Highlights from the past week:
Tuesday night, Hirsh, David, Mike, Hirsh’s two friends visiting from NY and I went to the Round of 16 Spain-Portugal game. I decided to root for the underdogs (Portugal) and wore a sweet Portugal hat and a Portugal flag Hirsh bought me to make up for him stealing and then immediately losing my USA hat last weekend during the US/Ghana game.
We walked along the “Fan Mile” to the game which was pretty crazy- all sorts of people out wearing various Spain or Portugal gear (or just really weird outfits) loudly and obnoxiously blowing vuvezelas and/or yelling. There are these little tiny colorful buildings that line the Fan Mile street selling food and World Cup stuff, and one of them had a big sign on it that said “EGOOOALLL” (which I’m going to conclude was because whoever named the store didn’t know that people were actually saying the world “goal” when they yelled GOOALLLL during a game, and thought people were just yelling “EGOALLLL”). We got to the spectacularly huge stadium and, after waiting in line forever to pass through security and get our tickets checked, finally found our seats. The seats weren’t bad, but we decided for the second half of the game to just sort of stand on the first level and watch from there. It was a GREAT view, and it was a much crazier crowd down there than the one around our seats. Even though I’m not a huge soccer fan, it was really cool being that close to the players that were being watched on TV by millions of people at that very moment. Spain eventually won (poor Portugal). The vuvuzelas weren’t as loud as I expected, but I was glad I had “vuvezela-eliminating earplugs,” as they market them (although I was a bit disappointed that they don’t actually eliminate vuvezelas, which would be cool).
Wednesday night was quite a disaster. After work, Mike, David and I went to this Mexican place right near our hotel called Fat Cactus, and after discovering that there was no indoor seating and it was quite windy and cold on their deck, we went across the street to this cute little place called Pasta Factory. Turns out, this was a horrible decision. The place was small and only had about 4 other parties eating there, but it took FOREVER. Interestingly, after the waitress served us all our respective pasta dishes, she turned to me (and only me) and asked if I needed a bib. A BIB. Really??? Mike and David thought this was pretty hilarious and I still can’t really figure out why she a) asked me if I needed a bib, and b) why she didn’t ask Mike or David if they needed a bib. At the end of the 2 hour meal, we got up to leave, and I looked down to where I’d had my purse sitting at my feet, and it was gone. This was a big purse (that I got in London, sniffle) with just a LOT of personal stuff in it- my wallet with cash, credit cards, student ID, driver’s license, health insurance card; medication; makeup; this really great map of Cape Town; and all sorts of other stuff that it has turned out to be very difficult to replace around here. Luckily, I had had both my Blackberry and my local cell phone sitting on the table, so that wasn’t stolen, and since my camera was already stolen, that couldn’t have been stolen either. I was in total disbelief that this had happened, especially because it was such a small restaurant and we were the only table in that part of the room. The staff started suggesting that these three girls who came in and out to get take out while we were eating must have done it, and described them to me in great detail and then wrote down the description for me to give to the police. I immediately believed that it must have been these girls who had taken it, because I tend to be pretty oblivious about what goes on around me (especially when I’m in the middle of a conversation, and we had been having a heated discussion about the accepted custom of women taking their husbands’ name when they get married), but David and Mike were pretty incredulous and told me later that they were almost 100% sure they would have seen these 3 girls if they had come into the restaurant, and especially if they had edged by our table at some point. Leading to my confusion was also the fact that as soon as we asked them if they had security cameras, they said no, and then when we pointed to a camera that was facing our table, they immediately said it didn’t work (this could also be explained by the fact that a lot of restaurants have fake cameras that don’t ever actually take any footage just to scare people). Anyway, we finally left the restaurant and as soon as we got back to our hotel, Miles from the front desk convinced me to call the cops. Two officers came pretty quickly and took down the entire story. This was actually a pretty interesting experience because a lot of the research I’ve been doing focuses on victim empowerment policies and how SAPS (S. African Police Services) treats victims of crime. So aside from the suckiness of the situation (the fact that this ‘field research’ came at the expense of my entire purse), it was pretty cool to see how they treated me and what they were doing. I’d say overall they were very thorough and considerate, and the next morning I even got a text message from them saying my case had been filed and telling me what my case reference number was. Nothing has come of me reporting the theft, but hey, I guess I’m glad I at least reported it.
I have become friends with the Somalian guy who picked me up out of the road when I fell the other day. His name is Kalan and he has a vendor stand on a side street off of Long street. He asked me how many Somalian friends I had in the US, and I told him I really don’t think I have any. He’s a real sweetheart though.
On Thursday, Jim came back from his foray across South Africa with his 3 fraternity brothers from college during which they attended 6 World Cup games. I was most jealous of the part of their trip when the got to play with baby lion cubs at this place outside of Joburg. That night we all went to the Burger Joint (the one whose kitchen my fire escape leads into) and they, of course, forgot to ever bring my order. I was entering food panic mode (which those of you who know me well is NOT a good mode), and the people at our hotel offered to let me have some of the traditional South African meal they were cooking for some other guests. The manager kept saying it would be “her greatest pleasure,” which I found hard to believe, but I accepted their offer. WELL, turns out unbeknownst to me “mince” is made of beef, so after taking a huge bite and spitting it out I had to figure out a plan C for dinner (and I also had to figure out how to make it look like I ate a lot of the food they had so nicely offered me). Plan C involved some sad microwave noodles.
Friday was one of the weirder days I’ve had in a while. To make a long story short, there’s this huge law firm in S. Africa called “ENS” (Edward Nathan & Sonnenburg, or something), which they claim is the largest law firm in Africa (and I now believe them). Anyway, I guess one of the partners their went to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, so they really wanted to meet with (recruit) Harvard Law students who were going to be in South Africa this summer. The people at HLS thought it would be a good idea to combine this meeting with their Mock Interview Program, through which they set up mock interviews for HLS students this summer wherever they are in the world to prepare for the Early Interview Program in August. Anyway, this women Themba at ENS set up this whole day for us and emailed us this really intense sounding itinerary about a month ago, and so at 8 am sharp on Friday, we showed up at their building.
As I was about to walk through the revolving doors, I heard something and turned around to laugh at Hirsh, who had just walked into a pole. As I was laughing at him, I didn’t realize that the revolving door (which was apparently automatic after the first push) was continuing to revolve, leading me to become trapped between the revolving door and the door frame. When I finally dislodged myself I basically went tumbling into the firm’s front reception area, and David and Hirsh and Jim were laughing so hard at me that it took them a minute to get themselves under control.
The ENS building was pretty ridiculous- there was a gym on the first floor, and when we went up to the 5th floor to the main reception, the entire floor was covered with a fake grass carpet-thing that was simulating a soccer field. When I went to find a bathroom, I went through multiple sliding glass doors that had fake soccer goals painted onto them, and multiple little areas that were suddenly outdoors and had large rock formations and fountains.
We were eventually brought to a room full of “vac students,” or law school students, who were basically interning/interviewing with ENS for their 2 week vacation period. Here, instead of a law degree being a post-graduate degree, it’s a 5 year program that’s combined with your university education. Anyway, they basically treated us like celebrities and we were set up in the back of the room in a row of chairs facing the entire group in order to introduce ourselves to all the vac students. David, Hirsh and Jim introduced themselves first, and they all said the same exact thing (“Hi I’m ___, I’m from ___, and I’m happy to be here”). Everyone kind of laughed when Jim followed suit and said “I’m happy to be here,” so I thought it would be appropriate to say “Hi, I’m Cary, I’m from the NY area and I’m NOT happy to be here.” Apparently they didn’t really get the sarcasm and the room was silent except for Jim, Hirsh and David cracking up… Brilliant idea, Cary.
Then they put us all in vans and we went to the City Center to get a tour of all the courts and the jails. Seeing the courts was pretty interesting but the prosecutor who was giving us the tour kept interrupting court proceedings to explain to us what was going on. The magistrate and the attorneys seemed fine with it, but the accused looked really confused as to why there were a bunch of students crowding into the court room to see their arraignment.
We got a tour through the jail as well, which was a very interesting experience, especially when we were all crowded into a putrid-smelling holding cell with a lot of unidentified liquid on the floor while the manager of the jail explained to us exactly what happens when you’re arrested and put into this holding cell. I did not like being in there. There was also an interesting little room called the “Prisoners Friend” (no apostrophe), which was empty, and a sign that said “NO MORE ESCAPES,” leading me to wonder how many escapes had actually occurred.
I felt very strange and voyeuristic being in there. At one point, the manager of the jail pointed out to us “oh, look, there are women in that cell,” and then turned to them and yelled “NAUGHTY PEOPLE!!!”. They also showed us the FIFA courts for the World Cup, and explained how they expedite the criminal justice process for the people being prosecuted for World Cup-related offenses because of tourists going in and out of the country. After the prosecutor told us about one guy who went before the judge an hour after he learned what he was being charged with, someone raised their hand and asked, “doesn’t that violate the Constitution?” The Prosecutor just kind of laughed and said “OH- the Constitution’s not a big concern!”, which to me was alarming. I’m staying far away from any criminal activity around here.
Then we were all put back in the vans and taken to ENS’s pro bono office about a half an hour out of town. We couldn’t really figure out why we were there, and the head of their pro bono practice sort of treated the meeting like a focus group, and instead of telling us about his practice asked us all sorts of vague questions about why people do pro bono (and then rejected every one of our answers).
When we got back to the law firm, we had lunch at their very nice restaurant on the top floor. We were supposed to have our mock interviews right after lunch, but then Themba (the woman orchestrating our visit) came up to us looking like she was in physical pain and told us that the attorneys who were supposed to do our interviews bailed out because they wanted to leave early to go watch the World Cup game. Awesome. Apparently we’re going to reschedule those mock interviews, but we’ll see how that goes.
Later that day, we all met at the waterfront to watch the Round of 16 Ghana/Uruguay game. Ghana at this point was the last African team in the tournament, so everyone in Africa was routing for Ghana and was decked out in Ghana gear. I even saw my Somalian friend hanging out supporting Ghana at the outdoor beer tent where we were watching the game.
Anyway, to make a long story short, it was a devastating game that shattered all of Africa’s hopes in the very last possible second of the game. Depressing. After that we ended up at this weird techno club called “Assembly” filled with people that I’m assuming were on E.
On Saturday, I opted out of any World Cup activities (which was easy since I didn’t have a ticket to the game and all the boys did) and I went to Camps Bay, this gorgeous GORGEOUS beach on the western coast of Cape Town about 15 minutes from where we live. On my way to catch a minibus I saw a man standing on top of a store blowing a vuvezela, which no one seemed to surprised/concerned about.
Because I went right during the soccer game, there was NO ONE there except for some locals hanging out, collecting shells for artwork or drying their laundry on the rocks. It was absolutely a gorgeous day (see pictures).
Then I caught a minibus taxi back to town, which was uplifting because of the beautiful scenery and because everyone in the bus was laughing hysterically the entire way back (I have no idea why, but it was cheerful). On my walk back to our hotel from where the minibus dropped me off, this smiley looking man came up to me and asked if he could be my bodyguard. I asked him if he thought I needed a bodyguard where we were, and he said no, he would just like to be it. I asked him if he was going to work for free, and he kind of sadly sad no, it wasn’t going to be free, so I had to tell him it wasn’t going to work out. Too bad… it would have been nice to have a free bodyguard.
On Sunday, I met up with Kristen’s brother John’s friend from college, John, and his friend, John (yes, that’s three Johns). While I was waiting for them on Adderley street, this guy came up to me and mumbled at me for about 5 minutes, and I kept asking him to slow down or enunciate more because I had no idea what he was saying (all I caught was “Queen of England”), and then at the end he said very deliberately, “and in conclusion, you are the only object of my desires.” Realizing that he was trying to pick me up I kind of laughed and said “oh, sorry, that’s not going to happen,” and he just said “oh” and walked away. That was weird. When I found the Johns we caught a minibus for 6 Rand each (that’s less than a dollar) to the beach at Camps Bay, where all the guys were hanging out, swimming and playing soccer. It was a gorgeous day- probably one of the nicest we’ve had in a while. We all hung out and the boys played a few pick-up beach soccer matches with two different groups of Argentinans, who were extremely intense about soccer. I took lots of pictures of them in action while the sun was setting- so pretty!
We all headed back to Saasveld and then Hirsh, David, Mike, Dave, Jim, the Johns and me went to this restaurant called Gold Restaurant where I had made reservations. It was actually a 15-course meal with dishes from all over the continent, and there was traditional Malian dancing and singing throughout the meal that involved people wearing giant heads that were kind of terrifying (see picture). I think the best thing I had was this peanut sauce thing that I can’t really explain now that I am trying. Oh well.
Back to work today- a lot to do this week! And yes, I actually do work around here.
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