Being posh in Stellenbosch

I’m so happy here. Really could spend a month, semester or college experience in this town. I’ve been trying to analyze this place as best I can, but it is so close to my defintion of normal I feel too close to it to find a plethora of things I hate, want to change or complain about. Can you believe it? Me! not complaining! Stellenbosch is a very easy place to live and an easy environment to feel comfortable in for me. the cultural gap is just so much smaller than Langa and Tshabo that is more like we are just sharing and comparing lives, than leanring one anothers cultures.

So my family is definitely part of this reason. They are very similar to my fam, love to travel, eat dinner together every night (we don’t say grace, but whatevs) and are always laughing and joking. They treat Tori and I just like I know my parents would host a student. They wanna show us their favorites things in Stellenbosch- this weekend we are going to the Saturday market, this adventure, tree house, magical sounding restaurant and Sunday night half price sushi. Liezel, our mom, drove us around downtown to give us the lay of the land last night and the town is perfect. Basically is Saratoga/ Scarsdale main st. with a few thousand more people. There is a mix of students, tourists and residents occupying the shops and amazing looking restaraunts. I wanna go into every store and just shop it out (but I wont parents).

We do have class all day on campus and being back on a college campus, even though it is incomparably preppier than Skid and 10 times the size, it just so comforting and awesome. Just seeing the way kids dress here has been fascinating me since we arrived. Having time to sit and talk to students has been amazing. And the amenities of this school have been a gift in itself (amazing food court and shops in the student center where our class is). Also no shoe kid, if you’re out there reading my blog, even though I don’t know your name, you would fit in great here- they have been having a shoe fundraiser everyday so kids are just barefoot all day.

In class we have been learning about Afrikaans culture, language and history which has been really cool. I knew nothing besides the awful stuff about this group, which is the largest in South Africa language wise, and gaining new perspectives and information has been great. Afrikaans people did not create or all enforce apartheid, however they did comply with it and are therefore given a lot of shit for it. Mostly what I am hearing is that they are anti-apartheid and anti-segregation and are completely fine with black and colored people living and being treated equally, they just don’t need or want to integrate with them.  They want to keep Afrikaans language around, even though it adds a barrier to mixing with foreigners or other South Africans. Many feel that the fact that University of Stellenbosch is bilingual adds something UCT and UWC cant offer.

            South Africa, due to its history of apartheid, has racial issues up the wazoo. Race is discussed everyday, more blatenly than anyone in the US would ever dream of. Words like black, colored and white are not whispered or put in quotations, they are said equally to other words in the middle of sentences in every conversation with anyone. Of course what they are saying depends on the participants, but the emphasis on discussing reality is prevalent. In Stellenbosch, the racial seperation is so apparent, it is impossible to not recognize. Over the past 3 days the situation between black, whites and coloreds has sky rocketed and is a constant theme in every hour we spend here. It feels like I am living through the civil rights movement in the US, before anyone started listening to Martin Luther King.  Maybe it is just because we watched The Help yesterday and if you change a few accents, characters names and outfits it could be South Africa. In every lecture we have the classic SA quote of “What really has changed?” comes up. Laws have changed. Nelson Mandela is free. But socially, what has changed? Colored kids sit with colored kids in the food court, the school is majority white and Afrikaans, and although white people are working in many shops in restaurants- apparently an accomplishment for Stellenbosch- all labor jobs, such as parking attendants, sanitation and taxi drivers, are occupied by black or colored people.

            The thing is, especially as a white person- who is often mistaken for an Afrikaner, they always speak it to me at shops before I get em with the ol’ American accent- it is so incredibly easy to keep living in this dream world and float on without addressing reality. I am trying to do a balance of noticing the controversial moments, and enjoying the privilege as a white person in Stellenbosch.

Some pics of the casa:

Typical Pottery Barn of SA photo collage or their international trips (there are also two for travel within SA)

the Kitchen. Directly off our room/ wing. I am taking the pic from our room

Welcome to the christian home! Do they know were jews? Debatable.

Our marvelous room/ wing. It is no longer this neat- yes full bathroom in the back
and a door to the right of the right (Tori's) bed that leads to the parking area - aka easy sneaking out ;)