Sunsets and the Symphony

Yesterday between 8 and 14:30 (they love their military time here) I ‘wrote’ two tests that together will account for about one third of all the grades I will get at UCT. Final exams here make up at least 40-50% of course grades, and sometimes more, so they are quite nerve wracking. Having two in one day did not help. I think my exams went fine, though, although it is tricky to tell given the grading system here.

Straight after the exam, I joined a few friends and hiked Devil’s Peak for the first time. I was quite exhausted, but it was a really nice hike. At the top it was so windy I thought I might fall over, but the view was spectacular. As we hiked down we saw an amazing sunset just behind Lion’s Head.  

I have also checked off another item on my Cape Town to-do list by having a picnic at sunset on Signal Hill. Kevin, Levi, Bri and I packed some snacks and wine and made our way up last week, just in time to enjoy the sun setting behind a perfect view of the city.  

Bri and me as the sun was about to disappear

A random woman directed us to pose like this and took our picture

Last Thursday marked the last day of classes. It is hard to believe the semester could already be over. Exams are so spread out, though, that I will not truly be finished for two more weeks. We made the evening after our last day of classes an exciting one. First we had a great dinner at Sevruga, a restaurant at the waterfront. The waterfront is actually kind of boring and touristy, with a ton of expensive stores, but the restaurants make up for that. Next we headed to the symphony, which played in City Hall. The Cape Philharmonic Orchestra was great, playing Haydn, Mozart and Shostakovich. The violinist Olivier Charlier, who was apparently quite the music prodigy based on the bio in the program, played with the orchestra for a Mozart concerto and was truly amazing.  

Kevin and I took an awesome day trip downtown to visit museums a couple of weeks ago. We went to the District Six museum, which depicts the forced removal of people from District Six, an area within Cape Town’s city bowl, during apartheid. The museum does a good job of reconstructing some of the past and personalizing the stories of people whose lives were drastically altered because they were forced from their homes. The area, including people's homes, was bulldozed during apartheid and is mainly barren still today, despite the fact that it is in a prime location near the city. A huge map on floor of the first level of the museum shows where roads were and people who lived there have come and visited the museum, writing in where their homes were.

This mural is on the wall of the District Six museum

Later, we had lunch at our favorite restaurant, Addis, a delicious Ethiopian restaurant. 

 Kevin is impatient that this picture is preventing him from digging in

Inside Addis, note the cool umbrellas on the ceiling

Our last stop that day was the South African National Gallery. The National Gallery is really neat, with an especially intriguing sculpture in the first room of the Gallery. The sculpture, Butcher Boys, by Jane Alexander, has three life size figures with human bodies but animal features including broken horns. The art is interpreted as a reference to the way apartheid dehumanized South Africans.  I was not allowed to take pictures in the museum, but here is a link to a picture on pbs.org: Butcher Boys 

There was also a huge exhibit by a man named Peter Clarke, called Listening to Distant Thunder. Clarke actually lives in Ocean View, where I did my homestay. His work is really interesting because it spans a wide variety of styles and medias. One entire wall contains a huge photograph he took of Ocean View, which was really neat to see and to try to identify different places I had been there.

That same weekend  I got to go back to Ocean View with my friend Hannah and make dinner for the family that hosted us during our homestay. It was really fun to make them dinner and to see them again. Our host mom made the most delicious food, so it was exciting to be able to make food for her, which she either enjoyed or was really good at pretending to enjoy it. We had a slight debacle making our way back home, having missed the last train, but we ended up making it fine and even trying out a new method of transport here, the bus. 

Slang Section:

Bru = Bro

Lekker = cool/great

Chips = French fries

Soapie = soap opera. One soapie, called Generations, is really popular here. It can be tricky to follow all of the intrigue as the actors and actresses rapidly switch from English to Afrikaans. 

This is not slang, but still peculiar. They write dates backwards from us, so today is 23-5-12. Seeing cheese in the grocery store that expired 1-6-12 at first really grossed me out. Now I have finally gotten used to this, just in time to come home.

Setting Africa Ablaze

I cannot believe it has been so long since I last wrote. I can partially explain this by the fact that Cape Town now feels more like home than a travel destination about which I should write. Nevertheless, I apologize to my devoted followers (hi Mom and Dad!)

The weekend after our Easter break, we had a day trip for my archeology class. We drove to see a ‘shell midden,’ which is just a big pile of discarded shells left behind after people ate shellfish. After that we drove on to Smitswinkelbaai cave (nice name, right?) Researchers have already excavated part of the cave, notably finding sheep and seal bones, but there isn’t really anything to see now. This trip made it even more clear that archeology is slightly more boring than Indiana Jones makes it appear. Most excitingly, a few clever baboons swarmed our buses at one of the stops, thwarting our plans to eat lunch outside.

I got to see my first real ‘football’ game, Santos vs. the Kaizer Chiefs. It was hard to keep track of everything because more fans were rooting for the Kaizer Chiefs, who are from Johannesburg, than the home team, Santos. Apparently the Kaizer Chiefs are a beloved team for all of South Africa, probably because they are the most successful team. Maybe Buffalo sports fans should take a cue from South Africans… Nonetheless, Santos actually won, which displeased much of the crowd.

Perhaps a record breaking Vuvuzela 

We have gotten to celebrate birthdays for a few of our friends at UCT, including a failed surprise party for our friend Andile. It is tricky when the birthday boy arrives before the majority of the guests.

 Andile enjoying cake

Also, yesterday, we celebrated our friend Emma’s birthday at an area by campus that used to be a zoo. Now there is a lot of grass overgrowing everything, but the brick structures of the cages are still there. Emma set up a huge tent and we chilled at the lion cage. No awesome pictures of this, but hopefully I will go back and get some. The whole ancient zoo is almost a little eerie, but definitely a good place for a birthday.

The main exciting event of the last couple of weeks was our venture to AfrikaBurn, which is sometimes compared to Burning Man. The event takes place every year in the Tankwa Karoo, which is about five hours from Cape Town. Seven of us rented a big van, filled it with what we hoped would allow us to survive the weekend, and took off on April 27. Slightly more than halfway through the drive there were only dirt roads. Our van was quite the trooper, making it up dirt hills and through some big mud puddles.

We arrived and a couple of costumed girls approached our van asking the driver, “are you virgins?” While this question felt slightly intrusive from a stranger, we quickly realized she meant “are you virgins to AfrikaBurn.” Our affirmative response meant we had to jump out of the van and hit a set of massive chimes with a heavy bat, thus marking our arrival. We drove on and found a spot to camp, setting up our tents and realizing that everyone around us had much more elaborate accommodations.

 

Our neighbor's flags were quite helpful when trying to relocate our spot

The place was set up in a semi-circle, with all the tents on the inner circle having themes, such as the ‘Land of Soft Things…’

One tent had magic, others music, one served tea every morning, among many other interesting themes. A main component of Afrikaburn is that it is a gift economy. You are not allowed to buy, sell or trade anything (except of course your purchase of a R700 ticket, an interesting contradiction). Each person brings enough for himself, as well as a gift contribution for others. Our group decided to go gold for the weekend (yes, I have some shiny gold leggings now) so we tried to think of something gold to give out. While it was somewhat of a stretch, we decided on popcorn. We made a massive quantity on the stove before leaving, packaged it in small bags, and handed them out throughout the weekend. 

Unlike music festivals, there was no set schedule of events, so we spent a lot of time just wandering around, meeting people and doing a lot of people watching. I kept thinking, ‘that is the strangest thing I have ever seen’, and then turning around to see something that made me repeat that thought. Everyone there was dressed in unconventional attire, and some, particularly a few older men, in no attire. 

Awesome lady on stilts

The main negative of the event was the constant thump of techno/trance music that went all through the night in the camps beside us, with a brief morning break to reggae. One of the coolest aspects, though, was the transportation people brought. A lot of people brought their own decked-out bikes or elaborately modified cars:

Pin-wheel bike!

The art structures, placed in the center of the circle, were the neatest part of AfrikaBurn. Mostly everything was made of wood and was extremely elaborate. 

This dragon shot out fire at night

I cannot even fathom how much time and thought went into all of the art that was made, which was truly amazing. But even more exciting, perhaps, was when they set these things on fire.

The nights were cold and we were not eating gourmet meals, but survival was quite easy. We left quite dirty and smelly, but definitely having experienced an interesting weekend.

I think we were trying to spell something, but I was busy
scrambling up the van to beat my camera's timer

This past week, I finished up my first double digit page length paper since freshman year. It was all about the presence of eland in rock art. I am so bored of eland that if I find one on a menu here I might consider ordering it.

Eland in San rock art

Tuesday we went on an awesome hike up Table Mountain taking the Skeleton’s Gorge route, which I have done before. This time, however, we walked to a nearby dam, which seems kind of random and appears to have little function atop the mountain. We took a route down Nursery’s Ravine. It was steep and slippery, so I’ll leave my stumbles to the imagination. A couple of weekends ago we also made a failed attempt to climb Devil’s Peak. Equipped with someone who had hiked it in the dark, which was confounded by some extreme cloud cover, we hiked a lot, but ultimately did not find the top. While we could not see much on our hike, the surroundings were quite incredible, resembling scenes from Jurassic Park. Apparently, we wound up at Minor Peak, so we accomplished something. We must conquer this peak some other day soon.