First Impressions

It’s not as strange here as I thought. Granted, I have been here less than 24 hrs, but it looks a lot like cities in the states. Steve’s friend picked me up at the airport and we came directly back to the house I’m staying in in Observatory, a suburb (as they call it - it’s more like an ‘urb, not far out of the city but not directly in the center) of Cape Town. It’s a house full of American students from Marquette University who are here studying at the University, which is just a couple miles up the hill from here. This neighborhood is mostly full of students of various sorts - almost all of them at UCT.

We went to see Steve directly and he’s doing okay. Going to get a chance to see him again tonight so I’ll see what’s changed. Afterwards we regrouped (me and Tyler, Steve’s friend) at the house and went out to meet some of Tyler’s friends for drinks around the corner. I was struck by how similar that was to the states. Almost everything looked so familiar I could have been on Landsdowne Street. The people were pretty friendly - lots of them maybe because they had had too much to drink - and it was pretty crowded in a couple of the places we went. Around midnight we came home.

In the meantime, well the in-between time, Tyler and Jenny told me about safety. Steve also warned me a lot. Basically there is a lot of theft here, and some pretty random violence. No more end-result violence than an area like Bayview in San Francisco, but the difficulty with it is that it is much more random it seems. Some places are considered very safe, but even there you need to make sure things are secured. Everyone here just has a heightened sense of awareness it seems: people lock everything. When you are driving, you’re supposed to keep very valuable things beneath you (not the seat) because at stop lights sometimes people come up, smash a window and grab what they can. Violence against people for the sake of violence is rare. People here aren’t angry at the person walking down the street - they’re just poor and desperate. That’s not to say people aren’t angry at certain groups - there is a lot of anger - but mainly, it’s survival in terms of the crime. At least that is what my first 24 hours has told me.

This Morning

I slept. A lot. I got over that huge flight, the night, the questions by sleeping. I woke up around noon, when my mom called. I have a cell phone now. If you want to call me just email and I’ll send you the #. It’s crazy expensive for me to call, but not bad to call me.

I woke up and asked some of my housemates where to go for coffee (I needed it like I have never before needed it in my entire life) and walked up the street to Lower Main. At Obz Cafe I had to figure out how to get the closest thing to drip that they had, and I got some eggs. Sustenance has helped. I’m now back at the house, in my pretty frigid room, getting ready to take care of the car rental, get in touch with Tyler and go food shopping. I am considering this an acclimatization day - a get-over-jet-lag day. No guilt for not doing anything, just trying to recover from this grueling trip. Waiting for phone calls. Trying to get in touch with Emily.

Table Mountain looms above use - looms above everything here - it’s beautiful, and imposing. So far my trip has been okay - but without a friend and traveling companion it’s going to be harder. I’ll see what I can do.