Hi everyone!
Today was our first full day here in Cape Town, SA. We woke up this morning to a spectacular sunrise over Signal Peak directly behind our apartments, and the day only got better from there. We started with a trip to the Waterfront; a nearby mall which reminds me of the Natick Collection outside of Boston. There, we spent the morning buying groceries for the week, figuring out the phone situation, eating breakfast, and exploring.
Around 12pm we met Peter Kraan and travelled to the TSiBA Campus to meet their students for the first time. After some time mingling and hopelessly trying to learn each other’s names, we all consented that it would come with time and got into buses headed off to the Township of Langa, where we met our tour guide, MC.
Townships were created due to the enactment of the Group Areas Act of 1950, which decreed that ethnicities must live in separate areas; effectively banning all non-whites from living in the cities with the white South Africans. If you would like to learn more about South African townships and what their role in apartheid was, and what it currently is in post-apartheid SA, you can read more about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township_(South_Africa)
MC, who started his own township tour guide business, participated in the NU SEI/TSiBA program last year and was eager to show us around Langa. The Langa Township is representative of a vast majority of South African townships. Is has three major economic classes; poor, middle class, and wealthy. What makes this so unique is that all three are tired together through an astounding sense of culture and community. MC explained to us that even the residents in rich areas, the doctors, lawyers and teachers, could all easily afford to live in the suburbs, but choose not to on a basis that they had cultural ties to their community – whether it is religious, or other any other reason. It was quite a moving experience to be immersed into such a strong sense of culture.
MC and his tour guides took us throughout the township, showing the many facets of township life, and the members of the community were very gracious in letting us into their personal lives – down to stepping into a hostel of three beds, that housed three families, one bed for each. After the tour of Langa, we all headed over to have a group dinner. It was a great chance for us to bond with the TSiBA students, and I came to the conclusion that I am profoundly jealous of their vibrant sense of humor. After dinner we said our ‘good byes’ and headed home. I don’t think I could have imagined a better first day. Tomorrow we head to Robben Island.
-Jason Morris
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