Kayla believes she's prepared to start living as an average Capetonian

Orientation is officially over and we have begun our normal routines in Cape Town. Overall, I really enjoyed orientation and I feel surprisingly well prepared to start living as an average Capetonian. Yesterday, was the first day of our internships and I was supposed to take a minibus taxi with a group of students interning in the same area as me. Unfortunately, no minibus taxis were coming so we were even able to improvise and take a regular bus to our internship locations. This was really nice because taking the bus only cost about $0.50 when a taxi would have cost about $7.

Starting my internship has allowed me to really interact with local people. This experience has opened my eyes to many local issues such as the real strain apartheid has still left on the community. For example, today a white woman at my office was speaking about the demographics of a group of volunteers. She turns to a black woman in our office and says, “There’s 8 white volunteers and 7…can I say black volunteers?” The black woman responds and says, “For god’s sake yes, I hate when you say African because you’re African.” Lastly the white woman says, “Really, I am? Sometimes I feel like the oppressor.”

This interaction showed me how for South Africans, race isn’t necessarily as taboo a conversation as it is for Americans. However, people of different races have clear discomfort in talking to each other about race. This instance made it clear that the white woman didn’t want to offend the black woman by using the wrong terminology. This experience of wanting to be politically correct in ones speech is similar to that in the United States. Yet, it was interesting that the white woman still felt the need to highlight the race of the volunteers in a situation where it really was not very relevant when in the United States it most likely wouldn’t have been noted at all. I find that often race is brought up in conversations because it is something that everyone here seems to notice. It is not uncommon for someone to refer to someone else as “the tall white guy” or “the short black girl.” However, I find that white people in South Africa are still struggling with not seeming as if they themselves are racists because they do not want to be associated with “the oppressor.”