We spent our last full day in Cape Town being tourists rather than students. We all got in the van with a few extra people: Anjalee, Jessica, and Genevieve (and her boyfriend) from class at UCT joined us. It was a beautiful day in Cape Town: blue skies and the sun was shining bright- great for us, but not so great for Cape Town because of the drought. At our first pit stop, there was a man selling wires that he bent into different words and images. I had no plan of buying anything, but something caught my eye: there sitting on the edge of the mountain was one that seemed to be made for me. It spelled "dream" in silver wire with little squiggles on the end of the word like I add on my letters. I'm not sure why, but dream has been my motto since I was little. I have it on various things in my room: signs, journals, posters, etc. I suppose it's because my mind's constantly thinking and daydreaming. I've always been very idealistic and optimistic- when I was in Elementary School I wrote of "a little girl who was very little but had a very big dream. She wanted to help the world be a better place.” The little girl in my stories making a positive impact on the world represented myself and my ambitions. I try to look for the good in people and I'd like to believe that everyone does the right thing and treats each other kindly. I'm a Romantic (with a capital "R") at heart in the way that I look at nature and am inspired by it. I've always wanted to be able to fly through the sky, and I would live in the clouds or mountains if I could. I had to borrow money to buy the wire word, but I'm glad I did. It's something little that makes me happy whenever I look at it and remember the day. When we made a pit stop at a market, I was feeling very anxious, so I stuck with Magali and she helped keep my mind off of it. She walked me around and showed me all the hidden treasures Moses had pointed out to her: a light made out of part of a tree, a hidden Nelson Mandela painting, and other trinkets you wouldn't noticed unless you opened your eyes a little wider got a new perspective of the room. Our next major pit stop was at Boulders Beach in Table Mountain National Park, and you'll never guess what we saw............ PENGUINS! South Africa is the last place I thought I'd see wild penguins. We got to watch them nest (taking twigs and waddling around), sleep, canoodle, and swim! My favorite part was when they'd swim because they'd come galloping down the hill with their friends and then they'd waddle and flap down to the water. They waited for the water to come up to them and then they'd bellyflop into the water and whoosh! they were gone. Their little waddle got two times as fast as they geared up to swim. They were super cute when they played around with each other. The one bad part about the Penguin Sanctuary on Boulders Beach was that it only exists because humans are awful and take up too much of the Earth. They used to roam free and then they had to be "contained" because they were "bothering" the humans and encroaching on "their" land. At the beach by the Penguin Sanctuary, I finally got to put my feet in the ocean! It's my favorite thing to do when I visit a new place. I took my sneakers and socks off and waded right into the winter water with my jeans on. It feels so refreshing to have the sand in your toes and the water running over your skin. I think I was made to be a fish or a bird because I'm happiest when I'm in the water or the mountains. I got my pants wet, but I didn't have a care in the world. At this point we were in Simon's Town- a very wealthy area of Cape Town and one of the oldest towns in South Africa. By wealthy I mean million dollar houses by the water, boats, houses built into the side of the mountain kind of wealthy. It was a very different (whiter) Cape Town than we'd been seeing for the past two weeks. As one of my classmates put it: "it's the area of Cape Town you would go to with your parents on vacation". It's unbelievably beautiful, but it gives you a single story of Cape Town. It shields you from the poverty, racial divisions, and inequality that is so much a part of the nation's struggle and identity. The next stop in our adventure was Cape Point! When I saw a sign for "Cape of Good Hope: Table Mountain National Park", I got super excited because it's somewhere I never could've imagined that I'd be. It was something I read about in a textbook or saw on a map, not somewhere that I actually was. On our way up to the Cape Point lighthouse, I encountered my first wild baboon. We'd seen a few on top of buildings and along the road in Simon's Town, but we were up close and personal with this one. We were warned to put all food and drinks away because they were aggressive and would attack you for it. When we walked past him, he was smashing open a Gatorade bottle he had grabbed from somebody. He did look slightly scary, but I felt bad for him because all the people (including myself) were just standing around watching him and taking pictures. If I were a baboon, I wouldn't like that very much. Human beings can be so invasive. At the top of hill by the lighthouse (which had been operational from 1860 to 1919) it was incredibly windy, but the 360 degree view of the ocean and mountains was more breathtaking than the suffocating winds. One of the coolest parts for me was that there was a bunch of directional signs with the number of kilometers we were from a particular location. It pointed me 12,541 kilometers back to my home in New York. At high points (whether that be a higher altitude or in life) always remember where you came from. No one makes it through life completely on their own- it took a village to get me standing up by the lighthouse in Cape Point that day. We walked from the Cape Point lighthouse across the rocks to get the Cape of Good Hope. On our voyage across the rocky bridge, we saw two people skinny dipping- I guess if you're going to skinny dip anywhere, it might as well be on Dias Beach at the Cape of Good Hope in broad daylight with the moon(s) shining. I admired their guts- I don't know if I would've had the confidence to do that. When we finally got to the top of the mountain over the Cape of Good Hope, I felt like I was on top of the world (although I was very much at the bottom of it). I was feeling a bit daredevilish (which is pretty dangerous because I can be very unstable and clumsy), so I went to the edge of the cliff and hung my legs over so that they were dangling over the water. The scariest part was the wind because it felt strong enough to blow me over the side of the mountain into the rocky water. If I stood up where I was sitting, I'm sure it would've!
Back at Scalabrini, we had our last reflection and then met up in my room to put together a presentation for our last day of class. It was an assignment thrown on us last minute (about a day before we had to present), but while the other girls were stressed out and rehearsing what they'd say, I wasn't worried because I know I speak much more powerfully when I speak from my heart. If I try to memorize a speech, I just forget what I want to say as soon as I get nervous, so it's best for me to list my main points and then wing it. Brooke put together a PowerPoint with one slide for each of us that included a picture related to what we were going to talk about. I put in a picture of my passport and the tickets to Cape Town because I wanted to talk about the privilege of the American passport. In class the next day, we went through a brief review of the first part of the Social Infrastructures class and then it was our time to present. I wish someone had taken a video of our presentation. As I listened to 3 of my classmates speak before it was my turn, I looked around at the class in front of me. Standing in the front I got to see things from a whole new perspective. As I was standing there waiting and observing, I felt pretty stable and wasn't nervous at all- but not for long. I started out my speech by introducing myself to those I hadn't gotten the chance to meet. My memory is a little hazy because of how anxious I got, but I think I went right into talking about the privilege of the American passport. Cape Town awakened me to this privilege: before, I had taken advantage of it without even knowing I had it. I never realized how much power it the American passport has- how many places it had taken me so easily. I've traveled to 4 out of the 7 continents and multiple countries without a problem. No one suspected that I was a terrorist or that I would leave the US and try to stay in their country permanently. A US passport is essentially a ticket to anywhere in the world as long as you have the money. Waseem, who works for Southern Ambition Africa and is from Palestine, applied for a travel visa to the US 3 times and was rejected each time. The US sees him as a threat because of his Palestinian passport and fears that he'll seek asylum there and never leave. It's discrimination against your nationality- I noted to the UCT students how your passport country says nothing about what kind of person you are. At this point is when I started to feel like I was going to pass out. I've only had that feeling 3 times in my life, and it's unmistakable when you feel it- even if you've never passed out before you know what's happening when you feel it in your legs and everything around you starts to go white. I kept thinking, "Oh crap, oh crap, I'm gonna go down in front of the whole class". My mind was trailing off in anxious thoughts and I stammered for a moment, but then I looked down at my notes to remind myself and was enlightened with a passion of what I wanted to say. I told the story from a few nights earlier when I was on the phone with my mom. A family friend had asked me on Facetime, "How was Africa?". As I looked at the class, I told them that I said, "Well, South Africa is wonderful, but Africa is a continent...". And with that statement, the class erupted in applause and cheers. For the first time in my life, I actually had to wait for the applause to stop so I could speak. It meant a lot to them that we understood that fact- that all of Africa wasn't the same, that it had diverse peoples, languages, and cultures, that there wasn't a single story. I've made it my mission to educate everyone who asks me how "Africa" was with this reality.
I continued speaking and said (half smiling, half fighting the light-headedness I was feeling), "I can't tell you about Zimbabwe or Swaziland or Uganda". Then my memory gets fuzzy. I think I said something about the experience as a whole and I was at a loss for words still feeling like I was going to pass out. My loss for words and anxious face must've been confused for tears because I heard a chorus of "awwwws" and a "don't cry Claire". If you know me well, you know that I almost never cry. The reason why is a long story for another day, but if I'm crying you know there's something seriously wrong. I wasn't even close to crying in that moment- I was dizzy and terrified! So I ended with "so, thank you" and a nervous smile and laugh, and the classroom exploded in applause. It was a totally unexpected success! I believed in my abilities to speak impromptu and from my heart, but I never imagined a response like that. I think I have a lot of potential to be a great public speaker if I can keep my nerves at bay and get out of my own head so that I can speak eloquently. I needed to sit down or steady myself when I finished, so I put my arm around Michaela who was standing next to me. After we had all spoken, a few of the UCT students raised their hands to speak in response to us thanking us and talking about what they learned from us- what stereotypes about Americans we took down by being there. At the end of class, we said our goodbyes and gave out hugs. The truth is, none of us knew if we'd ever see each other in person again, and the odds aren't in our favor. It's hard saying goodbye to people you know you will probably never see again, but in a strange way, leaving UCT felt like a "see you later". Maybe not for everyone in the class, but I know for some, if I ever found myself back in Cape Town or they ended up in New York, our homes would be open to each other. If there's one buzzword that was thrown around throughout the 2 weeks in Cape Town, it's privilege: white privilege, male privilege, American privilege- they revolve around being able to do certain things without difficulty or without being questioned and discriminated against. We were reminded of it so frequently as to make us feel guilty or ashamed of it- like this privilege is a bad thing and we should just do nothing at all to protest against having it. I noticed this especially with Magali when she talked to us in the van about Robben Island and how many South Africans hadn't even been there. To me, wallowing in guilt and not doing what you're able to do is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. It's the equivalent of saying: I'm a natural-born runner who can qualify for the Olympics, but I'm not going to run because there are paraplegics in the world who can't run. It just seems silly. You were blessed with this life so why not live it and take advantage of the things that are available to you? It's important to be cognizant of your privilege and remind yourself of it whenever you do things that use it, but you must live with it nonetheless. Being conscious of your privilege comes with a responsibility to fight against discrimination toward others, use your privilege to speak up when you see an injustice, and do what you can to pay it forward. I've been luckier than I've realized, and it's taken this trip to awaken me. Thank you to my UCT classmates, thank you to our instructional team, thank you to Moses and Southern Ambition Africa and all the Beth Uriel boys for your guidance, thank you to Scalabrini for your work with migrants and for giving us a place to stay, thank you to everyone who made this trip possible and who helped me on my journey for knowledge. My only hope for this blog is that more people get to learn what you taught me and how special you all are. Knowledge is nothing unless it's shared, and by sharing little bits of your wisdom, I aim to be a more active citizen and hope to inspire others to be as well.
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