Friday, July 16, 2010

Thursday, July 15, 2010 12:57 AM Cape Town Time- UCT Dorms

Weather in America is temporary. Chicago gets super cold but in Chicago we are blessed to have buildings with heat. Even homeless people can frequent stores that have heat. Nobody in Cape Town really has central heat and its not terrible but it's definitely a change. In America we have low temperatures and they're much lower than anything here but because our privilege in that respect acts as a buffer we don't always feel the lows. That sounds poetic I guess. I'm loving it though.

Today over the lunch conversation we talked about the most dangerous thing we had done in our lives. The group was my South African RA and other American students. It was funny because the RA talked about disobeying her father as her most dangerous thing and then most of the American students had some form of extreme sport or something as theirs (white water rafting, bungee jumping, etc.). I told them about the time I was caught in the crossfire of a drive-by. Needless to say I killed the mood for a second. It made me think about something interesting. It made me think about how sometimes the children of privilege (we are all included because we all are privileged in some way) often create danger as a means of excitement. What else is cheating but someone with the privilege of a mate creating the excitement of being single? Not to say that all privilege or expressions of the manufactured danger are bad things but it just made me think about it.

The food is straight, haven't had any of that traveler's tummy (which perhaps proves my theory that it is something white folks who don't eat real food get). Getting to know the RAs is cool because they are African students. I think I will be pretty good friends with a few of them. My dorm has a basketball team or club I may join. I'm also thinking about traveling further around the country and/or Africa.

Today we also had a very interesting session on the racial and cultural construction of South Africa. I think I understand the racial distinction of "coloured" more than I did just reading about it. We watched some stand-up from this comic Trevor (I forget his surname) that shed some light. I wanted to ask people if I would be first considered black or American or possibly coloured but I was kind of embarrassed to ask it I suppose. I will get around to it at some point. I'm looking forward to getting in a good bit of community service while I'm here too. This post is a little unfocused and I'm kind of sleepy now so I'm gonna stop. I'll post again later.

"when they ask for hot shit i freeze, i tell them where i was rose we always said cold"

-common

peace,

nate

1 comment:

Stitch said...

make these into a book
i think this could be a very interesting read to people in later generations