Africa via Oxford? Another Eve update

When I left you last I was on my whirlwind Eurotrip, somewhere between Italy and France. The week in Milan was very ‘divertimento.’ It’s a nice city, but one that needs some tweaking, such as air conditioning (NOT optional when the temp. averages 32°C in summer), maps of bus and tram routes (it’s always a bit of an adventure when using public transport in Italy… who knows where you’ll end up!), and functioning ATMs (when one stops working, apparently the entire system shuts down… another example of practical Italian thinking).

Other than that, there are some things that the Italians have just right. #1 on that list is clearly FASHION and SHOPPING (gentlemen, you may skip the next few sentences). Now, all the big designers are in Milan but at the same prices as NYC, so going to Armani/Prada/D&G/Gucci is a waste of time. However, there are tons of nice boutiques that are very reasonably priced by European standards. And yes, I did do some serious damage in the shoe department ;)
Another thing that the Milanese have right is ‘aperitivo’—evening cocktail period where for the price of one drink you have an open buffet with tons of salads, pastas, breads etc It’s a fabulous way for financially constrained students to basically get a free meal (and by financially constrained, I mean broke from shoe shopping).

So in addition to the shopping, eating, drinking, and sightseeing, France and I left scorching Milan for one day and took the train down to the coast. The train ride was an adventure in itself and I think the whole day can truly best be captured through pictures.









Anyway, after Milan, I spent a long weekend in Paris before heading back to NYC for a whole 4 days. A logical stop-over on my way to the UK, don’t you think? Actually I went back home for my sis’ high school graduation (congrats again Anne-France!), which I combined with a week of packing and partying. I had a great send-off party at Luna Park, a very nice outdoor bar in Union Sq park, and later at Cain (yes, I still heart Cain, despite the door bitch).



Anyway I moved to Oxford last weekend. My neighbourhood is pretty, um, interesting… Lots of students, plus soap-dodging hippies who drive old Saabs and walk around bare-foot, East Asian immigrant families who own taxi companies and ten thousand small grocery stores apiece etc. It’s the quirky multi-cultural part of Oxford, which is a nice way of saying that I don’t walk around alone after dark. But it’s all good, I survived Langa ;)

Unfortunately, my grandfather passed away last week, which was obviously very sad and hard to deal with since I’m so far from my family. However I’m quite busy with discovering Oxford and meeting new people that I haven’t been too depressed. Plus I started my internship at Africa Now last week and it’s going really well… The office is small and quite laid-back. We listen to music and the director makes coffee and tea for everyone (you better believe I love this role reversal). Some of the work I’m doing is the classic boring stuff like writing press releases and processing donations (donate online now!), but other things are quite cool like compiling case studies and being interviewed by MTV News.

What?!! Yeah, I’m being interviewed by MTV news because of the work Africa Now is doing for the Make Poverty History campaign (makepovertyhistory.org). For some reason, I’m the only one available and the director thinks that I’ll be great since I’m young (aka MTV audience age) and supposedly articulate and knowledgeable the issues. However, I am clearly FREAKING OUT. The interview is tomorrow afternoon in London!! AHHHH!!
Ok, must chill… *breathe*… Anyway I’ll obviously let you all know when it’s airing, but I think it’s only on MTV Europe.

Well, after my first TV appearance, I’m flying to Amsterdam for the weekend to meet up with some friends which is probably exactly what I need right now, if you know what I mean. Anyway I’m off for now… More info about Oxford, my housemates etc on the next update.

Eternal sunshine, literally

I know it's been a while since my last update, mostly because I've seen most of you since my return from South Africa... plus I doubt any of you want to read on about my day to day life up at school (fascinating as it is). Generally it was a great semester; 'studying abroad' at Amherst College (high school actually), living with boys (3 of 'em!), having a crazy 21-bday partay in NYC (caviar and pink gorillas?), organizing a huge tsunami relief fundraiser, partying hard, and working harder.



Anyway the semester is over and done with (finally) and I've now been on summer vacation for a little over 2 weeks... which doens't seem like much time, but feels like a lot considering what I've been up to. After a week of partying (and sleeping... oh sleeping is good) in NYC, I took off with my friend Rob from Princeton and Mark, one of his friends from GWU, to Reykjavik. I can see you all scratching your heads in bewilderment... indeed, why would someone want to go to Iceland? Well hopefully this little update will convince you.

So the hypothesis that I formulated during my stay is: Icelandic people are crazy. And it was confirmed over and over again... Reykjavik is one of the craziest party cities that I have ever been to--this coming from someone like me. We met a bunch of Icelandic students who were more than happy to show us around to the good bars, buy us ridiculously overpriced drinks and practice their (very good) English. The nightlife starts around 1am--that's just the pregaming. The real partying doesn't get going until around 3am, which of course makes sense since the sun is shining. A lot of places stay open until 7am on Friday and Saturdays because it's the traditional 'runtur', which is basically a city-wide bar crawl. Plus we happened to have landed in Reykjavik during graduation weekend, so the partying was all the more crazy.







In addition to lots of drunken stumbling and making jokes about Vikings (the best Icelandic beer is actually called Viking), we did a bit of the touristy stuff... saw the geysers (2 of only 5 in the whole world), some waterfalls, some volcanos, the mid-atlantic ridge that is slowly pushing Europe and America away from each other. I also went on a 4 hour horse trek around lava fields... Basically your usual tourist sights ;) We also walked around Reykjavik and visited the giant phallic Church and the Icelandic Historical Museum, which had fun activities for kids like dressing up as a Viking (which I did) and reconstructing heathen graves (which I did not).







Plus we saw lots of the sights and other cool stuff during our evening stumbles around town, a nice aspect of the eternal summer sun. One not so nice aspect is that it tends to make sleeping in a hostel with no black-out shades rather tricky. I think Icelandic people just deal with it by getting smashed every night, a tradition which we tried to adhere to as well.

A few last notes about Iceland and Reykjavik:
-it is the most expensive country I have ever visited--$20 for a cocktail in a normal bar (aka NOT a super upscale/trendy place)!! To put things in even sharper perspective: some of the taxis are Porsche Cayennes.
-the mullet is back (or maybe it never left)...and this applies to both men and women.
-a red light is only red if there is an old lady in the middle of the road... and it is never red at night.
-12 degrees celsius is hot weather! Break out the shorts and tee-shirts, and get yourself some ice cream!
-Icelandic rock music is very angry, which I suppose is understandable when you only have 3 hours of sunlight in winter... in addition, Icelandic people are notably sexually active (not to say promiscuous), which is understandable for exactly the same reason.

Well I'll stop boring you all about my little Icelandic journey... besides I've been in Italy since Monday so all of this is ancient history ;) I'm taking Eurorail to Paris this afternoon for a long weekend with friends and family and then back to NYC for 4 days before taking off to the UK for the summer!!

Craving some biltong

Well I presented my Indep. Study Project stuff (again) for a special research symposium at Smith last weekend... Looking over that thing that dominated my life last semester brought back all those great memories, and also the not-so-great ones (um, bedbugs anyone?)...
I have this list of all these South African idiosyncracies that I miss and that I think we all actively need to work on bringing over to the statess... For example, integrating "hectic" into our everyday vocab, calling traffic lights "robots" (because they clearly are), walking around barefoot--everywhere, calling napkins serviettes, and systematically removing all trash cans (or "rubbish bins"). There are obviously some things that we all love about South Africa that will never hit it big here, like putting mayo on everything (including pizza--yummy, *gag*), making cream soda the color of fluorescent nuclear waste, making people pay for plastic bags at the supermarket, and, of course, minibus taxis.
Otherwise life has been pretty decent, particularly the last week since the weather has finally decided to cooperate. Unfortunately, the nicer the weather, the less work gets done... which is tough considering how much work there is at the end of the semester-- ugh.
Anyway, I actually have a pretty cool summer lined up so far. I'm taking a bit of a break after classes end and traveling with some friends to Reykjavik for a week, then visiting a friend who's abroad in Italy for a week... After that I'm interning at this foundation called Africa Now that's based in Oxford, England. They do some pretty cool work and it's a pretty small org (at least on the British end) so I'll hopefully be able to actually do some real work for them. Anyway that lasts abour 6 weeks and then I'm going to Sierra Leone (and possibly Liberia) with a few kids from Amherst because we've started an org and raised some money to build schools for girls. I'm really excited about that trip, though my parents are clearly freaking out about security. It's all good though because we're going under the auspices of UNICEF so we'll have a UN security detail (sounds pretty hardcore, right?)... That takes us to the middle of August and then... I dunno... probably just relaxing :-)
I hope you're all well and that the end of the year isn't too hectic!

Goodbye South Africa

Last weekend was a flurry of goodbyes to Cape Town, shopping, partying, and days on the beach (though not in the water because the Atlantic there is basically the Antarctic Ocean). It was quite difficult to say 'bye to Cape Town, a city I have after 4 months come to consider another home.

On Tuesday morning, after our free weekend, the whole group was bused to Hermanus, a pretty beach town about 2 hours from CT, known for the "best land-based whale watching in the world!" Of course, the whales are not currently around, so we saw jack shit. We did spend a fair amount on time on beach, and actually swimming in water as this was the Indian Ocean.






We also had some pretty corny "de-orientation" sessions about the issues of re-entry etc... Bascially you all should be very sensitive and eager to hear about my experience :-P All is all though it was great to spend the last four days just with our group. On Friday after a nice lunch on a wine farm, we drove to airport and said goodbye to our Academic directors and to the kids who were staying around CT for the holidays.




Anyway, I'll gloss over the 22hrs inside an airplane, which basically consisted of watching many many crappy movies and downing several mini bottles of wine. So after a grand total of about 32hours of traveling, I got back to the USA yesterday morning! And even though I'm slightly traumatized by the bloody cold, I am happy to be home, back up at my country house, with my family, my dog, and our new kitten. I am planning on sequestering myself here for a couple of days to unpack and readjust, but I will definitely be back in the city and ready to party on Monday evening.
Hope to see you all very soon! Happy Holidays,
Kisses,

Eve

Final days eAfrika

Wow the semester has certainly sped by... I can't believe I only have 10 days left in South Africa! However I have been trying to make the most of my time left, which has actually been helped by the fact that my mother is down here visiting. I met up with her in Joburg last Saturday, and we spent the weekend in Zimbabwe. We saw Victoria Falls and did a little safari/touring of Zim. Needless to say that the trip was great. The falls are amazing, particularly the aerial view we got from our helicopter ride(!)

We got back eKapa on Monday evening (I'm staying with her at the hotel), and I spent Tuesday showing her around... A long walk around the city (and some shopping along the way) and a visit to my family in Langa. Yesterday was pretty exciting bc I managed to convince my mom to join me in an activity I've wanted to do for a long time: cage diving with great white sharks. Oh yes, I was in a cage, in the Indian Ocean, with my mother, and great white sharks. Unfortunately, I got horribly sea sick (which never happens to me, but the sea was quite rough where we were anchored) but I just stuck it out. I even puked while I was in the cage :( Anyway it was really cool, and not scary at all. We saw about 8 different great white sharks, varying in size from 2.5-4 meters (juvenile size)... The best view was from the boat, and I only saw two sharks through the murky water while I was in the cage. The sharks were actually quite shy and didn't usually hang around for too long--except for this one huge female who kept sneaking up and stealing the bait. Despite losing about 5 pounds over the side of the boat, it was totally worth it. (Check out shark pics.)


Today is my mother's last day in Cape Town, and also the day that my massive ISP is due. Obviously this trip has been planned for a while so I actually finished the mega-research project last week, a whole week early. Yes, all 65 pages of it. (*pause for applause*) Thank you, thank you. Anyway I'm just finishing up some proof-reading now (clearly) and then I have to print it and get it bound.
So off to finish my work, and then hopefully have some time by the hotel pool before our big celebratory dinner tonight ;)
Love to all... and I guess I'll be seeing a lot of you in about 10 days!

The intrepid, adventurous, shark-diving E.V.E

*yummy* it tastes like oppression

Just a quick note to update and to wish you all a happy turkey day (well, to those of you who are American or in the US at any rate)! It's so weird being out of the country and away from my family on my favorite holiday--especially since I'm usually in charge of Thanksgiving at home!
Anyway, my group decided that we had to have a Thanksgivng, so we had an ex-pat celebration last Sunday. Everyone participated by bringing a dish and yours truly was of course in charge of the turkey/stuffing/gravy/pecan pie. Actually there were 3 turkeys, yes 3, because I was feeding over 25 people. Needless to say that I did actually spend the entire day in kitchen. We had a great dinner though and a really nice evening all together (the pics were added to the website). There was tons of yummy food--enough that I've been surviving on left-overs most of the week. However it was a little surreal because it's summer down here, I mean, we had dessert around the pool.






Actually this whole "eternal summer" thing is messing with me a little bit. I've been wearing capris and tank tops for 6 months now; I am ready for wool sweaters, boots, scarves etc... It's definitely going to be quite a shock to arrive back home in NYC in mid-December and be greeted by snow, ice, and sub-zero wind chills.

Well I'll let you back to your copious meals and inevitable indigestion as I have to get back to work (I spent the whole day visiting corporate-sponsored small business programmes),

Love to all,

Eve

Summer in Cape Town

Molweni everyone,

Yes, it is summer in Cape Town! Warm, sunny, beautiful weather... that I obviously have not yet had the chance to take advantage of because I am in the library most of the day, everyday. No, the program is not all fun, traveling, and hospitalization, there is legit work involved. Actually there's quite a lot now because I'm working on my independant research project. Lectures/ classes are over and now we're free—a relative term in this situation obviously. The focus of my project is corporate social investment programmes (CSI) and their role in nation-building and development (fun fun fun). I've gotten really lucky and managed to get interviews with the directors of CSI programmes of huge companies (like Shell). Next week I'll be visiting some of the projects around Cape Town and then focusing on writing this mother of a paper--40 to 60 pages total.

However, I seem to be one of the few actually taking this seriously. My roomates spend more time chilling at the beach and smoking pot than studying. But that's their decision and, besides the fact that they regularly ravage the contents of the fridge, the living arrangements are going really well. Our flat is so cute; we have a little patio with lots of flowers and a huge tropical hibiscus plant, a sun room, stained glass doors, high ceilings etc...

Plus the neighborhood in Observatory is really nice, with little boutiques, lots of cafés and bars, random second hand shoes stores, organic food markets. Come to think of it, it's actually a lot like Northampton. With less lesbians. And no snow.



Alrighty, I'm cutting the rambling short this time... mainly because I really have to get to work transcribing these interviews.
Kisses,

Eve

diet Africa --low in carbs and political commentary

Helloooo everyone--

Terribly sorry about being slightly incommunicado recently... I know most of you must have been panic-stricken with the thought that I might have relapsed and been re-hospitalized. No such luck I'm afraid. Or maybe you were so absorbed in following the democratic processes in the US that you completely forgot about me. I won't go on some long diatribe (as promised in the subject line) but I would just like to say how weird it was "watching" the election from down here. Also, the fact that Mugabe is my neighbor to the North and that Swaziland still has a divinely appointed absolute monarch definitely puts Bush in perspective. (END POLITICAL RAMBLING HERE)

Well, last week we were in Stellenbosch, a small city in the wine country about an hour away from Cape Town. It's an really pretty city, surrounded by vineyards (yes, we did go on a wine tasting) and it feels a bit more like a big town with tree-lined streets, lots of cute cafés and boutiques.






It almost feels like a New England or even parts of Europe--which was basically the goal, because, fun fact about Stellenbosch: it's considered the intellectual birthplace of apartheid. All the prime ministers and architects of the apartheid went to the university of Stellenbosch. In fact, the legacy of apartheid is very strong there, and the white population (a majority there, duh) has some pretty fun views on South Africa as a new democracy. Most of them are comfortable, middle class farm-owners, and are semi-comparable to people from "Middle America." Well I won't delve into all the fun fun fun ignorant racist bullshit things we heard during our stay, but I will give you a fun fun fun anecdote about the family I stayed with there:
So about 3 months ago, the parents were car-jacked, at gun point, in their driveway. The father was shot and killed, and the mother was also shot but she survived. The bullet is still lodged in her chest, actually in is in her lung, which is why they can't remove it. Their 15-year-old son witnessed the whole thing from inside the house. But, you know, they're "fine with it."
WHAT?!
Yeah, it was pretty intense. And quite irresponsible on the part of my program directors to put me with a family that experienced such violent trauma so recently--as if I'm equipped to manage this situation. Thank god that we were paired for this homestay as well... My friend Becca and I were able to sort of support each other and take turns muttering sympathetic remarks to the family.



Ok so Stellenbosch is finito, and now we're on our last homestay. This time we're staying with Coloured families (that is the appropriate SA term to refer to people of mixed-race) in Cape Town. We just started that homestay last night, and my family is really nice. I'm staying in a nice proper, middle-class, mostly Christian suburb with about half the group, with the other half staying in the city center with middle-class Muslim families (during Ramadan, I know).

As you may have noticed, there are some organizational issues with the program, and yours truly is getting a teensy bit frusterated. Well I'm certainly not the only one, and we all vent to each other and mock our weird and quirky program directors: Shane, a short, middle-aged man from Ireland via Zimbabwe, stutters, loses his reading glasses several times a day, and can't drive us anywhere without making a minimum of 17 U-turns. Zed (see, even the name can be mocked) a lanky, middle-aged man from Zimbabwe plays rugby and comes to class with black eyes, tries to pose as a father-figure, and walks around bare-foot in the office (it's a South African thing). Scariest part? They both hold PhDs.

Well the 'structured' part of the program is almost over, and we'll all be starting our independent research projects next week. So for the remaing 5-6 weeks of the program (times flies, no?) we'll be living in Observatory, a cool, studenty, bohemic-chic area of CT. I found an awesome flat and am living there with 4 friends. We are all so excited to settle in and not be living out of backpacks... you have no idea how draining it is to be shuttled from family to family every few weeks, explaining the program over and over and repeating the same life-story spiel etc.

Anyway, we have afternoons free this week to do preliminary research for our ISP (indep. study projects) so maybe I'll go do that rather than further clogging your precious inboxes,

Love to all,

Eve

Free, free at last!

Wow it feels amazing to be online and back in business. As most of you know, I did not complete the week-long rural homestay because I got sick and had to be hospitalized. Yes, hospitalized in Africa. Rural Africa. Oh, there are many anecotes, including going into "town" to see the doctor via donkey-cart. Indeed, you read that correctly, a cart pulled by donkeys... four small, skinny-ass, mangey, probably diseased donkeys.

Anyway the hospital was not as bad I'm making it out to be. It was totally clean and non-sketchy, and I had a private room. Plus I got to be on morphine for a couple of days which was awesome. I'm still on antibiotics and painkillers, which are def essential bc I'm more than totally depressed about baseball. At least I'm not in Massachusetts having to live through this, and besides, there's a lot more to life than baseball. I'm not going to make a list now, but let's just say that not being confined to a hospital bed def puts things into perspective (I was in quarantine, aka not allowed out of my room in hospital and I was there for 6 days... human contact whittled down to nurses and my friends on Days of Our Lives).



Well, I'm back with the group now, currently staying in Durban in really nice apartments on the beach.






Actually I should probably head back to those now bc the group should be getting back soon, plus the Bold and the Beautiful is on...
Lots of love to all, and extra love to those who sent flowers, get-well emails, and who called me while I was in the hospital!!

-EVE

p.s yes, 6 days in the hospital+painkillers=addication to crappy american soaps

Africa Update

Molweni Abahlobo, (Hello friends)

Life in SA have been going pretty well, as usual, despite having to deal with huge inconvenience of no phone/money/credit cards/ID etc... as well as dealing with tons of bugbites all over my body (yeah, it's those damn bedbugs again).

Last weekend we participated in a short program with the Direct Action Center for Peace and Memory. The center was created by a bunch of former-MK guys (militant branch of the African National Congress which was responsible for the so-called acts of terrorism that helped bring down the apartheid govt) and they showed us around all the different townships around Cape Town. The experience of actually standing in places where the police opened fire with live ammunition on groups of children, of hearing stories of how they watched their friends die and of how they fled the country to receive military training was quite intense. Most of them were in their mid- to late-thirties, meaning that they started participating in the armed struggle when they were kids, like 14 or 15 yrs old. To say the least, it was amazing and very emotional to interact with these guys...






The rest of the weekend was the complete polar opposite. My friend Liza's parents were in Cape Town on their way to a safari trip, and they got us a hotel room where they were staying. The Cape Grace is the nicest hotel in Cape Town and five of us (Liza, Sara, Jamie, Elliot, and myself--aka the Select 5) were treated to 24-hrs of luxury--definitely a nice change from Langa, but slightly surreal and disconcerting after the earlier experiences of the weekend. Liza's parents took us out to a fab sushi dinner and then bankrolled a night of drinking and debauchery at several of the Cape Town hotspots (is it just me or do I sound like some corny tour guide? who actually uses the word "hotspots"?).
On Sunday we had an amazing brunch at the hotel, chillaxed at the Waterfront, went to the movies (Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle--that's how hungover we were), and then took a chauffered new 7-series beamer back to good ol' Langa.

The week otherwise has been somewhat uneventful, but it was our last one in Langa homestay. I'm definitely going to miss my over-protective mama constantly asking me if I'm hungry and baking fresh bread for me; little sisi Tina who I taught to "high-five" and who, upon seeing my copy of Long Walk to Freedom, cried out, "Mandela!"; the kids in Langa who yell out "mlungo!" (whitey) when they see me walking around; laying on the bed with the whole family and watching American soaps and random movies like Under Siege 2... I will not however miss the cockroaches, or the bedbugs, or the bathtub that has no shower head (super practical for washing my long hair), or getting up at the ass-crack of dawn every morning. We have a farewell party tonight with all of the host families coming together and then tomorrow we head out to the Eastern Cape.

Our workload has def intensified, but it's still pretty easy. Xhosa is going well-- I can tell you to go to hell and describe in detail the process of washing dishes, but I'm not really sure how to ask where the bathroom is.

Anyway, off to the Eastern Cape tomorrow morning, bright and early! The eastern cape province is a rural and poor province, and we'll be staying there with Xhosa-speaking families for a week (apparently their English is VERY limited). Picture mud huts, grazing cattle, chickens and goats running free, women balancing huge water jugs on their heads... your basic imperialistic perspective of traditional African societies. After a week there, we are being treated to a weekend on the coast where we can chill on the beach etc. before heading to Durban for a week of classes. Then back to CT on Oct 24! Woohoo. All that to say that I won't be in touch for about 10 days. I know it'll be hard for some of you, BUT one of the program directors has lent me a cell phone until I can get a new one.
I miss you all and hope that life is good, whichever continent you find yourself on,

Yitschani esihogweni,

Eve

p.s sorry about ending with that last sentence with a preposition
p.p.s "Yitschani esihogweni" means go to hell