District 6 Museum and Downtown -- Wednesday

We walked all the way to class today and holy crap! We walked up a few huge hills and probably 400,000 stairs. It was a trek. We got a lecture from a very good-looking man about the process of ending Apartheid and all the negotiations that happened. It was so interesting to learn how a bunch of different conditions came together at the right time to lead to the end of Apartheid.

The big lesson I took away from today was the importance of realizing the possibility of long-term consequences. Apartheid lasted for only a few decades but the social problems that stem from it will last past our lifetimes. So many public decisions are made without giving thought to the consequences they'll bring and more problems are created than good things.

After class, we went to the District Six Museum close to downtown Cape Town. It's in an old church and pays tribute to the history of the District Six museum and the memory of its former residents. Before Apartheid, the area was a vibrant community of mostly colored residents, but when the government imposed forced removal, these residents were moved to the townships, their houses and buildings were demolished and zoned for white residents only. Not only this, but races were legally forbidden to have any contact with each other. The museum is filled with stories and pictures from the residents themselves so we were able to see the human face behind the history. I could never imagine what it must feel like to be categorized as subhuman and have your home and its memories demolished. It breaks my heart to know what human beings are capable of doing to each other.

Part 1

Part 2

After the museum we had a couple hours to walk around downtown before our vans came back to pick us up. So we went to the market!

We didn't have a ton of time there, so good thing we're going back for more shopping soon! We left to walk back to where the vans were going to pick us up and all of a sudden we hear a ton of yelling on the next block and see flashing cop lights all over the place. We are supposed to avoid demonstrations (rule #1 we learned was to not get arrested) so we all had to resist the urge to go check it out. Then a paddywagon drove by filled full with men from the jail who were rattling the bars and yelling some nasty things out the windows, and some people somewhere were yelling 'go back to your homes!' We ended up having to go around the block to get to the vans and here is what we found:

It turns out there was some sort of demonstration taking place at the courthouse and it must have gotten out of hand to the point of police forces coming out to break it up? Still don't know what exactly was going on, but it seems like it had to do with the conflict between the refugees from Zimbabwe and the South African township residents. I hope the problem doesn't get bad enough for our time in the townships to be cancelled because I know everyone in my group is looking forward to that so much. At this point, a lot of us feel just like tourists and we are so excited to go to Gugulethu to go through that experience. So I just hope that the situation stays under control, not just for my group, but also because it's a terrible situation all the Africans affected by it.

This is just so weird to see that as a middle class American. We have demonstrations, but really, people get arrested for trespassing on private property or something minor like that. Just the other week here, a man was burned to death in the street. It's a little different. At this point, I don't have a lot of opinions.. well, no, I do. They just are floating around in my head but I can't really form anything solid yet. I'm just taking it all in now. I'll figure out what I really think about it later. For now, you just get read my day-to-day stuff, nothing too deep because I just haven't figured it out yet. I feel like I'm not really qualified to figure it out yet because I have only been in the wealthy areas of Cape Town, and that is by no means the whole story of this country. I need to see the other side of things before I can form solid opinions.

Right now you see a man in tattered clothes at the harbor and view him as just a poor guy, but I feel as though after we go to the townships, that man would be viewed as a neighbor. Does that make sense? All I know is a privileged life outside of poverty. I don't know anyone who is struggling to survive. But once I experience Gugulethu, I feel like the man in the tattered clothes won't be just another poor person; He'll have a story and a life and a family and a place. Until this happens, I don't feel like my thoughts are solid enough because I just don't know enough.

On another note.. we ate at Nandos tonight! Delicious. It lived up to the hype. Next on my list is to eat at the KFC and see if Ajith was right at all about his claim that South African KFCs are better than American. After Nandos some of us went across the street to a bar called Pig & Swizzle for some drinks and pool. Good times.