Almost six months ago, close to half of my university’s class of 2010 departed to cities varying from Barcelona, to Sydney, to Cairo. We were all spending part of our junior year of college studying abroad. I was headed to Cape Town, South Africa, and after over 24 hours of exhaustive traveling I finally arrived in the country I would call home for five months. South Africa will forever bring to mind my most valuable memories of good friends and even better experiences. My life was changed in just a few short months.
For me, foreign travel was already part of my life. I was raised in Peru, the Cape Verde Islands, and Paraguay-- moving from place to place up until I was in 6th grade. I was comfortable with international travel, and I became very good at adjusting to new places, especially overseas. So, unlike my classmates at Bucknell, I didn’t spend time doing hours of research. I didn’t have my heart set on a specific place, and I didn’t know what I wanted to get out of my abroad experience. I just wasn’t that worried about it because I knew that anywhere I went I’d adjust without a problem. It would be just like enrolling in another international school.
Old memories flickered in my head of me as a little girl, gripping my mom’s skirt as we toured what seemed like dozens of local international schools full of unfamiliar faces and new languages. In Cape Verde, there was only one private school that fit my mom’s criteria, and it wasn’t even an English-speaking curriculum. I had to learn how to play with the other kids in French, and to my parents’ and teachers’ astonishment, I did so in only a few short months. Anyway, I knew if I could handle that challenge as a seven year old, I could handle most any other challenge in an international setting as a 20 year old. Plus, almost all of my friends were doing it and I didn’t want to be the odd one out left alone at school with nobody to hang out with.
I am often asked “Why Cape Town?” The truth is, I wasn’t sure. I ultimately chose Cape Town in South Africa because it would be summertime there and I jumped at the opportunity to bypass the miserable weather typical to winters in central Pennsylvania. Thinking of my parents as well, I considered the weakness of the dollar and tried to make my decision an economical one, too. Little did I know I had unintentionally (and quite naively) made the most rewarding decision of my life.
So I joined 150 other American students in my program at the University of Cape Town, three of whom were from my home university—also a plus. If I became miserable, at least I’d have three familiar faces to fall back on. I was nervous because I wasn’t sure how Americans would be accepted in South Africa. Unfortunately, we are not a people that are well liked in the global community. I learned that from my travels. We walk around in large groups. We’re loud.
Sitting in the large conference room at our hotel where we stayed during orientation, I stopped for a minute and noticed the deafening buzz of conversation. We really were loud. Orientation began, and we learned how to sign up for classes, the requirements we needed to fulfill, and other details on how to officially become an international student at UCT. I envisioned myself getting lost in the long hallways of the strange ivy-coated buildings we toured.
We were also introduced to our “SOL mates” (student orientation leaders) whose nationalities ranged from Kenyan to Zimbabwean to American, and some from within different regions of South Africa as well. All of the SOL mates then performed a comical, self-choreographed dance in their matching black T-shirts and made the students get up and join in.
As we all sat in a circle under the hot sun staring at each other and awkwardly playing “get to know you” games, we shared feelings of apprehensiveness about our new environment. This apprehensiveness was made only worse when we met our SOL mate.
“Hi. I am Ken. From Kenya” his six-foot-five frame towered over everyone in the room, and his voice was so deep that it left a resonating buzz in your ear, like a sub-woofer projecting overly loud bass. We later laughed about the fact that his serious demeanor frightened us because his intimidation tactic was only a joke. His humor was unique; he wore purple clown wigs around the house and had a prized collection of wool sweaters, which he wore even on the muggiest of summer days. He was not only a friend, but a father figure as well. He supplied our house with the essentials, toilet paper and sponges for the sink, and sat on the back porch with us late into the night over bottles of Castle beer and tequila, his poison of choice. A really, really cool dad.
Once I got a taste of the easy-going, enthusiastic and friendly nature of what they called the “Cape Town atmosphere,” I was excited to indulge in the mindset and became addicted to the seemingly carefree lifestyle of the South Africans. It was a breath of relief compared to the high-stress, academic-driven life I lead at Bucknell. While I was laying on the beach gazing at the pro surfers slicing their boards through the most vicious waves in the world, the students back at school who didn’t chose to study abroad were buried in the depths of their down jackets and thick woolen scarves, losing an icy battle with Old Man Winter. Take that, fellow Bucknellians.
Another thing I was experiencing outside of Bucknell was hectic class registration. At UCT, this process was anything but efficient (another quality very typical to the lifestyle in South Africa) and nothing like the orderly system I was used to. Many of the classes we had unofficially signed up for during pre-departure were either cancelled or non-existent. The room assignments and time slots were subject to change, and they did multiple times up until the second or third weeks of class.
Class didn’t start, however, until three weeks after we arrived, so we kept ourselves busy. We went on a road trip down the Garden Route (the 130 miles of coastline at the southern tip of the country) and did a lot of exploring (and getting lost) around the “mother” city. Combined with the beaches, endless surfer boys, and the fact that my grades transferred only in pass/fail form, I felt I was in paradise on Earth. Embracing the cultural routines, Cape Town became my utopia, and not one minute of the day did I spend unhappy. The thought of leaving loomed over my head like an impending storm cloud.
Of course, I also saw first-hand with the hardships that affect most third-world countries. South Africa’s rich and disturbing history was something else I didn’t research previous to my trip. I spent time with a host family in one of the townships whose people were forcefully removed from the inner city in the 1970s during South Africa’s ruthless apartheid regime. This family opened my mind to the pain that is caused by racism and oppression. I’ve never done exceptionally well in a classroom setting. My cell phone or my friends sitting around me are dangerous distractions, and I am easily put to sleep by lecturers. This was a whole new educational experience. I learned not in a classroom, but by being able to interact with this family and immerse in their cultural mindset on a personal level-- a real and tangible level.
As the cliché image of “volunteering in Africa” plays itself out, I participated in a basketball game with middle-school children living amidst unthinkable violence and witness the effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in their everyday lives. But, in spite of the (dire) circumstances, they still have the capability and motivation to laugh and play a game of hoops, which I found to be remarkable. Whether it is cliché or not.
I could speak forever on behalf of the people in adverse situations that I came to know, but that wouldn’t do justice to the incredible students I met who came to be my closest friends.
I guess when you throw a bunch of American students a new house, all going to an unfamiliar school, and adjusting to new cultural norms while in a country far from home, there’s a natural tendency to stick together. I became close with three girls in my house, and our natural draw to each other proved to be permanent when we, one-by-one (with the help of A LOT of adrenaline) jumped off the Bloukrans Bridge and performed the highest bungee jump in the world. I am terrified of heights, and this was something I never, ever saw myself doing. Yet, I was forced to face my fears by these perfect strangers I had bonded with.
After taking the scariest leap of my life (literally and figuratively speaking), I started to notice a trend as I got months deeper into my trip: the people I met and interacted with were the main reasons for my persistent feeling of satisfaction throughout my trip. Satisfaction doesn’t even do it justice. I was in a permanent ecstasy.
I made sense of this trend during one of my lectures in my “African Traditional Religions” course. We learned of a Zulu/Xhosa proverb: Ubuntu ungamntu ngabanye abantu, which loosely translates to “we are people through other people.” For a phrase that holds so much meaning and importance to me, it’s a shame I still can’t pronounce it. In any case, this proverb stems out of the larger philosophy of Ubuntu, which is seen as a founding principle of the new Republic of South Africa. It has been referenced by Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and other influential figures and places an emphasis on the individual having an interconnectedness with the people that surround him, and that he can use this power to change the world in some way. It has also been called “the essence of human existence.”
Anyway, this got me thinking. The people I was meeting in Cape Town shaped me into the growing person I am. The experiences I will look back on are made especially memorable because of the people I shared them with. The humanist philosophy of Ubuntu suddenly became apparent in all of my interactions with the people I came to know. Walking through the marketplace of scurrying, insistent vendors it wasn’t uncommon to be addressed as “my sister” or “my brother” or in cases of older women, “mama”-- a sign of respect. Togetherness was deeply apparent. The connectivity of people was all around me.
Whether it was the circles we sat in as housemates on our back porch, playing “Catchphrase” (that often turned into some sort of drinking game) or getting lost in thought as someone strummed on the guitar, the circle was a fierce representation of our togetherness. We were all affecting one another’s experience in some way; we were opening each other’s minds in the midst of a different culture. Whether it was the man selling tapestries, the boy dribbling the basketball, the unfairly displaced family, Ken from Kenya, or my roommate, they all took my hand at some point and lead me further into the exploration of this different world I was placed in. All parts that put together the whole of my experience.
Thinking back on my time in Cape Town is was like finding a long-lost album of pictures. All of the faces become familiar and stir up warm memories that were buried for too long underneath the clutter of the “now” mindset. And flipping through the album recovers a feeling of nostalgia so intense it feels like butterflies in your stomach. Oh, to be back in that place, at that time. The longing stings like a paper cut, but in the end you can only feel happy that you have such an emotional experience to look back on. It’s like that amazing feeling of the sun’s warmth on your face. Except now I feel it in my entire body, it radiates into soul. And to think that I only picked Cape Town for the weather.
Lindsy I really enjoyed reading this. There is nothing like the joy of finding that our experiences with and connectedness to other people help make us who we are--or bring it out. I absolutely LOVED the last paragraph. Welcome home!
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