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
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