making the Monday posts a tradition

A picture from last weekend: Emily, Shannon and I at Neethlingshof Wine Estate

A good looking bird at the ostrich farm (I feel like every post will eventually contain one good looking bird or another)

Coming back from the ostrich farm they let me sit in the bed of the truck. What a beautiful view!

My favorite picture from the weekend (although I swear I can't take a picture with a perfectly flat horizon to save my life)

The past week was pretty calm, in an eventful sort of way. During the week I attended a presentation given by UCT Student Workers Alliance (UCTSWA) on globalization and outsourcing as it pertains to a university setting. It was pretty interesting, but a little too communist for my taste. I also volunteered for the first time at the LEAP school, which tries to encourage maths and sciences to its students. That was pretty cool, but we'll see how it pans out.
In a weird way, the most exciting part of my school week was when I walked into my room at home, only to find a Cape Morning Dove sitting in the corner, bleeding from the head and staring at me. Surprising to say the least! Michelle, the Congolese man who lives in the house and is very nice, and I tried to capture it with a laundry basket. After leaving some blood stains on my ceiling it finally gave itself up and I got to teach Michelle the proper way to handle a bird. We put it outside in a protected spot, and it wasn't there the next day, so I feel at least ok about it.
This past weekend was the really fun part of the week. The program I'm on organized a home stay for us in a colored township called Ocean View. It was amazing. I stayed with a woman named Myrtle, her husband Patrick and their two children, Robin and Zoe. The family was so nice and open and loving. Both nights they made us big dinners and lots of people came over. One night they served fried abalone which apparently is illegal because it's endangered.
Saturday we went to help at a cancer benefit in the morning, then to an ostrich farm in the afternoon. Sunday we went to see the big bike race drive by. People who were there earlier apparently got to see Matt Damon drive by because he's in the area filming a movie and a big cyclist.
The story of Ocean View itself is pretty fascinating. The community was created in the early '70s by the forced relocation of the colored populations of nearby Simons Town. Many of the people lived where the apartheid government wanted to build a naval base so they were simply forced into moving. Despite the extremely unfair circumstances that their community was founded on, the people seem to have little residual animosity. When asked if they would move back if they could, my family said no. Though some areas of the community are poorer (tin shacks), generally people seemed comfortable. The family I stayed with had a working shower, good food, a flat screen TV, and had just redone their kitchen. Mainly though, the family was so full of love, and that's what made the difference. I felt more comfortable with Myrtle and the family than I had since I've gotten here. My family in Mowbray may think that they're living in much better circumstances, but it doesn't matter if there isn't good home cooked food and love enough to spare.
Something interesting they told us about was how in '94 when the new government came into being apparently there was a mass exodus of white people from the country. A lot of white people, if they didn't leave, stocked up on all sorts of stuff because they thought there would be a civil war. To think about the type of ingrained and institutionalized racism and white power structures that were here, it really is amazing that there wasn't more tumult. It really can't be over stressed what people like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela did to keep South Africa together. (On a lighter side note, one of the waitresses at the restaurant I'm at keeps popping in an out her partial denture with a loud sucking noise. Those are the things that really do make me love people!)
I guess that the main point to take away is that though it's easy to view people as "other," a weekend in someone's house brings the point home that it's all the same thing, just a slightly different context. The differences make things interesting, but it's the similarities that are the real take home point. It may sound cheesy, but it really is profound to experience it in a new context. And let's be real, it's always nice to be around a loving mama who cooks you good food. Definitely helps with the homesickness, even if I'd prefer that it were my mama.