Cape Town, Friday Feb 24th

S Africa
On Friday Feb 24th, I walked around Cape Town with two other friends and we wandered the streets. Most of the restaurants were serving foods native to other countries. I found the streets to be really empty. I think a lot of people come there to work and then return to their houses in the suburbs. It felt very European. Everything was very clean, the cars drove on the opposite side of the road, the gas stations were very modern and the city looked new and pristine.

We also noticed that all the people walking around on the roads were black or colored because the white people were the ones with cars. We stopped in a couple of shops. South Africa has a lot of recycled art. There were elephants, bowls, birds made out of old cans and wire. It was beautiful, reflecting back on it now; I wish I bought something of that nature.

We had lunch in a sidewalk café right near a bunch of vendors. The café felt even more European, the food was presented beautifully and there was incense burning near us to create an ambience. We had a bottle of wine and it was perfect. But the whole time we ate, I noticed that the blacks were the waiters and we were being served. We were sitting, relaxing and eating but I just was wondering what social and racial pressures were hidden underneath that peaceful city.

We met a couple of interesting people at lunch. I met a vendor that was from Argentina and was backpacking Africa and had been to the US to sell his stone jewelry. We also talked to two ladies who were sitting next to us. One works in America for half the year and knew about Semester at Sea! The South African accent is very peculiar. It is very similar if not exactly British.

We travelled into an area with pink, yellow and blue houses that was considered the Muslim area. I talked to a man there and he pointed out all the nearby mosques. The houses were painted in such strange color coordination because when they were built, this population was illiterate and could not write down addresses. They used the color combinations to identify their house. It was strange to see one area of town segregated for a certain type of people.

I also stopped at a store that sells goods made by women in the townships. I bought a beautiful beaded purse. It was really hard getting used to the money system because a US dollar is worth ~7 Ran (S. African currency). So lunch would be around 210 Ran but it was really around $ 30. Every time we get into a new port we have to change what word we use to refer to the currency and it gets confusing because people forget. Sometimes other Semester at Sea kids speak in how much it cost in US dollars and not the foreign currency.