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Published: July 10th 2010
Many of you have been asking and wondering how my World Cup experience has been. To answer this question, it is vital that I break down “experience” into two parts: First, my experience of being in South Africa during the World Cup; and second, my experience of being a volunteer in South Africa during the World Cup. Let me start with the volunteer experience. If I spoke with you before I left for SA, (in this case, South Africa), then it won’t surprise you that the 2010 FIFA World Cup Local Organizing Committee (aka the South Africans running the show) are amongst the most disorganized of any organization I’ve worked with. Unfortunately, dealing with the most important items, i.e., meals and money, has been the most frustrating. Processes change all the time, communication is terrible. On one occasion, I received three text messages, all identical, within a 12 hour period of time, telling me about an event that started at noon, only to find out a few hours later in person, that the event was starting at 2pm. Even the volunteer soccer tournament they organized for us was a disaster. I don’t recollect feeling as unappreciated by and unimportant to the
Me & My Accreditation Buddies
At the volunteer party. I made a guest appearance.people in charge as I have here. I have been pissed off, livid and wanted to strangle somebody far more in than past month than I have, well, since I left my job.
Now, there is also my actual work here in the Accreditation Centre. That has actually been fine. We had a nice frenzy before the tournament started and then it was a whole lot of nothin’. Plus, there were a ton of volunteers on staff even though there wasn’t much work. I ended up cutting down my shifts basically to the minimum required so that I could get some paying editing assignments. When I did work, I usually brought my laptop with me to upload photos and video using FIFA’s internet access to avoid bandwidth limits as home. I also managed to do some of my editing at the AC. When the weather was nice, we had time to take lovely strolls down to the waterfront. When it was cold, the tent kept us warm. The physical Accreditation Centre was in front of the stadium. We, as AC volunteers, were removed from most of the other teams that were based out of the stadium. As a result,
Rudie and Me
Staking out our spot before the Uruguay v Nederlands match. we formed our own tight-knit team with our own sense of camaraderie. This part I liked. Whenever I’d go into the stadium volunteer centre and saw all the volunteers swarming around, it made me feel a bit uneasy. I liked our tent with our little family and our three, big HD television sets.
Were there any perks to being a volunteer? Well, I did have access to most of the stadium. I got into places like the FIFA Fan Fest when it was too packed for “regular” people to enter. I watched parts of a couple of games for free. But honestly, I didn’t go to as many games as I could have. I could have walked in to any match and pretended to work. Or actually work. Mostly I was deterred from working in the stadium during matches because of inclement weather and the prospect of standing in the same place for 5 hours. I finally sucked it up for the last Cape Town match - the semi-final between Holland and Uruguay. And I’m glad I did. I teamed up with one of my volunteer buddies and it was really cool. But mostly, I opted to stay out
Team Accreditation
At the volunteer soccer tournament. of the stadium in lieu of watching the matches with my friends. Not other volunteers, not other Americans, my FRIENDS - the South Africans I’ve come to joke with, confide in and tease about whose team is going to win (or lose). And it’s been great. I haven’t regretted a minute of. Even at the Holland/Uruguay game, with my amazing viewpoint, I missed my buddies. Which segways nicely into…
…my experience of being in South Africa during the World Cup. Man, being in the same time zone as the World Cup is incredible! I got to watch the early games at home or in the Accreditation tent. In the evenings, it was out with the buddies. It’s been a bit surreal, in retrospect, how much one sports tournament consumed so much of my time and conversation. , I don’t know that I’ve ever been to so many venues in a new city in such a short period of time. It’s been great. Almost anywhere showing a match is a good time. The atmosphere in Cape Town is supposedly one of the best in the country, and without having been anywhere else, I can attest that it has pretty much
been party central here, nonstop.
One of the most interesting things to me, which I wouldn’t have expected before I arrived, was how supportive the South Africans were of any African team playing in the World Cup. In the U.S., we never cheer for our neighboring Canada or Mexico. But here, the locals were so keen on the World Cup being won by an African nation for the first time the tournament was hosted on African soil. It was inspiring. Thus, I wasn’t too upset when Ghana beat the U.S. Sure, it would have been nice if my home country had won (even though they played like crap) but the entire African continent of 30+ nations was behind Ghana. It was incredible.
Something else we (we being me and some American friends) found kind of interesting, when Brazil lost to Holland (epic upset!), the locals were soooo happy. Not only because Brazil was the biggest threat in their eyes, but because of some strange logic the South Africans developed somewhere along the way. They thought that Ghana was sure to beat Uruguay later that date (which they didn’t) and so, Ghana was going to beat Holland (which they
Show Your World Cup Spirit
With vuvuzela in hand at the Adidas 3-Stories Apartment in Woodstock. couldn’t) to advance to the finals. It was so strange to hear the South Africans saying Ghana was gonna beat the Netherlands. Like, what?? Crazy talk indeed!
The quarter-finals were great though. When both Brazil and Argentina lost, man! They were such huge upsets!! Great tournament play. Very exciting. And, I called it! Not originally. Originally I withheld making any public predictions because I didn’t want people to think I was biased towards South America when I said that Brazil and Argentina would face each other in the finals (who knows, maybe I was biased). Towards the end of the first round though, after I had gotten to see most of the teams play a few times, I started saying it was going to be a European final. There were only 6 European teams out the advancing 16. But Holland, Germany and Spain were all looking so good, it just seemed like 2 out of those 3 were going all the way. Sure enough, Holland is through to the finals. And we’ll know in 3 hours if Germany or Spain will be advancing. Shoot, in 4 days, it will all be over. Whew! (UPDATE: Spain is going through and
Ostrich Knuckles!
available for your dogs the tournament is now over in 1 day!)
Now on to my observations about life and culture in South Africa. I must admit, Cape Town has grown on me. My time here definitely started out rough as things in volunteer-land were in a terrible cluster… But here we are, six weeks later, and I find myself struck by how beautiful the city is. On the other hand, while had I totally forgotten about the saying T.I.A. made popular in the film Blood Diamond, it is 100% based on reality even in an international city like Cape Town (T.I.A. standing for This Is Africa as in, “What are you gonna do about it? This is Africa.”). Keep your expectations low and you’ll have no problems.
Despite not having blogged for a while, I have spent a huge chunk of time thinking about all the things I want to share with you, especially here in South Africa with its very interesting and heartbreaking history of apartheid, which only ended a little over 15 years ago. It’s made me want to do something I’ve never done before in my blog, and that is, ask YOU to participate. I’ll share with you
some of my observations in a bit, but if you are an American reading this, who was around during the US civil rights movement, I invite you to comment on how you remember the US being 15 years after the end of Jim Crow and the passing of our civil rights laws. There is an option to leave a comment and I will publish yours, should you choose to respond so that others may read and comment as well. I ask that you please be as objective as possible.
One of the first things I noticed is that while I’d be out at bars or clubs, I’d see groups of blacks and groups of whites in the same venues. However, there wouldn’t be groups of whites AND blacks. There was no intermingling going on. I asked my roommate, who is a “colored” woman from Cape Town and my other friend, Lucky, who is a black African, about this one night. Their response was that, in fact, I had been lucky. Most places are almost entirely black crowds or entirely white. And with time, I have found this mostly to be the case, especially once you leave Long Street, which
For Use By White People
On display in the District 6 museum is the main avenue and party spot in Cape Town’s CBD, aka “Town”. I haven’t really found myself in too many of the all-black places (Mzoli’s, though, man…!!) but have been to places that are predominantly white a couple of times and haven’t really enjoyed myself. It also seems to be the case that in these instances, the only black people are the servers. This non-mingling was one of the first things that got me thinking about the U.S. I wondered if after 15 years of legal equality, the U.S. had venues where, at the same time, both groups of blacks and groups of whites could go out to enjoy themselves without any problems.
In Cape Town, there is an area known as District 6, and a museum. It’s near the “city bowl” and in the 1970s, it was a mostly mixed race/religion neighborhood. It was not a particularly well-to-do area but the community was strong and people lived in peace. It thrived culturally and the neighbors lived with pride. Then came a government mandate to move everyone out of the area, claiming the area for the exclusive use of whites. People were shipped out to under-developed areas that
District 6 Apt Building
Photos aren't that old... were far from the residents’ job sites forcing them to pay for their transit every day when before, they were able to walk. Families and neighbors were separated and sent to different parts of the city’s outskirts. All sense of community was lost and these new neighborhoods have now become the most dangerous parts of Cape Town. To add insult to injury, after knocking down and destroying the homes in District 6, somehow or another, they never got around to rebuilding anything. Lives were destroyed for naught. What struck me the most about visiting the District 6 museum, is that when I looked at the pictures from this era, they are the same quality and from the same time as say, my aunt’s wedding photos. It simply wasn’t that long ago. We, well most of us, were alive while this was going on. It’s truly heartbreaking in the way that blatant, hateful racism is.
Now, I mentioned my roommate, the “colored” woman above. In the U.S., I don’t think anyone uses the term “colored” any more. Personally, it makes my skin crawl. Here, however, it is an official term and one that people openly self-identify with. My roommate went
to school for only colored people. I don’t think this was a choice but rather, the way things were back then and totally accepted. When I asked, she didn’t know how far back her family had been “colored”. The fact that she is identified as such doesn’t seem to bother her in the least. As to be expected, there was a time when black athletic teams were separate from white athletic teams here in South Africa - coloreds were not allowed to play on either.
Something else I learned that has really struck me concerns education. I haven’t been able to talk to many people about this but I was sitting with two of my co-volunteers one day, one a biochemistry student, and one a teacher of 8th - 12th grade math. The student told me he is a good student. He gets all Cs. “What?” I replied, “you’re joking.” Apparently a C grade is good here. The teacher didn’t deny it. “You only need a D to pass,” the student replied. I asked around. Results varied. I think partly one’s opinion on what a good grade is depends on the type of school one attends or attended and
their parents’ expectations. One friend of mine received mostly Bs and Cs. His mother thought he was underperforming. His father was quite proud. Another friend of mine went to a Boys School. The Boys Schools, as my friend told me, are a bit different in that they instill a sense of pride in teaching the boys how to be men (not the Biv, Bell, Devoe kind, sorry). When this particular friend and I met some guys we didn’t know, but who had also attended a Boys School, there was an immediate sense of camaraderie. Perhaps it is the obvious results of coming from a family of “haves” opposed to “have nots” that intrigues me about the education system here, in addition to what standards they strive for. As you might remember, in the last blog, I wrote how I felt the city emanated a sense of complacency. This example might be one way this complacency manifests itself. Oddly enough, shortly after I published my last blog, I was talking to a South African, originally from Johannesburg, who recently moved to Cape Town after 4 years of living in London. I asked why. His response was that there is a lot
Please Pay Your Carguard
Informal employment is big in South Africa of complacency here and that allowed him the opportunity and room to pursue whatever he wanted professionally; it was an ideal scenario for someone with an entrepreneurial spirit. Guess I nailed that sense of complacency I alluded to.
In other news, it’s interesting how popular informal labor is here especially as a way to provide a source of income for people who wouldn’t otherwise have any. The mini-bus/taxis are a prime example. In particular, the “car guards” here drive me a little batty. At night, when you park your car, there’s an excellent chance no one is there to help you park or even find a spot. But as soon as you go to leave, there is a car guard rapping at your window asking for some change. None of the locals seems to mind. My roommate said her car has never been broken into when a car guard was around, but has been when there weren’t any. So there you have it.
How to conclude? Well, first of all, I’d still be very interested in a job where I get paid a lot of money to run around in shorts. Second, Cape Town has been a lot
of fun. Third, the volunteering experience from an administrative perspective has been crap, but I’ve met a lot of great people and learned a lot. If you are considering volunteering for a massive sporting event anywhere in the world, I strongly encourage you to find out how that country operates, its work ethics, etc. Brazil in 2014? Hmm, not too sure about that one. Besides, volunteers will have to be able to speak Portuguese and frankly, I'm not that interested.
So what’s up next for me? Well, I have about 3 weeks left before I head back to San Francisco. There are a couple of touristy things here in Cape Town I haven’t had a chance to do yet. I’m heading out to Namibia in a day or two on a road trip for about a week. And of course, World Cup finals tomorrow! You will, for sure, be hearing from me again.
By the way, there are about 35 pictures in this blog, I think they show up on 2 different pages. Make sure you scroll down or hit next page to view them all.
Thanks for your attention, friends, and I look forward to reading
your comments!
Morganne
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Luke
non-member comment
"Working on the Jumping Self-Timer" is a classic photo (and caption!)