Guilt-Inducing Juxtaposition

Over the last week, I've found myself becoming a lot less talkative and I know it's because of our time in Gugs. I can't get it straightened out in my head yet and it's uncomfortable. And it's messy, and still a little surreal.
I know when I get home, I'm gonna need a lot of time by myself to lay out in the grass, stare at some clouds and think.

We went on a wine tasting tour on saturday. I'll be honest- as much as I enjoyed everything and appreciate the industry's importance in South Africa, I hated it. Why am I swishing wine around in my mouth and dumping it out if I dont like the taste when just the other day I was playing with kids who live in shacks and struggle to get enough food? Don't get me wrong, the vineyards were amazingly gorgeous and I'm a firm believer in appreciating the good things you have in life. But this felt wrong to me, it really did. With everything I liked about that day, there was an equal (if not stronger) sense of guilt and wanting to go back to Gugulethu and make sandwiches for Pricilla's kids again.

On the way home we passed by Khayelitsha, which is the second largest township in South Africa. Over a million people live there, most of them in shacks. The HIV/AIDS rate here is absolutely unbelieveable: at least 25%. Go grab four of your friends, pull one of them away and say goodbye forever because it's a reality that AIDS will kill them. Go ahead and make one of your four friends a child too, because that is what these people face. 25% of the people here are HIV positive, and it doesn't discriminate against age.
When we first drove up next to Khayelitsha on the highway, our tour guide pointed to the shacks and said "this goes on for 10 kilometers." I didn't believe him, he seems like an over-exaggerator and I thought he was just being dramatic. No, he was serious. 5 minutes later (driving at highway speeds, mind you) we were still driving along side of shacks. Then something happened that I will never forget: I looked out the opposite side of the van for no more than two minutes and then looked back toward Khayelitsha, thinking I'd see shacks again. What I saw made my stomach twist: I saw nice houses. Walking distance from these nice big houses are the township shacks, it was like blinking my eyes and seeing a mouse turn into an elephant; poverty to excess. The stark difference between these two areas brought me a horrible feeling. I realized that we were on our way back to Mowbray in the foothills of Table Mountain and within 10 minutes I was going to be in one of those nice houses. I felt so disgusting. I have too much when millions of people don't have enough.

I am nervous to come home to face my excess and everyone else's, too. I am nervous to come home so changed that my friends and family don't get me anymore. I'm nervous to explain my experiences to people when I still can't get them straight in my own head. I'm scared that I will never make it back to South Africa to see my new family ever again.

But I will figure out how to deal with these things because it is important that I tell my experiences and if I truely want to come back here, I know I will find a way to do it.


On a different note.. I went shark diving today!! God bless seasickness patches, worked like a charm. Not everyone on the boat was as lucky as me. Well, what we did was get picked up by the skark diving company at 6am and took a 1.5 or so hour drive over to Gansbaai Harbor. They gave us a little breakfast and then we had a little safety talk and got on the boat. The ride out to Shark Alley was frickin sweet! The swells were HUUUUUUGE, it was like riding a rollercoaster and it was 200x's cooler to stand up for the ride. You could see the waves coming at the boat and it was just watching these emmense masses of water surging toward you. After 45 minutes, we got to Shark Alley (by Dyer Island) and put the anchor and cage out and they started chumming the water. This is where I was sooo happy that I wasn't getting seasick because that smell wouldve put me over the edge. It took a long time for a shark to come around, but all of a sudden, this massive great white shark came sliding in next to the boat! That thing was huge.

So the first group of 6 people got their wetsuits and goggles on and went into the cage and the crew would yell things out like "divers down! to the right! it's a big one! Oh its a big one!" when they yelled out 'down' you had to take a deep breath and pull yourself underwater. You would stay down as long as you could and watch the shark swim RIGHT by the cage. Laurie, Nichole and I were in the third group that went in. It felt so nice to be in the water because it was a lot warmer with the wetsuits on than it was on deck. It was actually really hard to keep control while we were in the cage because the current was so strong that it would pull our legs out and our feet would sometimes get pulled out of the cage toward where the shark was swimming! It only took a couple times of that happening to figure out how to make your legs stay down. Then sometimes a big wave would come in and smack your head up against the top of the cage if you weren't careful. We all got a big drink of chummed up salt water today.

But all these things didnt even matter when we heard the crew yelling "down!!" HOLY CRAP those sharks are huuuuuuuge! Underwater, it was a little green and murky and then this massive shark would just come gliding on past less than 2 feet from the cage! There was one shark that swam by us and started to head back out to the ocean but turned around and swam straight at the cage! It was down at our feet and I remember just looking down, my eyes the size of dinner plates, seeing this massive grey shark head 2 inches away from our feet! He bumped the cage a little bit and then turned around and swam off for a bit. Oh wow. I don't even know, it was crazy.

There were a lot of groups that went in and when some of my roommates were in the cage, there was a really aggressive shark that really wanted the bait tuna. He was fighting for it and was splashing up on the surface of the water and then eventually he went right at the cage and bit the corner of it and shook at it!! Sarah and Kate were screaming and when the shark swam away, the only words coming out of those two and TJ were "holy shit, holy shit! that was so scary!" It was sooo awesome to see it up from on deck too. We ended up getting a dvd of the day, so I cant wait to watch through the whole thing! Oh and on the way home, we saw a mother and baby Right Whales. They weren't supposed to be there, but I guess the whales were showing up two weeks early..so we got lucky! We could only see them from a distance, but they were still awesome and gorgeous and huge!

I've wanted to shark dive FOREVER and I finally did! I saw sharks today and swam with them! Great white sharks! God, it was incredible