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Published: July 16th 2008
Fear is derived from uncertainty, and there was plenty of uncertainty spinning within my mind as my flight landed in Cape Town. My global cell phone did not work in Amsterdam during my layover, so I had sent my dad an SOS e-mail to contact the service provider to see if they could straighten it out. Little did I know that in addition to being down one phone, I was also down one credit card. I had taken my credit card out to use a pay phone in Amsterdam attempting to call the service provider myself, and I either left the card at the pay phone or I hid it somewhere in my bag or pocket so securely that I couldn’t find it. If I did hide it, I should apply for a job with the Taliban to hide their leaders because apparently I am very good at hiding things.
So as I get off the plane at Cape Town International on a cold July night, I have already committed two turnovers in my proverbial mental game of travel football, and the tornado of uncertainty swirling in my mind is now an F 5. Did my luggage check all the
way through from Detroit? Will the University of Cape Town (UCT) liaison be there to pick me up? Did I have the right study permit to get through customs? Can I set a record for worrying about the most things simultaneously?
Fortunately, my luggage did check all the way through from Detroit, the UCT liaison was there to pick me up and I did have the proper study permit. I still haven’t heard back from Guinness regarding the worrying record. There were six of us that were picked up that night from the airport and one by one the UCT van dropped us off at our respective houses and apartments. We drove through the Cape Town suburbs in the dark, so we couldn’t see this new and wild place we had all landed in. Palm trees replaced pine trees and every street seemed unsafe in the night. I was dropped off at my apartment in a gated community in a suburb named Newlands. The gated community was reassuring but the street was narrow and there were very few lights. My apartment was quaint, complete with a living/dining room, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. Fortunately, I was able
Cape of Good Hope
First spot Europeans landedto connect to the internet and saw that my dad replied to my distress e-mail with instructions from the service provider on how to get my phone working. When the global mode picked up the Vodacom South Africa networks and three bars appeared a cement bag of relief dropped from stomach. The same feeling Lloyd Carr must have had watching his defense hold Florida on fourth down to secure the 2008 Capital One Bowl, or the feeling Phil Mickelson had when his putt on the 72nd hole at the 2004 Masters toileted in the cup was what I felt when I heard the dial tone, a couple rings and my dad’s voice. Houston, we have contact.
Early the next morning I woke up for orientation and my roommate and I were picked up by a UCT liaison and driven to campus. To my pleasant surprise, I wasn’t living in the inner city, in a drug lord’s compound or in an eerie isolated village like where The Others live on LOST. I was living in a regular suburb; there was a shopping center, BP station, bars, restaurants and a play theatre all within a fifteen minute walk from my apartment.
The only completely, un-Michigan features of Newlands appeared to be the traffic flowing on the left side of the road and the giant mountain that stood out above the city like a stern lunch mother watching over kids at recess on the playground. That giant mountain was none other than Table Mountain and the lunch mother was Devil’s Peak, one of the highest points in all of Cape Town. That’s not a bad view to see every morning, I thought. At Albion College, my home institution, the highest point was the top spire on Goodrich Chapel, a mere nose-picking kindergartener in the eyes of Devil’s Peak.
After signing in and collecting our complimentary gray satchels with ‘UCT Semester Abroad’ printed on them, we boarded coach buses and went on a tour of the city of Cape Town. A satchel is a hybrid between a purse and a mailbag, or an Africanized “murse,” and I felt less than masculine walking around with it slung across my shoulder. Cape Town, at least from the bus, appeared as a very clean city located right on the Atlantic Ocean with Table Mountain anchoring its back. We passed Long Street, the “club street” of
University of Cape Town
This is where I go to school. Cape Town as well as the construction site of Green Point Stadium, the newest stadium being built for the 2010 World Cup. Green Point is a very wealthy area, some of the homes built on the mountain side even had little elevator tracks leading up to their homes, and many locals are unhappy with the stadium’s construction because it will ruin their multi-million dollar view of the ocean. I’ve lived in three different houses in my lifetime, and if I combined them together, their combination might be the size of some of these homes’ front porches. Think the homes on Mackinac Island, just modern and with a view of the mountain and the ocean, and you’ve got a Green Point home.
From Cape Town the drive to the Cape of Good Hope was about an hour long, and along the way we stopped and saw African penguins along False Bay. False Bay is the home of Seal Island, from Shark Week fame on the Discovery Channel. All the other kids were fawning at the penguins and saying how they wanted to take one home as a pet. I, on the other hand, wanted to use the penguins for a
more natural purpose; as bait for the sharks. Go to your local zoo if you want to watch penguins waddle and honk at one another, I want to see Jaws go LeBron James on the penguin by jumping out of the water and eating it. Oh well, I’ll settle for the Morgan Freeman version.
The Cape of Good Hope is one of the southern most points on the African continent and was the first point spotted by European explorers. Like me when I was able to get my phone to work, I bet the Europeans gave a loud sigh when they spotted the Cape for the first time. If you stare due south from the Cape of Good Hope, you see a large bluish wall that at first looks like a tidal wave, but it is actually Antarctica. Word on the street is that if this global warming—excuse me—climate change theory turns out to be true, Antarctica will turn into a giant tidal wave and flood the cape. In my quest for all seven continents, I’ll someday have to visit Antarctica, just as Harry Potter had to eventually face Voldemort in his quest for the seven horcruxes, and hopefully
when I visit Antarctica it wont have melted to the size of Seal Island, with a bunch of penguins, seals and albatrosses clinging on to their last piece of home.
Following our Cape of Good Hope stop we visited a school in the township of Oceanview. During Apartheid, the white government relocated all the blacks and ‘coloureds’ into townships far removed from the city. We were served lunch here and watched the students of the school put on a talent show. The kids sang and danced, and all the while I kept trying to envision their lives; they didn’t have hardly anything compared to the international students watching them. I spent more money on fast food during the summer than those kids have ever had in their lifetimes, yet they work hard on their singing and dancing and enjoy life. Both Mandela and Tutu talked about how, after Apartheid, South Africans need to forgive and move forward. I doubt any of them forgot about the injustices that the Apartheid government caused their families, but these kids are all part of a post-Apartheid generation that doesn’t see South Africa in black and white.
Our long orientation day ended, finally. I persevered through the day before finally surrendering to jet lag that evening. Twenty four hours ago I was being blown away by gusts of uncertainty, but the gusts were dying down. The twister had swept me up and dropped me on the other side of the rainbow, and I was not in Kansas any more. I was Kevin McAlister from Home Alone who finally copes with his fear of his neighbor, The South Bend Shovel Slayer, when he realizes that his neighbor is a nice older man. Kevin’s fear, like all of our fears, arose from uncertainty, and when things became more certain to me, after my first day, my fears subsided. Of course, South Africa is a big country and I had only seen a corner of it, the southern most tip of it exactly, and I knew that there would be more uncertainty in the coming months.
The next week was a blur of class information and crash courses on Cape Town and South Africa. One evening we got to play traditional drums along with a marimba band. Think Bob Marley combined with the voice of Rafiki from ‘The Lion King,’ and that was what the lead singer sounded like. Rafiki Marley’s hands vibrated off the drums so quickly it looked like ten hands banging up and down. I’ve never had rhythm, never really sought a need for it, and my hands beat slowly up and down like a heartbeat that was about to die. The drums were all hand carved and if played properly, they sound very authentic. If you’re in an auditorium with hundreds of students who do not know how to play the drums, it sounds like an elephant stampede.
On another day during orientation we had a seminar on AIDS. I was expecting either an episode of Oprah traveling throughout AIDS-plagued Africa or Bono speaking on behalf of the children of the world; instead we got a safe sex seminar. One of the students had a dildo in front of the lecture hall and showed everyone how to properly apply a condom to the male treasure rod, and she proceeded to advertise the different brands of condoms sold within South Africa. We were all awakened by the frankness of the presentation and it was actually an effective presentation to harness the attention of a bunch of Generation I-Pod college students who were still wrestling away the lingering effects of jet lag. I wouldn’t expect Oprah to bring a dildo on her show the next time she airs an episode regarding AIDS, or for U2’s next album to be named ‘How to Apply a Condom.’
The week wasn’t the exploration filled week I’d envisioned and I wasn’t living in a jungle either. The mist hanging over Devil’s Peak in the morning was as jungle-like as Newlands got. During the week I’d managed to create a list of things I wanted to do in South Africa based on travel pamphlets passed out during orientation and my own research. In no particular order, my top three things were: Climb Devil’s Peak, shark cage diving and white water raft the Zambezi River. Before I could grab my fedora, whip and leather jacket, though, I had to do a few things in between.
Like attend class.
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KyleKGillis
Kyle Gillis
Note:
The internet isnt that fast down here, so it takes a long time for pictures to upload, I will upload more pictures surely but slowly.