Rachel eager to begin applying the lessons learned while in Cape Town

I am writing this final blog post on my way back from JFK. I think during my time in Cape Town I got caught up in the hype of America, because I was so excited to return home. Being excited to return home however, didn’t mean that I was ready to leave Cape Town. Driving through New York I am realizing I missed how green everything looks but I also miss hearing the mini bus drivers shout out the windows, the streets look too empty without them.

 My last week in Cape Town I spent most of the time at the aquarium because it was my favorite place to be in Cape Town. I finally got to finish my scuba diving certification and I am now a certified open water scuba diver! The dinner for our internships was a great time for the girls I had spent my semester with to meet some of my favorite people! I only wish they had met each other sooner.

I am realizing how much I want to talk about racial and gender topics now. My friends have been asking me about the touristy things I did in Cape Town, but I am more eager no to be able to participate in talks about gender and race. I think now I am realizing that it has been one of the best things I have gotten out of this trip.

For my final paper in Marita’s class I had to address how I have become a global citizen and I wrote that my first step was looking at my own internalized racism. I think this is one of the things that allow me to be a better global citizen because I need to start with myself. How can I expect the world to change if I myself won’t? Another thing I have learned on this trip is how to be an activist, and that will make me a better global citizen. I think I understand now that a global citizen is someone who wants to make a positive change in the world as a whole, not just one country. After this trip I am more likely to stand up for what I believe in and to more importantly, do something about it. As I said in my goals, I want to write letters to my state representatives to rid Massachusetts of plastic bags. I want to see the whole world make this change but I will start small. After this class I will be more likely to participate in a march for something I stand for.

Overall my time in Cape Town is one I don’t think I will ever forget. Not only all the amazing people I met and places I saw but the change I saw in my own self. My next step is to constantly apply what I have learned so that I don’t slip into my old habits.

Katherine will make it one of her priorities to return

It's now two days before we leave Cape Town. I feel numb to the incoming transition, and less willing than ever to leave South Africa. I find myself fearful of being bored at home, or that my life will lack excitement and adventure when I'm working in the U.S. as a college graduate. The next few days, my friends and I are taking the time to do things we want to be sure to experience while we're here, and to visit our favorite places one last time. I feel blessed to have met people who want to support me with their continued friendship and also professionally - we have a few friends who want to see us off at the airport, including Gadija, our activist project supervisor. Overall, I feel that I've gotten the most out of this study abroad experience and that I'm going to carry newfound knowledge and confidence with me to the U.S., along with an expanded comfort zone. The internship dinner was very cool - our friends and coworkers from Kuyasa were able to make it and had a good time. It was great to say thank you to everyone in the program that has made this an accommodating experience. After living here, I will always consider Rondebosch and the surrounding area a home away from home, and I'm going to make it one of my priorities to return. 

Laura G vacillates between wanting to go home and wanting to stay

I’m a few days late on this blog post because I was struggling to figure out a topic. I’ve been thinking a lot about going home. After having to move out of our house I got a little more excited to go home. It was very stressful to move everything out in two hours, but the hotel we moved to is very nice! I continually go back and forth between wanting to go home and not wanting to go home. I do miss everyone and I would rather live in a house over a hotel, but I’m sad to leave my life here behind. Here are some of the thoughts I’ve had while being here:

I’m really excited to be around cleaner air. Connecticut air smells so clean, and I love Cape Town but you can rarely escape the smell of cigarette smoke and diesel fuel.

I am going to miss the abundance of places on Mr. Delivery here! I can get almost anything I want whenever I want it.

I miss trees. There’s not many trees here, especially in townships (probably because there’s no dirt—just sand).

Iced coffee is A LOT easier to get than people make it out to be, in my opinion! I was pleasantly surprised by this.

NO ONE WEARS SHORTS HERE. That’s very strange to me since most days it’s been above 80 degrees or in the 90s; how can you not wear shorts?!

Minibus rides can actually be really nice and relaxing. Barring a bad ride or two, I’ve actually enjoyed utilizing them.

Personal space is NOT a thing here. I’ve experienced this a lot at my internship. People here don’t really think it’s weird to get close to you.

People here are NICE. Like really nice. One time while I was eating sheep’s neck in Khayelitsha (if it’s any consolation I didn’t know it was sheep’s neck), this woman came up to me and offered me her food. I had no idea who she was, my co-workers had no idea who she was, she didn’t speak English, but she wouldn’t leave until I took her chicken and rice.

Sharing is huge. In the U.S., I don’t really share my food. What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours. Here, people just assume that if you’re eating, they can also take some of your food. Definitely was taken aback when my co-worker just reached her hand into my food without asking, but now I’ve come to expect it.

No gas stations—just garages. People look at you really weird if you say gas stations.

This trip made me think of the way I speak as “having an accent.” So many people know where I’m from based on my ‘accent.’ Now I also hear Americans as having an accent.

Those just the things I could think of. There’s many, many more. We have exactly four days left in Cape Town. It really is absolutely insane to think about what we’ve done here and how much I’ve changed. Some parts of the trip were definitely harder than others, but I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything. Here’s to make the best of our last four days in Cape Town!

Cape Town at sunset and full moon

Sara W reflecting on the future while enjoying the present

Through doing all of the readings and just experiencing life here in South Africa, I have constantly been wondering what I want to do after I graduate. I honestly do not see myself fitting into any categories of any jobs I have heard of. I love people and I love so many things that I can’t imagine picking one specific thing to live the rest of my life doing. I want to find something that will suit all of the different passions I have and spend the rest of my life doing that. I want to impact others in positive ways and create positive social change, but I cannot see myself doing that by working for a single NGO or any single company for that matter. I don’t know if I just haven’t come across it yet, but I want to spend my life doing what I love rather than working for a paycheck. I want to help the people who feels all that they can do is work a minimum wage paying job and just live life day by day with no sense of self or purpose. I see so many people in my life that just seem bored or depressed without a passion. What kind of a life is that and how do we motivate these types of people?

Other than thinking about the future, this past week in Cape Town was a lot of fun. Last weekend, we hosted the first Firefighter soccer tournament at Mandela Park. It was a great success and meeting so many great people made all of our work worth it. This past week was also Rav’s birthday and we went to Blouberg to watch the sunset before celebrating on Long Street. The next day, we went to Muizenberg for a relaxing day at the beach. Then, a couple days ago we moved out of our house in Rondebosch and into a nice hotel not too far away. We get free breakfast which is a major plus! Some of us went to Old Biscuit Mill after settling in yesterday to get some last minute souvenirs and gifts for people who are back at home. Today, we went to Mzoli’s- a fun braii place in a township called Gugulethu. I’m starting to get sad that we have such a short time left here in Cape Town and I’m trying to make the most out of every day.

Sunset at Bloubergstrand with Devil's Peak, Table Mountain, and Lion's Head in background

Maddy enjoyed spending time with kids playing and watching soccer

Since getting back from Joburg, I’ve had an additional week off from my internship because of term break at the school. Though being busy with some stuff that I had to do such as catching up on homework and getting shirts for the Fire Fighters tournament for the weekend, I had a lot of free time on my hands to reflect. First off, I realized that during the week when everyone is in their routine of internships, I want to be at mine too. It was nice having the week off in Joburg, yet when we came back to Cape Town, I was ready to get back to my own internship.

During class this week we had a conversation about our transition back to the U.S. and what and how we are going to tell people about our experiences here. I realized that I have SO much to say and could go days talking about everything about Cape Town. However, Marita pointed out a good point that people may ask, but not everyone is looking for a detailed response or necessarily care about everything we have to say, and that’s okay, but it’s a good thing to acknowledge. I liked how Marita recommended that when people ask us how it is we say, “It was great, I saw and did so much, what would you like to know about?” I also realized that two of the hardest transitions I will have back to life in the U.S. are not wanting to hear people complain. Some of the stuff people complain about, including myself, are so not worth a complaint and I often find myself catching my complaints. However, listening to others who complain about things that really don’t matter is going to be different for me because here people are so happy with what they have when at home people complain about what they don’t have and I feel like I just see it in a bigger picture now. The other thing that will be hard to adjust to is people always being on their phones. I’ve always been a “no phones at the dinner table” type of person and always try to not be on my phone and enjoy the company around me. Being here and not even being able to use a phone unless I have Wi-Fi has really made me adjust to only using my phone before bed and in the morning. I know I will go back to using it all the time when I’m home but enjoying the things around me without distractions is so nice and I want to continue this.

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After a week of not much going on, I had a very busy weekend with helping the Khayelitsha Fire Fighters host their first annual tournament. In typical African fashion, we showed up early Friday morning to start setting up for the tournament and they still have many things that we would have thought would have done days in advance to do before the games started. Oscar, they guy who was basically running the show was so awesome and had everything very organized, he just didn’t have any help. He was so thankful that we were there and we did a lot that first day helping him out whether it was registration of the teams, managing the entrance fees, doing the schedules of the games, and logging the scores of the completed games. The next two days were more relaxed because registration was over so we could watch some of the Fire fighter’s games as well as make almost 100 sandwiches for the senior and junior teams as well as the other volunteers. It was a senior tournament but many of the little juniors were there each day to watch. That gave us more time to sit and play with them because we usually only see them at practice. It was awesome to see them become comfortable around us and Sunday when we were leaving they thought it was our last time before going back to the U.S. so you could see how sad they were and wanted to make sure they were able to say goodbye. When we told them we would still be at practice at least one more time they lightened up and went back to playing knowing they would see us again.

Sara, Ethan, Maddy, Kaitlyn, Bongi, Claire, Power

Spending time with the kids was definitely the best part. The rest of the tournament was a little physically and emotionally draining. The coaches depend on us to do a lot for the team that we realistically can’t always do, so we had to learn to start saying no. Additionally, though we were there all weekend, people didn’t seem to get used to a group of white girls walking around and constantly just wanted to take pictures with us and then just walk away. It got exhausting walking by people everywhere we went and have people start talking in Xhosa to each other and laughing, clearly talking about us but we had no idea what they were saying. This has happened countless times to us before in many situations but having it occur constantly for 3 days straight was a lot. This was another reason why I wanted to hang around the kids, they don’t care what you look like, if you are willing to play with them and give them your attention, they will love having you there. Overall I think the tournament went great for it being their first one and it definitely brought me closer to the Fire Fighters.