January 25, 2007
Home.
In the end, the trip went well. I finished my work and got to do a series of great interviews at clinics around Cape Town and also got to do some good interviews with Xhosa women on the street. It was cool. Now to write that 40 page paper... And do all the interviews here in Cleveland.
It was also great to see old friends and make new ones. I'm certain that I want to get back to Cape Town now, and can't wait for my next trip there.
After I finish this last semester, that is. Only a few more months to go and I'll be done with my degree! Crazy.
I'll continue to update the blog once I get some pictures of the trip and also as my research progresses.
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January 12, 2007
More lucky progress.
So today I set up all my appointments and car hire for tomorrow's clinic visits. Quite exciting. I am on my way to getting some real work done! Appointments tomorrow from 9:30-2, in Khayelitsha, Heideveld, Langa, Mitchell's Plain, and Milnerton. A mix of locations; townships -- with varying racial, ethnic, and cultural demographics. This will turn out well, I think.
I also went up to UCT today to visit with the interstudy staff, which is the program I came here with last year. It was nice and when I was done, I tried to visit several campus offices to find translators for my projects since my friends didn't seem to have connections. Unfortunately, though, I felt as though these places weren't going to come through for me, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and made posters appealing for assistance with my research and hung them at various places on campus (slightly against campus rules because I should've probably had the approval stamp on them, but oh well! What can they do other than take them down, and that will not likely happen before I leave). This was a partially successful effort as I was contacted by a young woman who wanted to serve as my Xhosa translator! So she and I are meeting tomorrow afternoon at 4, after my clinic visits, and I will be done with the Xhosa-speaking women portion of my project. All that will be left is finding a translator for Afrikaans-speaking women and I'll have to do 5 more interviews. I hope someone else responds to my advertisement. Anyway, things are good and I'll only have a bit of work left to complete during Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, which should leave time for one last trip to the beach if I'm lucky and a proper goodbye outing with friends on Sunday evening to Kirstenbosch, the amazing botanical gardens here, for the summer sunday evening concerts in the gardens.
Yeah, I think all is good here. Let's hope I can find that last translator. And I still can't believe my good fortune for meeting with Dr. Ivan Toms, Executive Director of Cape Town City Health -- I think this connection could prove to be quite useul in the future.
I love Cape Town!
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January 10, 2007
One more thing...
Maharaja's chicken curry rooti.
Wow.
I missed that perhaps more than Table Mountain... just kidding. But boy, was it good.
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Making it work
So things have shaped up here quite a bit. I went to the beach week and got a bit of a sunburn and enjoyed my time immensely -- I went with my friend Shawn, whom I've had the pleasure of spending a lot of time with since I've been here. Also saw several other people over the weekend and saw some of my favorite hang out spots in Observatory.
This week I got some other things done -- market trip, some research at the UCT library, and slowly but surely getting things together for my project's interviews. I did one interview with a woman from Marie Stopes, who is a private reproductive health providor -- and I interviewed them to contrast with the state-sponsored care. In my search for the correct contacts at clinics, I was given the contact info for who ended up being the Director of City Health of Cape Town -- the big kahuna for all public health clinics - and he offered to help me out and then offered to meet with me, which we did today, at his home. Nice, nice guy! And cool house. Anyway, he was a HUGE help and we selected some clinics for me to visit and then he's contacting all of them tomorrow morning to let them know I'm going to contact them, and then he says I should be able to get in with them all on Friday because it's a slow day. So hopefully all works out and if for whatever reason I can't get them all on Saturday I can try to schedule some on Monday, too. I just have to make sure my dude Cecil, or one of his friends, might be able to drive me around all day to these places. Hope they don't charge me too much. SO anyway, Dr. Ivan Toms, Dir. City Health, also gave me an interview, which is quite valuable.
Anyway, so that's exciting. I'm still working on getting interpreters for my interviews of women -- but the Case IRB still hasn't gotten back to me on all that so I really don't know what to think. If I can get people as interpreters(and I do intend to), then I will just do them anyway and only use them for my classroom presentation and not for anything else I do with this project later on, I guess. Not ideal but doable.
In other news, I went into "town" as it's called here, a.k.a. "downtown" and was at the market and decided to stop by the place where Jean Luke, the guy I met last week, was supposed to have worked. Unfortunatey, it turns out he didn't work there anymore, but I ended up having friendly conversation with some of the other people who worked there, and now I can certainly say that I have one more good friend in this city when I come back again by the name of Kenny. Always exciting -- and he has shown me some really cool spots along Long Street that I never knew about before, as well as provided me with plenty of fascinating conversation, both political and personal. This city definitely has its fair share of interesting people and I am enjoying meeting people that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet before. My last experience here was so insulated and I learned a lot and had a great time but I realize there was so much more I could've done. I think I knew it at the time but wasn't sure how to access the rest of things, and now I think I have the resources and knowledge to do so in the future.
I do love this city as much as I did before, I think, though it represents more to me now than it used to (which is good). And I am glad to be back. It's still sometimes weird to be in this house without the people who made it so great for me, and I don't know that staying here was entirely a good idea -- in some ways it's been really helpful and great but in other ways I think it might have been hindering my enjoyment of the city.
Anyway, it's been good. I am enjoying myself. Lots of work yet to do and I hope it all comes together... we shall see!
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January 05, 2007
One brief obstacle. Shortly to be overcome.
10:47 PM Cleveland time, 5:47 AM Cape Town time (when I initially sat down to write but gave up and made a phone call)
11:15 PM Cleveland time, 6:15 AM Cape Town time (when I began to write after my phone card ran out of minutes)
11:54 PM Cleveland time, 6:54 AM Cape Town time (when I finally finished my interrupted phone call)
At 10:47 I was feeling extremely lonely and sad, staring at the barren walls of my room, where I’d lived for 5 months previously. I had a great day yesterday, but after it ended, in my absolute exhaustion from traveling and hardly sleeping over the last three or four nights, I felt really alone. I went to sleep here in this stark, empty room, which I had made a comfy, cozy home to myself at one point, very early at about 8:30 PM, and kept waking up through the night with those recurring feelings.
This morning, when I woke up at 5:15 or so I realized how this house I’m staying in used to be full of my friends, and harbors a lot of great memories for me. Now I’m here and none of that is here with me. All I wanted to do for about ten minutes was to go back home, a thought which I knew was ridiculous because I’m only here for two weeks and I’ll be home soon enough, working my ass off doing school stuff and preparing for real life to start in May.
I made a phone call back home which definitely made me feel a little better. I think that being here and feeling alone recalled a lot of the memories that I have of being here, in this very room, when I first arrived – I was excited but I was terribly sad and lonely, having left behind a significant, long-term relationship, and those feelings were a huge part of my first several weeks here. Being here again, on my own – as I felt that I was when I got here last February – brought all of that back to me. In the end, I know I’m going to have a blast here – I have fun plans for today and I think I’m going to be able to carry out my project just fine, and it’s been great seeing people again. I was just worried there for a bit that perhaps my big life plans of coming back here after graduation some way, some how, weren’t perhaps the best plans for me. I realize now that I should definitely try to get back here again, and I know by the time I leave here that I’m going to be so sad to leave it. I’m not worried. Things will work themselves out, as they always do.
The church bells are ringing and it’s 7 AM. What’s funny is that I don’t think I ever heard the church bells ring at 7 AM before. In fact, I don’t know if they ever rang on any other hours, either. I wonder if the church (which is down the street) just started doing this while I was gone, or if I just didn’t ever wake up early enough to hear them – maybe they signify the start of school or something. Odd. I lived in this very room for months and never noticed before…
Anyway, let’s give the recount for yesterday – I got up and arranged to meet my friend and the coordinator of the program that brought me here last year. I got a ride across town from the taxi driver who always gave me great rates because he had a crush on me (Cecil – he’s a nice guy, and it was good to chat with him again), and then got to the house. It turns out a friend of the landlord is staying here, too – a young guy, about my age, who is a serious cyclist. It’s kind of nice knowing I’m not totally alone in this big house at night. Anyway, I went then to the Coffee Bean, the local coffee spot, to see Braam, the owner and probably the friendliest guy in all of Cape Town, and then took care of some business at the internet café… then called up my friend, Shawn, who met me for lunch and coffee. We ended up spending the afternoon together at my house and had a really nice time. I then ate dinner and proceeded to fall asleep early…
And today, I have plans for the beach, and hopefully some stuff for the research. I think I’m going to try to go out tonight in Obs, or Observatory, a nearby neighborhood where I spent a lot of my social time while I was here last year.
I am bound and determined to have a blast, and I am quite confident that I will. It’s just really weird being here alone. I do miss my friends a lot, and I think that was part of it, too – I forged some amazing friendships in this house and it’s hard to allow them to be a big part of my life right now because we’re scattered across the country and are all really busy. Anyway, I guess this is just motivation to try harder to maintain those friendships and a big push to take on Cape Town by myself. That was one huge regret that I have about my last stay here – it took me so long to get out and about and be confident about it, and even then I feel like I used my friends as a crutch to experience this place. I now have to do it on my own, and I’m both nervous (and was nervous about this before I got here) and excited about it.
Eventually I’ll get some pictures together and get them up here for everyone to see.
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January 04, 2007
Back.
7:15 PM Cleveland time, 2:15 am Cape Town time. ¾ January 07.
I can’t believe I’m back in Cape Town. Relatively uneventful flights, lots of movie watching. Met some nice people on the plane. Blocked in when I had to go to the bathroom for hours by sleeping row mates.
I got back to Cape Town in one piece…. And it’s just as amazing and great as I remembered it.
Went out tonight when I got in for a bit (about 2 hours) and ended up meeting a guy named Jean Luke, who was waiting for a friend (I met the friend eventually, too), and I think I have made two new friends. Great conversation, political, social, silly, serious… all of the above. Jean Luke is an Afrikaaner --- an exceptional one, which is nice – I realize I have had perhaps an unnecessary prejudice against most Afrikaaners. Interesting history (walked, literally, about 1/3 of the African continent for a little over two years, completely loving and supportive of his lesbian mother in a country where lgbtq issues aren’t exactly always accepted), and great friendly personality. Think I’ll meet up with him later.
I love this city. So good to be back. I think I belong here.
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January 03, 2007
Heading back.
2:02 AM, Cleveland time. 8:02, Amsterdam time. 9:02, Cape Town time.
3 January 2007
I am sitting here in the Amsterdam airport, waiting for my connecting flight into Cape Town, South Africa. It has been slightly over six months since I was last in Cape Town, and on my flight from Detroit to Amsterdam, I decided I should bring my blog up-to-date. Well, I don’t know that I can truly do that, but I do want to recount, recall, and anticipate a little before setting foot back in Cape Town.
I wrote that I was going to update about my trip to Namibia and that I was going to do some wrap-up on my whole experience. I never got around to that, though I think my neglect was a little bit intentional. When I left Cape Town, I was afraid that I’d never get back there, to a place I’d grown to love and in which I had discovered so much more about myself. Cape Town is an amazingly wonderful city, and anyone who has spoken with me since my return should know that I feel that way. The place is just beautiful and full of good people and has a great vibe, and art and music and excitement and … the list goes on, I really cannot say enough about that place. I found it inspirational and gained hope from it, and I was lent so much perspective on my life and my goals through living in the city. I think that I was keeping the Cape Town chapter of my life open by not writing my conclusion to the experience. I can write it now because I know that I’ll be there again in a mere 12 or 13 hours and I am bound and determined to find a way back for a much longer period of time following my graduation from Case in May.
Where to begin… I know that I have so much to say about Cape Town and so little time to type it in, before my laptop’s battery dies.
I love Cape Town. That love is certainly based in all of the attributes of the city, but it’s also based in what I experienced while I was there. I learned so much about everything under the sun, personally, politically, socially, historically. The world was clearer, sharper, made more sense after having spent some time in that place, and especially after going back home and re-examining my local surroundings. I grew up a lot, even though I’d always fancied myself an extremely mature person relative to my peer group, and I grew to know myself so much better. I figured out a lot more about who I am, or at least saw it more clearly, I was able to examine and understand the place and effects of a serious relationship, causing me to end it but also to appreciate it immensely for its impact upon my life. I understood my own insecurities and doubts and also was able to find my dreams and aspirations as they emerged from the muddled mess of questions and concerns which left Cleveland with me at the end of January in 2006.
I also learned more academically in that one semester than I had in any other semester previous, and the courses were so well-taught and the readings so interesting. Class was rewarding every time I went and the issues seemed so much more relevant to real life and to my interests. I do love many things about Case, but this academic experience at the University of Cape Town was incredible and I am so thankful that I was able to have it. My professors were great and it was so fascinating to learn from a non-US perspective, particularly one which had gone through so much recent political turmoil. I could talk about how rewarding this academic experience was for quite a while, but I’ll limit myself and stop here.
There is so much to reflect on and I don’t think I can do it all now, and even if I tried, I don’t think I could do it well enough to do justice to all of the experiences I had. I’ll move on.
I am excited and very nervous about this return trip. I am going back with funds from the Experiential Learning Fellowship I was awarded in the fall of 2005. I will be working on interviews for my senior project, which deals with a comparative study of the evolution of reproductive rights legislation in both Cleveland and Cape Town (US/Ohio and South Africa), as it was affected by the feminist movement, and how that evolution plays out on the ground in terms of what services are offered for women and how women experience those services. I am targeting poor, urban women because they are a demographic that has historically often been notably excluded from the concerns and causes of the feminist movement, and I am interested in seeing how reproductive rights, which are a championed cause of the feminist movement, affect women’s lives and how these particular women feel they are served by the movement. I’m doing the Cape Town half of the interviews with legislators, clinic administrators, and women, and I’m nervous about getting it all done and doing it well in the time I have in Cape Town, and also how I’ll fit it all into the final paper and if it will be good. I have loose ends to tie up with the Case IRB and all of this is a bit nerve-wracking because I’m on a very tight schedule.
I’m also nervous for my return because Cape Town is going to be very different than the last time I was there; all of my friends with whom I lived are back at home in the US and Canada, and many of my UCT friends have graduated and are no longer in Cape Town. I’ll be moving about the city by myself with a much smaller social network than the last time I was there, and staying by myself, etc. I am excited for all of this, but I’m also nervous for my safety, and also how the experience will compare to my previous one. I’m sure it’s going to be amazing, but that can’t stop me from being a bit uneasy right now.
Only one hour till my plane takes off for Cape Town. I’m much less nervous than I was yesterday, and much more filled with anticipation. I am looking forward to the 80 degree weather and the beach and the blue skies, several food items, a few hot social hang outs, and many friends. I am also excited about the interesting experiences that my research will inevitably provide.
On a side note, I wish I could explore Amsterdam. I’m here for a short while now, but have a five hour layover on the way back. Too short to go an explore but too long to not feel confined by the walls of this 60s-style (ugly!) airport.
Onward and upward.
More notes to come.
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