Hello everyone! nipples to the sky! that's some friendly advice from maxwell, my dance teacher. so once again, not too much going on. I've been living off of rice, beans, lentils, and earl grey tea and actually feeling very healthy. i've started jogging again, although my headphones have disappeared so i've been running uphill without music, and it's difficult.

So class wise there isn't much news. The grading system is really different here. A 75% is an A, so we keep getting tests back thinking we did really poorly when it turns out we have an A. I got a 78% on my archaeology test, and i only got 1 question wrong. They take their nuances pretty seriously here, but i think my professor was impressed. He seems to think that us american kids aren't at all prepared for his class, but we're proving him wrong and i think he's glad. In my religion class i'm learning that buddhism will never be the religion for me. I simply cannot be that passive, quiet and "pure." It's been quite interesting though, especially the part about "male love" in Japan, which can be seen as institutionalized, pedophilic rape. One of the biggest challenges for a lot of us (and i think for most kids abroad) is to separate what you're learning from your American preconceptions. This applies to the things we learn in class all the way to the things we see in the townships. and it's always just so hard not to judge it.

At Baphumelele we often see the kids with dripping noses and sores on their skin and flies all over and think that this is wrong, but the reality is that this is what happens here and these kids' basic needs are being met. It's hard to adapt from our western middle-class idea that a diaper should be changed every time the child goes, to the practice here of nappies get changed twice a day unless the kid is leaking. Also i've been trying to use my newfound Xhosa skills at the orphanage and the kids think it's hilarious. We gain so much street cred by saying "ungubani igama lakho?" which means what's your name. There are some kids who are really bonding with me, and we all have our favorites. For me a girl named okuhle (uh-kuth-le) has taken to me since my very first day. She's around 4 or 5 and just so sweet, she always brushes my bangs out of my eyes and tucks my hair behind my ears. There is also a boy named Anda who is very introverted, but then also very violent at times in his outbursts. He's hard for a lot of volunteers to understand and as a result of that they don't usually play with him so he scowls in the corner. But a couple of us have figured out a way to show him the attention he needs. We're all just learning a lot about how to interact individually with the different kids. Mostly we're just playing with them, but they really need that individual attention and love. It's interesting to learn how important play is in physical, emotional and social development. If anyone is interested more about Baphumelele they can check out the website for Children of South Africa at www.chosa.org.

On saturday i was supposed to go paint the house that I helped build last week, but at the last minute it was cancelled and then today i found out why. We put up a shack in a neighborhood of Nyanga that is apparently very hotly contested politically right now (we had absolutely no way of knowing this). The ANC is currently holding office there. After we put up the shack, the vice chancellor of the neighborhood (a very local level politician) saw this shack, thinking it was very nice and who could have afforded to build it. so she thought that the rival political party had organized. She brought the police in, citing an ordinance that the neighborhood had been upgraded (it had a playground and cement houses) and that no more shacks could be built on that block, and the police took down the shack. This all happened the day after we built it. The community was so upset because they had been so excited for the girl and to put up the house, that they all got hammers and put the house back up. They argued face to face with the politician, convinced her of the need for the house and that it was built and funded by a third party, and then the politician told the police not to mess with it. Members of the community have been sleeping in the empty shack all week to protect it. It's really neat how they have rallied around this family and they are so supportive of us for coming in to build it. So this week i'm going to go out and paint it, then we'll have a house warming block party with the community. This house was funded by past kids on the program and people they knew and there isn't enough money left over to furnish the house, so we're all going to try to contribute. If anyone wants to help me contribute to the furnishings they can email me (kerrylow@gwu.edu). I would really appreciate, but mostly this family would appreciate. They are trying to set up a non-profit, and then possibly like family-sponsorships for other families in need. Like sponsorships for a short period of time. This girl that we built the house for this time is only 19 and caring for 5 children, so she can't even work. Once I have more details on the official non-profit status I will get you guys the information. I'm gonna try to organize a sponsorship in the greek community, but they're also looking for money for a general fund to just build the houses. For more information on the nutrition center we're working with you can check out http://www.philani.org.za/index.php. It's an amazing organization. i'll keep you all updated with its progress.

Also, on saturday I went to a concert of the band Freshly Ground. It was awesome. just kinda hippie-like jazzy music. Really fun. Everyone was drinking wine, dancing, barefoot in the grass. it almost felt like fremont.

OK things I really miss: getting mail, chocolate chips and chocolate chip cookies, baked beans, chili, soup that isn't powdered, decent cheese, bread with some substance, cantaloupe, dogs that are bred to be friendly, being able to take my camera places, being able to walk at night, online window shopping, forever 21, coffee shops, grand street breakfast at ivory tower with an orange mango nantucket nectar, splenda, and well, the list goes on.

also, i've posted a few new pictures. and an update on my writing. i haven't posted anything else because i've realized that a lot my writing is becoming increasingly personal and i worry about offending people and not being able to explain things. So for now, i'll just keep it private and maybe post snippets of things. I really want to write for public consumption, but at the same time i'm self conscious about the reactions and the consequences of writing certain things. That's probably a pretty common fear, and thanks to those of you who gave input on the essay i did post, i think that one is in fact being published.

oh and one thing i forgot to post last week. The funniest case of "it's a small world" happened to me on a mini-bus. There were a bunch of americans in the mini bus on the way to see tsotsi and a few other people as well. We were all talking and all of a sudden the guy across from me looked at me and said "I used to live in Seattle." i paused, surprised, looked down at my clothes to see if i was wearing something that said Seattle on it, and said "wait, how did you know I was from seattle?" and he said "well you're american right?" and I said "yes, but i am actually from seattle, the rest of these kids are from other places in america." and it turns out that him and the driver as well were somalian refugees who lived in seattle for a long time and a lot of their family still lives there. I just thought it was so strange that he happened to be sitting across from the only person in the mini-bus who was from seattle. it was cool.

happy human rights day everyone! also, today is the first day of fall - sad. i was rather enjoying summer while you all brave the snow. the wind has been picking up a lot around here. also the weather has been really fickle. i often wake up and think it's sunny and nice, but by the time i get up the mountain to campus it's raining and freezing, with everyone frozen in their miniskirts! Things have been pretty dull recently. Because today was human rights day and there was no school, people took a faux long weekend. Most of my friends left to do the garden route (and ride ostrichs!! cool!) on thursday evening. i couldn't accompany them because i had a test on friday and no one wanted to wait for me. sad. but at least i think i did pretty decent on the test.

also, i know a lot of you heard i was supposed to have a date, but that didn't work out. but don't be sad for me! if a guy older than me isn't mature enough to set a time for a date, then it's just not worth it. there are PLENTY of other guys around here.

so friday after the test i went volunteering, then to wine tasting (cape reds, much better than cape whites). at volunteering it's really interesting. sometimes a lot of the kids aren't around, and most of them are a little bit sick most of the time. there are a lot who have really severe FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome). some of those kids are the sweetest ones. I'm also learning that a lot of them aren't really orphans. sometimes their families are just so destroyed that the parents are providing zero care. a few of the babies are really withdrawn and won't cry when they're upset - a sign that they were often abused or ignored in the past. a lot of them come and go too because the social worker will find members of their family - aunts and uncles, etc - and then the kids will go live there a short time until those members of the family decide they can't afford the kid or just don't want it and then will send the baby back to baphumelele.

so friday after wine tasting i went with some friends to the pub on campus. and since it was st. patty's we tried to order guinness. well this so-called "traditional english pub" did not have guinness. or cocktails. or really anything. at least my veggie burger was amazing. they are more like vegetable patties here, with whole peas and carrots, etc. then we were supposed to go to some student film festival, but the people i was with thought it started at 10, and we got there at 10:30 and it was over. Then they decided they "couldn't handle the bar scene" so even though we had just been at a restaurant, we went to another one that was a crazy expensive hamburger place. the night wound up being kind of a bust.

saturday i woke up early to go on a build in Gugulethu. This is definately one of the scarier townships. First we visited the philani nutrition center in khayelitsha which is really cool. it's beautiful and they have a garden and a daycare. the coolest part is that they have a shop where a lot of local women come to handdesign crafts. They make these rugs out of the t-shirt scraps that factories give them. They are beautiful! and 75% of the profits go directly to the woman who made it. If i get their website i'll give you guys the information. It's an amazing organization. They also do homevisits to families who are interested in their services. One of the interesting things is that nutritionists here try so hard to beef up children and to put weight on them (a lot of kids in townships are surprisingly short, i constantly am underestimating their ages), while in the U.S. it's the complete opposite. So i thought that with my experience from this summer working on nutrition with the girls in DC that i would be of value here, but it's such a different reality. very few kids are obese here.

so the build was for a family where the primary caretaker is a 19 year old girl with a 2 year old daughter and an infant daughter. She is also caring for her 3 younger sisters who are between the ages of 3 and 11. Since she had absolutely no way of caring for this family properly while trying to live in her uncle's already crowded shack (and i suspect she wasn't all that welcome there either) the nutrition center decided to build her a shack of her own. We found a site on the corner of a pretty rambunctious neighborhood, right next door to a shebeen (bar), and then went to get the supplies. They sell you the corrugated zinc shacks in 4 pieces and then you have to put them together. We hired a couple local guys with shack building experience to help us out. Since we were 8 white girls we were pretty helpless. Mostly we played with the neighborhood kids who kept getting in the way of the build. It was a really interesting day. First we had to clear the site, which meant digging up lots of roaches, broken beer bottles, weeds, chicken feathers (bird flu, anyone?) and dead animals and maggots (sooooo nasty, thank god i brought gardening gloves). Then we started building. During the build I went with the social worker, the 19 year old and dianna, the american girl who got us involved, to a hardware store for supplies. The girl got to pick out the paint and everything for her house. she chose light blue and she was soo excited about it. It was neat to see that even though we were building something that would not pass for acceptable living conditions in many places, she was thrilled to have at least something. Also, we built a 2 room shack, which is considered really nice. While we were building the whole neighborhood turned out to see the commotion, and since it was a saturday and no one had to work, they were all drunk. This meant that all the men were hitting on us. They all wanted our phone numbers and one man enquired about our lobola. Lobola is bridewealth around here and it's a pretty big deal. It used to be paid in cattle but after the men kept leaving their villages for the mines and coming back with cash, the payment method switched.

anyways, we saw some interesting things that day. I noticed that the men were MUCH more aggressive out there than here on campus. You hear so much about rape and how dangerous things are, and on campus you get such a false sense of safety, but being out in the townships on a weekend you could see how it must be much more common. guys were just being very rough with local girls and no one does anything about it. we also saw women carrying around live chickens that they were about to slaughter. there were animal bones all over the place. and people were eating fried chicken feet. We also saw goats just wandering around.

one other interesting thing about the shacks is that they are very small and very crowded. in an 8 x 8 room shack you probably always have at least 5 people living, and you see these shacks right up next to concrete, government built houses left over from the Group Areas Act. You would think that those larger concrete building would be much nicer to live in, but each house or condo that was meant for one family usually houses at least 3. After apartheid everyone came to the city thinking there would be jobs, but there weren't. So they got stuck out in the townships, cramping in with relatives and trying to squeeze by.

Also we saw a lot of interesting advertising. There is one aids awareness group that hires american marketers and then posts billboards all over the townships. These american marketers are sooo far off the mark from the lifestyle here, that the billboards are completely ignored. They have sayings like "HIV loves skin to skin contact" and "teen pregnancy is good for HIV." They just don't make any sense. and a lot of the advertising features white people, which is just weird because there are NO white people living out there.

Anyways, then later on that night after showering, i went out to dinner with a couple guy friends who live next door and then we hung out at their house listening to nirvana for the rest of the night. Sunday i didn't actually do anything. and monday i went to class, then didn't do anything. i watched aladdin. that was fun. i also watched the notebook. cried myself to sleep. good times. today for human rights day i went to the mall. i know, not exactly the most politically correct way to celebrate the holiday. I saw some neat stores. bought a couple things to get me by. I had neglected to bring sweaters or clothes for going out at night. So i got a sweater, 2 tops and a pair of wedges (on sale!!). but no jewelry, because i decided that while i'm here i can only buy jewelry in the markets. why spend extra buying it at a mall? ok congratulations if you made it all the way to the end of this one. also i posted a few new pictures at http://photos.yahoo.com/specialk0107, in the africa section. T hey are of my trip to stellenbosch. a couple weeks old. i don't have that many pics because i'm afraid of bringing my camera out at night. sorry.

hello all, sorry it's been so long since i posted but not that much has been going on. mostly just going to class, doing reading, and going to volunteering. At volunteering i've been trying to practice my xhosa. it's funny because the babies don't usually understand because our accents are so bad, but the older toddlers will try to correct us. It's pretty cute. classes have been fairly interesting. xhosa is terrible. the language isn't that difficult (except trying to make the click sounds), but my teacher is awful. He can't hear very well and he can't really spell in English or in Xhosa. so we are constantly asking questions about him clarifying something he wrote down, but he always hears us wrong and starts going off on a tangent. in my archaeology class i'm learning a lot of pottery, iron smelting and Bantu language migration. actually pretty interesting because it was so recent so they do a lot of interpretation from "the ethnographic present", which basically means they are using modern peoples as "living history." That can be a very controversial thing to do. Also today I learned how to do technical drawings of pottery sherds; a skill that is sure to come in handy someday.

I saw the movie tsotsi last week. It was so frightening. I didn't know the story line at all so it caught me off guard. But it's a beautifully made movie and I really recommend that you all go see it. Just know that it takes place in Jo'burg, not Cape Town and the crime types are very different in the two cities. In cape town they usually just take your money or your phone, they don't hurt you. keep that in mind. Now that i've been here over a month i think i had a different perspective on it than i would have had i never been here. So i have a firmer grasp of the politics that influence the movie and the lifestyles of the characters make more sense.

Also last week the Cape Town Festival started. It lasts all month and is a giant arts festival. The kick-off event was a huge outdoor party in Long Street with 30,000 people. They had a fashion show in the streets, street performers, food stalls, and general mayhem. It was pretty fun. I went to my first event with the wine tasting club also. it was an introduction to cape whites. I didn't like most of them. Chenin Blanc is the most popular grape here and it turns out i hate chenin blanc. This week is Cape Reds, maybe i'll like that better.

Didn't really do anything this weekend. I've been sick so i kind of layed low all weekend, just hanging out around the house. I went on a quest for hair dye, and since i was too lazy to go all the way to the mall i had to try out the different chemists and grocery stores around my neighborhood. Turns out they don't really sell products for white hair in this neighborhood, so I had to settle. The hair dye brand, while a beautiful color, didn't have enough in the bottle so the back of my head was blond, and the rest of my hair was red. bad news. had to buy a second bottle and fix it the next day. In the future it might be worth to just haul myself to the mall.

There are a lot of funny habits that people have on campus. There are a lot of people who walk around barefoot, which i find appalling. Also, people are constantly drinking juice. and they drink it out of cans with a straw. weird. and the girls are always eating pastries and yet they are still skinny. hmmmm.

oh the other day I saw a friend from high school, Liz Bokan, on the street on my way home from grocery shopping. I knew that she was in Cape Town, but I had no idea where at. Turns out she's living in a township, and they are doing homestays the whole time. They don't go to regular UCT classes either. It's a completely different experience from the one that I'm having.

yesterday i made hamentaschen (i have no idea how to spell it). They are a cookie that jewish people make at purim. So i made those with my jewish friends and they attempted to explain the holiday to me. We were making them and couldn't figure out why the dough was so grainy and dry and then we realized that Adee had bought and used Maize meal (what they use for pap) instead of sugar! so we were making pap cookies. gross. Then we found some sugar and started over.

This weekend most of my friends are going on a road trip of the garden route, which has bungee jumping, ostrich riding, caving. i can't go though because i have a test on friday and everyone is leaving thursday. So i think instead I'm going to build a house in the townships for a family in desperate need of a safe place to live. I'm doing this with the Philani Nutrition Center that is based in Khayelitsha. It should be pretty neat. And then also I'll hopefully hang out with some new people.

i had a wonderful weekend! i started at volunteering friday finally. i went to the orphanage after all my classes and we played with the toddlers and helped them color and sing some songs. it was also the birthday of the woman in charge (rosie) so there was a big party with lots of singing and cake. Probably the only time you will see 30 toddlers sit still is when they all have a bowl full of cake. also, i had mexican food again! i keep winding up hanging out with a different group of people that has yet to try the fat cactus. since we had no reservations we wound up waiting for 2 hours before we got a table. oh well, we still managed to make it fun. then we decided to go out and try some new bars that we had never been to. we went to a pool hall and i played pool with the norwegians that i met not long ago. i also finally met a kid that is friends from home with a girl in my sorority (kate, for the adpis that read this). i had seen him on facebook (because i'm a stalker) and so i saw him at the bar and walked up to him and said "are you ed? i'm kerry, kate's friend. i know who you are because i saw you on facebook." i think it's a good sign for our friendship that he was not horrified by that statement. so we hung and i met some of his friends. i'm really glad that people here are so friendly so when i'm out it's easy to meet new people.

saturday ciee took us to a winery in stellenbosch to go wine tasting. stellenbosch is the epicenter of south africa's wine industry. we went to the neethlinghof estate. my group did our tasting first and then had a tour. The guy leading us was 18 and kind of a punky kid who didn't like to follow the rules. So he drank with us at the tasting and he let my friend meg pour a lot of the glasses. needless to say some members of our group went a little overboard for 11 am. not me though. you have to pace yourself when wine tasting. Then we went to a place called Spier, which is like the disneyland of wineries. it has a cheetah reserve, eagles, ponds, a huge deli, 2 restaurants, a craft market, people doing henna, a hotel, etc, etc. after having a nice picnic lunch and hanging out for awhile a bunch of us headed into the actual town of stellenbosch to spend the night at a hostel. the hostel was called the Stumblin' Inn. which is just amazing. it was really big with lots of leather chairs and couches, a pool table, a small bar, a pool. the 10 of us in our group were all in a private room so that was nice. although we had some drama actually acquiring the room because even though we had booked it we walked in and there were 2 skeezy old men in there who refused to leave. apparently what happened was that a huge group of annoying rich kids from mauritius had brought 10 people when they only had 8 beds, but they took 10 beds and kicked the old guys out of their room. it was a big mess for josh, the guy in charge, to sort out but he was on our side and hated the kids from mauritius.

for dinner we decided to try some more authentic south african food and we went to this fancy afrikaans place close to our hostel. I had the "cape country trio" which was chicken pie, bobotie (mince meat in spices covered in custard) and wasserblommetjies, which are a local water lily plant. it was pretty good. i wasn't a big fan of the water lilies though.

on the way home from dinner i had one of the most horrifying experiences of my entire life and i am not exaggerating. we were walking along and all of a sudden adee goes "eww cockroach!" because she saw one on the ground, but then i felt something on my leg and i realized a roach more than an inch long had jumped INSIDE of my jeans and gotten all the way to the back of my thigh! i screamed and i grabbed that area of my pants as quickly as i could so the roach didn't make it any farther up my leg. i tried to squish it, but once i had isolated the roach i was just standing there frozen. my friends were so freaked out that they mostly run away. I had to hobble into our hostel while still holding the roach in place because i had no idea if it was alive or not. the bathroom was occupied so i climbed into the shower. keep in mind that i am still screaming and shaking and most of my wimpy friends had ditched me. somehow i managed to get my pants off, they were tight and i have no idea how that roach even got up there. i shook them up, the roach was thankfully dead and landed in a few pieces on the ground. but the roach guts were all over my jeans (my expensive new citizens of humanity jeans!!) and there was a huge wet spot. i had to yell at my friends to find me a napkin and i just scooped the guts off the pants and had no choice but to put them back on. so i went out all night in roach stained jeans with the constant feeling that there was a prehistoric bug crawling around my leg.


after that ordeal we went on a pub crawl that the hostel was sponsoring. we figured that was a good way to meet a lot of people and end up at good places. it was really fun and rowdy. One thing i love about stellenbosch is that it's really safe. you're completely fine to walk around at night, you can bring a purse, your camera. it's amazing. we also noticed that it's all white, afrikaaner farmers. anyways we met tons of people out that night. i actually hung out with the two guys from the hostel who were sort of running the show. one of them told me i looked australian. frankly i wasn't aware that australians had a look, but hey, he said it was exotic and that that was a good thing, so i'll take that compliment no matter how obscure. actually i get a lot of compliments here. the guys are very friendly and very complimentary. and not just to us because we're american, but to each other as well. so anyways, a late night was had by all.

in the morning we all woke up in our hostel and decided to have a loungy morning and have a calm breakfast at this place we had seen while walking around town. then we took a train home. the train is really pretty dodgy. but josh from the hostel assured us that since we were a group of over 20 and we would be in first class it would be just fine. it was, but it was a long ride. the train takes twice as long as driving out there. but finally we got home and crashed out of exhaustion.

ok first: i started the essay blog as promised and i posted my first essay. the address is: http://africaessays.blogspot.com/ i will always let you guys know on here when i have posted something new. so please check that out and give me comments.

so what's been going on? well, i'm starting to experience those feelings of homesickness that i was promised. I don't live in the same housing complexes as the girls i befriended at the beginning of the trip and i don't see them that often. couple that with also kind of losing my guy friends (to their new girlfriends) and struggling to befriend my roommates and frankly, things are a little lonely sometimes. i guess this is particularly difficult because it can sometimes feel like the first signs of the friend-dropping i've experienced in the past. But i guess getting over past insecurities and developing a real sense of independence and confidence are what this experience is all about. So hopefully i'll be able to come home free of all the issues that have plagued me in the past and start fresh. the last fews have been pretty mellow. monday was our friend lindizwe's birthday so a few of his friends came over and we made him a cake. it was a nice little birthday. i think he was really happy that his new american friends did that for him; he wasn't expecting it.

Tuesday i was in a terrible mood. I ate too many peanuts at lunch and then felt sick for the rest of the day. When i went to dance class i got even more annoyed because the class is way too crowded. A lot of our teachers advanced students come to our class to just bum around and have fun, but they end up pushing us out of the way and taking over our class. i hate it. also, there are a lot of other international students who aren't registered for the class but they just come. it's really annoying to have all these extra people in our small little studio because those of us that are paying for the class don't even get to dance as much. Then i got home and started to feel depressed that my friends weren't ever answering my text messages and pooped out on the "great" party that our friend ellie was having. whatever, i heard it wasn't even that great.

the reason she got to throw a party on a tuesday was that wednesday the first was a public holiday and also election day. school was cancelled and the weather was icky so instead of going to the beach i went with my roommate brooklyn and a bunch of her friends to the district six museum downtown. Downtown was kind of creepy yesterday though. On holidays everyone stays at home, none of the shops were open and the streets were empty excepts for the vagrants and bums, plus the sky was gray and it was cold. Not a very pleasant atmosphere, but at least the museum was interesting. District Six is an area of downtown that had traditionally been very crowded and very racially mixed. There was a large muslim population as well as lots of mixed race families. During Apartheid the residents of this area were forcibly removed into the townships and all their homes were bulldozed to the ground. However, due to heavy protest and a general white distaste for the area, whites never moved in and nothing was built. In the last decade they are just now starting to build there and welcome the former residents back into the district. It's been one of the most successful post-apartheid outreaches.

after the museum we headed back to our part of town for a late mexican lunch to celebrate our one-month anniversary in cape town. on the way home from lunch we stopped at the residence hall where a lot of ciee kids are staying. The building looks like a prison with all the rooms in a rectangle that's 6 stories high. on the inside there is just a "courtyard" on the first level. this courtyard actually looks like the top of a parking garage, because that's what it is. it's very strange looking. We decided to go down to the courtyard to play red rover. We were being silly, having lots of fun and tons of people were coming out on their balconies to watch us play. But, then we got in trouble because games aren't allowed in the courtyard. after we were told of this rule we actually saw a sign that said "no games." we thought that was hilarious, and then we went home. for the rest of the evening we just hung out, not doing much.