Visit to Cape Town

Mountains in Stellenbosch

My friend Stephanie and I on the ferry to Robben Island with Table Mountain in the background!


Waterfront of Cape Town
Beach on Robben Island
Lime quarry where many freedom fighters were forced to work on Robben Island
Nelson Mandela's cell
Entrance to Robben Island

Shops/restaurants in Camps Bay (gorgeous beach area)

Our program took a trip from Durban to Cape Town March 27th-April 3rd. The first 2 nights we stayed in Stellenbosch, the vineyard and winery area about half an hour outside of Cape Town. It was absolutely GORGEOUS there! We had a lecture about the Identity of Afrikaaners one morning and in the afternoon we went on a wine tasting at Spier winery (which was really fun!). We then drove to Cape Town the next morning. The ride to Cape Town is pretty much one long stretch of shacks...so it's kind of hard to wrap your mind around leaving this gorgeous area and immidiately seeing mile after mile after mile of extreme poverty.

Once we got to Cape Town we moved in to a backpacker. The next few days we had various lectures, and visited all different places including Robben Island, the District 6 Museum, Joe Slovo and Delft informal settlements, etc. I really loved Cape Town!

For the last month of our program we have to complete an Independent Study Project on a topic of our choice. Basically complete research and write a looooooooong paper and then present it. We can go anywhere in South Africa as long as our topic/locaiton gets approved. So I decided to go back to Cape Town and that is where I am right now! I live with 2 other girls in "holiday flats". I start my research tomorrow. I am going to be exploring the effectivemess of a mobile TB clinic. So I will be going to a clinic in Gugulethu (a township) for the next week or so observing and interviewing staff. Should be interesting!

Newlands East and Parlock Homestays

Parlock Homestay Pictures Reshma and her family
Maya and I making Rotis
More Rotis...so delicious!

Newlands East Homestay Pictures
The family and I.
The apartment we stayed in was on the bottom floor.
Picture of Newlands East

The week of March 24th I stayed with a coloured family in Newlands East, a township about 20 min outside the city center of Durban. During apartheid it was an exclusively coloured area, now it is a little more integrated, but still remains predominantly coloured. My family consisted of a mother (Gloria) 2 sons Dale (21) and Jose (20) and one daughter Kelly (15). I was only there for a few days so I didn't become super close with them, but it was still very interesting. My family was extremely religious born again Christians and everynight they took me to Bible Study for several hours.


PARLOCK
The week of April 7th I lived with an Indian Family in an area called Parlock. I was paired with a girl named Liz from my program. The rest of the students in my family lived in Newlands West (across a highway from Newlands East) which used to be only Indian during apartheid and pretty much remains that way today. My family cancelled the morning students were supposed to move in so our teacher somehow found this GREAT family in Parlock (about 5 min from Newlands West) to take us in. There was Roy (father 55) Maya (mom) Reshma (daughter 33) Niven (son 28). Reshma didn't live at the house but came over all the time with her two little sons.

I loved them! The first day we were there it was the father Roy's bday and they had a HUGE celebration with about 30-40 family members over at the house. The second night the aunt and uncle invited us over to "taste" roti's and we ended up staying for 4 hours eating this AMAZING but huge meal...then we got home and Maya made us eat MORE curry! As you can probably guess the food was soooooo good!!! Another night Maya wrote down a bunch of Indian recipies for Liz and I and then taught us how to make rotis (see picture).