Second Weekend in Cape Town

The braai on Friday went fairly well, except that we followed all the instructions given to us by Buyiswa and still managed to offend people because we only provided food for 30- ourselves and the people in the park we work with. We didn't know that we were supposed to be feeding two other groups of workers as well. Hopefully our faux pas doesn't affect us too much. I cooked all the chicken (it took several hours) and Matt made the salad. Next time, we are making it a pot luck.

This picture is of Cape Town City hall and library.

Friday night was halloween, and they don't really celebrate that much here. We went to the News Cafe for dinner, the food was decent but not exceptional. Afterward, we headed out on the town to see what was going on for Halloween. We went to Long Street, and the Dubliner, but after an hour or so, about half of us left to go to a club. We went to Hemisphere, one of the nicer clubs in Cape Town, located at the top of a 32 story building, with windows on all sides. Unfortunately, we didn't know the minimum age was 25, and that most of the people in the club were over 40... but they let us in anyway. It was fun, but there weren't other people our age to dance with. We left around 2 am and headed home.

The next day was low key, I went out to lunch and to the waterfront with Laura and Debra, and we went to the Two Oceans aquarium which was nice. It was smaller than Mystic, but had sharks, penguins, giant rays, a sea turtle and a kelp forest, so it ended up being enjoyable. We stayed in on Saturday night because we'd planned to climb Table Mountain on Sunday. The weather didn't work out however, so we went shopping on Sunday instead because it was raining and there was now view. I bought a gold Africa pendant for my necklace, its really nice and has a diamond on it. And it was cheap. Sweet deal.

Monday was the ZERI orientation in the park,which consisted of learning about radical methods of water purification (naturally spiraling) and changing production processes. It was interesting to say the least, then we worked on different design aspects of how to rebuild an area of the park behin the community centre that was damage in a fire this weekend.

Today we are meeting with our advisors, hopefully coming up with an acceptable project and going to the Cape Town library. After some Kauai burgers of course. That is most definitely my new favorite restaurant. And theres gelato right next door.

The project aspect is frustrating. Really frustrating. But hopefully things will work out this week.

Molo vs Molwhene

We've been learning a bit of Xhosa (pronounced kosa with a click at the beginning) in the settlements (thats the language that most of the inhabitants speak in the area we are working in.) It involves clicking noises that none of us have mastered so far, which has given our new friends in the settlements a good laugh. We start our official lessons tomorrow with Buyiswa which will be helpful, since I've mastered the two forms of hello (molo and molwhene) and that is about the extent of it, I can never remember goodbye or thank you.

We've been meeting a lot with Buyiswa who runs a lot of the bed and breakfast for volunteers in the settlement, and she's been very helpful in organising our co researcher effort. The six people she selected for us have been guiding us around the C1 section of the park and helping the other groups to gather their research information. Yesterday, we went out with the Water and Sanitation and Mapping teams and toured their specific areas of interest. Its kind of depressing to tour the water spouts and toilets, often as many as 24 families share one toilet that does not flush. The only flush toilets are reserved for guests of the lodge, and for our use thankfully as well. The shacks are anywhere from 6 feet tall to about 20 feet tall, mostly made of corrogated iron and pieces of trash found in the area and recycled because the area was formerly a garbage dump. Some have yards, some have gardens, a few even have their own outhouses, which consist of a covered hole in the ground that gets moved when it fills up. The whole village is on a set of sand dunes, so the soil is no good for farming, and the wind constantly blows the sand everywhere, as the ocean is just over the dunes and you can see it from most of the shacks.

We toured the inside of a bar at 10 am, the drinking problems here are intense. People start at 7 am and the "shabeen" as they are called was full, and people were already drunk and stumbling. We've been encouraged to shop at the local stores, (which like the bars are also made of the same material as the shacks) and buy items that are sealed such as bottled soda and chips to support the local economy. The community center, youth center and guest house are sandbag buildings and part of the redevelopment effort. Sand bag buildings done by eco beam consist of special beams constructing the house, and instead of insulation the walls are filled with small 6x12 bags of sand which are stacked inside them, before the walls are plastered, which makes them fire proof and much more resistant to the wind. There is a sense of hope here, theres a preschool and a youth centre with computers, and the people we've met have seemed optemistic which is inspiring.

On the social WPI front, we went to dinner at a brewery on the water front which had delicious food, and confused waitresses. Afterward we attempted to go to a famous club known as Tiger Tiger, and after a 100 rand taxi ride, we could not get in (well we could, the guys could not) because of a dress code that requires pants, a collard shirt and shoes. They were wearing flip flops and shorts, and the bouncer turned us down. We went to an Asian bar, Cubana, the Doubliner and a gay club instead, before going to the News Cafe and back to our rooms. Most of these places do have dress codes, but they made exceptions for us, because we didn't know better... silly Americans.

Yesterday we cooked our own dinner and drank wine we'd bought at the local wine/liqour store. Which was nice, because we'd been looking for a licqour store since we got here, because even though drinks are cheap, its still cheaper to buy things to drink at home. Here, things were very cheap. For example, a fifth of smirnoff was 70 rand (a little less than 7 dollars) and I bought a bottle of delicious wine for $1.50 which I shared with Jason. "Good wine" costs around R100 per bottle, and people were joking about how they spent a hundred bucks on a bottle of wine, which is around 10 dollars.

Currently, we're in the Cape Town public city library, only slightly sketchy... and compiling our conatact lists, its kind of nice to have a day off from the settlements, its exhausting to be there and walk around in the sun all day. The library is pretty nice, and we get free wi fi. So I'm happy. Maybe we can get Kauaii Burgers for lunch. Its difficult to talk to people at home, as its only 7 am there, and after one in the afternoon here, and it will be getting worse with daylight savings time this weekend, but we're climbing table mountain and surfing, so its okay.