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!