At 6:20am tomorrow, I leave Cape Town behind and head off to Johannesburg for a whirlwind 36 hour visit. After I arrive Thursday morning, I go straight from my hostel to the University of Witswatersrand to interview Professor Deborah Posel. From there, I head to the Constitutional Court to meet with Justice Albie Sachs.

I have Friday free, and I am thinking about hitting up some of the museums in the city before I head to the airport in the late afternoon for my 7pm flight to London.

I am not sure if I will have internet access after tonight, so wish me luck and a safe trip home. If all goes well, I will land back in Buffalo at 1pm on Saturday!

Four days, and I will be gone from the country I have called home over the past two summers, not knowing when or if I will ever have the opportunity to return. Thinking about leaving South Africa is sad and exciting at the same time. Part of me is happy. I can’t wait to be at home again, enjoy the comforts of life in the U.S. (more than 4 TV channels, fast and unlimited internet!), and savour what’s left of summer vacation.

But at the same time, part of me is holding onto the life that I have grown accustomed to over the past two months or so. Each day I board the train, hop of at the downtown station, and navigate the crowds and street vendors milling about their daily lives, I feel like I fit in a bit more. I can look at the train timetables and understand where exactly each train will be going. I can glance at the posters placed on street poles promoting the day’s newspaper headlines and comprehend the latest political events and local gossip. I can rattle off street names and directions off the top of my head.

In spite of (and, in many ways, because of) its chaos, complexities, and contestations, Cape Town has grown on me, and no amount of endless rainfall can take that away.

My last weekend was very enjoyable, although a bit sad. Friday night, one of my housemate Joel’s co-workers, Intebeko, hosted a going away party for all of our house, since many of the people were leaving on Sunday. Intebeko lives in the Gugulethu township (an all black area), so we knew that we were in for quite an experience. After a quite harrowing car ride there (our van broke down several times in the middle of a busy road), we were greeted with a raucous party with plenty of food and booze. At the end of the evening, we joined Intebeko’s friends in turning the garage into a makeshift dance floor—South Africans really know how the enjoy themselves.

Saturday night, I was invited by Bonita, the director of the District Six Museum, over to her house for dinner. Aside from her and her family, several of my other co-workers (Tina and Chris from the Exhibitions Department, Mandy from Education, and Thulani from the Sound Archive) joined us, each bringing a dish to share. Let me say that the meal was fantastic. I got to sample a wide variety of traditional Cape Town recipes—all of which were delicious. I especially enjoyed boboetie (pronounced ba-beau-tea), a sweet mince meat curry.

After being on such a high from Friday and Saturday night, Sunday was a bit of a downer. Five of my housemates who have been here for the past 8 weeks were leaving to head back to the States. After spending so much time with each other, we were all very close, and it was sad to see them go. Thankfully, pretty much everyone goes to either UNC or Duke, so it will be fairly easy for us to keep in touch and see each other, due the proximity of our schools.

Sunday did have its silver lining, however. As you may recall, I mentioned in a post from my first week here how badly the choir at the Catholic Church near me sings. Well, in the past 9 weeks, they haven’t gotten any better, and my housemate and Church buddy Ainsley left mass every Sunday laughing at their interesting melodies. Last week as we walked out of Church, we joked about joining the choir for our final Sunday. What was just a mindless joke turned into a dare, and of course we had to follow through. So 30 minutes before the 11am mass, Ainsley and I headed to the Holy Name Catholic Church to join choir practice. It was hilarious, and I enjoyed figuring out exactly which choir members were responsible for the extremely off-key singing. I even was allowed to play the tambourine for the music during mass! The choir (average age 65) loved us, and as we left, they told us at least 5 times that they would pray for us.

After Sunday, I think that I will be hanging up my choir robes for good.

It’s been a bit of a crazy week here in Cape Town. Record rainfall has hit, soaking everything and everybody to the core, flooding roads, and wreaking havoc in the townships. Thanks to my nice waterproof rain jacket, I have been surviving the wetness, but I am anxiously anticipating the nice summer weather that is waiting for me back in the States when I return next Saturday.

My second to last week in South Africa has been going quite nicely, although it has been a bit hectic (a word South Africans love to use). Last weekend, I spent Saturday afternoon climbing Lion’s Head again. It was not as nice weather as the last time I ascended the peak, but it was a neat experience since there was a cloud at the top and we got to be in the middle of a cloud while climbing! Other than that, I just hung out around our house and watched several (perhaps one-too-many) movies.

Monday was my final official day at the District Six Museum. After weeks of work and a frantic few days of writing and formatting, I finished my final report and handed it over to the museum staff. Today (Friday), I will be meeting with my supervisors at the museum to discuss my findings and how the museum can move forward. Hopefully it will go well, as all of my work this summer will be for naught if I cannot sell the permanent staff on my recommendations. I will try to upload the document to the blog in the near future.

As far as my history research for my thesis on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I have been keeping busy with that too. After endless phone calls and emails, I was finally able to locate the documents I was looking for. Since last Thursday, I have spent countless hours scanning and photocopying reports, memos, submissions, and other random documents associated with the passage of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Bill, the act that set up the TRC. I have been extremely lucky that those who I have been able to get in contact with have been extremely helpful and generous in sharing their time with me. As fate would have it, the material I am working with is not all in one place, so each day I make a circuit around Cape Town hopping from one organization’s archives to the next. It’s a bit like a scavenger hunt, except the more documents I find, the more reading I have to do!

On a final note, I finally figured out my plans for my last week. Thursday morning, I will be flying to Johannesburg. Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, I hope to meet with several people there to talk about my research. And then Friday at 8pm SAST (2pm EST), I begin the long, 20 hour-long trek back to the United States.

Seven days and counting…

It has been a beautiful past week in Cape Town, and I am starting to think/hope that the endless rain of last summer is not going to make an appearance anytime soon. Not that I am going to complain.

With sunny blue skies all weekend, we were able to take advantage of the awesome weather. On the 4th of July, after enjoying a brunch at a creperie just blocks away from my house, we joined some of my housemates’ American co-workers from SAEP (the South African Education and Environment Project) for a picnic on the beach in a place called Maiden’s Cove. It was unbelievable. We sat on a big rock right next to the shoreline and enjoyed a beautiful sunset. It wasn’t quite the same without fireworks, but the full moon in the clear sky was an acceptable substitute. Sunday, we took the train to Kalk Bay along the Cape Peninsula, ate brunch at a local restaurant, and walked along the rocky shoreline towards the surfer’s beach at Muizenburg. Since it was a warm day and the waves were big, there were lots of people out in the water with their boards—definitely a site I am not used to seeing.

Monday was a bit of an interesting day. After work, my co-worker Estelle invited me, the two other Duke interns, and an intern from Canada over to her house for dinner. She had been talking up her cooking for weeks, so naturally I was eager to test out her claims. I am happy to report that the meal was delicious, my favorite dish being the Butternut Squash Soup. Aside from the food, we were also able to meet and visit with her husband and two young children.

After dinner at Estelle’s, one of my other co-workers Joe picked us up and took us to Swinger’s, a local jazz club with an open stage on Monday nights. As we soon learned, Joe is quite a big deal in the local jazz scene. Not only was he the emcee of the evening’s entertainment, his picture was also hanging on the wall inside the club! And at several points during the night he got up on stage and performed. All the artists that took the stage were quite talented, and I enjoyed the music very much. Also, I couldn’t believe how racially diverse the club was. Coloured, white, and black South Africans were jamming out side by side—definitely a refreshing and encouraging sight. At the end of the night, however, I was completely exhausted. Joe (who is 70 years old) stayed until the very end at 1:30am, so we didn’t get a ride home until then. A long night indeed, and an even longer morning waking up after so few hours of sleep. It was funny to think that a 70 year old man outlasted 4 college students, as we were all falling asleep by the end of the night!

Work is also going well. This week, I am putting together my final report for the museum. I am making definite progress, and I hope to finish it by Monday. The historical research is coming along too, although at a much slower pace. After an endless number of phone calls and running around, I was able to located key documents from the Parliamentary committee that debated and drafted the bill that set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And luckily, the material is located in Cape Town, so I do not have to spend as much time in Johannesburg and Pretoria as I had originally anticipated. I hope to begin looking through it next week when I am finished with my work at the museum.

I’ll end with a story that I found quite amusing—and perhaps illustrative of the fact that I am settling in quite nicely as a Capetonian. As I was walking from the museum to the National Library yesterday afternoon, and black man approached me. “Brother!” he shouted out. Usually, out of safety concerns, I would ignore anyone who approached me, but for some reason, I decided to stop. He was well dressed and didn’t appear to be a threat. After the initial greeting, he showed me a text message on his phone that contained an address, and he asked me for directions. Without hesitation, I gave him concise and seamless instructions on how to get to Barrack St, an obscure road a few blocks away. He thanked me, and I walked away with a grin on my face. Not only did I appear South African enough for him to stop me, I also was able to accurately direct him. I was quite proud of myself.

When I walked off of the plane at the Cape Town airport in late May, I wondered why, of all places, I decided to return to South Africa. I experienced the country last summer and was able to spend eight weeks immersing myself in its culture and engaging on a service project. It was an enjoyable summer, and I certainly learned a lot about the country and myself. Yet, when given the opportunity to plan a civic engagement project anywhere in the world for my SOL grant proposal, I chose to go back. At the time, I thought that my familiarity with the District Six Museum would allow me to be more effective, given the time constraints of the summer. But could I have made more of a difference elsewhere? Am I using my time and talents most effectively in working with the museum on this project? Should I have chosen to spend my summer in a totally different culture? Would I have been better off working with an educational organization? Would I have been better off working with the youth or in other service opportunities that make a more direct contribution to society and the common good?

I guess I will never know.

Wednesday at the District Six Museum, several of the youth organizations affiliated with the museum held a day of film screening centered around the power of youth. This week was the beginning of winter break for high schools (it’s weird to think about how everything is reversed here!), so lots of young people were able to attend.

After a few short film screenings and workshops in the morning, the afternoon schedule had the students watching a documentary about the life of Rosa Parks and the larger civil rights movement her activism inspired. Although it was a bit long, I found the film to be incredibly powerful, as it demonstrated the courage and persistence of Ms. Parks and the participants of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. It was a very interesting moment to be in the middle of South Africa watching a film about the history of my own country. Talking about, researching, and thinking about apartheid while in South Africa, it is easy to forget about the fact that similar racial and economic discrimination existed (and, perhaps, continues to exist) in the US.

The discussion that followed the film, led by one of my Duke professors (Bob Korstad), was especially powerful, and it illustrated both the challenges and opportunities existing in South Africa today. This past weekend, Bob, Jabulani (the professor from Pietermaritzburg’s University of KwaZulu-Natal), and I had a conversation about how much progress South Africa still has to go. In many ways, the achievement of political freedom in 1994 was only the beginning of the end of apartheid since so many economic, educational, and health inequalities stand in the way of total and complete realization of freedom. And unfortunately, due to corruption and the spoils of patronage, it appears as if the self-serving nature of political parties, including the ANC, will not be able to deliver equality. Instead, it can only be achieved by an extra-political organization composed of everyday South Africans actively participating in their democracy and demanding their rights.

Much to my surprise, many of the students after watching the documentary, made incisive observations similar to what Bob, Jabulani, and I discussed. They incisively recognized that so much progress remains ahead of them and that it will be up to their generation to continue the march to freedom.

While the conversation demonstrated the opportunities and hope for the future, it also featured a phenomenon far-too present in society. The success of the anti-apartheid movement was a testament to the bravery and selflessness of so many South Africans who sacrificed their livelihoods and personal well being for the sake of something larger than themselves. The struggle was long, difficult, and thankless, and they deserve endless gratitude and appreciation from the “freedom generation,” the young people today born into a democratic South Africa.

During the dialogue the other day, many of the youth program leaders, who are mostly middle aged, began speaking about their involvement with the movement, elaborating on the sacrifices they made and emphasizing the difficulties they encountered. But what were supposed to be (I think, at least) inspirational anecdotes and speeches turned more into preaching. The adults, it seemed to me, were talking down to the young people about how hard they had it and how lazy the youth today are—a prime example of the whole “back in my day, we walked to school uphill…both ways.”

It is often said that South Africa suffers from a syndrome known as “struggle fatigue,” basically that the country can’t get past its past. I never fully understood what that term meant. The past is important. It’s integral to moving forward and achieving true freedom in the coming generations. However, as I witnessed the other afternoon, it can get to be too much.

Does endless fixation on the past only generate malaise and fatigue? Do former activists need to take the backseat and allow the next generation of leaders to emerge? But is this next generation ready to lead and ready to sacrifice?

For South Africa today, the challenges and uncertainties are seemingly endless.

This weekend, I travelled with the DukeEngage students to Pietermaritzburg (the city where I spent my first four weeks last summer) to enjoy the region’s sights and speak with Professor Jabulani Sithole of the University of KwaZulu Natal and several anti-apartheid activists.

Early Friday morning at 5am, I met up with Bill Chafe, my professor and the leader of the DukeEngage South Africa trip, to head to the Cape Town Airport for our 6:30am flight to Durban. (We were flying separately from the other students). When we got to the airport, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The entire domestic departures terminal, which is a small temporary structure while the real terminal is under construction for the 2010 World Cup, was completely mobbed. The British and Irish Lions, the two countries’ national rugby team, is in the middle of its tour against South Africa (the reigning world champion Springboks), so the airport was full of British and Irish rugby fans traveling from Cape Town to Johannesburg, the site of the next match. The airport was so full that we literally had to push our way to the desk to check in.

After we made it through security, it was a quite relaxing morning, since Bill is an American Airlines platinum member and he was able to secure entry for me into the British Airways Lounge. Free internet and free breakfast are quite an enjoyable combination, and if it wasn’t 6am, I might have helped myself to the complimentary open bar. (I have to admit that I did take a few muffins, snacks, and canned sodas along for the road!) Upon arrival in Durban, we made a brief visit to the Indian Ocean and headed off to Pietermaritzburg where we cooked a collective dinner and played charades for evening entertainment.

Saturday morning started off with a delicious breakfast at the Aberfeldy B&B (the cleaning/cooking staff remembered me as the boy who loved their scrambled eggs) and a tour of the Edendale township, the site of the Seven Days War conflict between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in 1990. Recognizing that its position was weakening, the apartheid government sough to create instability within the ANC and the freedom movement by financing and arming rival organizations like the IFP. Although I had learned a little bit about the conflict during my time last year, the tour helped to fill in the gaps and give me a better understanding of what really happened. It was also cool that, during our tour, a local man began listening in and adding his own personal experiences from the conflict.

Later in the day, we went over to Professor Jabulani Sithole’s house to eat dinner with him, his wife Zanelle, and his four children (ages 16, 11, 4, and 1). It was an interesting evening to say the least. We walked in to find all of the children gathered around the television watching the Michael Jackson tribute running on MTV, which consisted of back-to-back MJ music videos. The TV was turned off for dinner, but afterwards, the tribute returned. Over the next few hours, everyone—Jabulani, his wife and children, Duke professors, and students alike—danced in the living room and sang along to all of the MJ hits. It was quite an experience, and it is truly amazing to see how music can bridge cultural divides and foster cross-cultural sharing. In addition, I do have to say that it was a bit strange to be sitting in a living room in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa watching a TV broadcast from Times Square. It shows just how small our world is and just how widely American culture has penetrated all aspects of the globe.

Sunday morning began with a trip to the Metro Methodist Church in downtown Pietermaritzburg, which we attended on the recommendation of the owner of the B&B. The church service was an interesting experience. The congregation was remarkably multiracial, and the sermon preached about Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Jesus was very though provoking. During the musical portions of the service, it got to be a bit much though. Many of the congregants began waving their hands in the air, and one even fetched a maroon flag from the back of the church and began waving it down the center of the aisle. Not your average church service.

The rest of the day was spent interacting with various anti-apartheid leaders, all of whom I had the opportunity to meet with during my trip last year. This time, however, I was able to get a lot more out of the experience because I have a much stronger understanding of South African history and could engage with them on a much deeper level. In the afternoon, Cassius Lubisi, the Superintendent General of Education for the province of KwaZulu Natal spoke to us about how he became politically conscious and how he began his career as a freedom fighter. In the evening, we went to the house of Rod and Fiona Bulman, local leaders in the non-profit community who were also anti-apartheid activists. The talk was especially fascinating because they were joined by their now thirty year-old daughter Rosie who spoke about growing up under the later stages of apartheid and how she dealt with her parents position as outspoken activists. I had never really heard what it was like for someone who grew up during the 1980s, and the exchanges and interaction between Rosie and her parents brought out very powerful stories and memories.

Yesterday, I took advantage of the downtime in the morning and early afternoon to reacquaint myself with the city of Pietermaritzburg. After a brief walk in the downtown area, I headed to the Voortrekker Museum which is located within the Church of the Vow. During the Great Trek of 1938 when they traversed the interior of the country seeking their own farmland and to escape British bans on slavery, the first group of Afrikaner settlers battled with the Zulu nation for control of areas of what is now KwaZulu Natal. The Afrikaners believed that their victory over the Zulu at the Battle of Blood River (in which the Afrikaners were vastly outnumbered) was a sign that God was on their side, and they constructed the Church of the Vow in Pietermaritzburg to honor this “covenant” with God that established the Afrikaner race as a chosen people. During the early twentieth century when Afrikaner nationalism began to be created and the National Party began its rise to power, the Church was transformed into a museum to reinforce the importance of God’s special relationship with the Afrikaner people and to commemorate Afrikaner culture.

Needless to say, the museum and the culture that it honors (one that oppressed millions of non-white South Africans) seems a bit out of place in a democratic South Africa. While inside the church and looking at the original pulpit inside, I couldn’t help but think about the hateful words spoken within to justify racism and human rights violations, all in the name of supposed Christianity. An interaction with one of the museum staff members really helped to put things into perspective for me. After she gave a brief talk about the history of the Great Trek, I asked how she, as a coloured woman, could work in a museum that remembers a people that oppressed her and her ancestors. Her reply was simple yet incisive: Afrikaner history is a part of South African history, and it must be remembered. She wholly correct; as painful as the past is, it must be understood in order for the country to move forward.

Monday night, we hosted a barbeque for all of the friends of Duke in the area. It was a fun opportunity to interact with several of the people I got to know well last summer in Pietermaritzburg, including my very boisterous former PACSA co-worker Jacqui Mseleku-Khumalo.

Today, we headed back to Cape Town, and we were greeted with sunny blue skies!

That’s enough writing for now. Sorry for the length of the post!

On my way from the museum to the National Library this afternoon, I took a different route than usual. Instead of walking through the central business district, I decided to cut down a different street that passes by the South African Parliament Building. As I casually glanced around, I noticed the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Cape Town perched across the street. It was the first time that I had seen the church before, and I was immediately impressed by its grandeur.

While continuing on my walk to the library, I couldn’t help but notice the irony of what I just saw. On one side of the street was a building where an unjust system that oppressed millions of people was formulated and enforced; on the other side is a building that stands for equality and the basic dignity of every human. Moreover, the Catholic Church was one of the few institutions that, due to its international standing and influence, was able to speak out against apartheid.

Just another example of the interesting, complex dichotomies rife within this country.

I have been extremely lucky lately. Instead of the constant rain that usually pummels Cape Town this time of year, we have enjoyed blue skies and sun, and I have had to make little use of my rain jacket so far.

Thursday was another hectic day at work. I had planned to spend the morning at the National Library working on some historical research and return to the museum in the afternoon. On my way to the library, I stopped by the museum just to drop off a disc of images. (The past week or so, I had been compiling pictures to be used in designing a display case for the museum at the Cape Town International Conventional Center, a beautiful building that plays host to a plethora of events and conferences. A good display there could help to drive significant traffic to the museum). Unfortunately, a quick stop turned into a whole day. One errand turned into many more, and before I knew it, it was late afternoon. The good news is that, by the end of the day, we were able to meet with a graphic designer and hammer out a design for the display case.

Friday, the museum staff was away for the day on a midyear retreat. Luckily, I did not have to attend, so I was able to make up for lost time at the library. After hours of pouring through hundreds of pages of Parliamentary transcripts, at about 3pm I called it quits, met up with some of my housemates that work downtown, and took the train to the beach at Muizenburg. It was a nice day, and I had never been to a beach in Cape Town, so I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. It didn’t disappoint. The rocky coastline was beautiful with the mountains in the distance, and it was cool to watch the many surfers hang out in the frigid water.

Saturday was an awesome day. In the morning, I headed to the Old Biscuit Mill in the suburb next to mine. Several of my co-workers had been raving about its Saturday morning food market, and I decided that it was time to pay it a visit and see what all of the fuss was about. When I got there, my jaw dropped. In a beautifully remodeled mill were tables and tables of gourmet food venders—all very reasonably priced. I was in heaven. After making a lap of the venue and seeing all the different types of food available, I settled on a Belgian waffle and a falafel. Both were delicious. The market was very classy, full pretty much of white, well-dressed South Africans. It felt more like New York than Cape Town.

The rest of our day took on a slightly different tone. One of my housemates arranged for his co-worker, Easy (pronounced “Izzy”), to take us on a tour of Guglethu, the township he lives in. The experience was both fun and powerful, and it provided a stark reminder of inequality that exists right here in Cape Town, so close to where I live my daily life. First, Easy took us to the site where Amy Biehl, an American Fulbright Scholar working in South Africa, was killed in 1993 by a group of Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) members implementing their “One Settler, One Bullet Campaign.” (As a liberation organization, the PAC asserted that Africa belonged only to black Africans and advocated an armed struggle to end apartheid.)

What was incredibly powerful about Easy’s story is that he was one the PAC activists that participated in the stoning of Amy Biehl. He was arrested and served time in jail, but he was later granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which forgave acts of political violence committed during apartheid in the interest of national unity. In the years following Amy’s death, her mother met with Easy and forgave him for what he had done. Now, he works for the South African education foundation that bears Amy’s name. It is an amazing story that illustrates not only the power of forgiveness, but also how the evil system of apartheid could bend and distort moral norms and drive fundamentally good people, like Easy, to commit such a heinous act.

Next, we headed to Easy’s parent’s neighborhood to meet his parents and walk around. The houses were pretty substantially built, but they were extremely small, and the roads were made of sand and littered with trash. While we were walking around, about fifteen young children, barefoot and with dirty clothes, ran up to our group. They didn’t speak English and we couldn’t communicate verbally with them. But they stuck out their hands and began to hold our hands. To be honest, I found the situation to be incredibly awkward. I had my reservations about going on the tour to begin with, since I think that so called “township tours” are rather exploitive and designed more to give foreign visitors a “feel good” moment and an “authentic African experience.” I could only imagine what the members of the community thought about a group of wealthy white kids coming into their space and playing with their children.

After that, we headed a “shebeen,” an informal bar in the townships usually based out of somebody’s home. The one we visited, which was named “China,” was located in a family’s garage. Let me say that it was quite an experience. In the hour that I spent there, I was yelled at by a drunk deaf woman who demanded I buy her a drink and hugged incessantly by another drunk woman who was probably sixty years old. From the shebeen, we went to Mzoli’s Meats, the butcher/barbeque restaurant I visited two weekends ago. Being a Saturday evening, it was an extremely lively and quite a good time.

Going from the white, yuppie confines of the Old Biscuit Mill to the poverty of the township, my experience Saturday really demonstrated just how racially and physically separated South Africa continues to be fifteen years after democracy. This country is rife with the scars of apartheid, and unfortunately, I can’t forsee them beginning to heal anytime soon. How do you build adequate homes for the countless families without one, and how do you change the residential segregation that pervades (and in many ways) defines the country? There is no easy answer.

Today the weather turned, and we had out first cloudy day in a while. I pretty much just hung around, watched television, and prepared for the week ahead. And of course, I called my family to wish my dad a happy Father’s Day.

To all the fathers out there, Happy Father’s Day! Have a good week.

It’s hard to believe that it is already Wednesday night, that I have been gone for over four weeks, and that I only have about five weeks left. Despite the fact that my time is speeding by, I am making the most of the summer and trying to get a lot accomplished work-wise. This past weekend, I went with 9 of my housemates along the scenic Garden Route, a section of highway that runs along the southwest coast of the country. After a beautiful drive with rolling green hills and an impromptu stop at a delicious and free-flowing winery along the way, we made it to the Garden Route Game Lodge for a game drive. Although I went on a real safari last summer, it was still cool to visit a game preserve and see elephants, lions, cheetahs, and giraffes in their natural habitat….plus the dinner buffet was pretty delicious!!

Sunday, we continued along the Garden Route passing by rocky coastlines and bays on our way to the Bloukrans Bridge, the site of the world’s highest bungee jump. Some of my friends decided to make the 200+ meter plunge, but I decided to reduce the damage to my wallet and ensure my continued existence by opting to zipline across the bridge instead of jumping. It still provided me with some incredible views of the canyon that the bridge traverses. After jumping, we piled into the small car (5 of us) and made the long 6 hour drive back to Cape Town.

The work week has been going pretty well so far. Most of the day Monday was spent preparing for the museum’s Youth Day program for the following day, Tuesday June 16. (Youth Day in South Africa commemorates the 1976 Soweto uprisings when high school students protested against the use of Afrikaans as the official language of instruction in public schools. Their peaceful protests were greeted with violence by the apartheid government, and at the end of the day several students lay dead. The students’ protest ignited a wave of resistance in the following weeks and months, making the country ungovernable and ultimately leading to the end of apartheid nearly two decades later).

The program planned for Tuesday’s celebrations was designed to be an intergenerational dialogue between high school students and former residents of District Six (most of whom are in their 60s and 70s) about Youth Day and, building off of the museum’s soccer exhibit, the ways in which soccer and soccer culture have changed over the past decades. On paper, it looked like a promising afternoon. In reality, things didn’t quite work out so well. Not only we were poorly organized and frantically setting up last minute, half of the young students who RSVP’ed cancelled, leaving an highly uneven ratio of youth and former residents. Despite the uneven numbers, the dialogues went fairly well. From my perspective, I was fascinated to listen to all of the adults’ stories from 1976 and see their reactions to a video about the Soweto uprisings. Almost all of them gasped in unison when Henrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid, was interviewed on screen.

The end of the program was when things really went awry. A group of high school students were scheduled to perform a small skit to conclude the day. Their extremely corny skit, which ended with a singing of “I Believe the Children are the Future,” was good compared to what happened next. All of the sudden, some old man went to the front of the room, seized the microphone, and crooned an awful rendition of “Lady in Red” followed by the Stevie Wonder hit “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” While this was happening, I just sat and looked around the room at my co-workers to see find out what was going on, but I was only greeted with blank faces—they were equally confused. Let’s just say that this musical tribute didn’t exactly fit in well with the theme for the day. If nothing else, it gave us all something to laugh at after a long day of work.

Today, I spent some time at both the museum and the National Library. At the museum, I finalized a visitor survey that will be administered next week, and I succeeded in making contact with both several German museums and some Cape Town tourism officials. I do have to say that it is a bit awkward calling people out of the blue and asking them for help, but it is getting me valuable information and giving me a brief glimpse of what life was life before email! At the National Library, I made progress reading through transcripts of Parliament from 1994.

So far, I am really enjoying my research. This afternoon, as I walked out of the library, past the South African Parliament buildings, and towards the train station, all I could think about was how lucky I am that Duke is giving me the opportunity to be on the ground in Cape Town learning more about South Africa and its history. Today was a good day…let’s hope tomorrow follows suit.