Getting off to a good start

Today was a pretty eventful day and it’s just my second day here! I woke up bright an early at 9 am (ok, not so early) and went on a run with a small group of people from the program. We ran from our house to near the University of Cape Town campus and then up a trail to a Cecil Rhodes Monument on the hillside. I thought it was really interesting that there was still a huge monument to someone who basically started this whole oppression of Africans thing in South Africa, but it was a cool monument. It had a great view over our neighborhood and a couple of the other suburbs of Cape Town.

After getting back to town, I had some food and then we went to explore more of the immediate neighborhood. We went over to the larger grocery store, Pick’N’Pay, which is about a 10 minute walk from our house. It was good to get out and see a little bit more of the bus. When we got back to the house, a group of several other students were headed to the train to go to the beach and said we should hurry to get there. We ended up just missing the train, but we decided to take the next one. The train required tickets to ride, but unfortunately the ticket office is closed on Sundays, so we ended up just riding on the train without a ticket and fortunately our ticket was never checked.

The 40 minute train ride took us Muizenberg, a popular surfing beach. It was such a beautiful sight - right on the False Bay with pretty large waves and mountains on both sides. There were a ton of surfers out, even though a red flag signaling that a shark had been spotted was waving. Later the red flag was replaced with a black flag signifying that the water had become too murky to see a shark. Fortunately all our group did was wade in the waves as they crashed on the beach.

We spent a couple hours wandering on the beach and took a few pictures. It was a fun little adventure and it was good to get out of our little neighborhood and see more of the area surrounding Cape Town. We took the train on the way back. On several of the windows this time, there was a sticker posted which stated “Stop TB, Open the Window.” Though the windows were open and we were pretty safe, it was interesting to be reminded of some of the immense health problems that are ravaging the population. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to do something through my time in service learning here.

Back at the house we had our first prepared meal. The landlord’s wife is our cook and brought it over in large pans. We had meat babotie with chutney for dinner which is apparently a pretty South African dish. It was good and I hope that it is a sign that the food this quarter will be good!

Hope all is well with all of you reading this!
Tim