During a two week holiday from classes in the second half of March I adventured to Cape Town with PJ and Brittney from BC, and our friends Will, Robin, and Jane who are also US exchange students at Rhodes. Our adventures included meeting up with several of our other friends from BC who are at the University of Cape Town, visiting Robben Island, where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years of political imprisonment, climbing Table Mountain, wandering the streets of Cape Town on foot, and exploring the townships of Langa and Gugulethu. Instead of doing a chronology of events, I’m going to write about a few particularly striking experiences from our travels in three separate entries.
First, the view from Long St…
For several days during our time in Cape Town we stayed at a Backpackers Lodge on Long St., which is a hub of bars and stores and social activity. Right outside of our room we had a balcony from which we could view much of the activity on the street from above. The diversity of people and interactions was mesmerizing. It was also an interesting microcosm of the diversity and inequality in South Africa. Some of the sights and sounds…
- Loud music bumping from The Dubliner, a bar next door
- One-way traffic
- People of all ages and colors walking both ways on the sidewalks, some in suits, some begging, some carrying groceries, some heading into bars, some in groups, some alone.
- Edward, a 4th grader and street kid, bouncing around asking people for money or food
- A bunch of people sitting at tables outside of a café having drinks (and generally ignoring people asking for food or money)
- 30-something man selling beaded crafts
- A 20-something woman zipping back and forth across the street asking for food or money
- Taxis and taxi drivers
- Another grade school age boy searching for food or money
- On two adjacent stoops…on the left a black male teen alone who had been wandering the area for a while occasionally asking for food or money…on the right two white female teens in dresses who had just left The Dubliner, a bar.
These observations are pretty inconclusive and in no way speak to the full experience of any of the people I saw. They are really just my observations. In attempting to acknowledge the contrast of experience that exists here for the people of South Africa, it is unavoidable for me to question my own identity and experience. Where do I fit in to the picture? Very generally I suppose I am a wealthy white tourist from the United States. My general identity is not the issue because I can not change where I come from. I think experiences that make us question our identity, or experience, or vocation, or (at least in my case) privilege are important for determining, both in the immediate and the long-term, how we choose to live our lives. In the immediate, these questioning experiences should force us (“us” meaning everybody, I’m not trying to set up an “us” vs. “them” kind of thing here) to examine who we choose to greet with a friendly smile, how we choose to respond to a 10-year old begging for food, what parts of town we choose to spend our time in, or who we vote for. In the long term, I think these questioning experiences are valuable for determining where we want to live and what kind of work we want to do with our lives (that is, of course, if we have any luxury of personal choice in the matter of practical vocations.) Ok, I’m ranting and not making that much sense anymore. The view from the balcony just made me think a lot about who I am and what I’m doing.
First, the view from Long St…
For several days during our time in Cape Town we stayed at a Backpackers Lodge on Long St., which is a hub of bars and stores and social activity. Right outside of our room we had a balcony from which we could view much of the activity on the street from above. The diversity of people and interactions was mesmerizing. It was also an interesting microcosm of the diversity and inequality in South Africa. Some of the sights and sounds…
- Loud music bumping from The Dubliner, a bar next door
- One-way traffic
- People of all ages and colors walking both ways on the sidewalks, some in suits, some begging, some carrying groceries, some heading into bars, some in groups, some alone.
- Edward, a 4th grader and street kid, bouncing around asking people for money or food
- A bunch of people sitting at tables outside of a café having drinks (and generally ignoring people asking for food or money)
- 30-something man selling beaded crafts
- A 20-something woman zipping back and forth across the street asking for food or money
- Taxis and taxi drivers
- Another grade school age boy searching for food or money
- On two adjacent stoops…on the left a black male teen alone who had been wandering the area for a while occasionally asking for food or money…on the right two white female teens in dresses who had just left The Dubliner, a bar.
These observations are pretty inconclusive and in no way speak to the full experience of any of the people I saw. They are really just my observations. In attempting to acknowledge the contrast of experience that exists here for the people of South Africa, it is unavoidable for me to question my own identity and experience. Where do I fit in to the picture? Very generally I suppose I am a wealthy white tourist from the United States. My general identity is not the issue because I can not change where I come from. I think experiences that make us question our identity, or experience, or vocation, or (at least in my case) privilege are important for determining, both in the immediate and the long-term, how we choose to live our lives. In the immediate, these questioning experiences should force us (“us” meaning everybody, I’m not trying to set up an “us” vs. “them” kind of thing here) to examine who we choose to greet with a friendly smile, how we choose to respond to a 10-year old begging for food, what parts of town we choose to spend our time in, or who we vote for. In the long term, I think these questioning experiences are valuable for determining where we want to live and what kind of work we want to do with our lives (that is, of course, if we have any luxury of personal choice in the matter of practical vocations.) Ok, I’m ranting and not making that much sense anymore. The view from the balcony just made me think a lot about who I am and what I’m doing.
