Yesterday, a group of us spent half the day in city center seeing Bo Kaap and getting some last minute souvenirs from Green Market Square. We took the mini-bus from the city center station back to Red Cross Hospital and it got me thinking about our first two weeks in Cape Town. I remember, after all the intense security briefings, Parks brought us to the taxi/train station and showed us where to go, what to do and not to do. At the time, I remember thinking about how big the station seemed and how there was no way I was going to be able to find my way around the city and everywhere else we wanted to go. As we sat on the mini-bus on the way home, I thought about how comfortable we grew to be in our home for the semester. I’m not saying we got so comfortable that we stopped worrying about safety, but we have gotten comfortable with always being aware of what’s around us and where we are. It’s been something that we got used to doing to the point that when my mom was here, she noticed when I would insist on walking with her places, commenting when she’d put her camera in an open pocket of her purse rather than safely zipped, and other similar things that I didn’t even notice as being out of the ordinary. It’s interesting because I’ve had people from home ask about the safety aspect of it, and I would explain that I haven’t felt particularly unsafe other than being followed once, I just feel more aware of what I’m carrying, where I am and who’s around me. I’m sure I would feel the same if I lived in New York City, but I live in a tiny rural town where you don’t need to think twice about walking to a friend’s house in the dark or leaving your house unlocked while you’re home. This safety awareness isn’t even something that most of us have to actively think about, it just comes so naturally now that it will be strange to adjust back to UCONN, which is scary to think about because we shouldn’t let our guard down too much because things can happen on a college campus too.
It’s also really great to see how we have each found different places in and around the city that we love and frequent. It’s fun because we all have these places and have been able to share them with eachother and with visiting family. I have to say, we have a large group of coffee additcts on this trip, which is great because it means that between all of us, we have probably tried just about every coffee place in the area, categorizing our favorites. The same can be said about places to hang out, where to find the best chocolate cake, grocery stores that have certain things we want ( they have ostrich burgers at the woolworths down the street, but not at the one on Main Road), and restaurants we love.
At the beginning of the semester, I remember Vernon telling us we would get to know so many more people than we expected and it’s true! Mini-bus drivers remember you, the same vedors and parking lot directors say hello every week, the local coffee shops know your coffee order every morning, and even the tattoo artists at one of the shops know us by first name now (sorry dad). It’s amazing how many people you can connect with outside your internship and classes that you may not take the time to interact with in the fast-paced lifestyle in the US. Though I’m still not used to it taking 15 minutes to get take away coffee compared to the 2 minutes it takes at Dunkin Donuts, it’s a perfect amount of time to get to know a small bit about the person next to you who is also waiting for their coffee.
On top of all of this, there are the people at our internships who we have gotten to know even better! It’s really sad/happy because a lot of the kids we have gotten to know at Maitland are now going home, after we’ve spent so many weeks with them. It’s sad because we have spent so much time with them and have helped them through different steps of their surgery and recovery. They were always so happy to see us and would call our names before we even had time to change into our scrubs each morning. On the other hand, it’s really happy because going home means that they are healed and are lucky enough to have a family to go home to, which is not the case for all of them. It’s also hard because it’s a hospital for impoverished youths, so a lot of the children are returning home to areas that are so strongly affected by the inequality gap and we wish we could change that inequality. However, we spent so much time with them and hope that we were able to bring them a happiness that they’ll remember from when we played with them, read to them or made fools of ourselves to get them laughing when they missed their families. However, as each one gets to go home, new children come in who are just as excited to see you every morning. It really is such a bittersweet experience.
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| Devil's Peak, Table Mountain, Signal Hill, Lion's Head, with Cape Town Stadium in the foreground |
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