wailing. I was all for tossing it off the plane, but the rest of the tribe was not with me. Actually, I didn’t ask. But I’ll bet a lot of them would have voted with me—including the mother. Then, as soon as Hellchild quieted down, the man sitting in my row, who up to this point had been virtually silent, suddenly turned into Theodore Throat-Clearer. Every thirty seconds or so he experienced a compelling urge, which he did not hesitate to act upon, to drive a massive wad of mucus loudly and defiantly from his throat. It occurred to me that trying to sleep on the plane was a very foolish thing to do, and maybe I should just play another game of Invasion. But finally I dozed off. When I awoke, we were beginning our descent. That’s when I felt the first twinges of sickness in my stomach. Nothing bad at first. Just a little cramping, some discomfort. I just tried to lie quietly and read. As we prepared for takeoff, it suddenly became very clear that the airline waffles in my body were not planning to stay there. Unfortunately, the seat belt sign was on. I waited it out, and the pain started to subside, and I thought, good, I’m alright. It returned just as the fasten seatbelts sign flicked off, and I got up and ran to the back of the plane to the bathroom. That was about the time we started experiencing some turbulence.

I’m just going to stop there. Even I draw the TMI line somewhere. I’m just saying, it was a rough flight.
I slept for most of the journey from Senegal to Johannesburg, awakened just prior to descent by the dulcet tones of...

THE BITCH FROM DOWN UNDER.

Apparently Satan thought it would be fun to incarnate himself as a 5'9, twenty-something platinum blond from Australia and hop on the flight from New York to Johannesburg. She was traveling with someone, I thought at first that he was her boyfriend, but then she asked him some question that it seemed like she would have known the answer to they were together—possibly "What’s your name?" or something to that effect. Maybe not. At first I was enchanted by her accent, but pretty soon all I wanted was to stop hearing her voice, accent or no. She actually made some out loud reference to disposing of the wailing child, which I should have appreciated, but the way she said it just sounded rude and heartless. I guess the way I said it a minute ago also sounded rude and heartless.

We landed in Johannesburg at about 5:40, and I knew I’d have to scurry through customs in order to catch my connecting flight to Cape Town at 7.

The following preview has been approved only for certain audiences by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Movie Preview Voice:
She thought the worst was over
Flight attendant voice: South African Airways flight 204 preparing to land in Johannesburg. Those catching the connecting flight to Cape Town please collect your luggage and proceed through customs, then transfer to the domestic terminal.
(Shot of Jill disembarking, a smile on her face)
She thought she was home free.
(Shot of Jill heading for baggage claim.)
But she’s about to discover
(Jill strides in slow motion. Fade to black)
That lightening really can strike the same place twice
(Shot of Jill at the counter.)
Worker: I’m sorry, ma’am we have no record of your bags.
Jill: That’s impossible.
Worker: I’ll just need you to fill out this missing baggage report...
(Fade to black)
Jill (vo) I need to be on the seven o’clock flight to Cape Town.
Airline worker (vo) I’m sorry, ma’am, that flight is closed.
Jill: OH, COME ON!
Now, she’s trapped in a foreign airport.
(Shot of Jill wandering aimlessly through the Johannesburg airport).
With no way to contact her study abroad program
And no local currency.
Jill: JESUS CHRIST! WHAT THE GOD*$#($) F$(*$)#)$($O%#$$#???!!!
Last Flight to Cape Town.
Coming January 17th.

Rated R for strong language and drug use.

That’s the movie preview for the part of my life where I was so relieved to finally land in South Africa, safe and with my stomach lining intact, that I forgot about the very real possibility that the airline would lose all of my luggage and that in the process of filling out the missing luggage report, I would miss my flight to Cape Town.
They put me on the next available flight, but I had no way of calling Interstudy to let them know I was going to be late, so I spent the next two and a half hours on the verge of hysteria, convinced that there would be no one to meet me in Cape Town when I got there. Luckily, the Interstudy representatives had waited around, and drove me in the dark and rain, to

STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY.

The town of Stellenbosch has a population of about 90,000 people. It is the second oldest town in South Africa, after Cape Town. It is located on the Western Cape, on the banks of the Eerste River, about 50 kilometers from Cape Town. The university was founded in 1866, and has become one of the top universities in South Africa. (source: Wikipedia and Jill's memory)

It will be my home for the next 6 months.