Cape Town Week 16

Ross Peterson & Colin Mahoney

On the morning of April 28th the time had finally come for us to leave Windhoek after living and learning there for three months.  Saying goodbye to Namibia was bittersweet, but we were all excited to get to Cape Town for the last part of our journey in southern Africa.  Before we even landed it was clear that Cape Town was going to be a different experience than Windhoek.  After spending so much time in one of the least densely populated countries in the world, seeing so many sprawls during our approach to Cape Town International Airport was an almost foreign experience. Once in Cape Town, however, we heard from several speakers and visited number of museums, and the visible differences between South Africa and Namibia became eclipsed by the shared history and struggles of the two countries.

  One day we visited the former slave lodge in downtown Cape Town and went on a tour guided by a woman who spoke about issues of historical identity.  Because Cape Town was once a centre of trade and commerce it was also a boiling pot of several different cultures. Indigenous tribes were met by Dutch traders.  These traders brought with them slaves from the South Pacific and other parts of the world .As a result of this cultural mixing, Cape Town has a vibrant multi-ethnic community.  Afrikaans, the language became so closely linked to apartheid and sparked revolt in Soweto in the 1970s, is really a mix of several different world languages.  With the apartheid system, however, much of this cultural history was ignored and South Africans were limited to pre-determined cultural identities.  Our guide sought brings more attention back to cultural history and start anew dialogue about identity.

Identity was also the subject of our tour of Manenberg.  In the 1970s, coloured families were forced out of the part of Cape Town known as District Six to make room for new white development.  Many low income families were placed in the new neighbourhood of Manenberg.  Since its creation, the neighbourhood has been hit hard with crime and gang violence, although our tour guides seemed optimistic that things were improving.

Many people we heard from over the course of our trip did not share the same sense of optimism.  Several of our tour guides asked people on the street what their view of post-apartheid South Africa was. Each person answered in essentially the same way, saying that although there is a democracy in place and apartheid has ended, nothing has really changed.  It is impossible for us as American students in Cape Town for only a week to really judge on this issue, but walking through the various parts of the city there was still a sense of immense separation.  To put things in perspective, however, the official end of apartheid was just over twenty years ago and Mandela 'selection was only eighteen years ago.

Final Projects and Semester Wrap-Up

   Ross Peterson & Helena Kruger Week 15

At the beginning of this week we were all scrambling to finish our final projects before Wednesday.  The living room floor was covered almost entirely with papers and posters, and many of us were working, or at least pretending to work, long hours.  When Wednesday morning finally came we all got our stuff together and headed downtown to the American Cultural Center in the Sanlam Center.  As nervous as many of us may have been, everyone’s presentations went great.  Topics covered ranged from HIV/AIDS to Community Based Natural Resource Management to tribalism in Namibia.  It was great to watch the presentations and learn so much about a variety of topics, and it also reminded us just how much we have covered over the course of the semester.  We may be slightly biased, but one group did a puppet show for their final presentation, and it was definitely one of the best puppet shows we have ever seen. 

Our time here has flown by, and looking back at our experiences over the past few months made us realize just how long we have been here and how many opportunities we have had over the past few months.  It feels like we were in Johannesburg just yesterday!  And it definitely does not feel like a month has passed since the end of spring break.

            While we were well aware of the fact that the presentations marked “”the end,” so to speak, of our time in Windhoek, it was not until they were all done that that reality sank in.  Our projects felt like more of a midterm than a final, and it seemed as though next week we would still have classes, just as we have for the past three months.  But after the presentations it became clear that that would not be the case, and since then many of us have been feeling sad that we are leaving Windhoek, but excited to be going to Cape Town.  All good things must come to an end, and Cape Town will undoubtedly be yet another incredible experience to add to the long list that already exists.

            The past few days we have been doing our best to enjoy Windhoek.  We have also been attempting to clean the house, although that has proven to be quite a significant undertaking.  Packing has also been interesting.  Some people seem to be more skilled in that area than others. 

Goodbye to you Amy Wise & Mary Schaefer Week 14

This week was our last week of classes in Windhoek before heading to Cape Town. It feels like we just got here yesterday and we are already in the wrap-up week of our program and starting to say our goodbyes! In each of our classes we did a wrap-up of everything we have learned and in our development class we had one last presentation where we discussed two different issues of development we learned about and their effects on each other. It was hard to walk into every class this week realizing it was the last one.

Our first goodbye started with the internship farewell party. Throughout the semester most of us have been working on an independent project that our internships can use after we leave; that way, we could leave a lasting impact on the organizations. This week we got to present our independent projects to everyone in the house and to all the different organizations. Many people made pamphlets or games that their internships will be able to use for years. Our internships had a lasting impact on all of us. For some of us they helped guide our paths for the future and for others they taught that we could help out in the present. We learned that because civil society in Namibia is new it is still struggling to find its footing, and even if as interns we do the smallest of tasks we are still a big help to the organization.

In Politics and Religion we reviewed what we had learned throughout the semester and realized that without our classes we would not have gained such a good understanding of life in Namibia. We also learned that all our classes over lap with each other and without one it would have been difficult to understand the ideas and themes in the other classes.

In development everyone presented on different topics we had learned about throughout the semester. It was fun to watch everyone get excited about different areas of development and present on them.  Each person showed how the two topics they learned about affected one another. For instance, Amy’s project was on unemployment and education in Namibia and she showed what a large impact having or not having secondary schooling has on a person’s ability to gain a job in Namibia’s competitive work force. She also explained how if people are unemployed they will not be able to send their children to school which continues the cycle of unemployment and a lack of education in families.

At the end of the week once our classes ended we began work on our integrative projects. These are projects that incorporate elements of topics we have learned about from all our classes, home stays, and internships into one twenty minute presentation. It is yet another way that we are able to see how all the classes have similar themes that have a large effect on Namibian society. All in all, this last week of classes really showed how much we had learned and gained from this semester here, and it will be hard to say goodbye as we get ready to spend our last week in Cape Town.