Day 3

So today began rather early, and a few of us walked down to the market to get coffee and bakery items. Bother were heavenly and I love being able to walk a couple blocks in the beautiful morning sun to get a coffee. Love it. 

So this is really close to my hotel. It's gonna be a problem.

We then all piled onto our trusty bus and went to the University of Western Cape! It was about a 20 minute ride and we passed through some informal housing, or small townships, on the way. More on that later, because it was amazing. But not in a good way, like the “wow, I’ve never experienced this before” way.

   The University of Missouri system and the University of Western Cape (UWC) have a 25 year collaboration, which began in 1986, eight years before apartheid ended in 1994! This is really cool because UWC was a historically colored university (meaning only people of mixed race could attend the school during apartheid) and somehow out of nowhere the UM system befriended them and then formed a partnership to exchange funds, experiences, knowledge and opportunities. So awesome! That’s where this program was born and many other faculty and student exchange programs our school has. Jan Parsens, the director of International Relations for the UWC spoke to us about the UM-UWC partnership and the school’s history in general. The UWC has been through some rough times, they fought apartheid by challenging laws and hosting protests, and really being the leading organizing force for protests. Fun Fact: through this collaboration there have been many joint publications between UWC faculty and UM faculty like Lois Pierce (one of our advisors) and Nancy Shields (someone my dad knows!)

Then we walked around the campus with some of the graduate Social Work students! They were all really nice and it was fun getting to know them and seeing their beautiful campus. The campus is smaller than Mizzou’s but it is still decent sized. Some of the buildings are super modern while some are really old and are basically mobile buildings. Most of the students looks just like American college students, which makes sense, but it’s also noteworthy to realize that young adults around the world all act, dress and grow overall similarly. Another Fun Fact: UWC has free condom packets in every public restroom. So awesome! 

UWC Student Union

It was called the Condoman Condotainer!

On our way back into town we drove back through the informal housing, which are built right up to the highway. This is when the disparities really hit me. Along one road, ONE ROAD we saw vast areas filled with informal housing, shacks, outhouses and basically slums followed by areas of apartment complexes then finally entering the town again we saw basically affluent neighborhoods with nice houses, security protection and tourism. Besides these descriptive worlds, I really can’t describe how this felt. I have never seen such disparities in one short car ride. Yes, most big cities in America have homeless people, poor neighborhoods and rich neighborhoods back to back, but not shacks, not huts literally built out of extra wood and siding, not slums where the tenants have to steal electricity from their slightly less poor neighbors and walk to a community outhouse by the side of the highway. This scene just opened my eyes. It was amazing.

The next stop of the day was supposed to be a cable car up to the top of Table Mountain. This view is supposed to be great great great. We arrived and the cable car is closed until August 1st for maintenance, which happens every year. Not a huge deal, because we can come back after August 1st, BUT our trip included this expense, and after the official program is over they can't pay for it. And its like $40 USD. We will see what happens. You can also hike up to the top, which sounds intriguing, but I have heard its kinda a rough hike (and we know I am NOT the next woman vs. wild over here) and there have been some robberies including stabbings on the mountain recently. Its something we will have to discuss and work out. But we got to see a partial view from the take off point of the cable car: 

The exhaustion has finally hit us, since we are go go going all day and we stay up blogging and checking in with the real world and home and then wake up early to start a new day so missing the cable car wasnt too bad because we were able to head home and relax before our traditional African dinner with the whole group! This dinner was soooo cool! The food came out in little portions so everyone tried everything and you could ask for more of the yummy stuff. Most of the food was really tasty! We tried things like Cassava Bread (baked tapioca cheese and yogurt flat bread), the House style vegetable soup (which was wonderful!), Samp and beans (like baked beans and corn, also really good), Mussel Curry, Ethiopian Aib (white curd cheese with herbs), Mozambican nut mayonnaise (African hummus), Xhosa Imifino Patties (spiniach and mielie- like potatoes), Vetkoek (fried bread balls- yes fried bread), and carrot cake! Everything was really good! The women also came around and painted our faces with fun traditional flower patterns while we waited! The entire restaurant was beautiful and really fun! The employees also came by and sang and danced after our meal. The place was very touristy, obviously traditional Africans wouldn't go to a place like that, but I believe the food was authentic and that was fun to try, and the face painting and dancing was a new experience too. So I enjoyed the evening, despite the slightly stereotypical atmosphere. 

"flower face hannah"

Wall decorations

 Shava, from Clark Atlanta

Mussels with coconut lime curry. Really good.

the food list was on this little boat

song and dance

SHAPE group in Cape Town

Hope everyone is doing well wherever you may be! Tomorrow will be another big day so I must be getting some sleep! (as the South African's say)   Cheers!