My First Week

Things have been moving quickly, and yet the days have been quite long around here. On Thursday, Mani (my neighbor here from Berkeley) and I went shopping to get stuff for the flat. First we went to Clicks which is kind of like a Longs Drugs without the drugs (drugs are sold at a "Chemist"--what we would call a pharmacy), so it pretty much had a little bit of everything. Then we went to the grocery store Checkers in the same shopping center which has a LOT of everything. It is pretty similar to the setup of supermarkets in the US and fully stocked at very reasonable rates. There are of course some differences though--for instance, when I went to the checkout counter the clerk told me that I forgot to weigh my grapes. I was confused by this at first and then realized that all produce is weighed by a clerk back in the produce section. This seems to be one more way that this country has sought to create as many jobs as possible to keep its people busy.

Bit of a digression: Looking around I have noticed how there seems to be double if not triple the amount of workers doing a particular job compared to what I am used to seeing in the US. For instance, our little flat is cleaned six days a week. Back in Berkeley, I felt spoiled because someone came once a week to clean our kitchen and bathroom, but everyday is over the top! Also, the campus grounds are impeccably kept by what I can only imagine is a massive maintenance crew. The examples go on and on, but I will just give one more. I have noticed that in a nearby shopping center parking lot, there are five crime guards...for a parking lot that has no more than 50 spots. Many of the jobs around are not good ones, but they are jobs nonetheless.

Walking back with our stuff as it got hotter, we realized, "Oh, Denison is pretty far." It was sunny on Thursday so by noon it was HOT. I spent most of the afternoon settling into my room and watching my first African rain storm. Almost every afternoon, a thunderstorm rolls through during the summer. I also started reading Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, who was a student at this university back in the day so there's a bunch of stuff around named for him. I heard there was another EAP student living upstairs so I went up there to meet her, and it was a very good thing I did as you will later find out. Since most of the 20-30 EAP/Rutgers students arrived on Tuesday night (the day before me) they had already organized a trip into the main part of PMB that day.

On Friday morning, Mani and I went back to the shopping center to get some more stuff since we were limited by what we could carry. I got myself a cell phone (ask me if you want the number) and some staple food items to start cooking with. On the way back we ran into Lauren from UCLA (who I met the day before) and Jessi from UCSD who informed us that we were supposed to be registering right then! Apparently university people had come running after all the international students to inform them of this at the very last minute. Mani and I were away from our rooms and didn't get the message, so it was a very good thing we ran into these girls. We dropped our stuff, and went right back out to campus to register. I'm still quite confused about how things went down, but apparently I'm in enrolled in four classes. They were supposed to have timetables for us, which they didn't, so I still don't know if my classes conflict... Anyway, I was able to get my student ID card which is important because it provides access to all of the gates around campus. Hopefully things will work out.

The good thing about having to register on Friday was that I finally got a chance to meet most of the other international students. There's about 15 of us from UC's and 10-15 from Rutgers. All in all, everyone seems very friendly and enthusiastic to be here. After the registration madness, a bunch of us went to get lunch/ice cream. I tried the vegetarian fast food place which is amazing--I got a roti roll which is like an Indian tortilla filled with three kinds of curry--all of this for 3.50 rands, or 50 cents!! I'm sure I will be going there frequently. We chatted with Chris, a post-graduate (what we would call a grad student) who is one of our mentors. He has lived around PMB for about five years, but he actually grew up in the Congo and his parents are from Rwanda. Another post-graduate named Maibuye, who I met earlier in the registration office because he was held up in line behind all the frantic international students, came by and sat down to chat with us too. He gave us some good tips on what we absolutely have to see in SA, and how we should go about doing it. This guy grew up around PMB, but doesn't speak Zulu because it sounds like he was raised by a white woman. The Zulu students here (which appears to be the majority) seem to always speak with each other in Zulu rather than English. After that, we headed back to campus, and Chris took a bunch of us to the career office to find out about local community service opportunities. We were then directed to the HIV/AIDS Support Unit who apparently do a lot of direct service projects which many of us are interested in. They were closed by the time we got there, so hopefully we'll find out more this week. A couple of the girls decided that they want Zulu names while they are here, so Chris--not knowing Zulu himself--stopped a few Zulu girls walking up the road to ask for help with picking names for us. For me, they picked the name Senthemba (pronounced Sentemba) which means "promise." Pretty nice, but I'm not sure I'm going to go around introducing myself as Senthemba yet...

Later that evening our host professor took us out to dinner at a nearby steakhouse (I was able to find a veggie burger). Prices are definitely lower here--a steak dinner was less than $10 and my veggie burger with onion rings and fries was about $5--tax included. Service was incredibly slow, but this gave us a chance to get to know each other a bit better. Unfortunately, by this time I was losing my voice. After dinner, about half of the group went off to a nearby casino, and the rest of us went back to get some SLEEP. I was in a group of four girls making the long trek back to Denison, so we decided to stop in the security office along the way to ask for an escort. We had two guards for different stretches of the walk. Each of them spoke some English, but their primary language was Zulu, and apparently neither of them had ever heard of California!

On Saturday, a bunch of the UC/Rutgers students took a kombi (minibus taxi) to the beach in Durban, but the rest of us needed a day to rest. Mani and I went into town where we ran into Jessi. We decided to see Blood Diamond (a ticket costs about $2!), which was a nice break from the heat of the day. Seeing a movie set in Africa (albeit not SA) with an African audience was an interesting experience. There was a strong reaction from the racial slurs that I don't think most Americans would pick up on, and I could've sworn that people were chuckling during some of the violent scenes--perhaps it doesn't seem realistic? The moment we got to the campus gate, a kombi with all the UC/Rutgers people who went to Durban pulled up--crazy timing! We were able to bum a ride back up to Denison because all the girls that live at Lodge got out there. Apparently everyone got stung by jellyfish a few times--ouch!

Sunday we had our first excursion out of PMB sponsored by our home universities. We went to PheZulu Cultural Village where they had a re-creation of a traditional Zulu village. There was a show with some dancing and singing, and they showed us some traditional huts. It was all pretty hoaky (think Colonial Williamsburg) and was clearly catering to non-black tourists. They also had a crocodile farm there which was sort of like going to a zoo, except the only animals there are crocodiles. We were "lucky" enough to be there for the weekly feeding which consisted of chicken carnage (I took a video if you're morbidly interested). They also had some of the deadliest snakes in SA there such as green and black mambas--hopefully I will only encounter these snakes when they are behind glass. We had a nice Sunday brunch buffet type of thing down the road overlooking the Valley of 1000 Hills (I didn't try counting, but it was a very nice view) before heading back to PMB.

Sunday evening I went to a culture show at the playhouse on campus. For the first half, they had a panel of students from different cultures (i.e. different tribes, countries, lifestyles, etc.). After the theatrical numbers, they opened it up for a Q&A session between the audience and the panel. The discussion got very heated over issues such as who you should be able to date/marry and being true to your culture/traditions. I learned a new term that I had never heard: coconut. Apparently this is used (in a not nice way) to refer to a black person who appears to have lost touch with their tribal traditions and embraced Western culture. One of the arguments against such labeling was that an African who comes to this region from another country is sometimes mislabeled a coconut because they don't understand Zulu even though they are fully in touch with their own heritage. The crowd was very open and vocal which was nice to see because I think a similar conversation in the US would be much more reserved for fear of not being PC. This felt like a much more authentic African experience than the trip to the cultural village earlier in the day.

Monday was the start of orientation--a long day of sitting and getting campus information thrown at us, hoping some of the useful tidbits would stick. Highlight of the day was "tea time"--no joke. For the first break they had tea and muffins (or perhaps you could say crumpets) waiting for us. I have now walked home in the evening thunderstorms two days in a row--maybe I will learn to carry an umbrella...or not. The second day, I realized I was basically walking across a golf course (New Campus is a converted golf course and there are large swaths of open field) holding a binder over my head as thunder rumbled nearby--a comically stupid thing to do in a thunderstorm. Oh well, obviously I didn't get struck by lightning...this time.