I have definitely been enjoying my stay in Cape Town, South Africa. While all the security talks we were given did make me nervous about maneuvering around the city, I am quickly becoming accustomed to Cape Town. Not to fear parents, to get into our house (which is very nice and spacious) you need to use at least three keys. If your child is one of the six of us who lives in the pool house, we received an extra key or two to make our way through the house and then to the backyard to our bedrooms. The gate on the front door took most of us several days to master because it is tricky to unlock. Rachel, however, was a pro from the start. I stood at the front door gate for twenty minutes one day before I could get it unlocked.
While we were told by one of our security briefers that riding the minibus taxis is not safe, I find it to be one of the most entertaining parts of my week when I ride them to get to and from downtown for my internship at Black Sash. A minibus taxi is basically a large white van that supposedly seats about 15 people but during the busier hours of the day the minibuses tend to stuff more people in. There are two minibus “employees” (I guess that is what they should be called); the driver and the wingman. The drivers squeeze in and out of the tiniest spaces in traffic and manage to come away unscathed. The wingman sits in the passenger area of the van and is usually screaming and whistling out the window at passersby. His job is to recruit as many people to hop on the van as possible. I have learned that they will do anything to get you on the bus and get your money, including tell you they’re going somewhere and then once you are on and the van is moving you realize that the bus is not going directly where you are going! This happened to me on the first afternoon of my internship. While at first I was nervous and wasn’t sure what to do, the fellow commuters on the bus were quite helpful and steered me in the right direction. I had to get off at an area called Mowbray and switch to a minibus headed toward the Red Cross Hospital. Since that first day I have toughened up and learned how to better negotiate my way onto the correct minibus home. The minibuses play older American pop and rap music and sometimes the wingman even sings along. Most of the people who ride the minibuses are commuting to work from the surrounding suburbs. It takes about thirty minutes to get into downtown Cape Town via minibus because they stop several times to let people on and off before reaching the city.
In addition, there are a few funny subtle differences I have noticed over the past three weeks. If you ask for directions and someone tells you to go down to the next robot and take a right, they are not crazy. A robot is a street light and while I had been told this ahead of time I was still surprised to hear such a funny term used by people. When greeting someone in the U.S., we are used to saying “Hi, how are you?” Yet here most people say, “Howzit?” I have been trying to remember to say this instead of the previous greeting so that I can begin to blend in a little better. The most confusing difference here is that they drive on the opposite side of the road. Attempting to cross the road when I go for a jog or walking to the grocery store is quite a dilemma. I look both ways several times because it is not easy to break the habit of looking for traffic the way I do at home! My favorite difference is of course the animals. We have seen ostriches, baboons, weird birds, cheetahs, and penguins. I am both very scared and extremely intrigued by the baboons. They are very accustomed to people and will come up and snatch your food away from you. Sadly we have not gotten close enough to any to have that type of interaction with them. They also lay around on and near the roads. I want to bring a little baby baboon home, but I don’t think my parents would appreciate that…
Katherine at Chapmans Peak
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