The World Cup continues and other anecdotes

Last week I was very busy so I didn’t have much time to write, so I’m just going to include a few anecdotes!

I went to the post office here to try to mail Alie a birthday present. After standing behind a guy wearing a sweatshirt that said “Knowledge Enlightens” for about a half hour, I finally got to the counter. The woman asked me if it was ok for her to send it by “surface mail,” or by boat, and then told me that would take about 3 months. So I asked if she could send it “by plane,” and she kind of raised her eyebrows and then proceeded to put 5,432 stickers all over the package (some of which were just little stickers with an airplane on them). So I have no idea if this is ever actually going to reach North Carolina but we shall see.

Tuesday afternoon was the South Africa game against France and Hirsh, David and I went to a sports bar near our hotel to watch it. The S. Africa team played really REALLY well but in the end they lost 2-1 to France.

On Wednesday on my way to work I was innocently walking down Long Street and the next thing I knew I had COMPLETELY wiped out and was sort of laying in a tangled little pile on the side of the road. I literally couldn’t move at first and this really nice guy who had a vendor stand right by where I fell came and like carried me out of the street. It took me a while to get my bearings and it turns out I was fine, just a lot of nasty bruises and a few scrapes. I’m still not too sure what happened but I think it was because the soles on these shoes I bought here have pretty much no traction at all (I bought new shoes with traction that day at lunch) and one of the guys helping me said it’s a really slippery part of the road and he’s seen a bunch of other people slip there (I'm not the only one!). When I fell, I was actually heading to the train station to go to Observatory for a meeting at the Rape Crisis center, so Hirsh (who takes the train to work every morning) was able to swing by in a cab and grab me and help me get to the train station.

I got to Observatory around 9:45 and walked up Trill street, this really cool street with a bunch of restaurants and cafes, to try to find the Rape Crisis center. For security reasons there is no sign on the building, and the only information my contact had given me was that it was a “blue and white stripey building” up Trill street, so I had a little trouble finding the place. I called Jennifer at Rape Crisis and she just kept saying it was “blue and white stripey” (not a very helpful description, as it turned out). I still couldn’t find it so she eventually came out of the building to try and locate me. The building, or really the house, was distinctly turquoise/green, hence my confusion. It was beautiful on the inside though- they had a lot of cool photos and pro-female artwork up and the house was really old and unique looking. The next day I actually had to go back to the Center for a two-hour meeting with the roleplayers involved in this victim empowerment initiative- basically, they have been contracted by the UN to undertake this project assessing the feasibility of victim empowerment legislation in South Africa, and so they’re working with the South African Department of Social Development (DSD) and the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to make this work. They’re midway through the project in the research phase, and they also have a blog about the issue which you all should check out (http://victimempowermentsa.wordpress.com/). My angle coming from ODAC is about why rape victims should have the automatic right to be updated on their perpetrator’s progress through the criminal justice system, so as soon as I’m done with my brief about the state of access to information laws in the DRC (summary: dismal), I’m going to be writing up a report on that for them that they’ll eventually incorporate into a presentation they’ll be making to the DCD, the Dept of Health, the Dept. of Justice, the National Prosecuting Authority, the Dept. of Correctional Services, the S.African Police Services, the Dept. of Community Safety and the Ministry of Women, Children and People with Disabilities (aka a lot of different stakeholders).

Street in Observatory:



Inside the Rape Crisis center:



On Wednesday afternoon I got let off work early to watch the 4:00 USA v. Algeria game at O’Driscoll’s (an Irish pub). Apparently having to watch your country in a soccer game is a totally legitimate reason to leave work early here. Anyway, there were about 15 of us in the upstairs part of the bar watching the game, which turned out to be an INCREDIBLE game—for those of you who haven’t been following, the USA beat Algeria 1-0 in the last added-on 4 minutes of the game. We were all FREAKING out and then went out to celebrate afterwards.

On Thursday the only notable thing that happened was when I came home to my room to find a little can of deodorant with an attached card that said “I’m sorry for the mishap…please enjoy the rest of your journey” sitting on my bed. I was rather befuddled as to what kind of "mishap" had occurred and as to why there was a new deodorant on my bed, and I looked around to discover that my own deodorant was nowhere to be seen. I found out today (the next Monday) from the Really Happy Lady that apparently the girl who cleans my room had knocked my deodorant out the window and it exploded when it hit the ground. Interesting.

On another note, the girl who cleans my room really needs to chill out. As soon as you open a bar of soap and use it once you literally blink and it’s gone and there’s a brand new packaged bar of soap in its place. It’s really quite wasteful. Additionally, they like to “tidy” the room which involves them hiding all of my stuff in different places every single day, leading me to waste about 10 minutes every morning looking for my hairdryer/shoes/jacket. The other day I had left a pile of clean gym clothes on my chair to change into when I got home from work, and when I got back the clothes were nowhere to be found—I eventually found them in my dirty laundry along with my other dirty gym clothes. Awesome. So on Sunday I finally talked to the guy downstairs and politely asked him to ask whoever cleans/completely rearranges my room everyday to kindly chill out.

On Thursday night, Hirsh’s best friend from college, Mike, got into town and since it was his birthday we went to dinner at this place called “Cape to Cuba” which was very yummy.

Mike attacking his piece of birthday cake at Cape to Cuba:


On Friday night we watched some soccer game (I honestly can’t even remember who was playing due to an affliction I’m going to call ‘Soccer Overload') at this place called “Bob’s” and then kind of bar/club-hopped for a while. At one point we were about to go into a club but witnessed the bouncer telling a girl who had apparently swore at him that he was going to “slap her in the face” and repeatedly calling her “lightie” (which I believe is the opposite of being called “darkie” and is pretty offensive). So we ex-nayed on that bar and just kind of wandered around for a while, at one point coming upon this sign (seriously they will do anything to lure tourists into bars around here):



Saturday was a very windy but sunny day, and after sleeping in, working out, and getting some laundry done we all convened around 4:00 to get ready to celebrate/watch the USA v. Ghana game. I had purchased a lovely new trucker-ish looking America hat and I also quite craftily sewed an American flag onto a T-shirt.


The boys bought these really weird packets of whiskey, which I think are designed so that you can sneak them into events (and this is exactly what they planned to do with them):

They kind of look like salad dressing packets.

The FanFest was closed because of the wind, so we went to the Purple Turtle to watch the game. A lot of other Americans had convened there as well.

It was quite a good time until Ghana scored a second time, making the score 2-1 and causing USA to lose the match and causing many Americans here in South Africa to become very, very sad. We tried to cheer ourselves up afterwards and I even started a limbo contest using my USA scarf as a limbo pole.

Yesterday (Sunday) was an absolutely beautiful day and I went running down to Seapoint along the “Fan mile”, a kind of path through town that has been set up for fans to use when going to the soccer stadium. The streets were pretty empty because everyone was watching the Germany v. England game (Germany eventually won). Then I proceeded to go to sleep at 6:30 pm and sleep for 13 hours, which was amazing.

Today I had a pretty productive day at work, and at lunch I went back to the Eastern Food Bazaar we found the other day. You basically go into what looks from the outside like a garage but on the inside is this huge food place with different counters of Indian food. I got some delicious dosa for about 2 dollars and then ate it outside in the sunshine near my work.

After work I went to the gym, which is usually not a noteworthy experience except that today two South African women who were on ellipticals on either side of my found it appropriate to have a screaming conversation at each other across me as we were working out. If I shifted at all they would bend and crane their necks so they could see each other as they continued their ridiculously loud conversation in Africaans across me. Finally I thought I was going to have a panic attack so I just asked one of them if they wanted to switch with me (in kind of an irritated tone, I’m sure) and they were just like “oh, sorry, we haven’t seen each other all weekend,” as if that make it a totally understandable thing to do.
Sigh.

Tomorrow I’m going to the Round of 16, the Spain v. Portugal game!! I’m so excited. David found us reasonably priced tickets and it will be my very first World Cup game!

The Coast and Table Mountain

Friday was the USA v. Slovenia game, which was pretty exciting to watch- we were down 2-0 at halftime and managed to tie the game at 2-2. Friday night I took it easy and went to bed early because I was exhausted!

Saturday was a beautiful crisp, sunny day, and Hirsh and I met Nick at the train station and then the three of us took the train down the coast to Muizenberg, one of the Cape’s oldest Dutch settlements which used to be a seaside resort town for the wealthy. It’s truly beautiful, and we were dropped off right on the beach by the train. There was this really cool row of little colored beachside houses, and the rocky hills rising above the coast were just incredibly beautiful.






Then we walked down the beach through St. James to Kalk Bay, which is this gorgeous fishing village with lots of craft shops and cafes.





We went to this restaurant that this guy on the train had recommended to me called the Brass Bell, which has two patios overlooking the tidal pools and the fishing harbor.


We had some DELICIOUS pizza there (one of them had avocado, cranberry sauce, a spicy sauce, and feta and was amazing) and then bought some of these really cool animal figurines made out of beads and wires by a local woman. We continued to walk down the coast through Kalk Bay and came to a pier with a daily fish market and some people selling artwork. The best part about the pier was the family of sea lions swimming around right next to the pier. This little boy coaxed the “mother” sea lion out of the water and onto a rock to eat some meat, and then told me that her name was Rose (which I think is a very good name for a mother sea lion).






Then we took a quick bus 5 miles south to Simon’s Town, where we walked about a mile down the famous St. George street (which has a lot of very old colonial-looking guesthouses, pubs and houses).









We finally reached Boulders Beach, where we saw the famous wild colony of African penguins! The beach is so cool- it's a small area with a bunch of huge boulders (hence the name) and the penguins kind of run around and cross your path and hide in bushes. I even found one with two furry little babies!











On our way back into Simon’s town, we saw a random group of American tourists getting into a minivan and we asked if they were heading to Cape Town, thinking it was a public minibus taxi. Turned out it was a private charter, but they let us catch a ride with them back to Cape Town for something like 2 bucks each, which meant we didn’t have to deal with public transportation on the way back! They were really nice guys and are staying in Camps Bay, which is a really upscale area on the western coast of Cape Town. The most eventful part of the ride back was when the driver stopped short, and I, who was sitting in the jump seat, went flying forward and landed in a heap on the floor of the minivan. Awesome.

Hirsh and I were pretty exhausted (especially Hirsh, who had gone with a girl he met at work to this club in a neaby suburb the night before and had gotten 2 hours of sleep) so we didn’t end up going out, but we did have a nice dinner with David at a Thai place called Sawadee near our hotel (there was something on the menu called a “Fashion Sandwich,” which I was intrigued about).

Today was another beautiful, sunny day, so Hirsh and I (after I successfully avoided a run-in with CARL on Kloof street by our hotel) took a cab up to the base of Table moutain and took a cable car up to the top. Truly beautiful views; we were 167 meters up! It was pretty windy and chilly up there even though it was a very nice temperature at the bottom. We also got to see a “dassy” which is a little creature that looks kind of like a bunny without ears and whose closest relative is apparently the African elephant (who knew?).




See the dassy sleeping in the sun in the bottom left of this picture:





Hirsh and I explored a bit and then after an overpriced lunch at the restaurant at the top of the mountain, we headed back down.
Now I’m relaxing for the rest of the day because I’m exhausted from such a busy weekend!

Family Day and Carl

Monday was a cold, rainy day and I was soaking wet when I got to work. Even though I had an umbrella, it’s so windy here that it only helps marginally. Jim, who is anti-umbrella and refuses to carry one, was completely drenched when we got in.

Monday night we took a cab to the waterfront to have dinner and watch the Italy-Paraguay game. In the cab on the way there, I convinced the cab driver that I was a professional soccer player. He kept asking which one of the boys was my boyfriend and we told him that they were my bodyguards. He also was extremely solicitous about sports bras, and kept asking me whether I thought they gave enough support for soccer-playing, and what my teammates thought about whether they gave enough support.

When we got to the mall we have to go to the Vodaphone store so Jim could get a new phone. The boys had been telling me that we had to go to this place to meet “Hirsh’s sister,” and kept talking about this girl who apparently looked just like Hirsh. I was expecting to be looking for a human being, but when we got there they just pointed to this huge poster on the wall of a girl and a guy talking on a cell phone. Apparently Hirsh’s sister did some modeling and the picture (taken in the states) ended up on the wall of a Vodaphone store in a mall in Cape Town. Random.

We had dinner at a tapas place in the mall at Victoria’s Wharf and watched the game, which ended up being a tie.

Note: The lady at our lodge/hotel who monitors the breakfast buffet activities in the morning scares the living daylights out of me every single day. I’m always still half asleep and she manages to pop out from behind plants, from under the buffet table, from inside of the coffee pot, etc, and scream “GOOD morn-ING” in this creepily cheerful, extremely loud voice, and she’s just grinning and so excited that I’ve come to breakfast (which I do every morning), and I’m like blown across the room in my half-asleep state from the blinding power of her greeting. I’m glad she’s enthuastic about her job but seriously…

Note: I'm using a cell phone that Russell bought somewhere in Asia with a local SIM card that I bought here, and I was playing with it yesterday and I found that it has a series of "Quick Notes" programmed into it (these are supposed to be texts that you would commonly send to a friend like "Where are you?" or "I'm almost there", and you can just send them without having to type them out). The ones in this phone are hilarious. The phone says "MUCH" on the front of it, which apparently is some sort of TV show or TV station somewhere in Asia. Here are the quick-notes programmed in the phone:
-"NICK" (who is Nick?)
-"Can't talk-watching Much!"
-"Go away, you smell like Ed the Sock!" (What is Ed the Sock?? And even if that is a thing, why would you ever need to say this to someone?)
-"S.O.S.- Save me!" (a little more information here would probably be necessary)
-"Check who's on Much right now!" (ok, we get it, you are advertising "Much")
-"You're too much for Much!" (seriously?)
-"Rock and Roll!" (not something people say un-ironically)
-"Where is you at?" (Asian attempt at ebonics)
((Russell has since informed that this is a Canadian phone he got off of E-bay. Womp womp)).

Tuesday night we ate pizza and watched the North Korea-Brazil game (Brazil won 2-1). Afterwards Hirsh, Jim and I went to this bar called the “Waiting Room,” which involved walking up 3 flights of what felt like a fire escape and then dancing semi-awkwardly in what felt like someone’s living room. We soon left that bar and went to a more local bar, where they were playing old school 50 Cent, and we were dancing and having a good time until I felt something kind of pull on my purse. I turned and saw this guy kind of tangled up in it (my jacket was also tied to the strap) and at first I thought he just must have gotten caught on it, but then I looked down and saw it was completely unzipped. He looked kind of surprised/sheepish and then jetted to the other side of the bar. I’m definitely glad I caught this guy in the act before I had something else stolen…

After that happened, we left and went to Dubliner’s, which is this huge bar on long street that has dancing and more contemporary music downstairs, but upstairs is an awesome piano bar 7 nights a week. This woman was playing Billy Joel, the Beatles, Elton John, and the piano she was playing on was literally built to be leaned on (there was padding all around it and it was covered in glass so you could put your drink down).



By the time we left it was pouring outside and we ran back to our hotel in the rain. We were all completely soaked but it was pretty fun running around in the rain!

Wednesday was a public holiday (“Family Day”?) so we didn’t have work. A couple of Hirsh’s co-workers had invited Hirsh to go with them to this place called Mzoli’s, which is an outdoor bar/BBQ place in a township near Mowbray, where Hirsh works at the University of Cape Town Community Law Center. So Hirsh at I left the hotel around 8:30, walked to the train station, caught a train to Mowbray, then caught a minibus taxi to the campus. I can't believe Hirsh does this every morning. If you have never had a minibus taxi experience, you really should. These minibuses just drive around and pick up people on the sides of the road, and charge people a little over a dollar to shuttle them to wherever they want to get off on the route. There's usually one guy driving and one guy collecting money from passengers, and they usually BLAST extremely loud music. For them to make any money they have to squish as many people into the van as they possibly can, and this often leads to some interesting, albeit cramped encounters.

We got to the campus and waited around a bit to meet up with Hirsh's co-workers, who eventually showed up an hour late with 4 other Americans they had met at a bar or something the night before and invited along.


Hirsh's co-workers are really nice- while we were waiting for everyone to show up, we hung out in the office and this one guy made me some DELICIOUS coffee. I told him how good it was and he told me that he got it from his native town in eastern Africa. He said he would bring me some back next time he went home and give it to Hirsh to give to me (people are so nice in this country).

Then, we piled into three cars and drove to the township. I knew the surrounding areas of Cape Town were really different than Cape Town itself, but I was really struck by the difference. This township consisted of stretches of little one or two room huts made out of wood and plastic, and clearly had no plumbing. We eventually arrived at Mzoli's, which apparently was started by this entrepreneur who just basically put up a bunch of tents and built a butcher shop right next to it. Now it's a total hotspot, and people come from all the surrounding areas to drink beer, listen to the (REALLY LOUD) techno music they play, watch games, eat huge amounts of meat that you get at the butcher shop next door and then eat with your hands out of big communal bowls, and hang out. It was a beautiful day and there were a ton of people there-- I don't know if this is typical of a Wednesday afternoon or if it was particularly festive because it was Family Day and because there were three World Cup games playing.





Hirsh and I are both vegetarians, so we both realized that we might be facing a slight problem in the getting lunch department. Fortunately, Velma, Hirsh's co-worker (a middle aged South African woman who is hilarious and was drunk and dancing the whole day) went "around the corner" (wherever that may be) and came back with two to-go boxes of what turned out to be a DELICIOUS mix of potatoes, chick peas, green peppers, onions, tomatoes, and spicy sauce. The rest of the group went to the butcher shop (I did not go for obvious reasons) and came back with an extremely large amount of meat. It looked disgusting to me, but everyone said it was pretty much the most delicious BBQ they'd ever had. The only thing they brought back that I could have eaten was a loaf of bread that happened to be "Albany" brand (see photo). Go capital of NYS!







At one point, Velma went over to the bar to get drinks, and came back with a 6-pack of "Brutal Fruit," which apparently is kind of like a Smirnoff Ice-type drink. I think this is quite possibility the best name for a malt beverage and I have been annoying Hirsh ever since by referring to all alcohol-related activities using Brutal Fruit-related terminology (e.g. "That guy must have been hitting the Brutal Fruit pretty hard last night" or "We should go out Brutal Fruit-ing tonight").


I was walking to the bar after the Chile-Honduras game, and I hear someone yell "CARY!" Assuming no one in this township knew me, I was very surprised. I turned around to find RONALD (he works in my office and who is always decorating the office with South African flags and wearing ridiculous bufana gear) who was there with his girlfriend! He made me wear his ridiculous glasses and then he took pictures of me and Hirsh and Hirsh's co-workers.





Now it's time to talk about Carl, the Worst American that has Ever Lived (also known as The Reason Why People Hate Americans). So, there were these four Americans that Velma had invited along with us. They were two couples traveling together, and three of them were from Norfolk (an area on the coast in southern Virginia) and were generally meek/inoffensive. CARL, on the other hand, was anything but meek. I've decided that a good way to describe him is by analogy to the guy who saunters into a party smiling and winking and waving at people who aren't paying any attention to him or waving back, but he just wants to look cool by pretending he's having mutual exchanges of greeting. My best Carl anecdotes:
-When Carl told Hirsh and me all about how he "gets the local flavor of different countries" while traveling (he does this by going into grocery stores and seeing what kinds of food is on the shelves). BRILLIANT, Carl.
-When Carl, who apparently works for U.S. Customs, told us all about when he was sent to Iraq to train customs officials there, and described it as if he were a really important federal government official who was sent on a top secret mission to end the war and succeeded by using Jason Bourne-like tactics.
-When Carl started a sentence with "IF YOU EVER HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO VISIT THE BRONX...." (and yes, Carl talks in capital letters).
-When Carl came up to me and pulled out this little blinking thing attached to his vest, which turned out to be a whistle that he blew AS LOUD AS HE COULD in my ear and then, after I regained hearing in that ear, said to me "you didn't expect that, did you?" (No, I didn't.)
-When Carl told me that he lived in "WASHINGTON, D.C." which (not that I had probably ever been there) was THE MOST EXPENSIVE CITY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. When I said that I actually didn't think that was true, he corrected me by telling me that he read it in an article in THE TIMES.
-When Carl repeatedly yelled BUFANA BUFANA (name of South AFrican soccer team), pronouncing it "BUFAN-A BUFAN-A" (correct pronunciation is bufah-na bufah-na) in this nasally kind of voice.
-When, during the car ride from Mzoli's to where we could catch a minibus taxi back to Cape Town, Carl took pictures of EVERYTHING (literally road signs, the steering wheel of the car, cars driving past us, the license plate of a car in front of us, Hirsh and I sitting stone-faced in the backseat).
-When on the minibus taxi ride back to Cape Town, Carl danced THE ENTIRE 20-MINUTE RIDE to the really loud techno music being played (I wish SO much that I had video footage of this), occasionally twirling around the blinking whistle on his North Face jacket as if it were a glowstick and he was at a rave.
-When Carl took 5 minutes of video footage of the minibus ride, rotating the camera around to get a 360-degree view ("the FULL experience," according to Carl). Honestly, the look on the face of the guy sitting next to him that was half confusion, half pure disbelief was probably the most hilarious thing I've ever seen in my life.
-When Carl on the minibus ride made his girlfriend take about 6,000 pictures of him cupping his ear up to the speaker with this weird like "WHAAAT?" expression on his face.
-When Carl was talking to the minibus drivers in robot-speak, screaming, "SOUTH AFRICA SOCCER TONIGHT... WIN??? OR NO??" (shaking his head vehemently to convey the concept of NO), and the minibus driver responded in perfect English, "I think we're going to win" (because people in South Africa speak ENGLISH, Carl).

Hirsh and I were NOT fans of Carl.