Two Dinners and an Adventurous Night

As promised, this entry will cover the Braai we had with Stanford’s Talisman a cappella group last night. We hosted the group of about 20 at our house and our cook prepared traditional South African cooking. We ate and mingled and then Talisman gave us a little concert similar to what they have been doing in the Townships and around schools throughout this country on their Spring Break trip. They sung a bunch of songs written in Xhosa or songs that were important to the Apartheid struggle. It was really cool to be able to hear these songs in the context of Cape Town. I think it made them strike home a little harder than when I’ve heard the group at Stanford. It was almost as if you could feel the history flowing out of the music. At the end of their performance, they offered to teach us a song. They broke us up into groups based on pitch and then we each learned our part of the song. We sang it with them once and then just our Stanford group sang the song. It was really a great bonding experience for us. Music has an incredible ability to bring people together. Even if we didn’t have the best voices, they came together and we grew together a little bit more.

After the Braai, we decided to head out to a local bar to play some pool. Right outside the entrance to the bar we came across quite the scene. An American college student had fallen down 2 flights of stairs that led up to this bar and had hit his head on the way down. He was bleeding from the head and had apparently been lying on the ground for 30 minutes without the arrival of the ambulance. One of the members of our group is an EMT and she quickly moved in to hold C-spine control in case he had a neck injury. It took another 15 to 20 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. This fall is something that could happen to anyone. The hospital was only about 4 blocks away and it took this man probably an hour or more to get there. It is possible that he was bleeding into his brain and every second matters. I don’t know what happened to this man, but ultimately it was a harsh reminder that even if something very common happens, the lack of infrastructure in South Africa can really make things much worse very quickly. I resolved to be very careful during my time here. (Don’t worry Mom!)

Today I had a much more relaxed day and just went into town to walk around and then went to our program’s welcome dinner in town. Our dinner was excellent. We went to this restaurant which served us 16 different dishes from all over the African continent. After we had tried each of them with our hands (no utensils allowed), we were allowed to request as much of any of the dishes as we wanted. I left quite full and ready to go to sleep to prepare for my fun weekend.

So I will be out of internet access for the next couple of days as I go rafting down the Breede River. I’ll update you on Saturday night about the trip and any more exciting things!

Tim