//
The next day I had no idea where I wanted to go and so I just hung around in the morning. I was supposed to go to the township with Luzoku that day but it didn’t work out cuz he never came to breakfast and didn’t answer when I knocked on his door. Some kids that I hang out with like Brian and Allyson and Lauren were going to the cape and taking public transportation (super cheap and on your own!) and so I figured I’d just go with them.
We walked to the train station. It was a pretty nice walk, except that lots of things were caged off because of the jazz festival. One time we actually literally caged ourselves in and were like, um, what the hell happened here? We walked through a huge convention center and got to the end of it and asked for a lot of directions before we finally found the train station. We bought tickets there and back for a total of $4 each person and then went to wait for the train. It look a lot like Indian train terminals. I guess they’re pretty similar no matter where you go.
The train was supposed to leave at 11:15 or something like that but it was way late. There was confusion about a missing guard or something like that and so we got off the train but I think we ended up getting back on. There was graffiti inside the train car and also the walls hiding the traintracks from plain view of the rest of the world were COVERED top-to-bottom in graffiti everywhere they existed. I’ve never seen so much of it in my life. It was mostly tagging though so it wasn’t super interesting, but still, it was soooo much of it. The ride was about 45 minutes long, maybe an hour, but it went along the coast as you got further south so we didn’t mind stopping every like three minutes or so, although it did jerk like a manual car every time it started which was kind of annoying.
Anyway, we got out and headed for the bus to Simonstown since the train only went to Fish Hoek. Someone misplaced a ticket but we founded it again, and then they were distracted by guitar, but we all made it onto the first bus down to Simonstown. After we got off we talked to a nice older British couple (woman was a teacher, man was electric engineer) that were doing their second 100-day long cruise. Last year they went all the way around the world, this year they were just doing a “grand tour,” they called it, and next year they would go around the globe again, but then they said they were out of money. They said their ship had 2,000 passengers on it and they had live entertainment every night. It was kind of crazy. I never really knew things like that existed, and certainly not for the non-incredibly-wealthy.
We eventually found the beach called Boulder Beach and paid the $5 fee to get in and then walked around and saw some penguins including the ones right up on the beach. Brian videotaped them waddling to and from the water with each other and gave them voiceovers with a British accent even though they were South African penguins, which was pretty funny, he talked a lot about one stealing the others’ lady or something along those lines.
Then we walked to the place where you could actually go ON the beach with the penguins and we got right up alongside them and I got within inches of on, really, and took some nice close-ups, although a guard came later to tell us that we couldn’t be within two meters of them. There was a $80 fine for touching one. We climbed the rocks to get close to a couple of them and they were huge and flat and safe but a lot of the people with me were afraid to jump from one to the other still.
After that we really wanted food because it was coming up on like 4pm and we hadn’t really had anything to eat since breakfast at around 8:30am. So we talked to some people at the gift shop and headed for a restaurant back near the first penguin place and all got some take out. I got a totally plain hamburger with French fries and it was great. The other kids organized a taxi to come to the place (Seaforth) and pick us up to go to the Cape. I wasn’t incredibly interested, but I would have been convinced if the price were right. As it was, it was like $25 to go and it was going to be like another three/four hours or something and I just wasn’t feeling it, because I’d already seen beautiful stuff and I wasn’t really going to get more from just seeing kind of more of the same. So I told them I would just hang on my own, finish my burger, and head to the train station. I actually planned on asking people on the beach questions for my global studies project on happiness, I just didn’t want to tell them. Edwin came back later and sort of crashed that party, but it was okay. We found our way back to the train station with the help of two people who ran some sort of guest house and made it just a few minutes before the next train left, which I think was at like 4:20pm.
This train wasn’t as nice as the first one – just benches, not padded seats – but it was okay. We had to wake a guy up who was laying across a bunch of seats to have a place to sit. We felt bad but it wasn’t our choice. There was an incredibly pretty girl sitting a few seats over and across from me, with black curly hair and light features and she was stylish and etc., but it was totally not the place to say “Hey you’re hot let’s talk” and I didn’t care anyway, I guess I’m just saying that sometimes I actually am a dude so there. Another incredibly beautiful Indian girl came on the train later and sat two seats over from Edwin, but her boyfriend was inbetween them. Oops!
Edwin and I talked for a while and we had an old man take a picture when we got to Cape Town to commemorate the event. We talked a lot about what we wanted in a marriage partner. I asked him if there was anyone on the ship he thought he could marry, and he asked if he was trying to imply that he should marry the girl he had just been talking about, but it really was an honest to goodness mistake. He asked the same of me and I told him that I used to think so but now I’m not sure at all. It was a nice conversation and, in the end, I was fine with him having crashed my global studies project party.
Again I did NOT want to go out that night, so I just hung out at the waterfront. I think I had dinner with Dierdre that night and talked about Catholocism for a while, but that could have been a different day, I’m not sure. She’s incredibly cool and I wish I had talked to her more for the past 80 days and I’m sure I’ll kick myself over it for the next rest of my life.
My only goal for the night was to walk around the waterfront and ask at least four people what made them happy and have it on video for my project. The first guy I asked was at the port, one of the security guards. I got distracted telling some people about the ship before I was ready to take a video of him, and he thought about his answer. He talked for a while but he still seemed shy, though the crux of his answer was basically talking to new people.
Then I walked around a bit and made my way to the “DO GREAT THINGS” mural and benches surrounding it and there was a group of four high school aged kids or so, and I just walked up to them and used the ship as an ice breaker and asked if I could record them. One of them was pretty outgoing so I basically signed him up for it. I told him to be completely honest. He talked about things like smoking and chilling with friends and partying – maybe a little too much, he said. Then I asked the girl next to him, who was supercute (maybe I’ll post a picture sometime), and she included hammocks, swings, and giving massages. That got a little rise out of the rest of us and I asked if the two guys there got to take advantage of it, and she said, “Well that one has a girlfriend so not him.” They seemed like a cool crew, and I thanked them and moved on.
Before I got anyone else I ran into Xiao. Her computer died at the internet café before she finished everything she wanted to do and now she was going back to the ship to charge it or hang out or sleep or whatever and she looked pretty cold. I told her I might go back to the ship with her if she wanted me to and we could just talk for a while before going to sleep but I really wanted to interview the guy playing saxophone on the park bench. She said that was fine so she went up to him with me and I asked him if I could interview, and he said he didn’t have time because he needed to play to make money, but I said I’d pay him if he would just talk for about thirty seconds. I forget everything he said in detail, but music was a huge part of his answer, and he talked about getting in a fight with his wife and then going outside and playing a love song on his saxophone and his wife would come and he’d apologize to her and say he didn’t mean to do it and he was sorry, then played a South African song for us, and told us that his name actually meant “Happy.” It was totally worth asking him and I’m glad Xiao came with me.
When we were done though she said she felt more like walking around the mall a bit then going right back to the ship, and I told her I was more than happy to go with her. She wanted to ask some people more about South Africa, she said, and figured that’d be a good place to look. I had some interest in seeing The Hurt Locker if we finished our stuff in time, but that didn’t turn out to be the case, which was perfectly okay. She was sort of picky in who she was looking for – a middle aged pair of men, basically – which made it hard to find people to approach, but eventually we settled on a security officer. Thank god for captive audiences!
She’s a sociology major back in Fudan and she studies the relationship between alcohol and the workplace, so she was asking the guy about that. I don’t think that all of her questions were really coming across perfectly clean, but I was just as foreign to him as she was, so I figured I wouldn’t bother trying my hand.
We were pretty much walking back to the ship after that when we passed a nice looking waiter outside a restaurant smoking a cigarette. I asked him if he was on break and he said yes, and again I explained about the ship and my project and asked if I could record him for just thirty seconds or so. He talked about getting outdoors and learning about things he’s doing and enjoying whatever job he has, which was pretty cool. I asked him a bit about how much he went up mountains (every two or three weekends), and if he was in university or whatever. He said no, he actually used to run his own business (I forget what for though!) but when the economy went south he had to close it up and find other work. I said sorry for the messed up economy on behalf of America, since it was our fault. He accepted my apology.
He told us some more about South Africa and it was pretty interesting. He actually told us about the workers who were paid in wine and stuff like that, and about how Cape Town used to be the bulwark against Apartheid but that things took a turn for the worst in the 1980s. I explained that Xiao was a sociology major studying alcohol and she’d probably want to ask some questions, and no she wasn’t obsessed with drinking it was just for work, and he was happy to answer. I helped a little bit this time since English was the first language for both me and the waiter it seemed. One thing that surprised her was that in Japan, drinking a lot around your boss shows that you’re manly and up for the job (if you go to a bar after work), but this guy insisted that if you were trying for a promotion you would NEVER drink around your boss. In fact you’d probably try to get him a little drunk and remain sober yourself as much as possible.
I told him that if he ever wanted to start a business again I had an idea that could get him rich. I told it to him, but I’m not going to put it here in case anyone steals it and I ever feel like doing it. The point is that it has something to do with guitar picks. He laughed and said “That’s honestly actually not a bad idea.” It’s not an amazing idea but someone should do it someday. Anyhow.
I went back to the ship, but as we were walking there was a group of five white kids about our age walking toward the ship. I think they said something about it and I said, “I live on that ship” and one of them said something like, “Sure you do,” and I was like No Seriously I Live There Here’s My Ship ID Card and they were like Oh Crap You’re Serious. So I walked with them a little closer to the dock and then just started talking to them. I don’t really know exactly what we got started talking about, but the ship is a pretty great topic of conversation for people that can actually see it and we talked about that and the program for a while. One girl, Kayleigh, was in massage school for the moment but would be going to a university next year, and the other kids were in universities or tech universities, and I told them that they could all apply and had literally the same chance as anyone else who applied. They seemed pretty excited by that and took down the website. Then we talked for another like 45 minutes or something. It was cold and Xiao was very cold so she left after not too long, but Colette and someone else hung around and talked with me and the kids for a while.
These were some of the kids that I talked to about race in South Africa who convinced me that the people were still racist even if they didn’t know. I had actually talked to a group of three high school girls the night before who said essentially the same things, but I thought maybe they were exceptions to the rule. I remember all three of them were very pretty and fairly done up and the one named Kyla-Var in particular was supercute. But moving on, they were the ones that basically said They Choose To Live Dirty And Poor But No I’m Not Racist At All. I basically just accepted that they were racist but didn’t realize it and assured them okay, no, you’re not, and moved on because I had learned what I was curious about.
I remember asking them about HIV and if it was an issue. The number is something along the lines of 40% for the country, though some say as high as 60% and it’s definitely higher than 40% for the non-white communities (less access to education, information, condoms, and anti-retroviral drugs). I asked the kids if HIV was any sort of real threat in their life, and they said no, they all get free tests so they know their status. I asked, So like what kind of percent of kids in your school probably have HIV? They said Oh, not a very high percentage. I insisted on a number and they said probably something like 10-15%. My jaw basically hit the floor. These kids were well-off, too, they were at the freaking waterfront and had their own cars, and a school as rich as theirs still had a 10% HIV infection rate. That’s crazy. I can’t imagine how scary relationships would be with that sort of number looming over you at best.
They also told me about a comedian who was born to a Swiss father and South African black mother who explained racial stuff in SA pretty well and that I should check him out. I wrote his name down in my phone and I will definitely check him out later. Maybe some comedy and cynicism will shed a little more light on this whole thing. Apparently he does accents very well. Apparently SA people dig American accents, which is cool ‘cuz British people don’t. They had to get back home and I was pretty damn freezing, so I wished them farewell and headed for my room. I really did like them, it’s not like they actively chose to have that Essentialism pounded into them and they were really nice otherwise, it just kind of made me sad that they didn’t realize what was happening, but it’s cool.
I read some Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close that night and finished the first chapter which I hadn’t finished the night before. Little details I didn’t really pick up on the first time through seem much more endearing this time and I’m glad I’m kind-of reading it again, although I probably won’t finish before May 5th when I give it to Catie. I hope she’ll like it as much as I did the first time through.
No comments:
Post a Comment