Vino!

Since I arrived in Cape Town this morning around 6am, I was happy our day didn’t start until 10am, so I was able to catch a few zzz’s before waking up again. First thing on the agenda was to view a documentary by Molly Blank, called “Testing Hope”. It was really good, but also rather frustratingly disheartening. This film followed a couple grade 12 learners; they were the first part of the generation born post apartheid. So they are representative of what apartheid has done to the education system for black Africans and coloreds. Every student in South Africa has to take the ‘Matric’ or kind of final examination after high school (like ACT, I think) and must pass it in order to move out of high school. So this video followed a few students as they prepared for the test and after the scores were posted. The students lived in a township and explained the high importance of passing matric so they can attend college, get out of the township and provide for their families. Throughout the film it seems very uplifting; one woman wanted to be a doctor, one man a civil engineer, and then you find out that even though most of the learners passed they didn’t all get into university, many can’t afford it, and one died from violence in the township. It makes you want to go help every single student in this country because I have never and probably will never experience anything like they have and me as one person can’t fix this, I can’t help them. I am sharing this with you because the world needs to understand that this is going on.

Groot Constansia Winery:

National Flower of South Africa

After the heavy morning, we proceeded to load into the bus and drove to the oldest winery in the Cape area. Wineries here have a tricky background, aka they were staffed by slaves and the slaves were paid in wine, so they were unhealthily drinking too much wine and there was a large instance of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome among these populations. But, the vineyards are B-E-A-U-tiful and the wine was pretty tasty too. We spent a long lunch/afternoon there hanging out and relaxing, then came back and I napped and relaxed some more, recuperating from my weekend.