We have begun our work at Lwandle Migrant Labor Museum, and we will continue to work there until the end of next week. The group, as well as some student from the University of the Western Cape (UWC), and volunteers form the community, is working to put on an exhibit about textiles and clothing made and sold within the Lawndle Township. These are clothes made by people within the Township and we hope that this exhibit will prompt other people to buy these clothes and support the Township. I am on the exhibit committee, so I will be helping make the actual exhibit, decide what dresses or clothes to display, what signs to put up, what pictures to enlarge, etc.

Yesterday, we took a walk through the actual township and you can just imagine how... I am having trouble finding the correct, yet not cliché, word for this...desperate the situation is here. There are no official roads, no private toilets, and no garbage system. You can imagine how this place might look. Lunga our guide and local asked us to take pictures, but none of us felt comfortable, yet knowing that we wouldn’t want to forget this or miss the chance to visually document our experiences, Lunga took my camera and took pictures for us. I have two here:

After our work at Lwandle, we went to the famous Cape Town Water Front where lights, neon, and relics of American malls proliferated everywhere you turned. I asked one of the students from UWC, Lauren (pronounced with a trill “r” like in Spanish), if she was used to this contrast and she said, “Yes.” Contrast is what they are accustomed to, whereas in the US it’s all about subtlety. At dinner, well more like drinks, a “white” (or “Afrikaaner,” according to Dane, another UWC student) couple preferred to leave the restaurant than move one table over to make room for us and our “coloured” friends, where as in America if you are black you “randomly” get stopped in your car or searched at the airport. It makes me guilty and uncomfortable. Racism, poverty, prejudice, money is all sharply contrasted, side by side, there is very little grey here. I can’t decide if it’s a good thing or bad thing; “subtlety,” I mean.

As for me, I still have left little of my American culture behind. I wake up at six, shower, dress, and walk across the street to drink an Americano and study vocabulary for the GRE. When I go home I write these blogs, my “analytical” journal, my diary, and read.

Oh, about the pictures from last time, the internet is very slow and ornery here, so I will do my best to upload pictures. I understand they make things more interesting and aesthetically pleasing, so I will do my best (salé?) to upload pictures. I am slowly and painfully learning just how different and fortunate I am. I am growing a heavy heart while in South Africa.