District 6 and ANOTHER sunset to remember

District Six and ANOTHER sunset to remember
Haven't blogged in two days, mostly because things are becoming routine around here with class at least 4 hours everyday. Yesterday's lectures were supposed to be on Music, Literature, and Health. Sounds good, right? Well, instead we got: a rant on the lack of music education, a lecture about Dutch Architecture from a lit prof, and no health lecture because the doctors here are on strike. As a bonus treat we got a welcome from the Coordinator of International Relations office who welcomed us to the University (a week late) and proceeded to talk for an hour and a half in a monotone voice about the entire history of the university. Definitely the 10 minute welcome we expected. The South Africans sure do like to talk...about everything. The highlight of the lectures was the lit lecturer who was late because he got into a motorcycle wreck on the way to the university and then at the end of the lecture he proceeded to say, "alright then, time for a ciggy!"
After our long day at UWC we headed to the District Six museum. District 6 was an area in Cape Town that was initially inhabited by a wide variety of people – blacks, coloreds, Indians etc. Due to the passage of the Land Act during the Apartheid, the entire community was forced to relocate to the current area of the Cape Town Flats outside the airport. The only reason they were moved out of the area was because it was in a very desirable area near the harbor that was worth a lot of money. So the whites at the time, claimed their land, kicked them off, and then bulldozed all of their houses and property. This uprooting is just another one of the evils of the apartheid. The museum housed the orignal street signs, as well as pictures from the era of District 6. One of the most powerful aspects of the museum was the map of the entire district on the bottom floor of the museum. Here people who lived there prior to the take over wrote down their names and labeled where they used to live. I still cannot get over the fact that when the US was moving toward progression (a la the Civil Rights Movement era), the Apartheid and oppression was just beginning in South Africa.

Sign from the Apartheid

Langston Hughes quote from the Distict 6 Museum. Shout out to my 10th graders!

House foundation in the DIstrict 6 area. It is still uninhabited to this day.


With the weather being so beautiful again yesterday, we decided to do a picnic dinner down by the beach. A group of about 12 of us picked up some snacks at the grocery store and then headed back to our beach to enjoy the end of the day. After being treated to another, and possibly more beautiful sunset, we found this great outdoor coffee bar with an outdoor deck and Moroccan style seating with cushions on the floor. We hung out there for quite a while and met the owner and his wife who talked to us all about their experience during the Apartheid as white, Afrikaans speakers.

My friends Chris, Kim and Elayna at the beach for sunset


This morning began with a trip to the hospital where Dr. Christian Barnard successfully completed the first heart transplant in 1967. Initially, I kind of questioned why where were visiting the museum, but it turned out to be very informative and interesting. There were some creepy wax figurines, but there were also a collection of letters from people all over the world congratulating Dr. Barnard and also some calling him immoral and a murderer because many suspected that he killed potential donors. Needless to say, very interesting.
Our lecture today was on Poverty and Inequality. The lecturer focused on education inequality based on race (white, colored, black), and she also left us with some daunting statistics. In 2008, one out of three girls under the age of 19 were pregnant or had a child. Of those, 55 were girls in just fifth grade.
Tonight we are all laying low....about to head out and find some dinner and pick up some snacks from the grocery store. The rest of this week is more lectures, and then this weekend we are heading out to the beautiful winery country, and also to the Cape Point peninsula.

Oh – and shout out to my American Lit kids. We talked about TP-CASTT today and I thought of all of you! Don't you miss it?