Orientation continued

Ok, it has been a while since I have updated this, so I am going to try to summarize. However, I’m normally not very good at summarizing, so bear with me. On Wednesday during orientation, a group from campus talked to us. They are called Students Health and Welfare Centres Organization (SHAWCO). This organization runs about 14 projects throughout several different townships in Cape Town, mostly involving the tutoring of children. We took a visit to Khayelitsha, which is the biggest township in the Western Province. (You can see pictures of the township on Facebook) As we were on the bus driving, I began to notice shacks alongside the highway. These shacks went on for several miles, on both sides of the road, until we finally got off of the highway. These shacks were the township of Khayelitsha, which has about 700,00 people in it. The rate of unemployment is about 60%, and most houses are made of zinc and wood. The floors are dirt, there is no plumbing in many houses, and some areas have no electricity. There is a high rate of HIV/Aids (around 80,000 people) and a very serious problem of rape (about 2 are reported each day though there may be more and most are committed by someone the victim knows, esp. family). Unfortunately, many rapes are not reported because families try to cover it up in order to not bring shame to their family. Around Cape Town, and also around the rest of the country, there are a lot of these townships. It is within these townships, and with SHAWCO, that I will hopefully be doing some volunteering.

Ok, so then on Friday I registered for classes. This all had to be done by hand (not online), so it was a bit of a pain. Then one of my classes was registered wrong, so I had to go through a whole add/drop procedure, which is a bit of a pain here. You have to get the professor to sign a form saying you can be added to the class, then you have to print out a copy of your transcript to take to an advisor. Now, that shouldn’t be hard except that printing is not easy here. I had to activate my student card and get a pin number, then I had to put money on my card (no free printing here), then I had to figure out how to work the printer release station. None of this was made easy by the fact that I had no idea where I needed to go to activate my card and put money on it. Anyways, it took me about 1.5 hours to get one sheet of paper printed (and their paper is a different size, fyi). Then you stand in a long line to talk to had advisor to get your add/drop approved. It seems as though no one here has their own advisor, but rather there is a set of advisors for each department and you can go to any of them.

After registering for classes some of the other people in my program and I went to Muizenburg, which is a beach about 40 minutes away by train. The train only costs R11 round trip (about $1.35), and you can get off at any stop so it’s a really great way to get around. However, you should only use it between the hours of 8am-6pm. The beach was nice, but really cold and windy! We only ended up being there a short while.

On Saturday we went to Long Street to do some shopping! There were some cute shops, or more like boutiques almost. The clothing was a bit expensive for me, at about $40-80. Most clothing here is more expensive, even when it’s on sale.

On Sunday I went to church at two different churches - that wasn’t planned, but it was cool to try out some different places. First I went to a service at Methodist church nearby. The service I went to was mostly older and white, and the service was very traditional. Then, I went with a friend to a non-denominational church. This service was the complete opposite - mostly black, college aged students, and very upbeat with a band, lots of praise and worship, amens, alleluias, and the like. It was really fun to see the differences, but also to realize that both services were very similar to churches you could find in the US. The next week I went back to the Methodist church, but I decided to try a different service, so I went to a bi-lingual service in English and Xhosa. In SA, there are 11 official languages - 9 of them are tribal languages and the other two are Afrikaans and English. Xhosa (a click language) is one of the tribal languages, and the most used language in the Western Cape (where I am). They would sing in Xhosa, but they had both the Xhosa and English words on a screen up front. I tried to sing as much as I could, but it was difficult to click, though I think I now know which letters or combination of letters have clicks. The sermon was in English, which was nice, however the pastor had a very thick accent. Also, when some people talked they would use a mixture of English and Xhosa, so I would pick up 2 or 3 words and then be clueless. I was the only white person there, which was kind of fun.