Bad weather bites

Africa » South Africa » Western Cape » Cape Town
August 10th 2008

Published: August 10th 2008

The one lesson you learn quickly while studying abroad that isn’t taught in the classroom is patience. In America, I took a lot of things for granted: internet, television, Wal Mart, Target, fast food, junk food, home cooked food—pretty much everything. Following my first month in South Africa I started to hit a slump where my proverbial batting average of enthusiasm was down. At our study abroad orientation at Albion during the spring, the instructors explained how the study abroad experience is U-shaped: the experience starts high, with everything being foreign and exciting. As time progresses, you begin familiarizing yourself with the country and develop a school routine, and gradually everything seems less foreign and exciting, and more normal and uneventful. Homework starts to pile up, expenses tack on and the first drops of homesickness start to leak through your emotional hull.

When my shark dive got cancelled for the second week in a row due to strong winds, I started sliding down the U. Additionally, it continued to rain every day during the week, and my apartment lost internet for three days. I didn’t have a TV in my apartment, so I was in a black hole for 3 days, unable to keep in touch via e-mail with family and friends back home, or see if the world was still turning back in the United States. If you go camping or rent a cottage on a lake for 3 days without internet or TV, that’s understandable because you’re at least on vacation with friends or family, and are purposefully away from the world. In Newlands, not only did I need internet for school, but it was my antidote for preventing homesickness. Much like the malaria pills, where you take them once a day for your entire stay in the malaria-infected zone, if I could check my e-mail and read the news on the internet at least once a day, I felt connected back home and was content. Instead, I was caught in a 3 day quagmire of rain, school, homework and no communication with home.

The site of ESPN’s website, my homepage, opening on my computer on the fourth day was like watching the birth of a baby. I was so relieved to be able to check my e-mail and reconnect back home. Aside from a bunch of silly election news, the real important news during my quagmire was Brett Favre being traded to the New York Jets, and Pudge Rodriguez being traded from my hometown Detroit Tigers. By reconnecting with the internet, I bounced back to the top of the U, and I chugged down my 30 some-odd e-mails, instantly curing the homesickness that was beginning to settle into my system.

Alas, for the third straight weekend shark diving was postponed, again due to high winds. If you’re scoring at home, that’s now Weather 4, Kyle 1. The weather postponed 3 shark dives and 1 mountain summit, while I managed to score one by climbing Devil’s Peak a week ago. I began to think that all the postponements were another sign that I wasn’t supposed to participate in such a risky activity, but I kept using the Peyton Manning mantra and telling myself that eventually I’d get to go diving. Every postponement filled me with more adrenaline to jump in the cage, and as Clark Griswold said in National Lampoon’s Vacation, “It’s a quest! It’s a quest for fun!” Shark diving became another Devil’s Peak, and although I was confident that at some point during my 5 months in South Africa I would go shark diving, I wanted to go as planned to spite the weather and, more importantly, because August was one of the best months to see the Great Whites.

The weekend of my third cancelled shark dive I took the train to Muitzenberg, a coastal surfing town, with a group of study abroad students in my program. It was refreshing to go to the train station in broad daylight without worrying about Connor or darkness, and the train only cost about $1.50USD for a ticket. The train benches were gray and old with graffiti marks across the interior walls. It was probably the same train used in Batman Begins, where Katie Holmes is riding the run down train into the deteriorating, gloomy underworld of Gotham City when she almost gets killed by two thugs. The train ride was nearly an hour long, and along the way it passed through some nice suburbs, such as Cavendish, but also passed through many poor townships where blacks and coloureds were relocated during Apartheid. It was almost like watching a devolution film in a high school science class; the shiny new malls, Chrysler dealership, nightclubs and rugby stadium slowly transforming into dusty fields with flimsy shacks, tin, corrugated roofs and old Xhosa women carrying baskets and bags of corn feed on their heads back to their tiny homes. It was a revealing slide show of how South Africa is still a schizophrenic country, trying to find a balance between the first world and third world populations that inhabit it. When I researched Cape Town before I came, one of the travel books I read referred to it as “a first world city in a third world country,” and after seeing the difference between the two halves, I agree with that statement.

Muitzenberg was a quaint resort town along the coast where surfers flock during the warmer months. We ate lunch at a nice seaside restaurant, and walked down the streets lined with gift shops, bakeries and authentic African craft shops. The street reminded me a little of Main Street on Mackinac Island with the gift shops. Additionally, I was reminded of Caseville, Michigan, where my grandmother has a cottage, and how tiny Caseville blends tourism and local necessity shops such as a grocery store, restaurants and a post office. There was no grocery store in Muitzenberg, only bread-scenting bakeries, hand-carved African masks and blue waves breaking against the shore.

Although Muitzenberg was a peaceful way to spend a weekend day, I craved shark diving. As the fourth weekend approached, I channeled my inner Wiley Coyote and thought of ways ensure that shark diving would take place this weekend. Did Acme carry a wind-stopper? No, unlikely. Could I paint a picture of a tunnel on a cliff wall so the wind will blow through it and not across Shark Alley? No, I saw that episode. A train comes through the other end. Eventually, I settled on the conservative play. I got the e-mail address for the shark company, Unreal Dive Shark Expeditions, and e-mailed the owner, asking if the weather looked good this weekend so I knew if I should get my hopes up or not. This is the socio-maturity equivalent of calling a halfback dive in football as opposed to a double reverse option pass. Eventually, I received an e-mail back from Unreal Dive, and it was one of the best e-mails I received my entire semester:
“The weather looks good. We’ll pick you up at 9:30.”

As The Joker eloquently said in The Dark Knight: “And here…we…go!”

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