saying goodbye

This past week has been busy. We’ve been at the college so there’s been more free time, but a lot of final exploring to get done. We turned in our final group presentations this week and our final papers and are officially done with school. We got to go on a peninsula tour and see the most southwesterly tip of Africa and the penguins, which are adorable. On Thursday we hit some of the major museums in Cape Town like the Slave Lodge and the District 6 Museum, which was a great taste of how Apartheid impacted communities and families. On Friday we went back into down and did some final shopping and looking around. Saturday we got up at 4am and went shark cage diving. It was a 2-hour drive to get to Dyer Island where we dove, but it was all worth it. We were on the boat for about 4 hours and took turns getting into the 7-person cage and watching the sharks under water. The great things about the diving is that you have a terrific view on the boat as well because they chum the water and bait the sharks in with fish heads. So the people in the boat are able to see the sharks breech and jump and bite the bait while the people in the water are able to be a couple of feet away from huge great white sharks. It was a great experience and we got to be so close to some huge and completely incredible sharks. Sunday morning I went to a local church and the service was a Christmas pageant put on by the children of the congregation, which was adorable. After church a few girls and I went to the beach and hung out for a few hours. Today we had our final class session for debriefing and discussing the reentry process and the difficulties we might face. And right now we’re all frantically packing and trying to understand that our time here is done. In so many ways it feels like we just got here, but I am thankful to be going home and for the upcoming Christmas season and the opportunity to rest. I have so much to think about and process about my time here, but I know that we have been so outrageously blessed by God. We have learned so much and have experienced so much of God’s goodness. When I see you at home ask me about my experience or any specific questions you might have. I would love to talk more about my time here and would love to be able to bless other people with this huge blessing I have received. Thank you for going on this journey with me!

This was the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.
Psalm 118:23

we've been at the beach the past few days.
wednesday is going to be a rude awakening.

1st Week in Cape Town

Home stays are over and we are moving into our final week here in Africa. It's outrageous to think that we're about to go home- our time here in Cape Town has flown by so unbelievably fast. Home stays were such a blessing. It was the second or third time I've been in a home in these past 3 months and even though our stay wasn't terribly eventful, it was so good to be able to rest and reflect. The women we stayed with are teachers and spent most of our time in their home grading papers while we did homework, but we found time to do some sightseeing with them and we got to meet their whole family and spend some time at some friends' houses. The colored community here in the Cape is loud, open, gracious, and joyful. There are always people in the street, there are always parties going on, and you can't walk or drive around without talking to someone every few feet. So being in that environment was new and exciting and getting to learn about Apartheid from a different point of view was so interesting. Every family had a different story, but after hearing them and knowing the people we were living with it made Apartheid so much more personal. Seeing the impact of the Apartheid system in my host family's life even today, a decade and a half after it ended, was also really interesting. I started noticing people staring at Caitlin and I when we were out with our family and understanding what it's like to be discriminated against or looked at differently was really eye opening for me. But we had some great times with our family and got to meet a lot of great people and it was such a good enriching experience. Being in a home did make me a little homesick especially because there was so much going on, but now that we're at BI we have some time to slow down and think which has been so great. This past week when we weren't at home stays we were either in class or on excursions. On tuesday we got to go to Langa which is a local township and we were led through it on a tour by a few of the community members. It was interesting because I've spent a decent amount of time in townships on this trip because of previous tours and because I worked in one for a month, so I came into the tour knowing what to expect and Langa was no different then any other township I've been in. The problems are the same no matter where you go and even though Langa's been given a lot of money, the problems are still there. I have learned so much in my time here about what good development looks like and I've seen so many examples of what bad community development is which has been really eye opening and will be something I'll continue to figure out and use in my career. On thursday we went to Robben Island which wasn't what I pictured, but was certainly interesting and I'm so glad I had the chance to go. The tour is guided by an ex-political prisoner, so our guide was a student that was arrested for organizing and participating in demonstrations against the Apartheid government. He was a little difficult to understand but his insight and personal experience made the tour much more interesting and it was pretty cool to get to see where so much South African political ideology was discussed and created and where so many great leaders lived. On friday Virginia, our host mom, picked us up early from school and we drove around the city and stopped at some of the major lookout points and got to see great views of Cape Town and the ocean. For dinner we got banana pizza from the camel farm across the street which was weird but pretty good as far as banana pizza made on a camel farm goes. Saturday morning we got up early and hiked Table Mountain. It was a harder hike then I was expecting, if you could call it hiking. It was really more like rock climbing/going up giant stairs for 2 hours. So not really easy, but about half way up the mountain I found a Zulu family that was hiking at the same speed as me so we hiked and talked and sang Zulu songs together and had a great time. It was really cloudy as it tends to be on Table Mountain, so we couldn't see anything from the top, but it was a good hike. On sunday we went to church in the morning with Raynard, one of the cultural mentors, and after we went to a huge flea market in Muizenberg and we broke down on the way and got to push the car up the hill which was exciting. That night we went to a concert in the Kirstenbosch gardens which are gorgeous and saw a band called Mango Groove. They're a jazz african fusion type ensemble and the crowd was mostly old people with picnic baskets but we still had a good time. The semester is almost over so we have a group presentation due in a few days and a final paper due next week so we're pretty busy and today's been devoted to homework, but hopefully we'll still get out into the city a few times in this next week to really enjoy the last of our time here!