ninjas, townships, muggings and cheese

So, yet another crazy week. First, some more comments on the elections. We went around and saw the polling stations and things seemed generally pretty laid back but organized. After you vote you get the top of your thumb marked with an ink that stains like henna, only faster. I heard about people trying to wash it off right after it was put on, and it would re-appear rather quickly. People are still walking around with thumbs that look like they were maimed by car doors...
As for parties, some of my favorites I saw were the Cape Separatist Party, the plethora of Muslim and Christian parties, and the party founded on the basis of bringing back the death penalty. Especially the Separatist one. But in the end it happened just like everyone thought it would, and by Saturday we had found out that Jay Z was in fact the new president and the ANC had won in a landslide, but just below 2/3 majority, which is good. So no constitution changing. In the western cape (where I am) the Democratic Alliance (aka DA, aka generally white middle class) won the regional parliament and premier (like a governor). Last election they just got the premier but the ANC got the parliament so they were both basically deadlocked. Throughout the rest of the country the main opposition came from the Congress of the People (Cope), which is an offshoot of the ANC. Cope Leaders were generally in Robben Island along with Mandela, Zuma and the like, but either quit or were kicked out of the ANC due to their non-support for Zuma. As a side note, I think it's interesting that I've seen newspaper headlines calling Jay-Z SA's sexiest politician, which is horrifying. Here's some context: after purportedly raping a girl he was asked if he was afraid of getting HIV/AIDs, and he said no, he'd taken a shower. Awesome. He also has hundreds of counts of corruption and fraud against him that will basically just never be brought to trial probably. One of the minor parties that will be lucky to get even one seat in the national parliament, the Independent Democrats (ID), had as one of their slogans, "Put criminals in jail, not in government." Pretty telling if you ask me.
Aside from that, the week was interesting in and of itself. Emily and I went to see Elections and Erections on Thursday at the Baxter Theatre, which is right on campus. (I know that I'm probably mis-using "which," but I can't help it. I apologize to the proof readers and English buffs out there). It's a one man show by Peter Dirk-Uys, a political satirist who also wrote Macbecki. It was in two acts and really good, but I fell asleep during the second act and couldn't seem to stay awake. In the first act he dressed up as different (female) characters in order to speak as different voices commenting on the elections and politics in general. In the second half he dressed as his alter-ego, Evita Bezedenhuit (or something like that) and interviewed some local political figure. His fame basically comes from being an anti-apartheid activist as well as being openly gay. He's spoken to both Mandela and the national assembly while dressed as Evita, which definitely takes some balls.
Friday I went to a house party that my friend Sebastian was putting on at the house he considers himself an honorary member of. The theme was "Ninjas For the Advancement of the Space Program," and it was loads of fun. Emily and Maggie went as well, and we met loads of cool people and generally had a great time. It was nice to be able to go to a house party especially, because so much of the going out here is clubs, which never feels quite as comfortable. Sebastian had done some really cool art for the walls, and they had (for a reason I never picked up, but wholly agreed with) decided to fill the bathtub with fake blood and a disembodied arm. Walking to get a cab we got mugged, but we were carrying barely anything and the muggers definitely weren't too pushy, so it was not nearly as bad as it could have been. Somewhat scary, but we were intact and even got to keep a few things, so it could always have been much much worse. The only annoyance is having to figure out how to get a new phone, my task for later today...
Saturday I went to Yzerfontein to see some archaeological sites that had been discovered when building excavations had disturbed them. The sites were about an hour from Cape Town and we went for a class field trip. They were mostly shell middens, which are sites with tons of ancient shells that were eaten by ancient people (probably about 120 thousand years). It's amazing especially because they think that modern humans actually evolved here, partially because of the high amount of marine food intake which supplied ancient brains with the omega fatty acids necessary to encephalize (get bigger and more interconnected). Sadly we had to leave everything we found behind. Damn Monument Protection Act!
Sunday (sorry, I know this is a long post!) we went to Gugulethu to go to a really popular restaurant there calls Mzoli's. Shannon has a flatmate name Sia who's married to a girl named Zola (who's about our age) from Gugulethu, so she took us. Gugulethu is a black township, which means it's generally very poor, a little bit rough, and it's likely that some percentage of the population lives in handmade tin shacks. Lots of the townships started when black or colored populations were forcibly removed from where they were an put into these makeshift settlements. We walked around a bit during the day and some sites, including a place where they make Umqoboti, a traditional African beer made from fermented maize meal, among other things. We paid 5 rand to get a big coffee container full of it, and it was pretty good. It tasted really metallic, we think because of the metal container it was served in. I'll post pictures soon, it was quite an experience. We also saw some old hostels where men from the Eastern Cape would stay when they came to this area to make money. No women were allowed in the hostels, but often men would have a wife at home and a girlfriend here. Generally polygamy is widely accepted here. The idea of a "white wedding" - one were the marriage in monogamous - is pretty recent, and even Zuma has multiple wives. In the evening we made it to Mzoli's after buying some alcohol at a shabeen, which is an illegal liquor store (illegal because it doesn't have a license, tends to stay open later than others and will do things like sell you alcohol on a Sunday). Mzoli's is actually the freshest butcher in Gugulethu, so what you do is buy fresh meat then take it back and they grill it up for you. It takes forever, but we had brought salad and bought some dumplings and pap (it's like polenta), so it was a good time even for the vegetarians.
Yesterday was a day off, so we rented a car and went to wine country for a cheese festival. Basically the whole day can be summed up as wine, cheese, chocolate, olives and sun. I was driving so I did a bit of wine tasting early on, but then stuck to juice and water tasting. I think Maggie got sick off of all the cheese, which means we definitely got our money's worth on the entrance ticket. It was so much fun, and I'm already getting excited about the gourmet food festival in May!
So that's about it. I'll post pictures when I can. And kudos to any of you who were dedicated enough to make it all the way through! Love ya all loads!

election week!

So this Wednesday is of particular note, seeing as it is election day here in SA. Everyone generally expects that the ANC will win and that Jacob Zuma (referred to here as Jay Z - I'm not kidding) will become president. Elections here are party based, not people based, so you vote in the party and they pick the person for each individual seat. I'm not sure if it's still on going, but for a while there was also this kind of goofy period of floor crossing. What would happen is that a party would win a seat, and they would in turn put someone in. But then there's this one magical day where the people put into the seats can defect to whatever party they please, so there's no assurance that the party voted in will actually have that seat. I'm not sure if they still do that, I think there were concerns as to its constitutionality. Oh, also, it only takes a 2/3 majority to change the constitution, which from an American perspective is a little scary. On some level I'm really glad that it's so hard to mess with our constitution. I'm excited about the election, but let's not kid ourselves, I'm also just really happy I get the day off. I also get next Monday (Freedom Day) and next Friday (Worker's Day). Exciting! Hopefully next weekend we're taking advantage of the long break to road trip to Cederberg to see the rock art...
This past week I didn't do much other than go to a little art thing at someone's house with my friend Sebastian (a real live South African!). There was pottery this man did that was absolutely beautiful. It was really delicate in a way, which isn't normally my style, but he used these really gorgeous glazes and put textures in with lace, so it was really cool. There were also paintings by a woman. They were good, but nothing too special. There was also an old Argentinian man dressed all in shades of white and creme except for his red tie with white polka dots, which looked like it was painted onto paper. He was certainly older, but still taking art classes and loving life. I'm always so extremely happy to know there are people like that in the world.
Over the weekend Emily and I discovered this amazing market in another south suburb called Woodstock. The market is full of foods, designer clothes and jewelry, and set amongst all of these really cute little boutique-y shops offering just about everything you could want. The market goes on year round, which is even better, so hopefully we're going to make it a Saturday morning fixture. I got a pretty necklace with a ship on it, some shiitake mushrooms, sourdough bread, a gingerbread man, and this amazing preserve made of olive and chilis. In short, I'm in love!
Afterward we went to the Iziko slave lodge (Iziko just is what all of the museums in one group in Cape Town are called). It's the oldest slave lodge in the area and was used to house the slaves of the Dutch East Indies Company. Slavery wasn't abolished here until 1834 under the British, and for a while there were more slaves in the area than white people. Most of the slaves came from northern Africa, India, Malaysia, and the surrounding areas. The local people, the KhoeSan, were largely not enslaved because the colonialists wanted to keep at least somewhat friendly relations with them. The building itself was later converted into the parliament and supreme court buildings, so it's hard to see the infrastructured that allowed for it to be a horrid, dank slave lodge. It wasn't renamed until 1998 and is still under rennovation to properly showcase its history.
Sunday I went to the planetarium with my friend Sebastian. Afterward we walked around the Iziko South Africa Museum, which is basically just a natural history museum. First things first: SA'a dinosaurs are ugly. They look like mutant monitor lizards with dents in their heads and weird fangs. They really got not of the attractive ones. They were so interesting to look at though, mainly becuase probably due to their ugliness they weren't well publicized and therefore I've never seen anything like them. We also saw lots of random animal skeletons, some mineral, and an exhibit on some of the native groups. The planetarium show fell kind of flat because it was all just about the SA Large Telescope (SALT). I guess SALT used to be the biggest in the world, but within the past year or so it was overshadowed by a telescope in the US. As Sebastian puts it, SA realized that it really only had the money to invest in one science, and the one it picked was astronomy. Most of SA is karoo, a sort of scrubby vegetative area with low rainfall, which means that it's dry and flat and visibility is high. I've also been told that we're basically under one of the holes in the atmosphere, which also makes visibility good. Seems like pretty pristine location...
Afterward we went to the Mount Nelson Hotel (not named after Nelson Mandela, but something Nelson, who sounds like a big colonialist). It's basically the fanciest hotel in the area, but we managed to wander in and get some hot chocolate. It was definitely fancier than we were, but lots of fun. You know it's nice when you can finish the salty snacks and they just bring more without asking or charging. That's right, I'm living the good life!
That's about it though, other than the ongoing saga of trying to have good internet access. I was down at the coffee shop earlier and it kept kicking in and out, which is just infinitely frustrating. I've never been so tempted to believe in the gods as when I'm starting at a blank screen trying to figure out what sacred ritual or divine slaughter I need to commit to appease the masters of the interweb. We really don't realize how spoiled we are in the States, and I certainly can't wait to go back to being so!
Love and miss you all, and if any one actually knows what souvenir they want, then I would greatly appreciate the information. Otherwise if you're not careful you'll end up with cowhide house slippers and ugly jade statues of elephants. Consider yourselves warned!

pictures!

I can't put all of the details up right now, but I put a bunch of pictures up on picasa from the trip!