A Day in Cape Town

I woke up early, once again, and quite sleep deprived, again (only 3 hours). After a quick breakfast with Howard, we went to the Field Desk, and tried to figure out to do Cape Point or Cape Town. Seeing that Cape Point would be a longish trip, and just not that practical to visit, we decided to just roam around Cape Town. We exited the ship, walked through the V&A, and entered the city. Actually getting to the main part of the city took about 20 minutes to walk to. Once we entered the city, many of the preconceived notions I had of it were shattered. Before coming to Cape Town, we heard that the city, and South Africa as a whole, was a very dangerous place where basically anything could go wrong at any moment. The Diplomat at the Diplomatic meeting on the first day particularly scared me. However after just 10 minutes in the city I realized how wrong these people were. I’m not saying that Cape Town is not dangerous (because I’m sure it is at night), but during the day at least it was a big city with a small city-like atmosphere. It was quite pleasant, probably helped by the fact that the weather was great, and people seemed to be happy. We wandered down random streets, taking in the environment, getting some soveigners along the way. Behind the skyline, Table Mountain shined and shimmered, as always covered by clouds/mist. Today seemed a bit like rain at first, but eventually became a splendid and sunny day. We crossed a bridge, went left and right down streets, stop at markets we ran into, Howard made a phone call to his dad, and we wandered some more. After around 1.5 hours of walking around, we finally hit up a market that was much larger than the others. We were there for about 5 minutes before Howard had to leave for an SAS trip. Now I was on my own, this was the first time during the trip that I was legitimately wandering on my own anywhere with no knowledge of where exactly I was going. It was a great feeling actually: I really liked it because it had this liberating feeling to it (I don’t have to worry about other people and their needs and desires). I strolled the street of the market looking at shops, enjoying the atmosphere of the shoppers interacting with store-clerks, people talking at a restaurant, and just the whole mood of the place. I had to be careful which stores I looked at: if I even showed some interest in the items, the clerks would latch on and not let me go. I met one clerk who was really cool: Mohammad Ali, a doctor-in-training doing his masters and giving me good suggestions of other sellers and things to do. After 2 hours of traveling on my own, I decided to make my way back to the ship and see what others were up to and drop my stuff off. Walking back, I traveled down streets I ran down with Howard, not knowing how and amazing at the fact that I had found my way back to these streets after wandering the city for around 4 hours. As I got back to the V&A (more musicians and performers) I ran into Amy and Jenn who were going out to Green Market, which I had been looking for before but couldn’t find. They told me to come with them, and so I decided to do just that. After getting some money from the ATM, I headed by taxi back into the city. Green Market was basically a square of a large number of vendors (mostly of crafts and arts) cramped into tiny make-shift stores. As Amy and Jenn did their girl shopping I did my own thing. I thought that the sellers at the other market were clingy; the sellers here at Green Market put those sellers to shame in terms of clinginess. They were absolutely ridiculous. If I even approached their shop (which was impossible to avoid since all the shops were so close together) they would jump on me and start making ridiculous claims and deals, even if I was completely uninterested in what they were selling. At first I was fine, but after a number of such sellers, I did not like it because I felt really bad for them since they were trying so hard but I wasn’t buying. I got the things I needed, and after about 30-40 minutes, I left with this fiasco with the other two. A nice police officer helped direct us to a place to find taxis, and we were soon on our way to the port again. Back at the mall, I bid good bye to Amy and Jenn, and headed to the craft market and various other stores to get the last few things a needed before heading back to the ship. On the ship I wrote my postcards and turned them in with plenty of time to spare before dock time. So I decided to head back into the mall and get some last minute internet time and spend my last few Rand. In the mall, I went back to the same spot I had last gotten internet the other day, which was in front of a cell phone and internet store called “CellC.” As I tried connecting to the frustrating V&A free internet connection, one of the store clerks came out and saw me. He then invited me into the store and use their internet. He even offered me coffee and tea, even though he knew I would not be buying anything. It was really nice of him. And since I was having difficulty connecting to even their internet, the guy gave me one of their internet USB cards, which gave me super fast connection. After skyping my parents, I headed to a grocery store to use my last Rand. I had a difficult time finding something I wanted for 13Rand or less, but I finally settled on a bag of kettle chips. With the time I had remaining, I reconnected to the free internet, quickly skyped Yash for the first time (he was quite angry at me :) and then left for the ship. I got back later than my usual: 5:30, but I was still able to get on in time. Going to dinner, I ran into Mezrim who told me what a great guy I was, which was a great self-confidence booster :). I had dinner outside with Johnny and Michaella, who I hadn’t seen all the time in port since Table Mountain, since she was on her safari trip. Inside again, I sat with a few kids and their mother and talked about things. I found out that Professor Sanchez would be returning to the ship at Mauritius and not teaching Global Studies until after India. Apparently one of his eyes had a detached retina during our South African stay, and so he had to get surgery and needed a good amount of time to recover from it. Later on during the night, I watched us leave. It felt like we had been here for such a long time, and it was only 6 days. It probably was because I had done so many amazing things in such a short amount of time. During this stay, I hiked table mountain, went on a safari, cage-dove with Great White Sharks, visited a South African Township, saw one of the World Cup Stadiums, had a long night out with friends, wandered the streets of Cape Town, and had three experiences next to something that could have killed me. It was a great port. Ghana was an amazing port in terms of culture and opening my eyes. South Africa also opened my eyes (the township visit), but was mostly an amazing port in terms of doing crazy things. I reflected on my experience for some time before going to my post-port reflection group meeting. After the usual “what did you do, what did you like/not-like, how did it affect you,” we were done around 10. And I called it a night early. By 10:15 I was in bed and within 5 minutes, I was gone. I am so happy that we have a reading day the next day. That gives me plenty of time to sleep and recover from my sleep deprived last 6 days.
-Nimish
October 8, 2010